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The conversationality index. A quantitative assessment of conversation in social media interactions

  • There has been an explosion in social media use, with Statista estimating that worldwide, Facebook has over 3 billion regular active users, YouTube 2.5 billion, and Instagram and WhatsApp 2 billion (Statista 2023). While social media allows one to connect and interact with a range of people, increased social media use can be associated with feelings of isolation and symptoms of depression and anxiety. This may in part be because it allows users to engage in activities that appear social but that do not provide meaningful social interaction. We developed the Conversationality Index to assess the quality of social media exchanges based on the length, number of participants and how equally the participants contribute to a written online conversation. After calibrating the Conversationality Index using real and surrogate data, we assessed conversations taken from a 33-million-word database and found that the Conversationality Index consistently distinguished between conversations of varying quality.

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2026/03/01

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Author:Louis CotgroveORCiDGND, Rüdiger Thul, Kathy ConklinORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:bsz:mh39-130144
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00119.cot
ISSN:2542-386X
Parent Title (English):Internet Pragmatics
Publisher:Benjamins
Place of publication:Amsterdam
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2025
Date of Publication (online):2025/02/18
Publishing Institution:Leibniz-Institut für Deutsche Sprache (IDS) [Zweitveröffentlichung]
Publicationstate:Ahead of Print
Publicationstate:Zweitveröffentlichung
Publicationstate:Postprint
Reviewstate:Peer-Review
Tag:bounded quality scores; computer-mediated communication; conversation; conversation analysis; conversationality index; digitally-mediated communication; nonlinear response functions; online conversation; social media
GND Keyword:Computerunterstützte Kommunikation; Gespräch; Interaktion; Konversationsanalyse; Pragmatik; Social Media
Page Number:30
DDC classes:400 Sprache / 400 Sprache, Linguistik
Open Access?:ja
Linguistics-Classification:Pragmalinguistik / Kommunikationsforschung
Program areas:Lexik
Licence (German):License LogoUrheberrechtlich geschützt