CuCo Lab Conversations | Jannis Androutsopoulos (Hamburg)

INFORMATION

In sociolinguistics and beyond, the concept of the ‘online-offline nexus’ (OON) emerged in the last few years as a key analytical tool for grasping the interplay of digital and physical communication and interaction. While the idea that on- and offline domains of (inter)action are intertwined has been around for some time, it remains inconsistently applied. Drawing on a meta-analysis of academic publications (Androutsopoulos, forthcoming), this paper critically examines the concept’s genealogy throughout the early 21st century and its use across fields such as media and communication studies (de Souza e Silva et al. 2025), pragmatics (Blitvich 2022), sociolinguistics (Blommaert 2019, Spotti 2022), sociology (Hsiao et al. 2023), multimodal interaction analysis (Avgustis 2023), and linguistic landscape research (Androutsopoulos 2024). On this basis, the paper defines OON as a multi-scalar process that operates across different scales of action and sites of social practice, including interpersonal communication, place-making, and identity construction. More specifically, the paper proposes to distinguish three primary types of OON, each characterized by specific temporal, participatory, and scalar properties: (1) simultaneous nexus action, where digital and physical activities occur concurrently, such as using navigation apps while moving through urban spaces or being co-present in an online game while sitting next to each other; (2) consecutive nexus action, where on- and offline interactions follow one another in a structured sequence and jointly contribute to accomplishing a higher level target, as when people digitally coordinate in-person meetings or transition from social media interactions to real-life encounters; (3) memetic nexus processes, where widely-circulating digital content influences offline behavior across a population, exemplified by viral trends and algorithmically mediated discourse. This typology aims to provide a more granular understanding of how OON contributes to shaping communicative practices across different contexts in post-digital societies.

References

• Androutsopoulos, J. (2024) ‘The Offline-Online Nexus’, in R. Blackwood et al. (eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 441-455.
• Androutsopoulos, J. (forthcoming) Online-offline nexus: genealogies and trajectories, scales and sites. In: A. Georgakopoulou and T. Spilioti (eds.), The Routledge handbook of language and digital communication, 2nd edition. London: Routledge.
• Avgustis, I. (2023) ‘Respecifying Phubbing: Video-Based Analysis of Smartphone Use in Co-Present Interactions’, in Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Article 651, pp. 1-15.
• Blitvich, P. (2022) ‘Karen: Stigmatized Social Identity and Face-Threat in the On/Offline Nexus’, Journal of Pragmatics, 188: 14-30.
• Blommaert, J. (2019) ‘Sociolinguistic Restratification in the Online-Offline Nexus: Trump’s Viral Errors’, Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 234.
• de Souza e Silva, A., Campbell, S.W. and Ling, R. (2025) ‘Hybrid Space Revisited: From Concept Toward Theory’, Communication Theory, 35: 14-24.
• Hsiao, Y., Leverso, J. and Papachristos, A. V. (2023) ‘The Corner, the Crew, and the Digital Street: Multiplex Networks of Gang Online-Offline Conflict Dynamics in the Digital Age’, American Sociological Review, 88(4): 709-741.

SPEAKER

• Prof. Dr. Jannis Androutsopoulos | Website

COORDINATES

• Date: Friday, 25.04.2025
• Time: 10.15 – 11.15
• Place: – online only –
• Webex: https://unilu.webex.com/unilu/j.php?MTID=m535a50661d622d61707b75af6480aa46