Text Revisions in Mobile Messaging: A Mixed-Methods Approach to Writing Processes in Smartphone-Based Interaction

Research on digital discourse has produced detailed insights into the linguistic features and interactional structures of mobile messaging, yet it has relied almost exclusively on product data and paid little attention to writing processes. This article addresses this gap by examining text revisions in mobile messaging from a process-oriented perspective, bringing digital discourse studies into dialogue with writing process research. Drawing on a mixed-methods experiment conducted in German-speaking Switzerland, it combined screen-capture videos, chat exports, reconstructed keystroke logging, and eye-tracking to capture writing as it unfolded in real time. Quantitative findings showed that 44.9% of messages contain at least one revision, challenging the assumption that interactional writing is revision-poor. A micro-temporal analysis then distinguished four types of writing episodes by their process architecture—timing, typing speed, pausing—and showed that complete deletions are linked to incoming messages and to writers’ gaze. Qualitative analyses demonstrated that revisions are closely tied to writers’ orientation toward emerging turns. More fundamentally, the study shows that the interactional organization of messaging is not confined to the sequential linking of posted messages but permeates the temporal architecture of message production itself.