The interactional construction of joking threads in YouTube comments
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | The paper is based on a case study analysing two related aspects of YouTube communication: a video in which an atheist influencer discusses the acceptability of humour in relation to the 2019 burning of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, and the complete set of the accompanying comments – reactions from the anonymous viewers of the prompting video (Chovanec &Tsakona 2023). The analysis shows the emergence of several distinct types of humour, namely religious, disaster and interactional humour. The qualitative analysis yields several relevant findings about the type of humour and the nature of the interaction. First, despite the subject matter and the ideological set-up of the prompting video, the humour – typically based on punning and cultural allusions – does not appear to be substantially anti-religious, and thus does not have a distinctly conflictual nature. Second, users tend to recontextualize the triggering event in relation to other currently relevant issues, most notably (inter)national politics; consequently, the humour assumes the function of social commentary. Third, the data indicate that the comments constitute relatively separate joking threads, where initial attempts at humour are either met with other humorous comments or metapragmatic comments. Within the joking thread, users can thus deploy reciprocal forms of humour, or have the chance to evaluate – positively or negatively – the comments produced by others. The YouTube commenting section thus gives rise to potential conflict in three distinct directions: towards the outgroup, towards political elites, and towards each other. |
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