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Usenet may be regarded as the worl $ s largest conversatioti appficatioq with over 17,000 newsgronps and 3 fion users. Despite its ubiquity and poptiari~, however, we know Etie about the natore of the interactions it suppo~.~ s empirical paper investigates mass interaction in UseneL We anrdyse over 2.15 Mon messages from 659,450 posters, co~ ected from 500 newsgoups over 6 months. We fit characterise mass interactio~ presenting basic data about demographics, conversational strategies and interactivity-Using predictions tiom the common ground [3] model of interactio~ we next conduct causalmodetig to determine relations bemeen demographics, conversational strategim and interactiv~. We find evidence for moderate conversatiomd threading, but hge participation ine@ ties in Usene4 with ad minority of participants posting a large proportion of messages. Contrary to the common gromd model and …