Prompt-rich CMC on YouTube: To what or to whom do comments respond?

Abstract

Participants in textual CMC must identify to whom or what a message responds in order to establish conversational coherence. Media sharing sites provide rich prompts that make available multiple, diverse, potential addressees. We conducted an exploratory content analysis of addressee types and how they relate to the content of messages in three YouTube comment threads related to the COVID-19 pandemic, applying addressee and topic coding schemes inspired by [6]'s YouTube participation framework. Some addressee types and content types were mentioned significantly more frequently than others, although there was variation across threads. Also, certain kinds of topics were addressed more with certain addressees, and different topics were addressed in replies than in comments. Thus, the interaction between addressee and message content should be considered in analyses of conversational coherence on YouTube and other rich-prompt CMC platforms.