Video Mediation in Institutional Encounters: 4 studies from an applied ethnomethodological and conversation analytic project

Simon Bierring Lange

Research output: Book/ReportPh.D. thesisResearch

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Abstract

This dissertation presents four academic articles that were produced as part of a PhD project with the title “Better video-mediated encounters through multimodal interaction analysis?”. The project employed an ethnomethodological and multimodal conversation (EMCA) analytic approach and consisted of two main phases. The first phase investigated video-mediated interaction between professionals and clients by analysing the situated practices of participants and how their conduct is afforded and constrained by the ecologies they interact in. The second phase aimed to apply findings and use data from the first phase for the benefit of practitioners that use video mediating technology as part of their daily work. Articles 1 - 3 in the dissertation are products of the first phase of the project, and the data used for the articles is drawn from a dataset of video-recorded video-mediated encounters collected in collaboration with researchers at the Centre for Interaction and Communication Design. Article 1 focuses on instructions on locating an object in video-mediated interaction. Through a single case analysis, the article shows how such instructions can be decomposed to make them more understandable, and that a central resource for doing this is using a designedly mimicable embodied demonstration. Article 2 focuses on instructions in the form of directives in the initiation of an institutionally relevant activity. Based on a collection of instances, the article tracks the observable differences in the recipient design of the directive sequences in face to face and video-mediated passport-ordering encounters. The article shows that the video-mediated directive sequences are prolonged and more linguistically complex compared to the co-present ones, partly due to the use of transitional directives in the video-mediated encounters. Article 3 zooms inon a common phenomenon in video-mediated interaction: when a participant moves a camera in the course of an interaction. Based on the analysis of a single case, the article shows how the movement of a camera in the specific sequential context of emergent trouble in understanding can be a crucial resource for restoring intersubjectivity. On this background, the article argues that this specific video reconfiguration practice can be termed a repair of the visual frame. Article 4 is a product of the second, applied phase of the project, and the data used for it is video recordings from three communication training workshops that were carried out as part of the project. The article focuses on workshop facilitation in educational settings. Drawing on a collection of instances, the article investigates a facilitator’s resources for managing turn transitions in a plenary setting. The analysis shows how the facilitator can actively mobilise response or suspend transition relevance by using various embodied resources (facial expressions, position in space, gaze direction). Based on these articles, the dissertation contributes to both studies of social interaction in video-mediated settings and the application of EMCA research in professional practice.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherDet Humanistiske Fakultet, Københavns Universitet
Number of pages208
Publication statusPublished - Sep 2020

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