Using the various technological affordances of a videoconferencing platform for epistemic search sequences : a multimodal conversation analytic investigation into online social meetings

Abstract

While online videoconferencing has existed since the 1990s (Fetterman, 1996), the outbreak of Covid-19 has greatly increased its use (Maulana, 2023). Videoconferencing platforms are used across the world for remote work, online education, and also more social activities such as casual conversations for shared interest groups (Lorenz et al., 2020). Although a large number of studies have emerged that investigate online social activities in educational settings (e.g., Rusk & Pörn, 2019), further studies are needed to understand more video-mediated online social meetings. Data collected for the current study are 26 hours of video-recorded group meetings organized by a church in the UK. Participants are church volunteers and international students, and these meetings are held to facilitate intercultural friendships. In these meetings, participants routinely invoke knowledge imbalances, and use different technological features of the videoconferencing platform to reduce such imbalances. While the platform has various technological features (e.g., screen-sharing, chat box, and video feeds), there is little understanding of how participants use them to accomplish social activities during real life interactions, particularly in sequences when knowledge imbalances emerge. Using Multimodal Conversation Analysis (Mondada, 2019), the current study reveals that when participants work to reduce knowledge imbalances, they routinely orient to three technological features (screen-sharing, chat box and video feeds) using a series of verbal and embodied resources. Firstly, participants activate the screen-sharing and use various verbal and embodied methods to make particular on-screen contents the focus of the collective attention. Aspects of on-screen contents are then incorporated into participants’ talk as a resource to request or provide information. Secondly, more knowledgeable (K+) participants post chat box messages to provide less knowledgeable (K-) participants with information in written form. These messages are then used as a resource for K- participants to develop an understanding. Thirdly, K+ participants work towards generating a shared understanding by making physical objects, gestural practices and body posture shifts visible on the video feed. In summary, this study shows that participants invoke knowledge imbalances in online conversation groups, and shows how different technological features are oriented to and activated in sequences when knowledge imbalances emerge. In the process, participants draw upon a series of multimodal resources including verbal and embodied resources to make efforts in reducing knowledge imbalances. The findings add to the existing body of Multimodal Conversation Analysis research in Video-mediated Interaction (VMI), and also to the body of research on epistemics in interaction.