Abstract
Latency in video-mediated interaction can frustrate smooth turn-taking: it may cause participants to perceive silence at points where talk should occur, it may cause them to talk in overlap, and it impedes their ability to return to one-speaker-at-a-time. Whilst potentially frustrating for participants, this makes video-mediated interaction a perspicuous setting for the study of social interaction: it is an environment that nurtures the occurrence of turn-taking problems. For this paper, we conducted secondary analysis of 25 video consultations recorded for heart failure, (antenatal) diabetes, and cancer services in the UK. By comparing video recordings of the patient's and clinician's side of the call, we provide a detailed analysis of how latency interferes with the turn-taking system, how participants understand problems, and how they address them. We conclude that in our data latency unnoticed until it becomes problematic: participants act as if they share the same reality.
Highlights
Research on video-mediated interaction has long recognized the problems that technology and a lack of shared physical space pose for conversational participants (Heath and Luff, 1993; Hindmarsh et al, 1998; Luff et al, 2003; Rintel, 2013, 2015)
Because latency frustrates smooth turn-taking, we are provided with a treasure trove of phenomena and practices that are rare in instantaneous interaction
We argue that how these problems emerge and the resolution practices participants use to address them show that the participants in our data orient to turn-taking in video-mediated interaction as instantaneous: they monitor and interpret both their interlocutor's vocalized and embodied behavior as if production and perception co-occurdthat is, as if there were no latency
Summary
Research on video-mediated interaction has long recognized the problems that technology and a lack of shared physical space (the “fractured ecology”) pose for conversational participants (Heath and Luff, 1993; Hindmarsh et al, 1998; Luff et al, 2003; Rintel, 2013, 2015). The setting provides something of a natural breaching experiment (Garfinkel, 1967): provided the latency is long enough to have a noticeable impact on the interactiondnoticeable to the analysts, not the participantseparticipants find themselves in an environment where unbeknownst to them, their background assumption that turn production and turn perception occur simultaneously no longer applies (Ruhleder and Jordan, 2001). As a result, they routinely have to solve basic interactional problems. Because latency frustrates smooth turn-taking, we are provided with a treasure trove of phenomena and practices that are rare in instantaneous interaction
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