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Drawing on the seminal ideas of British, European and American group analysis, psychoanalysts, social psychologists and social scientists, the books in this series will focus on the study of small and large groups, organisations and other social systems, and on the study of the transpersonal and transgenerational sociality of human nature. NILGA books will be required reading for the members of professional organisations in the fields of group analysis, psychoanalysis, and related social sciences. They will be indispensable for the \"formation\" of students of psychotherapy, whether they are mainly interested in clinical work with patients or in consultancy to teams and organisational clients within the private and public sectors. --Page 4 of cover.

Metaphor has long provided a rich way to speak about the unspeakable, to refer to delicate issues. Sex is one such area. This book follows a cognitive-linguistic and relevance-theoretic approach to the language of sex, considering metaphor as a bridge that brings together mind and language. It does this through the analysis of the antithetical mechanisms ofverbal mitigationandoffence. These two mechanisms are (more commonly know as) euphemism and (its lesser known companion term) dysphemism. The volume reflects on the social and communicative functions that sexual metaphors perform in a sample of almost two hundred postings taken from internet forums. How do people think about sex? How do people avoid talking about sex? How do people paraphrase sexual topics? It offers an account of how real language users understand sexual taboo in present-day English and also a great grounding in manual corpus work on a qualitative level.

This descriptive and comprehensive study on the discursive struggle over interpersonal relations in online message boards is located at the fascinating interface of pragmatics and computer-mediated discourse – a research area which has so far not attracted much scientific interest. It sets out to shed light on the question how interpersonal relations are established, managed and negotiated in online message boards by giving a valid overview of the entire panoply of interpersonal relations (and their interrelations), including both positively and negatively marked behavior. With the first part of the book providing an in-depth discussion and refinement of the pivotal theoretical positions of both fields of research, students as well as professionals are (re-)acquainted with the subject at hand. Thus supplying a framework for the ensuing case study, the empirical part displays the results of the analysis of 50 threads (ca. 300,000 words) of a popular British message board.

The New International Library of Group Analysis Drawing on the seminal ideas of British, European, and American group analysts, psychoanalysts, social psychologists, and social scientists, the books in this series focus on the study of small and large groups, organisations, and other social systems, and on the study of the transpersonal and transgenerational sociality of human nature. NILGA books will be required reading for the members of professional organisations in the fields of group analysis, psychoanalysis, and related social sciences. They will be indispensable for the “formation” of students of psychotherapy, whether they are mainly interested in clinical work with patients or in consultancy to teams and organisational clients within the private and public sectors.

This volume examines how Chinese women negotiate the Internet as a research tool and a strategy for the acquisition of information, as well as for social networking purposes. Offering insight into the complicated creation of a female Chinese cybercommunity, Chinese Women and the Cyberspace discusses the impact of increasingly available Internet technology on the life and lifestyle of Chinese women-examining larger issues of how women become both masters of their electronic domain and the objects of exploitation in a faceless online world. University of Hong Kong. This title is available in the OAPEN Library - http://www.oapen.org.

Every day, millions of users log on to their favorite online forums and interact with others to get advice and discuss everything from the latest news and trends to their hobbies, professions, and whatever else strikes their fancy. Admin­istrators have to lead these communities, deal with difficult users, and choose moderators. Legal constraints, spammers, and technical issues can turn the excitement of running an online community into chaos. With the right guidance, however, running forums can be a pleasure. Patrick O'Keefe has spent years developing and managing online communities. Now, he shows readers how to make the right decisions about every aspect of their forums, including: • choosing a name and domain name • picking the right software • deciding on user options like avatars and private messaging • setting guidelines and dealing with violators • ensuring that posts stay on topic • settling online disputes among users • involving users and keeping the site interesting Managing Online Forums is the one book that shows site owners and administrators how to create a safe and entertaining community that users will return to again and again.

Internet trolls live to upset as many people as possible, using all the technical and psychological tools at their disposal. They gleefully whip the media into a frenzy over a fake teen drug crisis; they post offensive messages on Facebook memorial pages, traumatizing grief-stricken friends and family; they use unabashedly racist language and images. They take pleasure in ruining a complete stranger's day and find amusement in their victim's anguish. In short, trolling is the obstacle to a kinder, gentler Internet. To quote a famous Internet meme, trolling is why we can't have nice things online. Or at least that's what we have been led to believe. In this provocative book, Whitney Phillips argues that trolling, widely condemned as obscene and deviant, actually fits comfortably within the contemporary media landscape. Trolling may be obscene, but, Phillips argues, it isn't all that deviant. Trolls' actions are born of and fueled by culturally sanctioned impulses -- which are just as damaging as the trolls' most disruptive behaviors. Phillips describes, for example, the relationship between trolling and sensationalist corporate media -- pointing out that for trolls, exploitation is a leisure activity; for media, it's a business strategy. She shows how trolls, \"the grimacing poster children for a socially networked world,\" align with social media. And she documents how trolls, in addition to parroting media tropes, also offer a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes, including gendered notions of dominance and success and an ideology of entitlement. We don't just have a trolling problem, Phillips argues; we have a culture problem. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things isn't only about trolls; it's about a culture in which trolls thrive.

The Discourse of Online Reviews is the first book to provide an account of the discursive, pragmatic and rhetorical features of this rapidly growing form of technologically-mediated communication. Examining a corpus of over 1,000 consumer reviews, Camilla Vásquez explores many of the discourse features that are characteristic of this new, user-generated, computer-mediated and primarily text-based genre. She investigates the language used by reviewers as they forge connections with their audiences to draw them into their stories, as they construct their expertise and authority on various subjects and as they evaluate and assess their consumer experiences. She also demonstrates how reviewers display their awareness about emerging conventions of the very genre in which they are participating. This book adopts an eclectic approach to the analysis of discourse, and explores topics such as evaluation, identity and intertextuality as they occur in online reviews of hotels, restaurants, recipes, films and other consumer products.

Despite the prevalence of vaping nicotine, most nicotine cessation research remains focused on smoking cigarettes. However, the lived experience of quitting smoking is different from quitting vaping. As a result, research examining the unique experiences of those quitting vaping can better inform quitting resources and cessation programs specific to e-cigarette use. Examining Reddit forums (ie, subreddits) dedicated to the topics of quitting vaping nicotine can provide insight into the discussion around experiences on quitting vaping. Prior literature examining limited discussions around quitting vaping on Reddit has identified the sharing of barriers and facilitators for quitting, but more research is needed to investigate the content comprehensively across all subreddits. The objective of this study is to examine content across quit vaping subreddits since their inception to better understand quitting vaping within the context of the expanding nicotine market. All posts from January 2015 to October 2021 were scraped from all quit vaping subreddits: r/QuittingJuul, r/QuitVaping, r/quit_vaping, and r/stopvaping (N=7110). Rolling weekly average post volume was calculated. A codebook informed by a latent Dirichlet allocation topic model was developed to characterize themes in a subsample of 695 randomly selected posts. Frequencies and percentages of posts containing each coded theme were assessed along with the number of upvotes and comments. Post volume increased across all subreddits over time, spiking from August - September of 2019 when vaping lung injury emerged. Just over 52% of posts discussed seeking social support and 16.83% discussed providing social support. Posts providing support received the most positive engagements (i.e. upvotes) of all coded categories. Posts also discussed physical and psychological symptoms of withdrawal (30.65% and 18.85%, respectively), strategies for quitting including: quitting cold turkey (38.33%), using alternative nicotine products (17%), and tapering down nicotine content (10.50%). Most posts shared a personal narrative (92.37%) and some discussed quit motivation (28.20%) and relapse (14.99%). This work identifies a desire for peer-to-peer support for quitting vaping, which reinforces existing literature and highlights characteristics of quitting vaping specific to a changing nicotine product environment. Given that posts providing social support were the most upvoted, this suggests that subreddit contributors are seeking support from their peers when discussing quitting vaping. Additionally, this analysis shows the sharing of barriers and facilitators for quitting, supporting findings from prior exploration of quit vaping subreddits. Finally, quitting vaping in an ever-growing nicotine market has led to the evolution of vaping-specific quit methods such as tapering down nicotine content. These findings have direct implications for quit vaping product implementation and development.