SIG:Computer-Mediated Communication

Motivation

In the past three decades, computer networks and especially the internet have brought forth new and emerging genres of interpersonal communication (computer-mediated communication, henceforth CMC). Even though there's been a lot of research on CMC genres and on language use on the internet in linguistics and social sciences as well as in the field of natural language processing, there are still no common standards for the representation and annotation of these new forms of communication and their structural and linguistic peculiarities. Being able to represent CMC data on the basis of an encoding framework such as the TEI which is broadly acknowledged within the field of digital humanities will allow for an interchange of data between research groups and for building interoperable CMC corpora for different languages.

Mission statement / scope and tasks

This special interest group is elaborating on suggestions for adapting the TEI guidelines to the representation of genres of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The focus of the group's work is on (but not limited to) tasks such as:

• modelling user contributions ("postings”) to written CMC dialogues (which share features both with written discourse and with spoken utterances);
• modelling CMC document structures ("CMC macrostructures” – e.g., forum threads, wiki talk pages, chat logfiles, Twitter timelines etc.);
• annotating linguistic features within the posting element ("CMC microstructures” – elements such as emoticons, addressing terms, hashtags etc.);
• representing linked data and media objects connected with/embedded in CMC discourse;
• metadata schemata for the description of CMC resources;
• developing perspectives for the representation of discourse from multimodal CMC environments (in which written discourse, speech, video, animations and/or interaction in 3D worlds are used in combination).

The customized TEI schema for CMC genres published in the jTEI (issue 3, 2012) and first presented at the TEI members' meeting in Würzburg (2011) will serve as one of the starting points of the group's work.

Activities and exchange

1st meeting of the SIG (Rome, October 2013)

The first meeting of the SIG will take place at the TEI-MM in Rome (October 2013). We would like to encourage everybody who is interested to participate in the discussion about how TEI could include devices for representing CMC genres o attend the meeting. The first meeting is mainly intended as a platform to get to know each other's perspectives on and interests in CMC and to set up a format and an agenda for the future work of the SIG.

If you have suggestions for issues which - besides the topics listed above - should be taken into consideration for the SIG's agenda, please feel free to leave a note here:

• issue: ...
• issue: ...
• issue: ...

Minutes form the 1st meeting will be published on the wiki (here) after the conference.

Panel on CMC in TEI at the TEI-MM in Rome (October 2013)

In addition to the SIG meeting, some members of the SIG are doing a special-topic panel on Computer-mediated commuication in TEI: What lies ahead" at the TEI-MM in Rome. The panel is meant to outline a range of open issues hat relate with the representation of CMC in TEI. For some of these issues, first ideas for solutions will be presented. The overall goal of the panel is to stimulate the discussion within the TEI community about how a standard for the representation of cmc in TEI should look like and what might be a practical and reasonable way to go about creating such a standard. The issues raised in the panel can be starting points for the agenda of the SIG, too.

A pdf version of the panel exposé can be found here.

Exchange via mailing list and wiki

For further exchange (inbetween the TEI-MMs), the SIG will use its pages in the TEI wiki and a mailing list (which will be set up soon).

Contact details, information

• Mailing list (coming soon)
• Official TEI SIG page (coming soon)
• Contact person for questions before the 1st SIG meeting in October 2013: Michael Beißwenger, TU Dortmund University, Department for German Language and Literature, michael.beisswenger@tu-dortmund.de ([http:/www.michael-beisswenger.de Website])