French: Discourse Analysis of Social Media

The course deals with Francophone social media from a discourse analytical perspective. The course introduces concepts and theories from Francophone theorists in discourse analysis and provides practice in applying them to authentic examples from the French-speaking world. Different types of social media are studied, such as blogs, microblogs, forum discussions and comment fields. Technical aspects are also addressed in order to understand how the digital context (characteristics of the platforms, the design of the interfaces, the possibilities to hyperlink, etc.) affects the use of language and communication in social media. The analysis enables a problematisation of the role of social media as an arena for discussions and debates in the French-speaking world, as well as for people‘s identity construction.