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A lot more words are being used, inevitably, in the face-to-face discussion. And other signs are being used too - facial expressions, body language, as well as the bits of paper and other media that the facilitators have on the table. By contrast, the tweeters get through fewer words (even though there is no break in the stream) and their visual signals are limited to punctuation, capitals, smileys, and the odd URL.
Both groups are discussing what they do with technology. The focus group reflect across a range of life and work contexts, going on at length and wandering off at tangents. The twitter group stick mainly to talking about twitter. They 'talk' in turn, are very concise, and generally keep to the point.
I would love to do a proper discourse analysis comparing these two discussions around the same topic. I wonder if it would provide me with grounds to talk about the twitter activity as 'literacy', in a way that I could not do with the face-to-face discussion? Or would it show the twitter stream to be basically the same kind of conversation, only with a lot less said?
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