This qualitative study explores the factors that contributed to limited interactional involvement in a telecollaborative project linking two groups of participants: 12 advanced-level students of English in northeastern Germany and 9 advanced-level students of German in the southwestern United States. Drawing on data from online transcripts, interviews, and questionnaires, I examine the tensions that arise when students' attempts at communicating online result in missed opportunities for engaging with their online partners. I report on the results of a discourse analysis of the online transcripts and rely on extensive interview and survey data to examine which factors made it difficult for students to maintain sustained interpersonal involvement in the online discourse. I document three main contextual tensions that arose from the different socially and culturally situated attitudes, beliefs, and expectations that informed students' communicative choices in the online discourse. I address the pedagogical implications of each of these three tensions. The findings suggest that research needs to focus not only on how students jointly construct online discourse, but how they co-construe the context for their participation. The paper concludes by addressing the implications of these findings for future research promoting language and culture learning online. (Contains 3 tables and 9 notes.)