A STUDY OF SOCIAL MEDIA RAPPORT MANAGEMENT ON AL-JAZEERA FACEBOOK PAGE

Abstract

This study investigates the dynamics of rapport management within user interactions on the official Facebook page 
of Al-Jazeera. Drawing on Spencer-Oatey’s Rapport Management Theory, it examines the linguistic strategies 
employed by users to maintain, enhance, challenge, or neglect rapport in discussions spanning sensitive discourse 
categories, including religion, politics, gender, terrorism, and race. A corpus of 250 utterance tokens, collected 
between 2019 and 2021, was analysed using a combination of qualitative discourse analysis and quantitative 
statistical tools such as cross-tabulation and the Chi-square test. The findings reveal that rapport challenge is the 
most prevalent strategy, particularly within religious and conflict-related discussions, followed by maintenance, 
neglect, and enhancement. The prevalence of impoliteness and confrontational language is attributed to factors such 
as anonymity, perceived social distance, and the contentious nature of the topics discussed. The study establishes a 
statistically significant relationship between discourse categories and rapport strategies, thereby affirming that the 
nature of the discourse influences patterns of interaction. This research contributes to the growing field of 
pragmatics and computer-mediated communication by demonstrating the applicability of rapport theory in 
interpreting digital politeness, aggression, and interpersonal dynamics.