(New) participatory framework on YouTube? Commenter interaction in US political speeches

• Two main YouTube commenting strategies are proposed: constructive and disruptive in favour of traditional terms such as trolling, spamming, flaming, etc.
• Most comments are part of multi-participant conversations exhibiting interaction among users.
• First-level reception roles are fulfilled by registered and unregistered participants.
• Second-level participation, which is enacted by registration, would appear to ‘ratify’ a different type of interaction among YouTube users.

This article examines the various participant roles adopted by users on YouTube, when watching and commenting on Barack Obama's Inaugural Address (January 2009). Based on the notion that YouTube has become a powerful medium for (re)broadcasting institutional texts and genres, the article argues that text commenting practices allow for the co-creation of distinct participatory roles.Drawing on a quantitative and qualitative corpus-assisted analysis of the comments to the speech, the article examines how roles are defined and participatory positions delimited through linguistic and non-linguistic means. It addresses the different types of production and reception roles (Goffmann, 1981 and Levinson, 1988) exploited by users for communication and how they differ from the traditional ones, ‘ratified’ and ‘unratified’ participants in the medium, and the ways in which the YouTube medium affects participation. A reworking of the traditional participatory framework categories is proposed on the basis of the new online environments. Specifically, it proposes a multi-level representation of production, with the original speech and speaker (Obama) seen as the first level of production, and the comments as a secondary level. Both levels entail various reception roles, which are exploited to various degrees by YouTube participants.