"BLACK OR WHITE": Online Consumer Philosophy --What, and how, we can learn

Online discussion groups allow people whose social or physical separation previously kept them from communicating to form groups to discuss mutual interests, entertain each other, and work collectively. Some of online discussions can directly influence the purchase of products and services. In spite of its potential importance, the quality and quantity of participants or a follower, it comes up with two questions: what can we learn from the “bulletin board” discussion groups and how best can we learn it? We examine characteristics of online discussion that make it special both to participants and researchers.

Conversation Analysis Applications:
Attitudes and Values: online discussion participants bring the same bias online that exist in the real world. If content analysis is used, it may be necessary to examine a number of postings over time to assess stable attitudes.
Knowledge and Expertise: Participants can establish expertise and a reputation for expertise can be established over time that can be related to how central a participant is in the network.
Personal Disclosure: It is possible to disguise online identity completely or to divulge a great deal. Domain names can indicate what background the participant is from.
Motivation for response: participants my want to be entertained or to feel a part of a group. They also may be motivated to persuade, to win, to dominate, or to vent their emotions. These motivations may be analyzed at the level of individual postings since participants may want to accomplish different things at different times.
Role: In any particular posting, contributors assume a role that closely ties to their motivation including providing information, initiating a topic, asking a question, answering a question, clarifying an answer, corroborating an answer, and emotionally supporting a participant. Over time it may be observed that participants consistently assume the same role.
Message Tone: tone refers to the participants attitude toward the subject matter. Consistent with the kind of context used in conversation analysis, tone may be characterized further. Conflict refers to clear differences of opinion and threatens positive face.
Content analysis: Perhaps most importantly, discussions can be characterized by the particular terms and points made. These terms are used to compile a dictionary that can be used in content analysis.