Knowledge Construction and Uncertainty in Real World Argumentation: A Text Analysis Approach

Collaborative argumentation is key to promoting understanding of scientific issues. However, classroom structures may not always prepare students to engage in argumentation. To address this challenge, education researchers have examined the importance of social knowledge construction and managing uncertainty in group understanding. In this study, we explore these processes using data from /r/ChangeMyView, an online forum on Reddit where users present their opinions, engage others in critiquing ideas, and acknowledge when the discussion has modified their opinions. This unfacilitated environment can illuminate how argumentation evolves naturally towards refined opinions. We employ automated text analyses (LIWC) and discourse analyses to understand the features and discourse sequences of successful arguments. We find that argumentative threads are more likely to be successful if they focus on idea articulation, coherence, and semantic diversity. Findings highlight the role of uncertainty: threads with more certainty words are less likely to be successful. Furthermore, successful arguments are characterized by cycles of raising, managing, and reducing uncertainty, with more occurrences of evidence and idea incorporation. We discuss how learning environments can create norms for idea construction, coherence, and uncertainty, and the potential to provide adaptive prompts to maintain and reduce uncertainty when unproductive argumentative sequences are detected.