You hear a lot of opinions about discussions taking place in social media. Some people have even begun wondering whether social media can threaten democracy. But shouldn’t we make a distinction between various forums for discussion online?
The channel influences the quality of interaction. Susan C. Herring has categorized technical features and social situations that affect such discussion. Among other features, Herring mentions message length, anonymity, filtering, and media options. Situational factors include such things as the number of participants, their professions, the topic, and the objectives that participants have for their activity.
All these factors affect the quality of interaction, so it is quite a generalization to make negative statements about social media discussions without mentioning the forums on which the findings are based. Critics need to specify whether they‘re talking about discussions in blogs, wikis, learning environments, customer chats, public sector forums, or newspaper comment sections.