Bronwen Thomas

The conceptual and practical ethical dilemmas of using health discussion board posts as research data.

Background Increasing numbers of people living with a long-term health condition are putting personal health information online, including on discussion boards. Many discussion boards contain material of potential use to researchers; however, it is unclear how this information can and should be used by researchers. To date there has been no evaluation of the views of those individuals sharing health information online regarding the use of their shared information for research purposes. Objective To explore the views of contributors to online diabetes discussion boards with regards to if (and how) they feel their contributions to boards should be used by health researchers. Methods A qualitative approach was employed using online semistructured asynchronous (email) interviews. Interpretative description methodology was used to assess the interview transcripts, and quotations were extracted and anonymized to support each theme. Results 26 interviews were carried out. Participants agreed that forum posts are in the public domain and that aggregated information could be freely used by researchers. This was agreed to be a good way of ensuring that the view of people living with diabetes is being heard in research. There was no consensus on the need for permission to use individual information, such as quotations, with some people happy for this to be freely used and others feeling that permission is necessary. Conclusions Participants acknowledged the dichotomy of having placed information into the public domain in an unrestricted way, with some interviewees also wanting to retain control of its use. The Internet is a new research location, and rather than trying to apply traditional ethical norms to this new genre, a new modus operandi is required. The authors propose introducing new norms for presenting research carried out with online discussion boards.

Moderating readers and reading online

Despite the proliferation of online forums for the discussion of literary texts, very little has been written to date on the management of these spaces and how this helps frame the kinds of discussion and interpretative work that take place. This article draws on a series of interviews with moderators of online book-related sites, alongside close analysis of online interactions between moderators and users to consider issues of authority, hierarchy, power and control, asking how these act to structure or facilitate acts of interpretation taking place online. We begin by outlining the moderator’s role before conducting a brief review of existing scholarship on offline reading groups and online communities, to identify how social infrastructures are established and negotiated. The main body of the article draws upon interviews with moderators of two online literary forums – The Republic of Pemberley and The Guardian’s online Reading Group – to explore the ways in which each of the respective moderators frames his or her role. This is accompanied by an in-depth exploration of how the forms of interpretation we find on the two sites are shaped and directed by the moderators. The article concludes by reflecting upon some of the issues raised by this study and its methodology, particularly with regards to digital dualism and the blurring of the boundaries between the public and the private in online spaces.

Kicking the hornet’s nest: The rhetoric of social campaigning in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has attracted huge audiences all over the world. Interest in the trilogy has been fuelled by revelations about the life and death of the author, and by clever publicity campaigns for both the books and the film adaptations, but little attention has been paid so far to the language and style of the novels. This article will focus on Larsson’s attempt to incorporate social campaigning and politics into the crime genre, and the extent to which he is able to combine rhetorical attacks on the injustices of contemporary Swedish society with a gripping plot. The article will offer a close analysis of the stylistic ‘gear shifts’ in the novels (Page, 1973), along with an examination of the various types of paratextual matter (Genette, 1997 [1987]) they incorporate. In addition, I will explore how far Larsson’s writing participates in the reworking of definitions of criminality and deviance within the genre (Gregoriou, 2007). Finally, the article will consider how far the film adaptations dilute Larsson’s social and political agenda, and tone down or glamorise the sexual violence which is such a feature of the novels.

Whose Story is it Anyway?: Following Everyday Accounts of Living with Dementia on Social Media

This article will focus on an analysis of everyday accounts of living with dementia found on Twitter. The discussion aims to address specific issues of control raised by these narratives, both in terms of the ownership and distribution of the stories, and in terms of the sense of self these accounts may provide. The article will reflect on the specific methodological issues raised in analysing the small stories found on social media, especially in so far as they challenge traditional narrative categories. It also engages in depth with the ethical issues raised by researching dementia narratives, particularly as regards consent and any attempt to (re)construct some kind of unitary meaning from the fragments and traces of the self these narratives may provide. The discussion aims to go beyond the language and style of the individual narratives to explore the contexts in which the narratives are taken up and circulated. It also aims to consider how far these stories of the self offer an alternative to dominant versions of the illness narrative that focus on transformation and growth, to provide powerful insights into the everyday realities of living with dementia.

All talk: Dialogue and intimacy in Spike Jonze’s Her

This chapter focuses on the ways in which film dialogue can enact and foreground the complex mechanisms underlying conversational interaction, and demonstrate the ways in which verbal interaction may be as much about concealment and solipsism as it is about intimacy and revelation. With close reference to Spike Jonze’s Her, which centres on the developing relationship between a lonely writer and an operating system designed to fulfill his every need, the chapter will examine how the film’s foregrounding of character dialogue to the exclusion of almost everything else challenges convention and relies on the audience to read between the lines of the characters’ utterances. The chapter draws on theories of dialogue from literary criticism, narratology and linguistics as well as film studies to argue that dialogue in film is not just about exquisitely staged scenes or displays of auteurish experimentation, but plays an integral role in the audience’s active engagement with the characters and their investment in their unfolding relationships.

Book Review: Marina Grishakova and Marie-Laure Ryan, Intermediality and Storytelling

Without doubt, this book constitutes a highly relevant contribution to the cognitive study of literature and facilitates new ways of engaging with this flourishing field of research. Another strength of the book is that its arguments are all exemplified by well-chosen examples. Bearing such fine qualities as readability, intelligence, and originality, the book will become a key reference in the vast literature concerning cognitive approaches to literature, and a source of very fruitful discussion and further developments.

Book Reviews: Dramatic Discourse: Dialogue as Interaction in Plays: by Vimala Herman, 1995, Routledge, London, pp. 331, ISBN 0 415 08241 2

Vimala Herman’s study provides a comprehensive theoretical framework for the analysis of dramatic dialogue. Dramatic Discourse places the emphasis on the interactive aspects of dialogue and attempts to take account of the specific demands of live performance. The book primarily concerns itself with exploring the various models for communication and interaction devised by linguists, and considering how appropriately these may be applied to dramatic texts. But this analysis necessarily raises issues concerning the power-relations of characters, politeness norms and gender differentiation as well as theoretical and philosophical questions regarding the nature of verbal interaction itself. The main strength of the book lies in its exposition of linguistic models, which is both thorough and accessible. The individual chapters on ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, turn sequencing, pragmatics, and gender and language provide excellent overviews for anyone interested in analysing the mechanisms and structures of interaction. In addition, the breadth and clarity of the theoretical framework should prove invaluable to stylisticians working on fictional as well as dramatic dialogue. Herman’s choice of examples from dramatic texts illustrates the variety of possibilities available to the dramatist, from Shakespearean rhetorical set-pieces to the misfires and conflicts of

Book Reviews: An Introduction to Spoken Interaction by Anna-Brita Stenstrom, 1994, Longman, Harlow, pp. 238, ISBN 0 582 07130 5

gradual fading during the twentieth century of the classical literary references, including the fairly basic biblical ones, in the knowledge-base of even quite well-educated students. Balz Engler’s chapter is a light and enjoyable ’proof’ of the proposition that the first occasion of reading or hearing a poem will permanently affect our reading of it. This chapter doesn’t go very far, but is a useful addition to the argument of those who need to counteract students’ belief in the primacy of the text. This chapter is at the other extreme from Chapter 6 it’s easy!