Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Complaints Online: The Case Of Tripadvisor, Camilla Vasquez

Camilla Vasquez

Complaints have been studied from two major disciplinary perspectives. Whereas pragmatic approaches have tended to rely on data elicited via discourse completion tests (DCTs), more ethnomethodologically informed approaches have focused on naturally occurring talk in interaction. In addition, a handful of studies have examined written complaints, while fewer still have investigated complaints in CMC (computer mediated communication). In order to determine the extent to which CMC complaints display some of the defining characteristics of complaints as identified by previous research, a data set of 100 complaints (negative reviews of hotels on the website, TripAdvisor)was examined. The study found that a …