Michel Marcoccia

Practices Analysis and Digital Platform Design: An Interdisciplinary Study of Social Support

People are turning increasingly to the Internet to find support and share their experience and feelings when they are undergoing hardships such as medical problems. The aim of our ongoing research project is to design innovative online social support services. In order to pave the way for this complex undertaking, several interdisciplinary studies were conducted in this framework: discourse analysis was carried out on online discussions focusing on social support, observers attended support group meetings attended by family caregivers, and interviews were conducted with these caregivers. The application of our findings to our design project is discussed.

Producing Irony in Adolescence: A Comparison Between Face-to-Face and Computer-Mediated Communication

Abstract The literature suggests that irony production expands in the developmental period of adolescence. We aimed to test this hypothesis by investigating two channels: face-to-face and computer-mediated communication (CMC). Corpora were collected by asking seventh and 11th graders to freely discuss some general topics (e.g., music), either face-to-face or on online forums. Results showed that 6.2% of the 11th graders’ productions were ironic utterances, compared with just 2.5% of the seventh graders’ productions, confirming the major development of irony production in adolescence. Results also showed that adolescents produced more ironic utterances in CMC than face-to-face. The analysis suggested that irony use is a strategy for increasing in-group solidarity and compensating for the distance intrinsic to CMC, as it was mostly inclusive and well-marked on forums. The present study also confirmed previous studies showing that irony is compatible with CMC.