A Conversation Analysis of Facebook Confessions Pages: Identity and Identification

How individuals identify each other through digital media and display their claims of knowledge is at the core of this study. This work contributes new insights into how participants accomplished identity work by looking at the conversational resources they use in addressing matters of identity in their interaction. The study draws on Conversation Analysis (CA), particularly conceptual work on membership categorization analysis (MCA) and epistemics for analysis. The findings based on two interrelated aspects of the data taken from Facebook Confession Pages interaction. The first concerns the features of the initial (confessional) message, and the second relates to subsequent responses on the initial message. Close examination of the initial message shows ways that identity work is initiated as it would implicate in that subsequent response messages. Two primary forms of messages were then identified on the basis of person reference: those that inform and those that inquire. In each category, the analysis demonstrates that person reference is used as interactional resource in making an epistemic claim of the referent. The person reference is contextual in that they are locally based and understood within the specific contexts of the message. Thus, it is shown that the employment of person reference in the initial message illustrates the epistemic level that author has with the referent. Accordingly, analysis of the subsequent response messages demonstrated ways in which the identity, as presented in the initial message, is identified. The analysis of the subsequent response messages offers insight into how identity works is accomplished through a collaborative commenter’s epistemic stance. Additionally, the study also examines the technological element of FCPs that assist participants in their identity work that is Facebook name. It indicates that this Facebook functionality performed various interactional works including identification work as it provides a link to the right identified referent. Overall, the finding shows that as the identity work is performed, epistemic stance is a requisite component of the interactions. It then may challenge the notions of the invisibility of identity in digital contexts.