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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘I was bored so…’
T2 - motivational accounts of participation in an online emo group
AU - Chernoff, Nathalie
AU - Widdicombe, Sue
PY - 2015/3/16
Y1 - 2015/3/16
N2 - We examine members' spontaneous accounts for joining and participating in an online emo forum. The Internet and social networking sites are central features of contemporary youth cultures; the analysis of interaction on emo forums can thus provide a way of appreciating emo as a ?Community in Practice?. We analyse popular discussion threads collected from a key emo website, using membership categorisation and conversation analysis. In these threads, members introduce themselves and account for joining and posting pictures in response to a prior request to do so. Analysis shows that newbies establish their emo attributes and hence entitlement to participate while dismissing emo-related motivation for joining the forum, claiming instead a desire to relieve boredom. Participants similarly accounted for posting photos of themselves and for producing fan pics as due to boredom. We show how claiming to be bored allows members to engage with the group while negotiating potentially problematic inferences that attend subcultural membership. We conclude that our approach provides a useful methodology for furthering our understanding of an important aspect of contemporary youth subcultures.
AB - We examine members' spontaneous accounts for joining and participating in an online emo forum. The Internet and social networking sites are central features of contemporary youth cultures; the analysis of interaction on emo forums can thus provide a way of appreciating emo as a ?Community in Practice?. We analyse popular discussion threads collected from a key emo website, using membership categorisation and conversation analysis. In these threads, members introduce themselves and account for joining and posting pictures in response to a prior request to do so. Analysis shows that newbies establish their emo attributes and hence entitlement to participate while dismissing emo-related motivation for joining the forum, claiming instead a desire to relieve boredom. Participants similarly accounted for posting photos of themselves and for producing fan pics as due to boredom. We show how claiming to be bored allows members to engage with the group while negotiating potentially problematic inferences that attend subcultural membership. We conclude that our approach provides a useful methodology for furthering our understanding of an important aspect of contemporary youth subcultures.
KW - emo
KW - youth subcultures
KW - online interaction
KW - Internet
KW - conversation analysis
KW - membership categorisation analysis
U2 - 10.1080/13676261.2014.944115
DO - 10.1080/13676261.2014.944115
M3 - Journal article
VL - 18
SP - 305
EP - 321
JO - Journal of Youth Studies
JF - Journal of Youth Studies
SN - 1367-6261
IS - 3
ER -