Close, turn by turn study of home video calls recorded over two months by six couples in distance relationships in the North-eastern USA. It examines how couples handled inattention or awkward replies by invoking possible glitches in sound or picture.
Six couplesCouples in distance relationships of at least one year, new to video calling, living at least three hours' drive apart.
Two months of callsEach couple was asked to talk by video at home for at least 20 minutes once a week.
Every call recordedAn automatic remote recording system captured the calls.
Two calls analysedTurn by turn analysis of one call each from two of the six couples, focused on how fixing trouble was negotiated.
BWhat the study found
Two caseswhat happened in two couples' calls
•In one couple's first call, he treated her inattention as possible audio trouble.She kept watching a movie while he talked. Even after the connection proved fine, this framing spared both from confronting the tension.
•In another couple's last call, she refused his technical excuse.She took his reply as forgetting a conversation that mattered to their relationship. He blamed audio distortion, and she kept pressing the point.
What the cases suggestarguments drawn from the two cases
•The paper argues technology is easy to blame for awkward moments.A connection that is not responding can look like a partner who is not responding. So blaming the technology can offer an escape.
•The paper argues the listener gets first say on whether trouble was technical.On a video call the speaker hears their own turn perfectly, while the listener may receive it distorted. The speaker can still contest the listener's account.
•In both cases, couples treated real or possible glitches as relevant to the relationship.The couples did not treat glitches as mere noise to fix and set aside.
CKey takeaway
In technologized interaction, possible technical trouble can help people handle awkward moments on video calls. Technology is easy to blame, and with asymmetrical access to what was heard, the excuse can work if both partners accept it.
Made for this site with AI assistance from the verified research brief. It is not the paper's own figure.
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.
Research brief
By Sean Rintel.
Takeaway: Telling technological from social trouble is relational work on video calls. Couples can recast inattention as trouble hearing, or a reply that sounds like forgetting as the connection breaking up. It works, if both accept it, because technology is easy to blame and only the listener knows what they heard.
Why this matters
What was known
Video conferencing research has asked whether video simulates face-to-face interaction and how distortions are perceived, while network quality research rarely reports how users manage distortions. Quality of Service (QoS) research on the likely distortions resulting from network differences among consumer video calling services [21] or the noticeability of latency [14] rarely reports [users' practices] for managing distortions.(§2, p. 2)
What this paper adds
Video research has asked how distortion is perceived, and network research how often it occurs. We analyse turn by turn how couples themselves negotiate whether trouble is technological or social, and extend perceived affordances and constraints to mere possibilities. it extends the concept of perceived affordances and constraints to include the notion that, conversationally, affordances and constraints need only be a possibility rather than an actuality(§3, p. 2)
Who it matters to
Researchers of technologically mediated relationship creation and maintenance, who we argue should treat mediation as a fundamental participant concern rather than a container or transmission system.
Research question
How do couples in a video calling field trial use the possibility of audio/video distortion as a resource for coping with conversational inattention or apparently relationally inappropriate responses?
Method and data
Design
Exploratory qualitative study using ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis of naturalistic recordings from a video calling field trial.
Setting
Couples' home video calls. At least one member of each couple was in the North-eastern USA and the other at least three hours' drive away. Calls were captured by an automatic remote recording system.
Participants / data
Six couples in distance relationships of at least one year, novices to video calling. Detailed analysis of two transcripts from two of the six couples.
Duration
Two months. Couples were asked to talk for at least 20 minutes once a week.
Analysis
Detailed turn-by-turn analysis of how turns propose next actions and how repair is negotiated.
Findings
Inattention recast as bad audio. In a couple's first call in a two-month home video calling trial, she kept watching a movie while he talked. Even after they had established the connection was fine, he repeatedly treated her inattention as possible audio trouble, so neither had to confront the relational tension. #
“This is the clearest example of a substantially imaginative treatment of technological mediation as a conversational resource.”
Technology is easy to blame. From that case we argue more generally that a connection that is not responding can look uncomfortably like a partner who is not responding. So ruling out the technology can be relationally awkward, while blaming it offers an escape. #
“technology is eminently blameworthy and can provide a way out of awkward situations”
A technical excuse refused. In another couple's last call, she treated his response as showing he had forgotten a conversation that mattered to their relationship. He blamed audio distortion, but she did not accept that account and kept pressing the point, so they went on negotiating what his response meant. #
“perhaps because she happened to have enacted a self-repair due to a rare combination of self-production error and technological distortion”
Whoever hears the glitch frames the repair. In a video call the speaker hears their own turn perfectly while the listener may receive it distorted, the reverse of face-to-face talk, where the speaker gets first say on fixing trouble. So the listener gets first say on whether trouble was technical, though the speaker can contest it. #
“participants are free to generate and argue about meaning using these frames in any way they wish, hence, mediation and distortion are interactional resources for participants”
Glitches are part of the relationship. Across both cases, couples treated real or merely possible technological trouble as relevant to their relationship, rather than as noise to be fixed and set aside. #
“The technologized interaction approach refocuses attention from mediation as externally imposed effect to how participants treat troubled technological mediation as relationally relevant.”
Questions this paper answers
Can blaming video call glitches smooth over a partner's inattention?
Sometimes. A connection that is not responding looks much like a partner who is not responding, so blaming technology offers an escape. In a long-distance couple's first call of a home video calling trial, he kept treating her inattention as possible audio trouble, even after confirming the connection worked. (See §6, p. 7; §5.1, p. 6.)
Can blaming bad audio get you out of an awkward moment in a video call?
Only if the other person accepts it. A technical account can sidestep relational blame, but it can be refused. In a long-distance couple's last trial call, he blamed audio distortion for seeming to forget a conversation that mattered to her. She rejected it and kept pressing the point. (See §6, p. 8.)
Why is it hard to tell technical problems from social ones in video calls?
Because the speaker hears their own words perfectly while the listener may receive them distorted, the reverse of face-to-face talk. So the listener gets first say on whether trouble was technical, though the speaker can contest it, and a slow or odd reply could be either a glitch or inattention. (See §5.1, p. 6; §6, p. 7.)
Contributions and implications
Research on technologically mediated relationships should not treat technology as a container of relationships or a variably rich transmission system for relational material. must go beyond treating technology as simply a container of relationships or a variably rich transmission system of relational material(§6.1, p. 9)
Operational problems such as distortion, usually treated as engineering issues outside social research, should be studied as constraints that users orient to.
Telling whether repairable talk stems from technological or social issues matters for conversational continuity, which sustains mediated relationships. Determining whether or not repairable talk stems from technological or social issues is relevant to conversational continuity(§6, p. 8)
Limitations
An exploratory study, limited in sample size and demographics. This exploratory paper is clearly limited in scope.(§6.1, p. 9)
The participants were not representative of the US population. They were self-selected, native English speakers, college-educated and primarily white.
Other relationship forms (new relationships, very long relationships, relationships that remain online, sexual intimacy) would likely negotiate distortion differently.
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Concepts
Technologized interaction
Hutchby's notion, which this paper builds on: interaction becomes technologized when participants adapt or create new practices of social action that orient to the unique affordances and constraints of a communication technology(§3, p. 2)
Audio/video distortion
Glitches in domestic video calling caused by the limits of home Internet connections. choppy, clipped, muffled, missing, lagged, blurry, frozen, or desynchronized audio and video(§1, p. 1)
Asymmetrical access to distortion
In video calling the speaker experiences a turn flawlessly, while the recipient may experience it as distorted. As a result: Recipients are materially afforded the first access to the agenda of repair.(§6, p. 7)
Operational problems as constraints
Our argument about unintended glitches such as audio/video distortion: operational problems are necessarily constraints because they impact upon social action and are accounted for in social action(§6, p. 8)
How to cite
Sean Rintel. 2013. Tech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling. HICSS'46, 3343-3352. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2013.512
This brief was prepared with AI assistance and published by Sean Rintel. It is not the authors' published text. Page numbers refer to this PDF.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{rintel2013tech-tied,
author = {Rintel, Sean},
title = {Tech-tied or tongue-tied? Technological versus social trouble in relational video calling},
organization = {IEEE},
booktitle = {HICSS'46},
year = {2013},
month = {January},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2013.512},
pages = {3343-3352},
doi = {10.1109/HICSS.2013.512},
}