An Argumentation Analysis of Weblog Conversations

Weblogs are important new components of the Internet. They provide individual users with an easy way to publish online and others to comment on these views. Furthermore, there is a suite of secondary applications that allow weblogs to be linked, searched, and navigated. Although originally intended for individual use, in practice weblogs increasingly appear to facilitate distributed conversations. This could have important implications for the use of this technology as a medium for collaboration. Given the special characteristics of weblogs and their supporting applications, they may be well suited for a range of conversational purposes that require different forms of argumentation. In this paper, we analyze the argumentation potential of weblog technologies, using a diagnostic framework for argumentation technologies. We pay special attention to the conversation structures and dynamics that weblogs naturally afford. Based on this initial analysis, we make a number of recommendations for research on how to apply these technologies in purposeful conversation processes such as for knowledge management. 1 The research reported in this paper has been conducted as part of the METIS project, sponsored by the Telematics Institute, the Netherlands (http://www.telin.nl) The copyright of this paper belongs to the paper’s authors. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage. Proce dings of the 9th International Working Conference on the Language-Action Perspective on Communication Mo elling (LAP 2004) Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA, June 2-3, 2004 (M. Aakhus, M. Lind, eds.) www.scils.rutgers.edu/lap04/lap04.htm A. de Moor and L. Efimova 198 The Language-Action Perspective on Communication Modelling 2004