Internet Pragmatics - Online First

Smartphone ads compete for the user’s attention, which is initially intended to focus on other areas of the small screen of the device. Despite this competition, smartphone advertisements aim to produce as much cognitive reward as possible in exchange for the mental effort expended in their processing, that is, they aim at the audience’s relevance, as claimed by relevance theory ( Sperber and Wilson 1995 ), a theory in which cyberpragmatics ( Yus 2011 ) is rooted. This paper addresses several key qualities of effective smartphone advertising from a cyberpragmatics perspective that focuses on possible sources of relevance of online communication, and now applied to smartphone ads. Furthermore, it is claimed that today’s smartphone-based advertising cannot be accounted for pragmatically without the incorporation of key terms such as contextual constraint and non-propositional effect, which add to more traditional pragmatic accounts of online communication ( Yus 2017a , 2021a ).

This case study discusses audiences’ emotional reactions and convergent alignment in YouTube comment threads observed on four videos of Spanish YouTubers with affective narratives on sensitive topics. The analysis reveals that most single-comment threads are generally positive and that utterances are fairly equally divided in their focus on YouTubers or narratives. The act of taking a stance follow consists of a versatile process in which the convergent alignment or agreement with the YouTubers’ stance lead occurs not just by positively evaluating YouTubers or the story, but also by revealing something highly private concerning the stance topic. The four affective narratives evoke not only compliments, but also the convergent alignment the YouTubers presumably seek with their stories.