Identity-as-context : sequential and categorical organization of interactions on A Chinese microblogging website

This study seeks to investigate this core research topic: how identity is involved in everyday interactions between Chinese microblogging website users? By understanding identity as an element in the interaction context of discursive practices, the investigation is achieved through the analysis of naturally occurring text-based online data. Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA) are used to do the analysis. The former will focus on the interaction structure while the latter will be used to make some of the contents in the interactions relevant. This study seeks to make the “orderliness” (Sacks, 1972) and “members’ methods” (Garfinkel, 1967) under a particular context describable and analyzable. The sequential and categorical organization described in this study shows how members are oriented to identities in the in situ context when they exchange their ideas on a sensitive topic, and on a microblogging website.