With my recent work on the EMMA project and starting my PhD, there is a lot of new research to talk about! And Summer 2020 is going to be the time to gain some crucial feedback on my work so far. This Summer, I will be presenting at several international conferences in Bulgaria, Norway, and Spain, and in the UK. I will also be returning to assist in the running of the 3rd Statistics for Linguists Summer School at the University of Birmingham.
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methodological challenges in identifying and classifying multimodal instances of metaphor and
metaphor, could be observed in the classroom through teacher and student discourse.
On Tuesday 11th July, I was very excited to travel to York to present my Bachelor's Language and New Media project at my first professional conference - SymPol10.
always a strength because it ensures you are familiar with the material and makes you less nervous (that's my theory, anyway). Although the initial registration gathering was, at the time, a rather daunting prospect, I have to emphatically admit that the whole excursion was worth every ounce of anxiety and apprehension.
How do likes and reactions operate as interpersonal politeness strategies when evaluating Facebook status updates posted in 2016?
Facebook status updates, identifying when they operate as politeness strategies. Three stages of data have been collected: a self-report survey, a sub-sample of status updates, and a contextual questionnaire for status update authors. Likes and reactions were found to operate as interactional, interpersonal, and facework strategies on Facebook. Likes and reactions are employed more for positive (than negative) evaluation, as a means to signal endorsement, and as a supportive minimal response that emulates offline positive feedback cues. Likes are particularly used as a form of facework; to signal to the status author that their status has been 'heard', read, and acknowledged (West, 2015: 54). Meanwhile, reactions such as love and haha can be used to maintain or display offline relationships. The small selection of status updates analysed in this study provides an indication as to how likes and reactions are used as positive, supportive, politeness strategies when evaluating Facebook status updates in 2016. 
for the second day of the three-day conference.
How do likes and reactions as interactional features on Facebook status updates posted in 2016 extend narrative evaluation? |
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| While previous research has investigated Facebook likes, their role in evaluating online content, and expanding evaluative practices in an online environment, in 2016 reactions were newly-released on Facebook, and have not yet received much scholarly attention. Therefore, in this study I analysed the meanings attributed to likes and reactions by Facebook users and how they were actually employed to respond to Facebook status updates. I compared my results with previous studies to determine how far the use of likes and reactions have extended |  Debut presentation at ULAB17 conference, University of Cambridge |
evaluative practices of status updates on Facebook. Three stages of data have been collected: a self-report survey, a sub-sample of status updates, and a contextual questionnaire for status update authors. The results suggest that likes and reactions have afforded an increase in, and an extension to, evaluative practices on Facebook when compared with past studies. Despite reactions being intended to clarify evaluations in a continuum of emotion, likes are still used considerably more than reactions in 2016. It is argued that this could be due to numerous factors: likes' familiarity and integration in Facebook-user habits and competency compared to reactions; multiple meanings already attributed to likes before reactions were released; and the ease of practical and functional affordances of using likes as a "minimal effort response" over reactions.
| ULAB17 Abstract |
