Instant Messaging Interactions Research Articles

COVID-19 and self-initiated expatriate health workers: Spanish nurses in Germany

PurposeGiven that the incidence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) varies greatly between countries, it becomes relevant to explore self-initiated expatriate (SIE) health workers' perceptions of home vs host country safety during a global pandemic. Thus, the paper aims to study the effects of COVID-19 on the expatriation experience of Spanish SIE nurses in Germany, focussing on perceptions of home and host country safety as push/pull forces on their intentions to repatriate or stay.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews (n = 10) were conducted with Spanish SIE nurses in Germany between April/June 2020 followed by instant messaging interactions with the same participants in October/November 2020. Data analysis was assisted by NVivo software.FindingsOverloaded by information from social networks about the impact of COVID-19 in Spain compared with the situation in Germany, Spanish SIE nurses had exacerbated feelings of stress, and some reported having experienced guilt for not being in their home country. Nevertheless, the contrasting impact and management of the crisis and its relative effect on health workers and the larger society in Spain and Germany reinforced the nurses' intention to stay in Germany.Research limitations/implicationsThe research offers insights to organisations and public authorities involved with providing support to SIEs during crises, highlighting the implications of SIEs' social networks and dual allegiance to home and host countries during a global health emergency.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the growing literature on SIEs, whilst adding to the research on expatriates' well-being and safety during crises.

Jocular flattery in Chinese multi-party instant messaging interactions

It is well attested that teasing is a vehicle for criticising others which is prototypically accomplished through diminishing, ridiculing or denigrating the target. In this paper, we examine a form of teasing that occurs through elevating others, or what we term “jocular flattery”. Our study focuses on instances of jocular flattery in a context that has largely been neglected, namely, multi-party, instant messaging interaction in (Mandarin) Chinese, thereby also contributing to the growing body of work on teasing across different linguistic and sociocultural contexts. We examine how jocular flattery is interactionally accomplished in multi-party chat groups, focusing, in particular, on what occasions jocular flattery, and how the target and audience respond to it. We suggest that jocular flattery is a vehicle for delivering mild reproaches of the target for “overdone”, “unfulfilled” or “out-of-place” actions, as well as a vehicle for taunting the target for the amusement of the group. However, we also propose that due to the cultural value traditionally placed on denigrating self and elevating other, jocular flattery is also a vehicle for accomplishing interactional rapport in the Chinese sociocultural context.

Inter-subjectivity in Instant Messaging Interactions

This research studies participants’ self-repair practices in instant messaging (IM) interactions. IM is an online forum that allows two people to converse with each other through the exchange of text messages. Same turn, self-repair practices in IM are particularly interesting because here the message composition experience is uniquely poised between the written and oral contexts of communication. The composition is private and textual yet it is for an immediate audience. Drawing on the comparative approach used by Drew, Walker and Ogden (2013), the analysis compares the initial and final versions of participants’ messages and observes the repair operations they perform (Schegloff, 2013), the technology used to effect the repair and the actions thereby achieved. The data used for this research comprise 15 chats between 30 participants. The initial versions of the messages were recorded using a key logging software and these were compared with the final versions retrieved from the chat logs. A total of 671 messages were analyzed to study the ways in which participants self-repair their messages to design turns that are best suited for particular interactional needs. The analysis suggests that the repair operations that IM participants perform are not very different from their oral counterparts and include replacing, inserting, adding, deleting, aborting, searching and sequence jumping. IM participants engage in such repair to achieve significant actions such as upgrading or downgrading their claims, displaying sensitivity to epistemic authority, searching for the right referent amongst others. Besides issues related to turn design, self-repair in IM is used for another crucial function: to address trouble arising out of sequential placement of messages and to construct messages that are most appropriate for an ever-changing semantic environment.

Exploring Jakobson’s ‘phatic function’ in instant messaging interactions

This research investigates the nature of phatic communion in instant messaging interactions. It adopts and expands Jakobson’s much-quoted definition according to which ‘phatic’ is the language in an interaction whose primary purpose is to maintain contact between the speakers. Adapting conversation analysis for the study of textual interactions, the research observes the linguistic means used by interlocutors to signal attention, interest, and agreement – these being identified as important constituents of contact. The corpus comprises 60 chats, collected from 20 participants who chat in a mixture of English and Indian languages such as Marathi and Hindi. Openings, middles, and closings of these interactions are analyzed to study the ways in which participants establish, maintain, and terminate contact. The use of various linguistic means in these interactions such as back-channels, evaluations, expressives, and questions draws attention to a significant amount of interactional work done by interlocutors towards maintaining contact.

The choices people make: the types of buddy icons people select for self-presentation online

People are adapting their self-presentation strategies to utilize both online and offline communication in their interactions with strangers, co-workers, family, and friends. One way people communicate online is through the use of instant messaging, which includes the use of graphical representations of people called buddy icons. This project presents the results of a survey of the buddy icons 93 participants were currently using in their instant messaging interactions. It examines the extent to which self-presentation theory (Goffman 1959) can explain the choices people are making about how to self-present elements of their identity online. The icons were categorized and users were asked why they choose them as well as when and whether they change them with different interaction partners. Results show that male users select different categories of buddy icons than females but that most users select buddy icons that are human like, low on photorealism, and consistent with their biological sex. Users also reported that they rarely change their icons and that they selected human buddy icons when they want to increase social presence.

Disclosure through Face-to-Face and Instant Messaging Modalities: Psychological and Physiological Effects

Disclosure following stressful events produces physical and psychological benefits. This study was designed to compare the benefits following disclosure through face-to-face versus instant messaging. Eighty female undergraduates were asked to view a dramatized rape scene. Following this viewing, participants in the disclosure groups were asked to discuss their thoughts and feelings about the video with trained female confederates through face-to-face or instant messaging interactions. The nondisclosure groups discussed a neutral topic through the same two modes of communication. Positive and negative affect, pulse rate, and galvanic skin response were assessed at baseline, following the acute stressor, and following the conversation. The disclosure groups experienced a greater reduction in physiological stress symptoms than the nondisclosure groups, although self-report of negative affect improved significantly more for those that did not disclose. The face-to-face disclosure group showed greater physiological improvement than the instant messaging disclosure group, with no differences in affect. Social interaction modality impacts physiological coping following stressful events.

Variation in the use of general extenders and stuff in instant messaging interactions

Motivated by the demonstrated consequentiality of vague multiword expressions in spoken and written language use, the present study examines instances of vague language in the context of synchronous computer-mediated interactions. The focus is on multiword expressions encoding shared knowledge termed as general extenders (GEs) ( Overstreet, 1999), such as and stuff and or something. Variations in the frequencies of adjunctive and disjunctive GE use between native and non-native English language users in a corpus of over 500 one-on-one instant messaging interactions are explored in relation to the findings from corpus linguistic research on spoken English. The analysis based on their referential sets of meaning suggests a variation in the use and functions of GEs in computer-mediated interactions, with non-native language users utilizing fewer disjunctive and societal GEs than native language users. The findings, methodological considerations and pedagogical implications are discussed in relation to prior work on vague language.

Learning Designs

Researchers espouse that youth are learning differently than any other generation. Many researchers believe that because youth are leading the way with technology, their technology practices impact the way that they connect with the world around them. As a result, educators examine how to successfully engage youth in learning by understanding how to tap their technology practices. This study utilizes a sociotechnical framework to bring to light emergent structures of participation during student-teacher instant messaging interactions to support learning. Analysis illuminates three emergent and fluid participation structures. These structures reflect both pedagogical models and the most current literature on how people learn.

Examining the Scope of Channel Expansion

This article draws on channel expansion theory to explore the selection and use of communication media by organizational members. Channel expansion theory scholars posit that media richness perceptions are dependent on experiences with communication partners, the message topic, and the communication media utilized. This study tests channel expansion theory in the context of new and traditional communication media. Respondents ( N = 269) completed questionnaires regarding their use and perceptions of face-to-face, telephone, e-mail, or instant-messaging interactions. Results indicate that experience with channel, topic, partner, and social influence are all significant predictors of richness perceptions, when controlling for age and media characteristics. Findings also suggest that the richness of a medium is not fixed and may be shaped by interpersonal factors, including one's relevant experiences.

Conversational Argumentation in Decision Making: Chinese and U.S. Participants in Face-to-Face and Instant-Messaging Interactions

This study investigates cultural and communication medium effects on conversational argumentation in a decision-making context. Chinese and U.S. participants worked in pairs on two decision-making tasks via face-to-face (FtF) and instant messaging (IM). The analyses showed that Chinese participants tended to engage in potentially more complex argumentation, whereas U.S. participants tended to utilize proportionally more statements of claims and statements of convergence (agreements, acknowledgments, and concessions). Argumentation in IM tended to be more direct than in FtF interactions. There were no interaction effects between culture and communication medium on argumentation behavior. In addition, statements of convergence were found to be negatively related to measures of persuasion, indicating that such statements do not necessarily indicate true agreements or shifts in opinion. The results are discussed in terms of structuration theory and the socioegocentric model of communication.