1. Repair Organization in
communication in a Social
Networking Site : Facebook
Project Members
Sahar Al Zahrani
Yusop Boonsuk
Ali Karakas

2. Outline
Research Questions
Data Analysis and Results
Demographic Data
Data analysis Procedures
Findings
Conclusion
Summary
Limitations of the study
Recommendations & Evaluation of the Project

3. Research Questions
 How do users of FB engage in repair organization
while communicating via FB?
 Are there any differences between ordinary
conversation and written online communication in
term of repair organization? If so, what are the
differences and implications for users of SNS?

4. Data Analysis and Results
 Demographic Data
 Data analysis Procedures
 Findings

5. Demographic data
Table 1: Participant Background Information
f % Participants
Male 4 40
Gender Female 6 60  10 undergraduate Ss.
Total 10 100
Nationality  Active FB users
Turkish 3 30
Polish 4 40  Different nationalities
French 1 10
Dutch 1 10  Age range 18-25
Arabian 1 10

6. Data Analysis Procedures
 compilation of 157 pages of data
 10,887 words + 985 turn-takings
CODING
 each researcher involved
«intercoder reliability» (Mackay & Gas, 2005)
 various tools utilized
 conversational analysis
techniques

7. Findings
Table 2: The types of repair cases and their overall distribution
Repair type f %
Other-initiated self-repaired 17 47
Self-initiated self-repaired 12 33
Other-initiated with failure 5 13
Other-initiated other-repaired 2 7
Self-initiated other-repaired 0 0
Self-initiated with failure 0 0
Total 36 100

8. Table 3: Transcription conventions followed in the
presentation of the data
_________________________________________________________
(( )) comment by researchers
(…) data removed by researchers
Underline foregrounds the related parts that are being
examined
points out an exemplar of repair structures under
examination
: turn start
S1/S2/S3… speaker IDs
_______________________________________________________________

9. Excerpt 1: Self-initiated self-repair
01 S 1: yeah
02 commons
03 google the commons dude
04 S 2: what will you there ((trouble source))
05 what will you do there ((repair made))
06 is it near to the avenue cqmpus
07 S 1: google the cowsherd
08 its quite near

10. Excerpt 2: Other-initiated other-repair
01 S 1: good thing is
02 i dunno
03 ..
04 that i can travel for free atm ((trouble source))
05 S 2: what? ((first repair initiation))
06 what is atm? ((second repair initiation))
07 at the moment ((repair made))
08 probably this :D

11. Excerpt 3: Other-initiated Self-repair
01 S 1: (…) And my last erasmus party was really shit ((trouble source))
02 S 2: which one? ((repair initiation))
03 S1: the one at cafe parfait on Thursday (…) ((repair made))
04 I think it always the same these erasmus party (…)

12. Excerpt 4: Other-initiated with Failure
01 S 1: Hehe
02 Ill just come when I'm ready and call you yeah?
03 S 2: yeah
04 S 1: call my number which is start 0771 ((trouble source))
05 S 2: The turkish one? ((repair initiation))
((end of conversation with repair failure))

13. Conclusion
 Summary
 Limitations of the study
 Recommendations

14. Overall Summary
 synchronous data
 one-to-one text-based messages
 medium of com: English
 36 repair cases identified
 only 4 types available
 2 missing
 Conversation analysis techniques

15. Limitations of the study
 the number of participants (n=10)
 amount of the data (36 repair cases)
○ for exp. Yang (2005) 351 Repair cases
○ other types of repairs not covered by Schegloff et
al., (1977)
 one social networking site: Facebook
○ other social networking sites
 the setting: one-to-one text messages
○ discussion groups

16. Recommendations &
Evaluation of the project
 Large scale studies on different social networking
sites
 More than two parties in interaction
 Other media of written communication
 e.g. e-mails, mobile phone SMS etc. (asynchronous)
 Other mechanisms of conversation organization
 e.g.turn-taking, the sequencing of a conversation etc.
(e.g.Örnberg, 2010)

17. References
Mackey, A. & Gass, S.M. (2005). Second language research:
Methodology and design. Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum.
Örnberg, T. (2010). Written Conversation: An investigation of the
oral features of text chat through conversation analysis. Retrieved
from admin.humlab.umu.se/files/pdf/conv_analysis.pdf
Schegloff, E.A., Jefferson, G. & Sacks, H. (1977). ‘The Preference
for Self-Correction in the Organization of Repair in
Conversation’, Language 53 (2), 351-82.
Yang, R. (2005). Repair Structures in Web-based Conversation.
Proceedings of PACLIC 19, the 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on
Language, Information and Computation. Retrieved from
http://aclweb.org/anthology/Y/Y05/Y05-1034.pdf