ABSTRACT
A topic is continued on Facebook Timelines using four strategies: (1) producing topicalisers, (2) giving preferred responses, (3) repeating some parts of the topic introducer’s talk, and (4) asking questions for further elaboration on the topic. Six characteristics of Timeline conversations emerged from the analysis of topic continuation: (1) the delayed response from topic introducers encourages different Friends to employ different strategies in their attempts to ensure the continuation of the topic; (2) most conversation takes the dyadic form, which involves only two people (a Friend and the topic introducer); (3) the topic introducer holds the power to designate whom she or he wants to respond to upon receiving Comments from different Friends; (4) when inquiring about teaching-related knowledge, the topic introducer tends to ‘invite’ specific Friends who they think are expert in the subject of inquiry by tagging their Facebook names; (5) even though a topic introducer tags specific Friends to contribute to the continuation of a topic, other Friends who are not tagged can still join in the conversation, which reflects the high level of structural support on Facebook; and (6) interesting topics either attract many quick responses from Friends or elaborated responses from a few Friends.
