Online interaction turns the congeniality bias into an uncongeniality bias

Online phenomena like echo chambers and belief polarisation are believed to be driven by humans’ penchant to selectively expose themselves to attitudinally congenial content. However, if like-minded content were the only predictor of online behaviour, heated debate and flaming on the Internet would hardly occur. Research has overlooked how online behaviour changes when people are given an opportunity to reply to dissenters, potentially turning a preference for attitudinally congenial information into a preference for uncongenial information. Three main experiments consistently show that in a discussion forum setting where users can respond to earlier posts, larger conflict between user attitude and post attitude predicts higher likelihood to respond. The effect of conflict on response behaviour is shaped by the attitudinal composition of the forum, and it also predicts subsequent polarisation of users’ attitudes. These results suggest that belief polarisation on social media can be driven by conflict rather than congeniality.

The Ideology of Language Purism in Online Interaction of Arabic Speakers

Recently, the critical relationship between ideology and discourse becomes one of the main issues discussed in a wide range of disciplines. Language ideology is described as a dynamic and inconsistent process that must be studied in its given context. This paper aimed to explore the sociolinguistic aspects of language ideology embedded in online interaction of Arabic speakers. The ideology of language purism was the focus of this study. Critical Discourse Analysis was employed as a theoretical framework to analyze the data. The study showed the dynamic nature of discourse and asserted interdiscursive indexing of linguistic purism ideology among Arabic speakers on Twitter. Three key ideological dimensions namely nationalism, modernity and humanity have been recognized from the data corpus. The data asserted considerable influence of people’s cultural ideologies related to Islamic and Arabic identities on their language use and attitude. Modernity was also indicated to be one of the central factors influencing speakers’ perception about their languages and language use. English was described as a global language to be used to fulfill various integrative, communicative, and affective functions in modern life. Speakers’ comments about normality and personality in language use asserted the role those ideological perceptions play in their attitudes towards language purism. The intertextual analysis of the discourse revealed several linguistic features of texts under study including reporting speech, voicing, and shifting. These features served various pragmatic and social functions in this context.

New Thoughts on the Construction of Online Education Platform in Colleges and Universities during the 2019-nCoV Epidemic

Affected by the novel coronavirus pneumonia, schools across the country are facing the problem of postponed school opening. In order to respond to the call of "suspended class, ongoing learning", online education has become an important measure to maintain the normal teaching work. Through the investigation and analysis of online learners, this study finds out that current online education platforms have many problems remaining to be solved including the learning questions not getting answered in time, the learning environment not real, the function of the platform not perfect. Further, it puts forward some solutions, such as strengthening online interaction, integrating virtual simulation technology, using 5G technology and creating adaptive platform, in order to promote the further improvement and development of online education platform.