Tag Archives: videoconferencing

Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource

Rintel, S. (2013). Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource. The Electronic Journal of Communication / La Revue Electronic de Communication (EJC/REC) Special issue on Videoconferencing in Practice: 21st Century Challenges, 23 (1&2) [Format: Local PDF of pre-publication version].

Screen Shot of embedded Example 4

Screen Shot of embedded Example 4

Embedded video for examples:

The EJC version includes embedded video of three examples. Please email me for access to that version. Alternatively, URLs are provided in the pre-publication document above.

Abstract:

Video calling is now a realistic option for couples in distance relationships. This paper explores whether audio/video distortions block intimate relational talk. From a naturalistic two-month trial of couples trying video calling to maintain their distance relationships, it is found that couples can opportunistically use audio/video distortions as a relational resource rather than simply treating them as a blocking or outside of relational talk. First, technological mediation can be treated as relevant to disambiguating whether the repair involves simple content repetition or a more complex relational issue. Second, distortions can be treated as resources for relational parody and teasing. It is argued that the opportunistic use of distortions as a relational resource extends Hutchby’s (2001b) notion of technologized interaction, in which technology frames but does not determine social action. Rather than proposing yet another model of communication that includes more detail about noise as deviance that must be remedied, or taking an undifferentiated approach to distortion as “trouble,” the technologized interaction approach broadens our conceptions of online relationships as involving the use of technological features to a more holistic sense of technological mediation being part and parcel of maintaining online relationships

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Special Issue: Videoconferencing in Practice: 21st Century Challenges and Opportunities

The Electronic Journal of Communication

Correspondence Cinema by Villemard 1910 (from a postcard set "In the year 2000" | paleofuture.com)

Correspondence Cinema by Villemard 1910 (from a postcard set “In the year 2000″ | paleofuture.com)

My Special Issue on Videoconferencing in Practice: 21st Century Challenges was published today in The Electronic Journal of Communication / La Revue Electronic de Communication (EJC/REC) 23 (1&2).

If your university does not subscribe to EJC/REC please email myself or article authors for article copies (and ask your library to subscribe!).

The issue features a keynote article by veteran media space researcher Professor Steven Harrison (Virginia Tech), a book review of the mixed French/English videoconferencing research book Décrire la conversation en ligne: Le face-à-face distanciel, and six research articles (including one of mine).

Table of Contents:

  • Editor’s Introduction “The 21st Century Videoconferencing Dilemma: What Does The “Next Best Thing to Being There” Mean?“ by Sean Rintel
  • Parallel Universes of Teleconferencing by Steve Harrison
  • My Life with Always-On Video by Carman Neustaedter
  • Video Calling in Long-Distance Relationships: The Opportunistic Use of Audio/Video Distortions as a Relational Resource by Sean Rintel
  • Like What You See? The Effect of Video-Mediated Gazing on Information Recall and Impression Formation by Chris Fullwood & Neil Morris
  • Courtroom Interaction as a Multimedia Event: The Work of Producing Relevant Videoconference Frames in French Pre-Trial Hearings by Christian Licoppe, Maud Verdier, & Laurence Dumoulin
  • Videoconferencing: A Technology with Promises and Challenges – Case Study with IVC in an Undergraduate Course by B. A. Olaniran
  • Videoconferencing for First Nations Community-Controlled Education, Health and Development by Susan O’Donnell, Lyle Johnson, Tina Kakepetum-Schultz, Kevin Burton, Tim Whiteduck, Raymond Mason, Brian Beaton, Rob McMahon, & Kerri Gibson
  • Review of Décrire la conversation en ligne: Le face-à-face distanciel, edited by Christine Develotte, Richard Kern, and Marie-Noëlle Lamy, Lyon: ENS Editions, 2011, 215 pp. by Juliana de Nooy

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Tech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling

DesKay-VCTech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling: Thursday 3pm, Pikake 3, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 46.  The title in the HICSS program is the original draft title: Techs, ties, and video chat: Technological trouble as a conversational resource in online relationships.

Abstract:

Maintaining a relationship via video calling requires intertwining relational and technological talk. Using detailed qualitative analysis of transcripts from naturalistic recordings of couples in a video calling field trial, this paper explores how couple members use the possibility of technological distortion as a resource for negotiating around the problem of inattentive or inappropriate responses. Inattention may be cast as technological trouble, and, conversely, the technology can be blamed for an apparently relationally inappropriate response. It is argued that research on technologically mediated relationship creation and maintenance should not treat technology as simply a container of relationships or a variably rich transmission system for relational material. Rather, mediation should be explored as a fundamental participant concern in online relationship research.

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The Airtime video chat gamble

 The Conversation published my article on the problems of Airtime, the new Facebook video chat service.

Source: Airtime

I argue that Airtime offers little that is new, it’s not on board the group video chat zeitgeist, and it has significant privacy issues.

Read the full article @

Rintel, S. (2012, June 18). Airtime’s Facebook video service gambles on the kindness of strangers. The Conversation (Online).

Also syndicated in:

Rintel, S. (2012, June 21). Facebook’s funniest home video service. Technology Spectator (Online).

Related:

Mass exodus from Facebook due to fatigue, rise of alternatives such as Google+

I commented (briefly) in The Sunday Mail about Facebook fatigue and the rise of Google+.

Tin, J. (2011, August 14, 5:00pm) Mass exodus from Facebook due to fatigue, rise of alternatives such as Google+. The Sunday Mail.

“University of Queensland digital communications expert Dr Sean Rintel also pointed to interest in Google+, which has attracted some 25 million users within the space of less than two months, many of whom were poached from Facebook.”

Read the full article at:

The Courier Mail | The Sunday Mail

Or here (just a tiny bit ironically given the paper’s slogan):