People, Technology, and Social Organization: Interactionist Studies of Everyday Life [1 ed.] 1032230681, 9781032230689

Citation preview

People, Technology, and Social Organization

This insightful and accessible book is a response to the important role technology plays in everyday life, and the urgent need for empirical studies that analyze the impact of technology on social practices. The chapters in this co-edited collection reveal how technology is oriented to and embedded within the social organization of action in a wide range of settings and institutions, including education, markets, arts and culture, health and social care, media, politics, and science. In their analyses, the contributing authors adopt interactionist perspectives to explore how the meanings of technology emerge and are negotiated within and through action and interaction. The volume comprises 14 empirical chapters from authors working in fields such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, discourse methods, ethnographic enquiry, video-based methods, and others. The chapters are framed by an introduction and a concluding discussion by the co-editors which draws out the key themes and issues that the individual chapters speak to and show the importance of these themes for the social sciences and for society. The book is primarily aimed at researchers in the social sciences, including sociology, social psychology, organization studies, and beyond whose work is concerned with the interplay between social interaction, technology, and institutions. Dirk vom Lehn is Professor of Organization and Practice at King’s Business School/King’s College London, co-editor of The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, and author of Harold Garfinkel: The Creation and Development of Ethnomethodology. Will Gibson is Professor of Interactional Sociology and Qualitative Research at the Institute of Education, University College London, co-editor of The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism and co-author of Institutions, Interaction and Social Theory. Natalia Ruiz-Junco is Associate Professor of Sociology at Auburn University, USA, and co-editor of Updating Charles H. Cooley: Contemporary Perspectives on a Sociological Classic and The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism.

Interactionist Currents Series editors Dennis Waskul

Minnesota State University, USA

Simon Gottschalk

University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA

Interactionist Currents publishes contemporary interactionist works of ­exceptional quality to advance the state of symbolic interactionism. Rather than revisiting classical symbolic interactionist or pragmatist theory, however, this series extends the boundaries of interactionism by examining new empirical topics in subject areas that interactionists have not sufficiently examined; s­ystematizing, organizing, and reflecting on the state of interactionist knowledge in subfields both central and novel within interactionist research; connecting interactionism with contemporary intellectual movements; and illustrating the contemporary relevance of interactionism in ways that are interesting, original, and enjoyable to read. Recognizing an honored and widely appreciated theoretical tradition, reflecting on its limitations, and opening new opportunities for the articulation of related perspectives and research agendas, this series presents work from across the social sciences that makes explicit use of interactionist ideas and concepts, interactionist research, and interactionist theory – both classical and contemporary. Titles in this series: The Terminal Self Everyday Life in Hypermodern Times Simon Gottschalk The Portable Community Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life Robert Owen Gardner Sensing Spirits Paranormal Investigation and the Social Construction of Ghosts Marc Eaton People, Technology, and Social Organization Interactionist Studies of Everyday Life Edited by Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson and Natalia Ruiz-Junco For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Interactionist-Currents/book-series/ASHSER1366

People, Technology, and Social Organization Interactionist Studies of Everyday Life

Edited by Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson and Natalia Ruiz-Junco

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson and Natalia Ruiz-Junco; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson and Natalia Ruiz-Junco to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Vom Lehn, Dirk, editor. | Gibson, William J., editor. | Ruiz-Junco, Natalia, editor. Title: People, technology, and social organization : interactionist studies of everyday life / edited by Dirk Vom Lehn, Will Gibson and Natalia Ruiz-Junco. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Intersectionist currents | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023018368 (print) | LCCN 2023018369 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032230689 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032234670 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003277750 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Symbolic interactionism. | Social interaction. | Social psychology—Methodology. Classification: LCC HM499 .P46 2024 (print) | LCC HM499 (ebook) | DDC 302—dc23/eng/20230627 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023018368 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023018369 ISBN: 978-1-032-23068-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-23467-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-27775-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750 Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors  1 Introduction

vii ix x 1

DIRK VOM LEHN, WILL GIBSON, AND NATALIA RUIZ-JUNCO

PART 1

Power and control23   2 Being family and friends to abused women – a qualitative study of digital media in intimate partner violence

25

SUSANNE BOETHIUS AND MALIN ÅKERSTRÖM

  3 News, sex, and the fight between corporate control and human communication online

42

MICHAEL DELLWING

  4 Terminal violence: online interactions and infra-humanization

59

SIMON GOTTSCHALK

  5 Summing up the criminal case online

82

DAVID WÄSTERFORS

PART 2

Identity and community99   6 Organizing subcultural identities on social media: ­Instagram infrastructures and user actions J. PATRICK WILLIAMS AND SAMUEL JUDAH

101

vi  Contents   7 A queer kind of stigma

119

CHRISTOPHER T. CONNER AND SARAH ANN SULLIVAN

  8 Symbolic separation: the Amish and 21st-century technologies

140

COREY J. COLYER, RACHEL E. STEIN, AND KATIE E. CORCORAN

PART 3

Practices and technology157   9 Receiving phone calls during medical consultations: the production of interactional space for technology use

159

ALEKSANDR SHIROKOV, IULIIA AVGUSTIS, AND ANDREI KORBUT

10 Non-talking heads: how architectures of digital ­copresence shape question-silence-answer-sequences in university teaching

181

KENAN HOCHULI AND JOHANNA JUD

11 The role of cursor movements in a screen-based video game interaction

207

LYDIA HEIDEN, HEIKE BALDAUF-QUILLIATRE, AND MATTHIEU QUIGNARD

12 Problems with the digital public encounter

230

DANIELA BOEHRINGER

13 Smartphone tooling: achieving perception by positioning a smartphone for object scanning

250

LOUISE LÜCHOW, BRIAN L. DUE, AND ANN MERRIT RIKKE NIELSEN

PART 4

Reflections on interactionist studies of technologies275 14 Where next for interactionist studies of technology?

277

DIRK VOM LEHN, WILL GIBSON, AND NATALIA RUIZ-JUNCO

Names Index Subject Index

288 290

Figures

4.1 I am not a robot 59 4.2 Like, comment, share 62 4.3 Initial email 65 4.4 Follow-up message 65 4.5 Provost alert 66 4.6 Citi alert 66 4.7 Conference registration 67 4.8 Faculty annual evaluation 71 4.9 Library notice 73 4.10 Cyber-awareness training 74 4.11 File not found 75 4.12 Netflix no longer available 76 4.13 Access is denied 76 4.14 Do NOT reply 77 6.1 3 × 3 Metapictures of straightedge identities connected to music (left) and veganism (right) 105 6.2 Example of a personal post with straightedge symbols visible in the photo, caption, and hashtags 108 6.3 3 × 3 Metapictures of #straightedgegirls (left) and ­#straightedgehardcore (right) 109 6.4 Presenting identities visually through Instagram 110 6.5 Presenting straightedge identity through hardcore music 112 6.6 Hashtags as relational identity expressions 113 7.1 Grindr marketing data from www.grindr.com122 7.2 Age and race 124 7.3 Stigma for those exhibiting a stereotypical gay gender expression 125 7.4 Face pic required 127 7.5 Faceless profiles and headless torsos 128 7.6 Six-pack abs and a Master’s degree 130 7.7 The fat ones are always rude 131

viii  Figures 10.3 Adobe Connect provides a surface for shared content by default. Students can contribute to the lecture via chat messages 10.4 Left: Screenshot of the session, right: chatbox messages with translation 10.7 During the lecture, the participants do not see each other. The only thing they hear is the lecturer’s voice explaining mathematical formulas 10.20–10.22  Simone rearranges his visual appearance in the tile on the facewall within a second by slightly pulling the upper part of the laptop towards himself 10.23 Looking at the screen of a Zoom-meeting means seeing the expression on one’s own face in relation to others 10.28 For once it is clear who is addressing whom on the face wall. The lecturer moves his body forward, says “yes” loudly and can only mean the student who has raised his hand (see the third tile from the left in the second top row) 11.1 Example of the game interface with webcams 11.2 Inside the control center 11.3 Submarine plan 11.4 FEL’s screen 11.5 GUI’s screen at the beginning of the extract 12.1 “Job Board/Jobbörse” on the Internet 12.2 Screenshot “Restriction has been imposed according to branches” 12.3 Screenshot “Select Branch/Branchengruppe auswählen”

188 189 192 196 197

201 210 211 211 213 213 235 239 240

Tables

1.1 Types of cursor movements and their functions 1 12.1 Structure of transcripts 12.2 Transcript “Restriction has been imposed according to branch sectors” 12.3 Transcript “Fixed-term job” 13.1 Transcription symbols used in this chapter

223 237 239 241 255

Contributors

Malin Åkerström is Professor Emeritus in Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sweden. Her research work focuses on ethnographic studies of social control and deviance. Her most recent book is Hidden Attractions of Administration – The Peculiar Appeal of Meetings and Documents, and she has also published Suspicious Gifts – Bribery, Morality, and Professional Ethics, Betrayal and Betrayers – The Sociology of Treachery and Crooks and Squares – Lifestyles of Thieves and Addicts. She has also been published in Social Problems, The Sociological Review, Symbolic Interaction, Sociological Perspective, and so on. Iuliia Avgustis is a doctoral researcher at the Research Unit for Languages and Literature and the Research Unit “Human Computer Interaction and Human-Centered Development (INTERACT)” at the University of Oulu. She is also a member of the project “Smart Communication: The situated practices of mobile technology and lifelong digital literacies” (funded by the Eudaimonia Institute, University of Oulu and the Academy of Finland). She received her MA in Sociology from the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (a joint program with the University of Manchester). Her interdisciplinary video-based research combines methodological insights from ethnomethodology, multimodal conversation analysis, phenomenology, sociology, and human-computer interaction. In her doctoral dissertation, she focuses on collocated and collaborative smartphone use in the context of everyday face-to-face interactions. Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre is an associate professor in German linguistics at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 and member of the ICAR lab (UMR 5191). She holds a PhD from the Martin-Luther Universität (Germany) at the intersection between media linguistics and interactional linguistics and a habilitation thesis from the Université Sorbonne (Paris, France) in interactional linguistics. Her research interests lie in the field of the multimodal analysis of screen-based interactions, gaming interactions, and, more recently, Human Robot Interaction (HRI). She currently leads interdisciplinary projects in gaming interactions and HRI with French data.

Contributors xi Simultaneously, she is working on vocality and especially nonverbal vocalizations/liminal signs in French and German interactions. Susanne Boethius, PhD, is a researcher at the Department of Sociology at Lund University, Sweden. Her research interests are interpersonal violence, violence against women, and treatment programs for violent men. Her current research focuses on the social networks’ involvement and responses to domestic violence. Daniela Boehringer is working as a senior researcher at the University of ­Duisburg-Essen. Her primary research interests lie in the field of public social services, digitization, higher education and academic organizations, interaction research, ethnomethodology, and conversation analysis. Corey J. Colyer is Associate Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. He is interested in the nexus of belief and behavior, institutions, and culture. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the International Research Network for the Study of Belief and Science. Christopher T. Conner is Assistant Professor of Sociology at The University of Missouri, Columbia. His work explores the way in which new communications technologies and larger historical forces change our everyday lived experience. Using a theoretical framework that combines critical theory with interactionist concepts; he has published on a wide range of topics— LGBTQIA2+ issues, music subcultures, conspiracy theories and extremism. He is series editor of The Frankfurt School In New Times book series with Rowman and Littlefield. He is also working on a book manuscript unpacking the way the QAnon conspiracy rose to prominence and what it means for the future of American politics. In addition to his scholarly work and many journal articles, Dr. Conner is also a semi-regular contributor to The Conversation and Salon. Katie E. Corcoran is Associate Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. Her research cuts across many subareas, including congregational dynamics, religion and health, religion and civic engagement, religious emotion, religious knowledge, and religion and crime. She recently published the book High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America (2020, with James K. Wellman Jr. and Kate Stockly), exploring the dynamics of megachurches in the United States. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the International Research Network for the Study of Belief and Science. Michael Dellwing is Chair of the Methods Center at Leuphana University Lüneburg. He is interested in qualitative research into digital culture, games, and social media. Brian L. Due, PhD, is Associate Professor at Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, Centre for Interaction Research and Communication

xii  Contributors Design, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He applies video ethnography and ethnomethodological conversation analysis to analyze social interaction, technology-in-use, creativity, mediated interactions, multisensoriality, and sensory impairments. He is currently interested in objects and technologies as they are used in everyday encounters. Due has been the PI on large international research projects that explore how new technologies are used in everyday encounters and in professional contexts, and he has lately published on social issues arising from living with visual impairment. Human creativity as a fundamental trait of human sociality runs as a red thread in his research. He is the co-editor in chief of “Social Interaction. Videobased Studies of Human Sociality,” and he has published books and articles in journals such as Semiotica, Journal of Pragmatics and Space & Culture. Simon Gottschalk is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. As a critical social psychologist, he has published on topics such as terrorism, televised commercials, countercultural youth, environmental identity, acceleration, Las Vegas, the transgenerational transmission of trauma, ethnography in virtual spaces, and qualitative research methods, among others. He is the co-author (with Phillip Vannini and Dennis Waskul) of The Sense in Self, Society, and Culture: A Sociology of the Senses. His latest book The Terminal Self explores how our interactions with digital technologies shape our everyday lives and experiences. His most recent research examines emotions on white supremacist websites. Lydia Heiden is a PhD student in interactional linguistics at the Université Lumière Lyon 2, the research lab ICAR (UMR 5191), and the company SKILDER (Lyon, France). She holds an international Bachelor’s degree in French and German from the Universität Bonn (Germany) and the Université Sorbonne (Paris, France), as well as a Master’s degree in General Linguistics from the Universität zu Köln (Germany). Her current PhD research project “Identify multimodal alignment practices in a digitalised game” unites her long dated interest for the multimodal analysis of gaming interactions – her Master’s thesis dealt with the role of gestures in explaining the rules of table-top games – a concrete application context, and her curiosity for new technological possibilities, as well as for interaction itself (video chats and digital artifacts like the cursor), as for its analysis (video editing and semi-automatic data processing). Kenan Hochuli is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich. Previously, he taught at the Université de Neuchâtel. His research is dedicated to the analysis of the interplay between language, body, and space in everyday interactions. In particular, his habilitation project examines how this interplay has emerged over the course of evolution and shaped human sociality. His recent publications include Building, Dwelling, and Interacting: Steps in the Evolution of Public Space from Paleolithic to Present (co-authored with

Contributors xiii Jürgen Streeck, in Handbook of Pragmatics, De Gruyter Mouton, 2022), Interaktive Konfigurationen und Prozesse am Marktstand in Istanbul und Zürich (Dissertation, Universität Zürich, 2020), Turning the Passer-by into a Customer: Multi-Party Encounters at a Market Stall (Research on Language and Social Interaction, 2019). Johanna Jud is currently a doctoral student in the SNSF-project “Interaction and Architecture” (IntAkt) at the University of Zurich. Her research is primarily dedicated to computer-mediated interaction in institutional settings. Based on the methodological approach of multimodal interaction analysis with a special focus on space and technological affordances, she is interested in the empirical manifestations of copresence that arise in and through digitally mediated communication. In her dissertation project, she analyzes how participants establish and maintain a shared interactional space through social practices of reassurance in digital and hybrid university courses. She is the co-author of the recently published paper “Der Raum der Vorlesung: Vom Auditorium zum ‘multi media hub’ ” (with Heiko Hausendorf, Kenan Hochuli, and Alexandra Zoller; in: Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik, 2021). Samuel Judah is a graduate student in sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His research interests are in music subcultures, youth culture, social media studies, digital society, and the sociology of emotions. Currently, he is working on a graduate thesis about emo subculture and the subcultural framing of emotion through social media consumption. Andrei Korbut is an independent researcher interested in ethnomethodological studies of human-computer interaction and, in particular, user encounters with artificial intelligence. He defended his PhD at the Higher School of Economics (Russia) in 2014 and then worked as a researcher in several academic institutions in Russia. He applies ethnomethodology and conversation analysis to the research in digitalization of labor, communication with voice interfaces, and social transformation of homes by smart technologies. Louise Lüchow is PhD Fellow at Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, Centre for Interaction Research and Communication Design, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research is currently focused on visually impaired people’s use of AI technology in their everyday lives. By studying how technology impact peoples’ social lives, her research sheds light on the complexities of social inclusion from an interactional approach. Exploring social interaction from a multimodal perspective, she has specialized in ethnomethodology, multimodal conversation analysis, and video ethnography. Key research interests include technology in interaction, social inclusion, and multisensorial perception. Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen, PhD, is Postdoc at Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics, Centre for Interaction Research and Communication

xiv  Contributors Design, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Using microsociological methods based on ethnomethodology such as multimodal conversation analysis (CA) and membership category analysis (MCA), in addition to classic discourse analytical methods and discoursive psychology, she analyzes social interaction and other communicative encounters primarily in institutional settings. She is particularly interested in trust as social phenomenon, in participants’ local construction and negotiation of identity, and in how these local efforts impact larger social structures. She has published books and articles with Routledge and journals such as Social Interaction. VideoBased Studies of Human Sociality. Matthieu Quignard is a research engineer at the CNRS and member of the ICAR lab (UMR 5191). He is a computer-science engineer with a PhD in Cognitive Science from the Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble, France), and is specialized in natural language processing and in the exploitation of complex corpora. His main research interests are at the intersection of linguistics and cognition in everyday language practices – argumentation, cooperation, decision-making, problem-solving, and so on – involving verbal and nonverbal communicative actions, and digital artifacts. Aleksandr Shirokov is a PhD candidate in Communication at Rutgers University, where he is also a member of the Rutgers University Conversation Analysis Lab (RUCAL). He obtained his MA in Sociology from a joint master’s program of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and the University of Manchester. Aleksandr uses Conversation Analysis to examine doctor-patient communication and works with video-recordings of medical consultations. He is interested in examining how doctors and patients manage asymmetry in interaction and how patients exercise agency in actions that step into the doctor’s territory of expertise, such as diagnostic assertions and treatment requests. Rachel E. Stein is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at West Virginia University. Her work focuses on community building and health in Old Order Amish communities, including preventive healthcare decision-making, maternal health, and visiting practices. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the International Research Network for the Study of Belief and Science. Sarah Ann Sullivan is Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Missouri Columbia. David Wästerfors is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sweden. His research focuses primarily on interactions, institutions, emotions, and social control. He has completed three projects with ethnographic data from Swedish detention homes and another ethnographic project on accessibility for people with disabilities in urban and digital settings. At the moment, he is involved in a project on economic aspects of foster care and in a project on people’s digital discussions of crime cases.

Contributors xv J. Patrick Williams is Associate Professor of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where his research and teaching focus on symbolic interactionism, culture, self and identity, subcultural theory, and digital media/technologies. He is particularly interested in the interactional and experiential dimensions of social identity, authenticity, and digital media/game literacies. He is the author/editor of several books including Authenticity in Culture, Self and Society (2009), Subcultural Theory (2011), Studies on the Social Construction of Identity and Authenticity (2021), and Interpreting Subcultures: Approaching, Contextualizing, and Embodying Sense-Making Practices in Alternative Cultures (2024).

1 Introduction Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco

Technology pervades our everyday life. For most of us, it is hard to imagine a day going by without an activity that does not involve, directly or indirectly, the use of technology. Our everyday life, however, is increasingly characterized not only by “older” forms of technology but by newer ones: mobile phones, tablets, personal computers, smart watches, and a plethora of new devices are now central to the accomplishment of everyday tasks in almost every imaginable context. Such devices are part of the radical and rapid digitization of society, in which communication with digital tools and technologies as well as via digital services plays a key role. We use these technologies for working, for socializing, for finding friends, partners, or spouses, for managing our social networks, building communities, exercising, playing games, disciplining our bodies, managing our health, socializing, and relaxing. The absolute ubiquity of digital technology has given rise to competing accounts regarding its social impact. On the one hand, we commonly see pervasive discourses of social hope surrounding this technology – that it may be a resource to overcome socio-economic inequality (Greene 2021), and create more egalitarian, knowledgeable, socially connected, and conscious societies (for a critical discussion, see Turner 2008). That it provides more accessible education, health care, economic participation, and so on (KocMichalska and Lilleker 2017; Toffler 1981). In contrast, and complementing earlier critical perspectives that decried our affective dependence on technology and the rising societal power of technocratic thinking in the “risk society” (Adorno [1969] 2005; Beck 1992), there are many voices now pointing to the social harm of these technologies: the intrusive, profit-seeking practices of “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff 2019), where every detail of individual lives is inspected through technologies and used to construct metrics of financial exploitation. Digital technologies are often seen as resources to enforce new social categories – what Fourcade refers to as “ordinal citizenship,” the measurement and the sorting of people into categories and hierarchies – as people are required to engage more and more with online technologies, such that “being a full member of society implies one’s bit by bit incorporation into the networked infrastructure of the internet” (Fourcade 2021: 157). Such surveillance practices are said to be (negatively) re-shaping practices of exploitative DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-1

2  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco sales, debt accumulation, policing (McCabe 2021), criminal punishment (Lageson 2020), education, and almost every area of social life. Whatever their interpretation, which we will re-visit in the conclusion of this chapter, accounts of digital technologies are re-articulations of very old debates about the social possibilities and risks of technology, debates that have been evident in every moment of social history and every technological innovation. Digital technologies may be new, as are the distinctive ways they are being used to re-shape social action, but the sociological concern with the relationship between technology and social practice is as old as the discipline itself. Like its home discipline of sociology, interactionism has also had a longtime engagement with the concept of technology, a centuries-old idea. The word “technology” derives from the Greek tekhnologia – a composite of “tekhnē” (“art, craft”) and “logia” (“a subject of study or interest”) – and dates back to the seventeenth century (Oxford Dictionaries 2010). Although there are many angles from which to study the conceptual meanings of technology today, interactionist perspectives on technology are among the earliest and most prominent in the social sciences. Following a pragmatic orientation, interactionists are not typically interested in exploring the materiality of technological objects per se or the ontological separations that plague many definitions of technology, but, rather, the lived experiences through which people use and make sense of technologies and, in turn, create “tekhnē.” Thus, this book is a continuation of a long-standing interactionist concern with the empirical exploration of the uses of technologies in people’s everyday lives. While most of the chapters in this collection center on digital technologies, this simply reflects the prevalence of these tools in contemporary society. Our concern here is not with digital technologies as such, but with how people use technologies of all kinds and what these uses mean for the conditions for social action in society. We regard it as problematic to provide a definition of technology that sits outside of its everyday uses. Technology is part of ordinary life, and its meaning and possibilities are structured by people in real-world contexts. One can find abundant examples of “makeshift” technologies in everyday situations which are often utterly mundane: people sitting in coffee shops use bags to illustrate that, say, a chair is occupied or books to demonstrate their lack of interactional availability (Laurier 2008). For surgeons, scissors are technologies used to cut, but also to point or to maneuver objects (Bezemer et al. 2011). In both of these examples, technologies are an intricate part of the work at hand and central to the practical achievement of coordinated actions. 1.1.  Selves, objects, and social interaction If interactionist scholarship has had a long-standing interest in the ways people use technologies, it has also been concerned with the more general question of the intersection of people (as “bodies” and as “selves,” and as “embodied selves”) with the physical world. Indeed, the interrogation of the subject/

Introduction 3 object dichotomy and treating object engagement as a lived phenomenological practice has been one of the cornerstone achievements of interactionist scholarship (Brekhus et al. 2023; vom Lehn et al. 2021). This theme has its roots in work inspired by G. H. Mead’s (1932) interest in the relation between selves and the material world and in phenomenological accounts of the lived experience of the life world. Although early interactionists’ analyses were not directly concerned with technology, G. H. Mead has much to offer to the investigation of the intersection between selves, objects, and social interaction. Mead discussed the ways we configure ourselves and our sense of our bodies as distinct to an “external world” of things and (other) people. For Mead, we establish an interconnectedness with this externality through a collaborative entanglement with objects: we build a physical sense of things and our bodies/selves through our manipulation and handling of objects, and through this same engagement, we develop a conceptual understanding of ourselves and of the objects (Mead 1932, [1934] 2015). As Doyle McCarthy (1984) notes, there is a social relation between people and things because objects are critical to the construction of social identities, furnishing a “stable and familiar environment” and a construction of a (sense of) social reality. This view of an intertwining of the material world and social selves finds expression in how symbolic interactionists subsequently analyzed the relationship between technology and social change. In his often neglected book Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change: A Critical Analysis, Herbert Blumer ([1956] 1990) makes a powerful argument for an analytic focus on people’s interpretive actions when analyzing industrialization (Maines and Morrione 1991). Blumer explored the social changes that accompanied urbanization and mass production, focusing on the meaning-making practices of people and groups of people and how this interpretive work, manifest in power relations and conflicting interests, is constituted in the negotiation of social life. As with E. C. Hughes (1958, 1984), Blumer saw the changes in organizational structures, the formation of new occupations and occupational roles, divisions of labor, license, and mandates of action as analyzable through people’s own interpretive schemes. This perspective rejects a structural determinist view of social change, where people’s actions change because social structures do. It also rejects a technological determinism where new production technologies, say, lead to new structures of work and social arrangements. Instead, all sociotechnological changes are practices meaning-making. In a related way, Couch (1984, 1996) provides a critical evaluation of the emergence of novel information technology and its relationship to societal changes. Based on an analysis of a wide range of information technologies across human history, Couch argues that new technology and social structure mutually affect each other. [H]e showed how an information technology could foster the emergence of particular social relationships and decrease the development of

4  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco others. Moreover, he argued that the existence of certain social relationships influences the development of a given information technology. (Chen 1995: 324) In his analyses of information technologies, Couch (1996), for example, compares the emergence of printing technology in Europe and several centuries earlier in China. He finds that in Europe major societal developments such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and Capitalism have been underpinned by the use of printing technology. In China, however, the technology had a relatively moderate influence on societal developments. According to Couch (1996), the reason for the divergence in the influence that the emergence of printing technology had on society lies in the social organization that underpinned development. While in China the technology was developed, used, and controlled by state officials, in Europe the technology and its products – ­leaflets, posters, books – were widely disseminated by merchants. Drawing on Innis (2007, 2008) and McLuhan (2001), Couch (1996) also suggests that the emergence of information technology influences social structure. He argues, for example, that electronic media such as radio and television favor the use of evocative symbols, enhancing the importance of emotions in communication (Couch 1996). Consequently, in Couch’s (1996) view, representative democracy has been undermined through the growing importance of electronic broadcasting that benefits charismatic leaders like Hitler and Khomeni (cf. Chen 1995). In this way, Couch’s (1996) analyses contrasts with approaches that propose either a “social shaping of technology” or a “technology-shaped social structure.” Instead, Couch, like Blumer ([1956] 1990) in his study of industrialization, pursues an interactionist approach that sensitizes us to the study of how technology enters social life and of the reflexive relationship between technology and social structure. Couch was interested not only in technology and its relationship with social structure, but also in interaction. He promoted the use of experiments, for example, to study the opening of face-to-face interaction, that is, the move from behavioral independence to interdependence (Miller et al. 1975; Hintz and Miller 1995). Through this research, Couch and his colleagues at the socalled “New Iowa School” (Katovich and Chen 2021) have started to reveal the elements of social relationships that underpin the possible ways that two participants might align their actions with each other. Their research, however, does not explore how technology might feature in the emergence of social relationships. The analyses of social interaction undertaken by scholars at the New Iowa School bear a family resemblance with developments in “ethnomethodology” (Garfinkel 1967). Ethnomethodology draws on the works of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and other phenomenologists to critically interrogate the ­ subject-object distinction. Like symbolic interactionists, ethnomethodologists conduct studies that reveal the reflexive relationship between “embodied

Introduction 5 action”, “the lived body”, and the material environment. They do not separate body, consciousness, and environment but examine how participants interweave the material world with their embodied actions. The mundane objects and the physical world are, in the normal course of habituated action, experienced by us as unproblematic features of action, and they are used and managed in the same pre-reflexive way that we manipulate objects with our bodies. We drink from cups, type on computers, drive cars, play the piano, and walk up escalators without “conscious consideration” and without noticing our techniques of manipulation. Similarly, we use our own bodies as tools in much the same way that we use objects. In ethnomethodology, there are various now-classic studies that investigate the interweaving of vocal and bodily action with the material and visual environment. For example, David Sudnow (2001) explores the process of learning to play the piano, the movement from experiencing the clumsiness of hands as a neophyte learner, to a more experienced player whose hands seemingly make the shapes and trace the pathways of the keyboard of their own accord, without the need for any conscious attention on the part of the player. Even when technology is used in private, like the playing of a piano (Sudnow 2001), it is always social in character, situated within particular worlds of praxis (cf. Cohen 2015). In a related vein, ethnomethodological research examines work in the sciences (Garfinkel and Lynch 2022), focusing on the embodied practices through which scientists orient to the material world in the process of making discoveries (Knorr-Cetina 1981; Lynch 1985; Sormani 2014). Studies in this ethnomethodological program criticize conceptual schemes that create separations between “things” and their “use.” Such separation is often at odds with people’s own experiences and understandings of the material world. For example, hands are part of the practice of greeting (e.g., shaking hands, high fives, fist bumps) and can be regarded as a “technology of greeting” (Hall and Hall 1983; Kendon 2004). Hands are also central to pointing or to how we manipulate objects, and they represent an important interface of our embodied engagement with the physical world (Goodwin 2017; Hindmarsh and Heath 2000; Streeck 2002). As another example, “external” technologies are increasingly internalized to bodies: technologies of medicine and food production are ingested and become “embedded in” (and transform) the biological organism. Indeed, the processes of “biomedicalization,” or “the ongoing extension of biomedicine and technology into new and previously unmedicalized aspects of life” (Clarke and Olesen 1999: 20; see Clarke et al. 2003, 2010) continue to expand. Digital implants interact with the nervous system, and manufactured body parts are implanted and grafted. More than ever, our bodies are internal and external sites of technological action, places where models of medical practice meet technological logics and architectures. Our bodies are increasingly (re)configured through our engagement with technologies; indeed, our very physical actions, social identities, and communicative engagements are produced through these body-technology intersections.

6  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco 1.2.  Interactionism and the study of technology Interactionists’ “non-dualist” understanding of our relationship with technology (see Puddephatt 2005) has led them to interrogate closely the distinction between material objects (e.g., physical tools, machinery, digital devices), or the “technics” that people use (Vannini 2009; see also Merrill 2010), and the human interactions that configure and transform users, communities, cultures and the tools themselves. One way to question the ontological divide between technology and people is to show how people attach the material objects of technology to a sense of agency and even personality. This is what Phillip Vannini (2008) found in his ethnographic study of the sinking of a ship, the Queen of the North. The analysis of this technological accident, which occurred in British Columbia, illuminates the ontological complexities of our interactions with technology. In fact, Vannini’s ethnography shows that in the eyes of the local community the Queen (a non-human technic) was no longer merely “a ship that sank” as it had attained qualities that were characteristic of those of a person, embodied with personality. Addressing how meaning-making practices reframe the ontological nature of technological objects is thus one of the directions interactionists may take to question dualistic approaches in technology studies. Another interactionist direction for questioning this duality comes from the field of “Workplace Studies” (Luff et  al. 2000). This work has its origin in E. C. Hughes’ (1958, 1984) studies of work and organization and in the broad body of empirical work from sociologists at the University of Chicago (Birenbaum and Sagarin 1973). It also draws on the “Studies of Work” program that Harold Garfinkel ([1986] 2005) started in the 1980s, which includes ethnomethodological studies of diverse practices, such as lawyers (Burns 2005), professional coffee tasting (Liberman 2022), and mathematical practice (Greiffenhagen 2008). Workplace studies use “ethnomethodological interaction analysis” (Heath et al. 2010; vom Lehn 2018, 2019) as a methodological technique for analyzing the moment-by-moment accomplishment of communicative understanding. Its practitioners employ video-recording1 as principal data to reveal the fine details of the production of vocal and bodily action through which objects are momentarily constituted (Engeström and Middleton 1998; Heath and Luff 2000; Llewellyn and Hindmarsh 2010). Through a detailed inspection of short fragments of interaction, these studies produce accounts of how tools and technologies, such as computer systems, handheld devices, and electronic displays as well as pens and paper, gavels, or knives, are embedded within action and interaction. They, for example, show how personnel responsible for the orderly workings of rapid urban transport systems continuously remain aware of each other’s orientation to the technologies around them. Thus, [t]he technology and the information it provides, does not stand independently of the various practices in and through which personnel

Introduction 7 exchange information and coordinate their actions; rather, the use of the various systems is thoroughly dependent upon a current version of train movement, running times and changes to the timetable which are currently being undertaken. (Heath and Luff 1991) In a different study undertaken in museums, vom Lehn et al. (2001) reveal how visitors encourage or curb other’s participation in an activity with an exhibit by the ways in which they arrange their bodies around the artifact. They show how the minute movement of a foot, for example, may invite and obstruct co-participants to join in an activity at an exhibit. An important theoretical context for these studies on “technology in action” (Heath and Luff 2000) relates to the phenomenological approach to “intersubjectivity” and the construction of a “reciprocity of perspectives” (Schutz 1967) between people in social action. Ethnomethodological studies of interaction argue that intersubjectivity is achieved moment by moment as people organize their vocal and bodily actions with each other (vom Lehn 2019). Through vocal utterances, bodily actions such as shifts in posture or head directions, as well as through gestures, people display for others where and how they orient in the local environment. This allows co-participants to align their orientation and action with each other and pursue what Blumer (1969) called “joint action.” While some interactionists pursue detailed analyses of the achievement of joint action, others have turned their interest from joint action towards the emergence of “social worlds” (Clarke 1991) that are based on people sharing commitments to engage in certain activities and different kinds of resources. “Social worlds are defined as ‘universes of discourse,’ shared discursive spaces that are profoundly relational” (Clarke and Star 2008: 113). They therefore are characterized by shared commitments towards the joint action that is at the center of their respective “universe of discourse” (Mead 1926; cf. Strübing 1997). Different social worlds, with their respective interests and commitments, enter in negotiations with others in what Clarke (1991) refers to as “arenas.” Here, “boundary objects” (Star and Griesemer 1989), such as maps, diagrams, or plans, serve to mediate or translate between different social worlds and help bring them together to pursue joint action. The people in different worlds may be oriented to distinctive “systems of relevancies” (Schutz 1967) to one another, but boundary objects facilitate mediation by allowing people to communicate and come to agreements with each other. This direction of research has been particularly influential in the field of science and technology studies. Interactionist scholars have been interested in the “social construction of technological systems” (Bijker et al. 1987), investigating topics such as the emergence of new technologies like the bicycle and pneumatic tires (Pinch and Bijker 1984), distributed artificial intelligence (Strübing 1998), and cancer treatments (Fujimura 1996), all of which are analyzed in terms of the negotiation between different social worlds. Such

8  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco analysis shows that technological development is a result of complex processes of negotiation between worlds and their competing “visions” (Dierkes 2001) and priorities, and that the “most effective” technology is not always the “winner” in these negotiations (Pinch and Bijker 1984). Social constructivist studies of technology have argued that technology only becomes useful and usable when it is embedded within a complex network of activities, people, and systems. Thomas P. Hughes (1993) explains that Thomas Edison’s achievement is not only the invention of the light bulb but the creation of a system of electrical lighting that includes a wide range of technologies, personnel, and activities. This “socio-technical network” (Hughes 1993) entails political processes within and across different stakeholders that generate and determine standards and norms for features such as the power used in the network, the sockets that hold the bulbs, and so on. Gasser and Palfrey (2012) have introduced the concept of “interoperability” to describe this property of functioning socio-technical systems, referring to Apple’s “interoperable ecosystem” as an example for a company that has ensured interoperability between different devices (such as desktop computers, laptops, iPods, smartphones, watches, etc.) and systems (including the App-store and iCloud service). This form of interoperability is designed to allow the owners of devices produced by Apple to easily exchange information between them. The creation of interoperability between such a wide range of devices vastly increases in complexity when multiple hardware and software producers become involved in the creation of the system. Collaboration requires strict rules, standards, and norms in order to guarantee the system’s functioning, as in the case of the App store which prescribes the design practices for apps sold on its site. 1.3.  The internet, social media, and online communication The emergence of the internet and, subsequently, social media sparked a flurry of research that has been heavily informed by interactionist ideas. There are three broad and overlapping strands in this work where we can see clear influences from interactionist perspectives: identity theory, ethnographic study of online communities and studies of online/mediated communication. 1.3.1.  Online identity

As early as the 1990s Stone (1991) asked, “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?,” highlighting the possibility for people to create an online identity that does not always coincide with their offline identity (Marwick 2013a, 2013b). Early interactionist ideas about the self (Cooley 1902; Mead [1934] 2015) have had a huge influence on the study of online identity through an examination of the digital “devices and activities that serve as props for conveying status, membership, style, and focus to audiences” (Altheide 2021: 279). These ideas have had a wide-ranging influence on sociological approaches to identity

Introduction 9 (Stets and Serpe 2016), with concepts such as “identity activation,” “identity verification,” “identity conforming/disconforming feedback” becoming key components of behavior models that seek to understand the collaborative processes of identity formation in social contexts (e.g., the ways that other peoples’ “disconfirmation” of a person’s identity may be managed by that individual). These frameworks have been applied to the study of online identity performance and the exploration of how people manage the intersecting networks of distinctive publics and the social selves that they implicate (ibid.). Erving Goffman’s work in particular has had a substantial impact on the formation of theoretical perspectives on identity and the internet (Ditchfield 2021). Researchers interested in the relationship between technological mediation and the presentation and construction of self have drawn heavily on Goffman’s notions of “frontstage” and “backstage” to think about how participants might control information to present a “front” in an online context (cf. Boyd 2006; 2007). This metaphor has also been used to reflect on the implications of the “context collapse” (Marwick and Boyd 2011) that characterizes much online interaction, and the absence of control over the boundaries of an audience or even an understanding of who the audience may be. While the dramaturgy analogy has been influential, Hogan (2010) has pointed to the limitations of this concept showing that in face-to-face contexts, the “stage” metaphor relies substantially on the idea that people manage their impressions on the basis of the expectations of particular audiences. However, a key characteristic of online environments is a lack of predictability or control over the audience context. As such, Hogan suggests we think of online contexts as “exhibitions” of “artifacts” which are created and curated by active interactants. Other concepts from Goffman such as “facework” (1955) have also been important in analyzing how people collaborate in the maintenance of certain identities. Ditchfield (2021) analyzes how people edit chat messages in real time and how we can understand such editing actions as an orientation to the relationship between two interlocutors and the social values embedded within them. 1.3.2.  Online communities

A second strand of work concerns the study of the emergence and organization of online cultures of action. These broadly ethnographic approaches have been informed substantially by the ethnographic turns in symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology and have been used to study areas as diverse as online music making (Waldron 2013) and policing (Schneider 2021). Waldron explores how music teaching and learning is accomplished in the Banjo Hangout online community and investigates the differences between online and offline music communities. Schneider examines how the police made use of social media to respond to viral videos of police brutality. Through tools such as Twitter, the police can be seen to try to “enhance police/community relations” (itself a strategy of impression management and the enforcement of police authority, and of self-promotion).

10  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco A particularly strong area of research here has been online gaming. Kirschner (2021), for example, explores how players in online games manage to make sense of game action using a range of meaning-constructing technologies to communicate with each other. In related studies, Williams and colleagues (Williams and Kirschner 2012; Williams et al. 2014) looked at how in multiplayer games people use the technology to construct players’ roles and manage those roles in interaction with each other. Ethnomethodologists also have shown growing interest in online gaming. Reeves et al. (2017), for example, have begun to elaborate some of the issues that scholars drawing on ethnomethodology might pursue, such as studies of players’ acquisition and display of competence or the examination of talk and interaction between players. These and related issues have been taken up by a few scholars who have begun to explore if players orient to avatars as participants (BaldaufQuilliatre and de Carvajal 2015) and how they encourage others to continue participating in a game at moments when they seem to have lost motivation (Baldauf-Quilliatre and Carvajal 2019). 1.3.3.  Online and mediated communication

The third strand of online research that interactionists have substantially influenced concerns the communicative practices found in online spaces. Conversation analysis has been central to the formation of the microanalytic studies of online data and interdisciplinary study of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC), itself a reaction to “big data” and the tendency to rely on large data sets rather than the detailed analysis of interactional practices. In some ways, this growing field has required adaptation of original conversation analytic techniques, which were initially designed for studying the moment-by-moment production of turns at talk in copresent or spoken distributed environments. Foundational ideas such as “Turn Construction Units”, which were used to study the real time construction of talk are of questionable relevance in environments where turns are not negotiated but can be produced any time. However, other concepts in CA such as “repair,” “topic organization,” “adjacency pair,” and “recipient design” have proven to be extremely important tools for understanding the organization and achievement of online talk (Giles et  al. 2015; Meredith et  al. 2021). Researchers have used these tools to explore diverse textual practices such as textual quoting (Reed 2001), editing (Ditchfield 2021), and the use of multimodal communicative devices such as emoji (Gibson et al. 2018) and hyperlinks (Stommel et al. 2017). Similarly, mediated interaction through audio-video tools and other modes of communication continues to be a strong area of research for conversation analysts (Gibson 2020, 2022; Licoppe et al. 2017: 201). This research reveals how people use talk and gesture to facilitate co-orientation and make sense of objects in virtual (Snowdon et al. 2001; Hindmarsh et al. 2006) and video-mediated environments (Licoppe 2015; Luff et al. 2003, 2016).

Introduction 11 Another strand to CMC research has been informed by Harvey Sacks’ work on Membership Category Analysis and its concern with the organization of language as a system of “moral machinery” through which people organize their knowledge and construction of “what the world is like” (Jayyusi 2015; Hester and Eglin 1996). Researchers have used this framework to look at topics such as the organization of political opinions on newspaper forums (Gibson and Roca-Cuberes 2019), the construction of controversies in the Twitter use of celebrities (Housley et al. 2017), or categories of moral action in Facebook (Andersen 2021). These research approaches have also been used to interrogate the intersection of “online” communication in copresence or non-mediated interaction contexts. Humphreys (2005) as well as Walsh and Clark (2019) find that the use of mobile phones in social interaction often disrupts the flow of talk, such as when a mobile phone buzzes and calls for a participant’s attention. Ictech (2019) continues this line of research on the embedding of smartphones in face-to-face interaction: through focus groups with smartphone users he revealed that, at times, people might turn to the phone and undertake actions such as answering a text-message without allowing others to take part in the activity – that is, they engage in “exclusive digital cross-talk.” Similarly, people might turn to and see a message or picture on their phone that they then show others, building it into the ongoing interaction; “semi-exclusive digital cross-talk.” Ictech calls the third type of digital cross-talk “collaborative”, and cites focus group participants talking about ways in which they reported having included others in the production of social media content such as group selfies. Through this discussion we have pointed to the important contributions that interactionists make in revealing the social organization of action and interaction in relation to technology. The chapters in this book further add to the interactionist body of research that explores how technology features within social relationships and interaction. In the following section, we briefly outline the key contributions that this book makes to interactionist scholarship. 1.4.  The contribution of this book So far, we have highlighted the theory and methods as well as the empirical work that interactionists have contributed to the sociological study of technology and social action. Our discussion shows that technology has been closely intertwined with the emergence of interactionism as a perspective and method in sociology. While Mead (1932, [1934] 2015) only touched on the issue of technology, through Blumer’s work ([1956] 1990) technology became firmly situated within interaction studies. Interactionists have observed how industrial technologies and now digital systems, tools, and devices enter people’s lives, and they have explored people’s sense of self, their place in a “technologized world,” and their (technological) relationships with

12  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco others. Through their research, interactionists have consistently criticized theoretical and conceptual approaches that ascribe technology the power to shape or determine social structure and action. Instead, they promote a humanist perspective that puts the actors at the center of societal developments. With this volume we aim to move this discussion forward by exhibiting a wide range of interactionist perspectives, methods, and studies that investigate social life in a technologized world. The contributing authors show their commitment to interactionism from a range of perspectives. The chapters comprise research of people’s orientation and interaction with and around technology in a variety of settings, and they use a broad range of research methods that include (auto-)­ethnography, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, ethnomethodological interaction analysis, qualitative interviews, image analysis, and more. The findings from their studies advance interactionist and sociological research on how technology enters social life and reveals the human ingenuity and creativity that is present when dealing with technological impositions. 1.5.  Overview of the book The book is comprised of 12 chapters divided into three parts studies. Part 1, titled “Power and Control”, includes two studies exploring the impact of the use of technology on social relationships and two studies that critically examine the relationship between technology and social interaction. In Chapter 2, “Being family and friends to abused women – a qualitative study of digital media in intimate partner violence,” Åkerström and Boethius explore the use of smartphones, social media platforms, apps, and other internet-connected devices by domestic abuse victims and members of their social networks. They show how such technologies provide perpetrators with new opportunities and methods to be present in social relationships, even when they are physically absent. Thus, the use of such technologies can lead to an increase in the reach of abuse in close relationships and extend the troubles beyond the borders of the victim and into the broader family and social networks. In Chapter 3, “News, sex, and the fight between corporate control and human communication online” Dellwing examines how moral panics affect the online construction of news and sexuality. In particular, he explores the conflict between, on the one hand, hobbyists’ use of the internet to share content with others and, on the other hand, the attempts by corporations and the state to curtail hobbyists’ sharing of content. The critical discussion of the impact of technology on social relationships is continued by Gottschalk in Chapter  4, “Terminal violence: online interactions and ­infra-humanization” in which he examines autoethnographic vignettes of interaction with terminals, analyzing how technology can surreptitiously dehumanize social relationships. Gottschalk argues that our interactions with technology, particularly terminals, will grow exponentially as social actions are increasingly “mixed activities”, where people interact with terminals and other forms of technologically driven non-human

Introduction 13 objects/subjects. Gottschalk uses an interactionist approach coupled with an auto-ethnographic study to critically examine how technology interfaces or interferes with people’s experience of, and their interaction within, the world. Part 1 concludes with Chapter 5 by David Wästerfors entitled “Summing up the criminal case online”. Wästerfors examines how participants in online crime case summarize their online discussions and how these summaries are used to try to bring order to the often very diverse and contested online debates. In Part 2 of the volume scholars investigate the construction of community identity through the use of technology. In Chapter 6, “Organizing subcultural identities on social media: Instagram infrastructures and user actions”, Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah study the ways that members of the “straightedge” subculture community use Instagram, paying attention to the intertwining of the technology into the everyday identity practices of its members. Through their analysis the authors show how users make their own identity recognizable as “straightedge”, through the technical affordances of the application. In Chapter 7, “A queer kind of stigma”, Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan use multi-sited qualitative research methods to explore the various ways in which stigma features in the action and interaction of users of the popular gay-dating app Grindr. Drawing on participant observation, in-depth interviews, and the analysis of dating profiles, the authors study users’ stigma management techniques and how they reproduce the stigmatization process in interaction with others. This analysis extends the concept of “homonormativity” by demonstrating how the users of Grindr take part in a cultural system erected on normative standards of beauty. Part 2 draws to a close with Chapter  8, “Symbolic separation: the Amish and 21st-century technologies” by Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran. The authors analyze how the Amish community negotiates its traditional commitment to modesty and technological simplicity. Through this chapter, we see how the Amish use, reject, and adapt certain technologies in ways that are seen to “conform with” their cultural expectations and how, in doing so, they can be seen to negotiate the symbolic boundaries of Amish identity. In Part 3, the final section of the book, authors investigate the practices through which people organize the use of technology in real-world situations. In Chapter 9, “Receiving phone calls during medical consultations: the production of interactional space for technology use”, Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut look at video-recordings of doctor-patient interaction to explore how a ringing phone becomes embedded within the practical organization of the setting and how doctors and patients jointly produce slots for answering incoming calls. In Chapter 10, “Non-talking heads: how architectures of digital copresence shape question-silence-answer-sequences in university teaching”, Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud investigates interaction on digital learning platforms in higher education. Hochuli and Jud explore the emergence of moments of silence in interaction on two different platforms: Zoom and Adobe Connect. Through this analysis they reveal differences in how participants interactively work through moments of silence

14  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco and the different demands that the two platforms place on participants in this process. In Chapter 11, “The role of cursor movements in screen-based video game interactions”, Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard explore the interactional function of participants’ cursor movements during game play. The authors show that such movements are carefully coordinated and are related to practical actions such as displaying attention and the management of turn organization. In Chapter  12, Daniela Boehringer investigates how people use a computer-based job-seeking system. Her contribution, titled “Problems with the digital public encounter”, reveals how users manage moments of irritation; that is, moments in which the computer system does not respond to their action in an expected way, and reflects on the implications of this for how we understand encounters between citizens and the welfare state. Part 3 concludes with Brian L. Due, Louise Lüchow, Rikke Nielsen’s chapter “Smartphone tooling: achieving perception by positioning a smartphone for object scanning” (Chapter 13). The authors explore the use of a smartphone app designed to help visually impaired people when they go out shopping, illustrating how the application helps the shoppers to gain relevant object information and how they negotiate its use and the special relations of the context. After Part 3, Chapter 14, titled “Where next for interactionist studies of technology/” brings the book to a close with our reflections as editors on the contributions that the studies in this book make to debates on interactionist research concerned with technology. We also reflect on the developments in theory, methods, and research that we anticipate or hope for in future scholarship. We make links between the contributions in this volume and contemporary discussions about “digitization” and “the digital revolution” (Brennen and Kreiss 2016; Sidhu 2015), and we point to possible future developments in interactionist theory and methods that may be used to further the study of study people, technology, and organization. Note 1 Ethnomethodological studies of people’s mundane uses of technology in work and leisure activities often use video-recordings of “technology in action” (Heath and Luff 2000; see further below), in alignment with Couch’s (1996) approach.

References Adorno, Theodor W. [1969] 2005. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Translated by Henry Pickford. New York: Columbia University Press. Altheide, David L. 2021. ‘Media Logic, Fear, and the Construction of Terrorism’. In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, edited by Dirk vom Lehn, Natalia Ruiz-Junco, and Will Gibson, 277–287. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Andersen, Elizabeth Muth. 2021. ‘The Radio Host Cried, the Facebook Users Identified: Crying as an Action Linked to “Good People” ’. In Analysing Digital

Introduction 15 Interaction, edited by Joanne Meredith, David Giles, and Wyke Stommel, 87–109. London: Palgrave. Baldauf-Quilliatre, Heike, and Isabel Colón de Carvajal. 2015. ‘Is the Avatar Considered as a Participant by the Players? A Conversational Analysis of Multi-Player Videogames Interactions’. PsychNology Journal Vol.13(2–3): 127–147. ———. 2019. ‘Encouragement in Videogame Interactions’. Social Interaction. VideoBased Studies of Human Sociality Vol.2(2). https://doi.org/10.7146/si.v2i2.118041. Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Bezemer, Jeff, Ged Murtagh, Alexandra Cope, Gunther Kress, and Roger Kneebone. (2011). ‘ “Scissors, Please”: The Practical Accomplishment of Surgical Work in the Operating Theater’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.34 (3): 398–414. https://doi.org/ 10.1525/si.2011.34.3.398. Bijker, Wiebe E., Thomas Parke Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds. 1987. The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Birenbaum, Arnold, and Edward Sagarin. 1973. People in Places. The Sociology of the Familiar. New York and Washington: Praeger Publ. Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. New York: Prentice Hall. ———. [1956] 1990. Industrialization As an Agent of Social Change: A Critical Analysis. New York: Transaction Publishers. Boyd, Danah. 2006. ‘Friends, Friendster and MySpace Top 8: Writing Community into Being on Social Network Sites’. First Monday Vol.11(12). https://doi. org/10.5210/fm.v11i12.1418. ———. 2007. ‘Why Youth Heart Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life’. In Youth, Identity, and Digital Media, edited by David Buckingham, 119–142. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.31219/ osf.io/22hq2. Brekhus, Wayne H., Thomas DeGloma, and William R. Force. 2023. The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Brennen, J. Scott, and Daniel Kreiss. 2016. ‘Digitalization’. In The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Robert T. Craig, Jefferson D. Pooley, and Eric W. Rothenbuhler, 1–11. Oxford and New York: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect111. Burns, Stacy L. 2005. Ethnographies of Law and Social Control (Sociology of Crime, Law & Deviance). Stamford, CT: JAI Press. Chen, Shing-Ling S. 1995. ‘Carl Couch: Bridging Sociology and Communication’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.18(3): 323–339. Clarke, Adele E. 1991. ‘Social Worlds/Social Arenas Theory as Organization Theory’. In Social Organization and Social Process. Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss, edited by David R. Maines, 119–158. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Clarke, Adele E., Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, Jennifer R. Fishman, and Janet K. Shim. 2010. Biomedicalization: Technoscience, Health, and Illness in the US. Durham: Duke University Press. Clarke, Adele E., and Virginia Olesen. 1999. Revisioning Women, Health and Healing: Feminist, Cultural and Technoscience Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Clarke, Adele E., Janet K. Shim, Laura Mamo, Jennifer Ruth Fosket, and Jennifer R. Fishman. 2003. ‘Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformations of Health,

16  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco Illness, and U.S. Biomedicine’. American Sociological Review Vol.68(2): 161–194. https://doi.org/10.2307/1519765. Clarke, Adele E., and Susan Leigh Star. 2008. ‘The Social Worlds Framework: A Theory/Methods Package’. In The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, and Judy Wajcman, 113–137. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press. Cohen, Ira J. 2015. Solitary Action: Acting on Our Own in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cooley, Charles Horton. 1902. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner. Couch, Carl J. 1984. Constructing Civilizations. Amsterdam: JAI Press Inc. ———. 1996. Information Technologies and Social Orders. Piscataway, NJ: Aldine Transaction. Dierkes, Meinolf. 2001. ‘Visions, Technology, and Organizational Knowledge’. In Knowledge Management in the Innovation Process, edited by John De La Mothe and Dominique Foray, 9–42. Boston, MA: Springer US. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-1-4615-1535-7_2. Ditchfield, Hannah. 2021. ‘Interactionism and Online Identity: How Has Interactionism Contributed to Understandings of Online Identity?’ In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, edited by Dirk vom Lehn, Natalia Ruiz-Junco, and Will Gibson, 310–321. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Engeström, Yirjö, and David Middleton, eds. 1998. Cognition and Communication at Work. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fourcade, Marion. 2021. ‘Ordinal Citizenship’. The British Journal of Sociology Vol.72(2): 154–173. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12839. Fujimura, Joan H. 1996. Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Garfinkel, Harold. [1986] 2005. Ethnomethodological Studies of Work. London and New York: Routledge. Garfinkel, Harold, and Michael Lynch. 2022. Harold Garfinkel: Studies of Work in the Sciences. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003172611. Gasser, Urs, and John Palfrey. 2012. Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems. New York: Basic Books. Gibson, Will. 2020. ‘Sensory Communication in YouTube Reviews: The Interactional Construction of Products’. Discourse & Communication Vol.14(4): 383–403. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481320910523 ———. 2022. ‘All You Need Is Guitar Pedals: The Communicative Construction of Material Culture in YouTube Product Reviews’. Discourse, Context  & Media Vol.49(October). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2022.100626. Gibson, Will, Pingping Huang, and Qianyun Yu. 2018. ‘Emoji and Communicative Action: The Semiotics, Sequence and Gestural Actions of “Face Covering Hand” ’. Discourse, Context & Media Vol.26(December): 91–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. dcm.2018.05.005. Gibson, Will, and Carles Roca-Cuberes. 2019. ‘Constructing Blame for School Exclusion in an Online Comments Forum: Membership Categorisation Analysis and Endogenous Category Work’. Discourse, Context  & Media Vol.32 (December). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2019.100331.

Introduction 17 Giles, David, Wyke Stommel, Trena Paulus, Jessica Lester, and Darren Reed. 2015. ‘Microanalysis of Online Data: The Methodological Development of “Digital CA” ’. Discourse, Context  & Media Vol.7(March): 45–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. dcm.2014.12.002. Goffman, Erving. 1955. ‘On Face-Work’. Psychiatry Vol.18(3): 213–231. https://doi. org/10.1080/00332747.1955.11023008. Goodwin, Charles. 2017. Co-Operative Action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Greene, Daniel. 2021. The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Greiffenhagen, Christian. 2008. ‘Video Analysis of Mathematical Practice? Different Attempts to “Open Up” Mathematics for Sociological Investigation’. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research Vol.9(3). http://www. qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1172/2585. Hall, Peter M., and Dee Ann Spencer Hall. 1983. ‘The Handshake as Interaction’ Vol.45(3–4): 249–264. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1983.45.3-4.249. Heath, Christian, Jon Hindmarsh, and Paul Luff. 2010. Video in Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Ltd. Heath, Christian, and Paul Luff. 1991. ‘Collaborative Activity and Technological Design: Task Coordination in London Underground Control Rooms’. In Proceedings of the Second European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work ECSCW ’91, edited by Liam Bannon, Mike Robinson, and Kjeld Schmidt, 65–80. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3506-1_5. ———. 2000. Technology in Action. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Hester, Stephen, and Peter Eglin. 1996. Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis. Washington, DC: University Press of America. Hindmarsh, Jon, and Christian Heath. 2000. ‘Sharing the Tools of the Trade: The Interactional Constitution of Workplace Objects’. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Vol.29(5): 523–562. Hindmarsh, Jon, Christian Heath, and Mike Fraser. 2006. ‘(Im)Materiality, Virtual Reality and Interaction: Grounding the “Virtual” in Studies of Technology in Action’. The Sociological Review Vol.54(4): 795–817. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.2006.00672.x. Hintz, Robert A., and Dan E. DE Miller. 1995. ‘Openings Revisited: The Foundations of Social Interaction’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.18(3): 355–369. https://doi. org/10.1525/si.1995.18.3.355. Hogan, Bernie. 2010. ‘The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media: Distinguishing Performances and Exhibitions Online’. Bulletin of Science, Technology  & Society Vol.30(6): 377–386. https://doi.org/10.1177/0270467610385893. Housley, William, Helena Webb, Adam Edwards, Rob Procter, and Marina Jirotka. 2017. ‘Membership Categorisation and Antagonistic Twitter Formulations’. Discourse & Communication Vol.11(6): 567–590. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481317726932. Hughes, Everett C. 1958. Men and Their Work. Toronto, Canada: The Free Press. ———. 1984. The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers. New York: Transaction Publishers. Hughes, Thomas Parke. 1993. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Humphreys, Lee. 2005. ‘Cellphones in Public: Social Interactions in a Wireless Era’. New Media & Society Vol.7(6): 810–833. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444805058164.

18  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco Ictech, Brad. 2019. ‘Smartphones and Face-to-Face Interaction: Digital Cross-Talk During Encounters in Everyday Life’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.42 (1): 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.406. Innis, Harold A. 2007. Empire and Communications. New edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ———. 2008. The Bias of Communication. Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press. Jayyusi, Lena. 2015. Categorization and the Moral Order (Routledge Revivals): Tradition in Psychotherapy. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Katovich, Michael A., and Shing-Ling S. Chen. 2021. ‘Recent Developments in the New Iowa School of Symbolic Interactionism’. In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, 59–69. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Kirschner, David. 2021. ‘Multiplayer Online Gaming’. In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, 343–353. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Knorr-Cetina, Karin. 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Con­ structivist and Contextual Nature of Science. New York, London, et al.: Pergamon Press. Koc-Michalska, Karolina, and Darren Lilleker. 2017. ‘Digital Politics: Mobilization, Engagement, and Participation’. Political Communication Vol.34(1): 1–5. https:// doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2016.1243178. Lageson, S. E. N. 2020. Digital Punishment: Stigma, and the Harms of Data-Driven Criminal Justice. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Laurier, Eric. 2008. ‘Drinking up Endings: Conversational Resources of the Café’. Language  & Communication Vol.28(2): 165–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. langcom.2008.01.011. Liberman, Kenneth. 2022. Tasting Coffee: An Inquiry into Objectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press. Licoppe, Christian. 2015. ‘Video Communication and “Camera Actions”: The Production of Wide Video Shots in Courtrooms with Remote Defendants’. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.76(January): 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma. 2014.11.008. Licoppe, Christian, Paul K. Luff, Christian Heath, Hideaki Kuzuoka, Naomi Yamashita, and Sylvaine Tuncer. 2017. ‘Showing Objects: Holding and Manipulating Artefacts in Video-Mediated Collaborative Settings’. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 5295–5306. Denver Colorado: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025848. Llewellyn, Nick, and Jon Hindmarsh. 2010. Organisation, Interaction and Practice: Studies of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Luff, Paul, Christian Heath, Hideaki Kuzuoka, Jon Hindmarsh, Keiichi Yamazaki, and Shinya Oyama. 2003. ‘Fractured Ecologies: Creating Environments for Collaboration’. Human–Computer Interaction Vol.18(1–2): 51–84. https://doi. org/10.1207/S15327051HCI1812_3. Luff, Paul, Christian Heath, Naomi Yamashita, Hideaki Kuzuoka, and Marina Jirotka. 2016. ‘Embedded Reference: Translocating Gestures in Video-Mediated Interaction’. Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.49(4): 342–361. https://doi. org/10.1080/08351813.2016.1199088.

Introduction 19 Luff, Paul, Jon Hindmarsh, and Christian Heath, eds. 2000. Workplace Studies: Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, Michael. 1985. Art and Artefact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Laboratory. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Maines, David R., and Thomas J. Morrione. 1991. ‘Social Causation and Interpretive Processes: Herbert Blumer’s Theory of Industrialization and Social Change’. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society Vol.4(4): 535–547. Marwick, Alice E. 2013a. ‘Gender, Sexuality, and Social Media’. In The Social Media Handbook, edited by Jeremy Hunsinger and Theresa Senft, 67–83. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2013b. ‘Online Identity’. In A Companion to New Media Dynamics, 355–364. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118321607.ch23. Marwick, Alice E., and Danah Boyd. 2011. ‘To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter’. Convergence Vol.17(2): 139–158. McCabe, B. J., 2021. Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McCarthy, E. Doyle. 1984. ‘Towards a Sociology of the Physical World: George Herbert Mead on Physical Objects’. In George Herbert Mead. Critical Assessments, edited by Peter Hamilton, 215–229. Abingdon and Oxon: Routledge. McLuhan, Marshall. 2001. Understanding Media. London and New York: Routledge. Mead, George Herbert. 1926. ‘The Objective Reality of Perspectives’. In Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, edited by Edgar S. Brightman, 75–85. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. https://www.pdcnet.org/wcp6/content/ wcp6_1927_0075_0085 ———. 1932. ‘The Physical Thing’. In The Philosophy of the Present, 119–139. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. [1934] 2015. Mind, Self, and Society: The Definitive Edition. Edited by Hans Joas, Daniel R. Huebner, and Charles W. Morris. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Meredith, Joanne, David Giles, and Wyke Stommel, eds. 2021. Analysing Digital Interaction. Palgrave Studies in Discursive Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan. https:// doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64922-7. Merrill, Bryce. 2010. ‘Music to Remember Me By: Technologies of Memory in Home Recording’. Symbolic Interaction, Vol.33(3): 456–474. https://doi.org/10.1525/ si.2010.33.3.456. Miller, Dan E., Robert A. Hintz, and Carl J. Couch. 1975. ‘The Elements and Structure of Openings’. Sociological Quarterly Vol.16(4): 479–499. Oxford Dictionaries. 2010. Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pinch, Trevor J., and Wiebe E. Bijker. 1984. ‘The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other’. Social Studies of Science Vol.14(3): 399–441. https://doi. org/10.1177/030631284014003004. Puddephatt, Antony J. 2005. ‘Mead Has Never Been Modern: Using Meadian Theory to Extend the Constructionist Study of Technology’. Social Epistemology Vol.19(4): 357–380. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691720500145571. Reed, D. 2001. ‘ “Making Conversation”: Sequential Integrity and the Local Management of Interaction on Internet Newsgroups’. In Proceedings of the 34th Annual

20  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 10. Maui, HI: IEEE Computer Society. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2001.926502. Reeves, Stuart, Christian Greiffenhagen, and Eric Laurier. 2017. ‘Video Gaming as Practical Accomplishment: Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis, and Play’. Topics in Cognitive Science Vol.9(2): 308–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12234. Schneider, Christopher J. 2021. ‘Policing and Social Media’. In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Schutz, Alfred. 1967. Collected Papers I. The Problem of Social Reality. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Sidhu, Inder. 2015. The Digital Revolution: How Connected Digital Innovations Are Transforming Your Industry, Company & Career. London: FT Press. Snowdon, David N., Elizabeth F. Churchill, and Alan J. Munro. 2001. Collaborative Virtual Environments. Digital Places and Spaces for Interaction. London, Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Sormani, Philippe. 2014. Respecifying Lab Ethnography: An Ethnomethodological Study of Experimental Physics. Farnham, Surrey, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Star, Susan Leigh, and James R Griesemer. 1989. ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations” and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology 1907–39’. Social Studies of Science Vol.19(3): 387–420. Stets, Jan E., and Richard T. Serpe, eds. 2016. New Directions in Identity Theory and Research. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Stommel, Wyke, Trena M. Paulus, and David P. Atkins. 2017. ‘ “Here’s the Link”: Hyperlinking in Service-Focused Chat Interaction’. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.115(July): 56–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2017.02.009. Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. 1991. ‘Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?’ In Cyberspace: First Steps, edited by Michael Benedikt, 81–118. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Streeck, Jürgen. 2002. ‘A Body and Its Gestures’. Gesture Vol.2(1): 19–44. Strübing, Jörg. 1997. ‘Symbolischer Interaktionismus revisited: Konzepte für die Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung’. Zeitschrift für Soziologie Vol.26(5): 368–386. ———. 1998. ‘Bridging the Gap: On the Collaboration between Symbolic Interactionism and Distributed Artificial Intelligence in the Field of Multi-Agent Systems Research’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.21(4): 441–463. Sudnow, D. 2001. Ways of the Hand: A  Rewritten Account. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Toffler, Alvin. 1981. The Third Wave. New York: Pan Books. Turner, Fred. 2008. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Vannini, Phillip. 2008. ‘A Queen’s Drowning: Material Culture, Drama, and the Performance of a Technological Accident’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.31(2): 155–182. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2008.31.2.155. ———, ed. 2009. Material Culture and Technology in Everyday Life: Ethnographic Approaches. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. vom Lehn, Dirk. 2018. Ethnomethodologische Interaktionsanalyse. Videodaten Analysieren und die Organisation von Handlungen Darstellen. Weinheim and Basel: Belz-Juventa. ———. 2019. ‘From Garfinkel’s “Experiments in Miniature” to the Ethnomethodological Analysis of Interaction’. Human Studies Vol.42(2): 305–326. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10746-019-09496-5.

Introduction 21 vom Lehn, Dirk, Christian Heath, and Jon Hindmarsh. 2001. ‘Exhibiting Interaction: Conduct and Collaboration in Museums and Galleries’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.24(2): 189–216. vom Lehn, Dirk, Natalia Ruiz-Junco, and Will Gibson. 2021. The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism. London and New York: Routledge. Waldron, Janice. 2013. ‘YouTube, Fanvids, Forums, Vlogs and Blogs: Informal Music Learning in a Convergent on- and Offline Music Community’. International Journal of Music Education Vol.31(1): 91–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/0255761 411434861. Walsh, Michael James, and Shannon Jay Clark. 2019. ‘Co-Present Conversation as “Socialized Trance”: Talk, Involvement Obligations, and Smart-Phone Disruption: Conversation and Smart-Phone Disruption’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.42(1): 6–26. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.382. Williams, J. Patrick, and David Kirschner. 2012. ‘Coordinated Action in the Massively Multiplayer Online Game World of Warcraft’. Symbolic Interaction Vol.35(3): 340–367. https://doi.org/10.1002/SYMB.22. Williams, J. Patrick, David Kirschner, and Zahirah Suhaimi-Broder. 2014. ‘Structural Roles in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Case Study of Guild and Raid Leaders in World of Warcraft’. In Symbolic Interaction and New Social Media (Studies in Symbolic Interaction 43), edited by Mark D. Johns, Shing-Ling S. Chen, and Laura A. Terlip, 121–142. Bingley, UK: Emerald. Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. London: Profile Books.

Part 1

Power and control

The chapters in Part 1 of this book address a crucial issue in interactionist studies: the role that power plays in structuring social life, from the social interactions we have in face-to-face encounters with people in our primary groups to the social interactions that unfold in much larger groups, and through technology. Interactionists have often been criticized for lacking strong conceptualizations of “power” and “social structure.” This long-standing critique of interactionism crystalized a few decades ago in the famous “astructural bias debate,” which posited that interactionists lack the analytic tools to workings of social structure, and power, in empirical research. This critique has been strongly rebutted in journal articles and edited collections in which interactionist scholars reveal that power and (social) structure underpin interactionist concepts and theories and have always been critical central also to its’ empirical interactionist studies. The following chapters do not directly engage with the main premise of the astructural bias debate, as they do not articulate a concept of structure in the same manner. The authors in this part of the book continue this theme of investigation by offering empirical studies of the deployment of technology and its structural influence on social relationships. Furthermore, they explore how power relationships are influenced by people’s deployment of novel digital technologies, such as smartphones, social media platforms, and apps. The contributors focus on how the negotiation, management, and control of information through such technologies represent a critical feature of power relations that is negotiated by users in diverse situations and contexts. We see through these studies the increasing tensions and conflicts arising between corporations and hobbyists from their respective attempts to manage and control the publication of online content. They discuss the increasing influence that technology has on how people conduct their day-to-day affairs, and its importance as a feature or context for power dynamics and the often dehumanizing influence that technology can have on social relationships. We thus see the importance of the argument widely pursued in conversation analysis, that “power” is often a “mundane” issue, relating to the negotiation of rights to exert claims or other conversational actions in ordinary social situations. Thus, the contributions of this DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-2

24  Power and control part shift the conversation about “power” and “structure” from the abstract realm of ideas to the realm of people’s activities in relation to technology. In this manner, “power” and “social control” are not best thought of as abstract concepts, but, in a pragmatist way, as localized issues that are managed by people in real-world situations.

2 Being family and friends to abused women – a qualitative study of digital media in intimate partner violence Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström One way for abused women to escape a perpetrator of abuse has traditionally been to move to a new location. New digital devices, such as smartphones and apps, have increased the ways an abusive partner can find her and made it easier for the abuser to track and control her, before and after a separation. The availability and reach of technology can make physical distance alone insufficient for escaping abuse (Boethius et al., 2022; Woodlock, 2017). Technology-facilitated abuse has no spatial border, making it possible for perpetrators of domestic violence to harass, monitor, or threaten from a distance. This spacelessness affects not only the experience of the violence, but also the responses to the abuse (Harris, 2018). Such harassment and monitoring also involve family and friends. While research on abused women is extensive, there has been less focus on their social networks. Abuse has not only become more intensive and extensive through new digital devices and social media but these means of communication have also drawn in friends and family in troubled relationships in novel ways. They are affected not only in terms of practical ways but also in terms of interpretive and definitional processes. Being shown threatening text messages, listening on mobile phone conversations, and seeing photos of injuries taken by mobile phones made the people in the social networks gradually see the women as victims. As Holstein and Miller (1990) pointed out, the identity as a “victim” is interactionally created, and we suggest that the new digital media may act as especially rhetorically convincing through their immediacy and encompassing character. Digital technologies may make the presence of violence available to other people; communication can be semi-public, observable through the ways others interact through technologies. 2.1.  A special case: monitored communication With digital-based interactions in a social network, a troubled party can easily reach family or friends. Anyone carrying a smartphone can call for help during dire emergencies, such as being robbed or in a car accident. Domestic violence perpetrators find a different kind of opportunity with these new tools. The perpetrator may turn to them to keep the victim isolated DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-3

26  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström from family or friends and to control and monitor the target of their abuse. The result is restricted or hindered interaction, digital and person to person, with family and friends. These behaviors are associated with “coercive control” (Stark, 2007; Johnson and Ferraro, 2000) and highlight that beyond the physical acts of violence traditionally equated with domestic abuse, perpetrators also commonly isolate their victims, monitor them, and micromanage their daily activities. Furthermore, studies of abused women have highlighted that violence often consists of patterns of actions involving combinations of physical, psychological, economic, and sexual violence (Ali et al., 2016; Boethius, 2015; Stark, 2007). Traditionally, intimate partner violence takes place in the home of the victim, which is one explanation that has been made to view it as a private problem. The violence is often hidden from the police and social services but often known by people from the informal social networks of the victim and perpetrator, such as family, friends, and coworkers (Hydén, 2015; Sylaska and Edwards, 2014). Victims may disclose the violence to persons in their social networks, through digital technology, in some cases using ­smartphones to call or text for help in an emergency (Boethius and Åkerström, 2020). Thiara and Humphreys (2017) discuss the absent presence of perpetrators in the lives of mothers and children victims of domestic violence (Thiara and Humphreys, 2017).1 They refer to the various ways the violence impacts the victims’ lives post-separation. The concept of the “absent but present” abuser in this chapter refers to the perpetrators’ digital presence when physically absent, before and after separation. We are interested in how close social network contacts of abused women describe their experiences with everyday technology, such as the use of smartphones, apps, social media, tracking systems, and online communities. 2.2.  Technology-facilitated abuse and intimate partner violence In the beginning of this century, the anticipated increase in the use of internet and mobile phones led to the first discussions of how technology and intimate partner violence might interrelate (Fraser et al., 2010; Southworth et al. 2005). The focus at that time was on telephone calls and the fear that mobile technology would lead to an increase in unwanted calls and text messages. Most of the findings on digital abuse in the domestic violence setting came from studies that included broader experiences, such as cyberbullying or cyberharassment (Borrajo et al. 2015; Reed et al. 2016). Later studies, such as Harris and Woodlock’s (2019), did zoom in on domestic violence and applied the term “digital coercive control” to describe the use of digital technology to stalk, harass, threaten, and abuse current or previous victims. This term has its background in the understanding of domestic abuse as connected with power and control and that the abuse must to be interpreted in its context and its consequences (Harris and Woodlock, 2019).

Being family and friends to abused women 27 Another term grounded in the understanding of domestic violence as a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviors, often backed by the threat of violence, is “technology-facilitated coercive control”, describing violence and abuse by intimate partners facilitated by digital media (Dragiewicz et al., 2018). This term includes harassment on social media or through texting, recordings, GPS stalking, accessing accounts without permission, or impersonating a partner on the internet. Many studies rely on the research of practitioners (Woodlock, 2020) who claim that digital abuse is a widespread phenomenon in the domestic violence setting. Social science research on digital violence, technology-facilitated coercive control, and digital coercive control in intimate relationships is new and still emerging, and there is as yet no universal definition. However, studies have been conducted mainly in North America (Dimond et al., 2011; Fraser et al., 2010), the UK (Stonard et al., 2014), and Australia (Hand et al., 2009; Harris and Woodlock, 2019). In the Nordic setting, where our study is situated, research on technology-facilitated intimate partner abuse is limited. Nevertheless, in a study of teenage digital intimate partner violence, Nordic results show patterns and similarities to intimate partner violence between adults (Hellevik 2018; Hellevik and Øverlien, 2016). In a previous study we have treated this phenomenon by exploring how victims of domestic abuse experience technology-facilitated abuse (Boethius et al., 2022), and now, in this chapter, we turn our focus to their friends and families. 2.3. Methods This chapter is based on a larger study of social network responses to violence in close relationships, in which we interviewed 21 Swedish women who had experienced domestic violence from a former husband, cohabiting partner, or boyfriend, and also interviewed people from the women’s networks (Belotti et al., 2021; Boethius et al., 2022; Boethius and Åkerström, 2020). The first author conducted the interviews with the women, who had all left their abusive partner and most (19) of whom had filed a police report, and the aim was to explore how these women had experienced their social networks’ involvement. At the end of each interview, the women were asked if the researchers could contact persons from their social network for an interview about their experiences of knowing a victim of domestic abuse. Of the 21 women, 8 agreed to these contacts. Some gave us as many as four names, others only a couple, and one person gave us one contact. The contacts were mothers, fathers, siblings, colleagues, friends, an ex-partner, a new partner, and a daughter. All 24 contacts (17 women and 7 men) from the social networks agreed to be interviewed, and the analysis presented here is based on these interviews. The interviews took place in the interviewees’ home, at the university, in coffee shops, or at centers for abused women.

28  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström The women had been repeatedly abused during the relationship. In all cases, physical violence was combined with other kinds of violence as part of the pattern of abuse, such as sexual violence, isolation, economic abuse, control and monitoring, and digital abuse. For some women, abuse occurred daily, but for others, episodes were weeks or even years apart. Some perpetrators also were violent against pets, children, or other family members, whereas others were abusive exclusively against the woman. The violent pattern these women experienced was categorized as “coercive control” (Stark, 2007) by the researchers. Persons in the women’s social networks had known about the abuse for different amounts of time. Some had been suspicious but could not prove or pinpoint the problem, whereas others did not know about the abuse until the relationship had ended. Of those who knew about the abuse while it was going on, they had witnessed or seen evidence of it, or the victim had disclosed it. Some of our social network interviewees (e.g., mothers and best friends) were very close to the victim before and during their time living with the perpetrator, but others had more limited or infrequent contact before the disclosure (e.g., a temporary boss, an old childhood friend out of contact for years). In some cases, interviewees were persons who were close to the perpetrator. Our group of interviewees thus represents a spectrum of experiences, an important element when using qualitative methods. In these so-called “active interviews” (Holstein and Gubrium, 1995), the interviewer took the role of a conversation partner rather than a questioner. All interviews were conducted privately after the participant signed informed consent and were recorded and later transcribed. The participants received a letter about the project and information about use of their participation-generated material and the right to withdraw participation at any time. The interviews have been anonymized with regard to names, places, and other identifiable information. The Regional Ethical Review, Lund, reviewed and approved the project. This study is a result of a serendipity finding (Åkerström, 2013), in that we had not specifically addressed the question of digital technology in the interviews but picked up on its importance when transcribing and reading our transcripts. Our interest in the role of digital technology came as the first step of analysis, resulting from “key readings” of the textualized data (Åkerström and Wästerfors, 2021). We noticed that digital technology was often mentioned, for instance, when interviewees talked about abuse, harassment, and efforts to control, and about communicating with informal parties outside the family and their everyday lives. 2.4.  Family and friends getting involved As described by the interviewees, smartphones and computers were the main types of digital tools used by perpetrators of abuse. The women and their social network contacts described how the perpetrators used message services,

Being family and friends to abused women 29 apps, tracking devices, cameras, recording programs, and online communities as a means of controlling, harassing, and monitoring the women, and at times involving friends or families. As retold in the interviews, this involvement entailed, among other things, learning through these tools about harassment or efforts to control the women. The perpetrator also targeted family or friends, or conversely, social network contacts engaged in efforts to control digital communication or arrange support through digital devices. In this section, we present digital technology use as described in these interviews in a chronological order, starting from suspicions and disclosure of the abuse to how digital abuse was used during the period the violence was perpetrated, and finally how the technology was used post-separation. 2.4.1.  In the beginning

The women in our larger study explained that keeping information about the abuse to themselves prevented awkwardness when socializing with family and friends and avoided pressure to leave the relationship before being ready. Not disclosing the abuse was also described as a way to protect others in the network and gave the women a sense of some control over the situation, ensuring they were the only ones targeted (Boethius and Åkerström, 2020). But family and friends of these women described noticing at some point that something was “not quite right”, and these initial suspicions sometimes were formulated because of digital tools. Anja, for instance, talks about a colleague, Amelia, whom she helped after Amelia disclosed the violence. Their coworkers and a manager had become irritated about Amelia: “her manager and colleagues thought she was unfocused, she was on her phone a lot, it was a bit of annoyance around this”. Digital tools, such as smartphones, can function as “involvement shields” as Persson (2001) argues in applying Goffman’s (1966) concept as to how people establish boundaries between self and others, where Goffman used examples such as people reading a newspaper in a waiting room. Such boundaries are, however, not expected to be erected at work; getting too involved in a smartphone screen may not be welcome. In this case, the smartphone involvement in hindsight was a signal that something was wrong. When Anja was asked whether she had any notion that domestic violence could account for Amelia’s behavior, she says: No, no, I didn’t think it would be something like this, no. But I understood it was something. It has to be something ’cause she lost some information, she wasn’t, she wasn’t focused, and then it was also this with the mobile phone, “why is she fiddling with the mobile phone all the time?”, that was something I thought about. And that question, if I’d been the manager, I would’ve asked that question. Yeah, to be at your private mobile phone at work, that ain’t good.

30  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström Thus, we may conclude that the breach of some moral expectations that at work “you don’t spend too much time on your phone” was initially used to define her character negatively, and subsequently as an indication that “something was wrong”. The same behavior is treated differently based on the new understanding of the situation, changing definitions of the person and the emergence of a “victim” label. In another case the “something is wrong” concerned a woman’s emotional disposition. Rut, an employer and friend of another young woman named Cathy, describes how Cathy’s mood changed from rather sunny and happy to introverted and depressed. The young woman arrived late at some point, saying that “she was not allowed to have what clothes she wanted. She was not allowed to post which photos she wanted on Instagram”. Another of the abused women, Ann, gave Filip, a friend of hers, a vacation trip for his birthday. During this trip, Filip became worried about Ann’s being harassed by her new partner via mobile phone during the trip. Filip: Yeah, so he texted and called whether appropriate or not, all the time and scolded and shouted and threatened her and asked her to come back, but she didn’t acknowledge that he had threatened her. A smartphone obviously provides new opportunities for such harassment, opportunities that did not exist before we could carry network-connected computers in our pockets. In this case, the perpetrator was certainly present in his absence; he had become a part of their interaction at the beach, in the bar, and at the restaurant when Filip and Ann were in another country. These revelations were not the only things to raise Filip’s suspicions. He discovered during the trip that the new partner had checked out Filip on social media. She asked if I wanted to meet him but I just didn’t want anything to do with him. ’Cause I felt then he’ll sort of focus on me – things he had found on my Facebook profile. ’Cause he obviously has a huge need to control. Interviewer: Okay. So he’d checked you out a bit, right? Filip: Yeah. Interviewer: How did you find out? Filip: He texted directly to her [when Filip was present]. Interviewer: Okay. Filip: It was really uncomfortable. It set a bad tone during our vacation. Filip:

Other interviewees also described the perpetrators’ behavior vis-a-vis themselves in relation to initial contacts. For instance, Johan, who kept in close contact with his former wife, described her as his best friend. When she met a new partner, Johan took the initiative to send a friend request to him on a

Being family and friends to abused women 31 social media platform, but the new partner and perpetrator brusquely declared that he was not interested. . . . on this forum where she met him, I thought, I thought like, I  can write a contact request ’cause he would, after all, meet someone that I cared very much about. So like okay her friends are my friends. But he was completely dismissive of it and very, very signaling that “no, it will not happen”. Interviewer: Okay. Johan: In rather tough and cocky undertones. Johan:

Johan returned to this episode later in the interview as a first sign of the problems with his ex-wife’s new partner, knowing “now” it is easy for him to construct the man as an “offender” and his ex-wife as a victim, by assembling memories. Johan and Filip provide two contrasting examples – one wants a contact, whereas the other does not – but they both illustrate how signs of deviating can be built into the etiquette of social media via friend requests and visiting the profiles of others (Holmes, 2011). These examples concern suspicions when the abuse is not yet revealed. But family and friends also describe how the violence was disclosed at times with the help of digital technology. Ann’s father, Lennart, describes how Ann confided in him when they talked on smartphones during her commute to work. During this time, she told us in a separate interview, it was possible for her to talk with someone without the perpetrator suspecting it because she had a legitimate “alibi”­driving to work. Lennart was not aware of this reason at the time because she told him only that she felt uncomfortable driving by herself, she therefore wanted to speak to him while she drove. Her father did not learn about the violence for a long time but claimed he had had suspicions. But access to a smartphone when she was alone in the somewhat intimate space of a car during the late-night and early-morning commute seems to have created a space for confidence, something that might have been more difficult in a face-to-face situation. She revealed the situation little by little: Lennart: . . . we talked while she drove. She had a head-set . . . Interviewer: Was it revealed during these chats . . . that he was violent or how did you find out? Lennart: It came out gradually in all conversations. More and more was revealed, what had happened. – [But] We didn’t meet much that period. Interviewer: But you talked on the phone for almost an hour a day? Lennart: Yeah. It’s almost two hours ’cause when she leaves . . .[she calls too]. The cases described here are quite different. Anja denies suspecting abuse, while Lennart claims he had suspected it. All, however, describe a woman who

32  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström hesitates to claim an identity as victims of abuse. Some describe noticing the women’s behavior being different, or “not quite right”, and some describe the man’s behavior as odd. A working sense of “what is normal and not so normal behavior” is used to build an understanding of both “victims” and “perpetrators”. This sense of normality and its rationalizations shift the definitions of the others as the understanding of the situation evolves. 2.4.2.  During the relationship

According to our interviews with the abused women, the perpetrators restricted their victims’ use of digital tools, sent messages to their devices, and modified the women’s phones and computers before the women had ended the relationship (Boethius and Åkerström, 2020). These actions meant that a woman was often stuck in a situation where the perpetrator monitored and controlled her. Furthermore, during the relationships, they were often quite isolated, not only because the perpetrator demanded it but also because they did not want other parties outside the family to know about their situation. Women cited shame, child custody issues, and fear that the violence would escalate or expand to their social network as some reasons for their hesitation. Family and friends thus often had quite limited communication when the women still lived with the perpetrator, and our interviewees had comparatively less to relate about their digital interaction during these periods. They did, however, describe some interactions initiated by the victims to, for example, have friends and family maintain documentation of their injuries. Ann’s former husband Johan relates one such situation: it became . . . was worse and worse and worse until she finally, she sent a picture that showed there was a bruise here [points] under the eye. And she didn’t say it outright then, that it was a matter of like violence, rape. But she said “save this picture”. Sandra, a sister of one of the abused women, also collected pictures of injuries, screenshots of the perpetrator’s threatening messages and texts, and pictures taken by the victim as evidence that her perpetrator stalked her: She started sending me pictures from whatever she saw, like the cigarettes, that that he had left on the balcony, and the newspaper where he had circled the words, something like “I will kill you”, I don’t remember it was in (another language), ahh, and then the messages he sent to her on the phone but with a different (phone) number and no name. She would, she would pass them on to me. Just as a witness. Sandra also describes how her sister was afraid that the man would track not only her phone but also Sandra’s. This meant that the sisters got involved in complicated concealing tactics. Sandra would not answer her sister’s messages

Being family and friends to abused women 33 as her replies could give a clue of what the messages contained. Furthermore, Sandra deleted her sister’s messages and pictures on her phone but saved them on her computer. So, in this case, both smartphones and computers were involved in the information exchange along with efforts to keep the communication secret. It was not only the communication per se that is described as sensitive but the possibility of tracking or stalking someone through a digital device. Another topic mentioned in the interviews concerns the abused women’s engagement with mobile phones. As shown, people were sometimes suspicious that something was going on because of the victims’ constant “fiddlings” with phones, where the smartphone might have been used as an “involvement shield” (Persson, 2001; Goffman, 1966). These phones can have other social functions in a gathering, however. A common concern that family and friends expressed was the abnormal number of texts and phone calls the victims received from perpetrators. The digital communication contacts and attempts did not always take place in socially isolated situations, and the victims were sometimes interacting with others when they were harassed, threatened, or monitored on their phone or computer. In these cases the mobile phones initiated other social interactions. The smartphone can function as an involvement magnet, affecting the ongoing interaction by drawing the participants’ focus in a gathering from their communication to the mobile phone and its user. In this context, it leads people to ask about the victim’s relationship and the perpetrator’s behavior. Even though digital communication between the perpetrator and the victim could be considered private, in such situations, it includes others who were present. Johan, Ann’s ex-husband and friend, reached a point at which he wanted to opt out of the interaction where he was the third party. Ann kept reading messages from the perpetrator out load to Johan, and she paid a lot of attention to her phone when receiving and answering text messages from the perpetrator. He explained that he told her: “I don’t want you to read messages or read me the messages from him” [the perpetrator]. That was the furthest I came to do something. And when she at one point still did, then I really did it: I grabbed the phone and like, locked it and kind of signaled that – “okay, I am the one living in this apartment and his words are not welcome here”. “His words are not welcome here”, Johan says, and “I am the one living in this apartment”. His recollections are quite the illustration of how a person who is not even present still invades a space. In a setting with participants who are physically present, their focused interaction may be interrupted by modern technology: a digital person may intrude. Those present may however remove the unwanted presence by simply muting it. Unwelcome digital interactions were also mentioned by the interviewees as only involving the perpetrator and members of the social network. Nora’s

34  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström mother, Ing-Britt, talks about how the perpetrator demanded that Nora’s 13-year-old sister respond to his contact attempts on social media. He had started to follow Tova, she is the little sister, on Snapchat or Instagram, or wherever, and he demanded that she would respond to his posts, and so on. If she didn’t, he became angry with her. The sister told her mother that she did not want to have online contacts with the perpetrator anymore and that he was giving her a hard time. The mother confronted the perpetrator on Facebook: “I wrote to him that Tova doesn’t want [to be friends on Snapchat and Instagram]”. The mother herself kept him as a friend on Facebook for a while, but after overhearing his calls to her oldest daughter one day, where he was screaming and yelling, she decided to end the Facebook connection. I wrote a message to him on Facebook – “I think this is messy and that you [perpetrator and victim] have problems to solve. And I  feel that I have no desire to pick a side, but I don’t want to be friends on Facebook anymore”. The mother also told us that at this time, she did not know that the man physically abused her oldest daughter but had gradually come to see him as generally aggressive and troublesome. These two instances of refusal by members of the social network to be available online had, according to Nora, been one of the rationales the perpetrator gave when he physically abused her shortly afterwards. The interviewees also described experiences where they believed that the perpetrators targeted them. Viggo, the employer of Cathy, reported that he suspected that the perpetrator harassed him using digital technology: It started with that I got my email hacked and it started to come with things like, a lot of emails from porn sites and things like that. And it was at the time when we had started to get her out of it. Viggo’s wife, Rut, talked independently from Viggo about the same incidents. She described the perpetrator’s action as a threat directed at them. She herself helped Cathy, who not only had been their employee but also had become a close friend who would stay with them with her children. Her husband, however, was mainly the person who tried to talk Cathy into leaving her partner. Many weird things started to come to him [her husband]. That he had bought stuff and . . . Interviewer: And you believed it was him [the perpetrator]? Rut: Yeah, I mean, he’s the only one that would like to do anything [harm]. He’s really good at computers, and he knows computer freaks that know how to hack. But we can’t prove it. Rut:

Being family and friends to abused women 35 2.4.3. Afterwards

All the abused women that participated in our study had left their abusive partners and in most cases filed a police report. When leaving the relationship, the women’s relations with family and friends were revived in cases where the abusive partner had hindered or monitored contacts. In cases where contacts with family and friends were kept alive during the abusive relationship, the interaction intensified. An earlier interaction had often been kept to a minimum, limited to conventional events and small talk, but interactions often escalated when they came to identify the women as victims of abuse, with demands of documenting injuries or persuading the woman to stay away if suspecting how he at times still had her “in his grip”. As seen earlier, in some cases, social network contacts used digital devices to document the abuse during the relationship by storing pictures or videos of injuries sent by the victims from their devices. Such documentation held increasing value when a woman decided to file a complaint. Sofia, an old friend to Jeanette, encouraged Jeanette to pose for her camera to document visible injuries after she left her partner. “To do a report on abuse with no photo evidence, I understood that there was no point to that”, said Sofia. For others, though, the perpetrator was so frightening that documentation was collected in case “something would happen”. Ing-Britt, the mother of Nora, was afraid that the perpetrator would come to her house where her abused daughter was hiding. The stories that Nora had told her, combined with “more than a hundred” texts and calls from the perpetrator the same night Nora had escaped, made Ing-Britt fear that the perpetrator would show up in a rage. She asked Nora to allow her to write a detailed document of all the abusive situations the daughter had experienced in the relationship to be emailed to their families and friends in case “something was to happen to us”. Ing-Britt’s documentation later became important in court, which is not always the case (Douglas and Burdon, 2018). But the digital evidence also could affect how the social network understood the situation. Ing-Britt sent the documentation to Nora’s older brother Frank, who in a separate interview said: I think it was good to receive it in black and white, exactly what had happened, then I could, as it were, process what had happened. – [I] had become angrier and angrier and it was harder and harder. This way, I got everything at once: This is what happened. Then you could like, start getting over the initial feelings pretty fast, not fast but faster than if you had gotten it piece by piece. Digital documentation that already existed, such as pictures or recordings taken by the victims or messages and texts sent by the perpetrator, was also used when explaining the abuse to family and friends after separation. IngBritt described how she could not understand at first why Nora had stayed with the perpetrator. “The Handbook”, Ing-Britt said, tells a person to leave immediately in such cases, and she thought that she herself would have done

36  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström so. She added, however, that no one truly knows how they will act until they experience such a relationship. She explained that she gained a better understanding after her daughter showed her some of the ways the perpetrator had manipulated her: all the weird texts and threatening things that he had sent to her, and I got an absolutely greater understanding of . . . It’s not just like he gets pissed one day and hits her. He had broken her down, he had diminished her and scared her into a position I can’t even imagine. In many cases, even though the victim had left the perpetrator, he could use the availability and reach of digital tools to be present in the victim’s life. Many of the women’s close relations described how the perpetrator was still present despite being physically absent. Rut, the employer and friend of the abused woman named Cathy, explained how the perpetrator was still affecting Cathy’s decisions even after the break-up. Cathy, who had back problems because of a heavy chest, was booked for a breast reduction surgery when the perpetrator started to text her, trying to persuade her not to go through with the operation. As Rut described it: He still had this power over her so she had telephone contact. I was with her in there [at the clinic] and she was going to take, she had the pills [painkillers] ready but couldn’t do it ’cause he was still, still sent text messages and was “inside her”, was in the background even if she didn’t meet him. The spacelessness of digital violence made it possible for the abusers to still reach their victims even if they were physically separated: he still was inside her. One father took the smartphone from his daughter because of these spaceless invasions. The underaged daughter had been severely abused by her boyfriend, including being stabbed and dangerously kicked around, and the father made her stay at home so she would not meet the perpetrator. This step was not enough to keep his daughter from the abuser, who still contacted her through social media. Markus describes: That damn phone. That was the hardest. You can’t control it. We did choose to cut it out. But that became like a prison for her. So after a while we had to let it go a bit. Access to the internet and the use of smartphones play a significant role in people’s everyday lives. Technology is essential for being a part of various communities and widely used in many arenas. It offers ways to communicate and connect with peers and has in many ways rapidly changed the way people interact in society and with each other. Cutting a person off the internet is not easily done today, making Markus’ solution impossible in the long term, as he himself acknowledged, stating, “that became like a prison for her”.

Being family and friends to abused women 37 For some of our interviewees, the relationship with the abused woman was intense for the period after she had left the perpetrator because the victim was dependent on them for practical and emotional support, assistance with filing a complaint to the police, and acting as witnesses in court. Practical support included taking care of the victim’s children, managing her finances, and in some cases providing shelter, which led some supporters to a breaking point because their own children were being neglected. When the situation started to settle and the woman began to build a normal life, some of these friends claimed that the relationship needed some distance, if not a break. This was often the case when women and their children had moved in with their friends. These friends stated that they still wanted to keep an eye on the victim and at times did so by using digital technology. Rut kept track of her friend by playing an online game, seeing if and when her friend was online, and through a son who followed the victim on social media. Another type of digital interaction that occurred after a separation involved representatives of the social network and the perpetrator. Johan tried to keep track of the perpetrator using his technology skills. He investigated whether the perpetrator had logged into his former wife’s Facebook account, as she believed he had. Johan went through her digital history and compared it with her whereabouts and looked for digital traces left by the perpetrator. The abuser, on his side, could target the social network after a separation through texts, social media, or emails, and by posting comments and sending messages that impersonate the victim (see Boethius et al., 2022). Those perpetrators that were digitally skilled could hack relatives’ accounts and post critical comments about a woman, use the network’s accounts to contact the woman, or encourage others to confront or criticize the woman. Another way the perpetrator targeted the victim’s networks was to post comments when logged into the woman’s social media accounts, making it look like the woman had written the post herself. Perpetrators also answered the victim’s text messages, impersonating the victim. Others could harass those who had helped the woman to leave the man. Finally, even the signs of when the abusive relationship began to fade were interpreted via digital communication: Interviewer: How did you notice that he backed down? Rut: So it became much calmer. It was not. She [the victim] could see on her phone that it was not the same traffic. Facebook was not hacked all the time and she could change her password and nothing happened in two weeks before it was encrypted again. 2.5. Conclusion The spacelessness (Harris, 2018) of digital violence – the absence of a physical border – means that perpetrators can often reach victims wherever the victims are. This chapter shows that family and friends also are included in this

38  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström reach of spacelessness. Digital devices that we carry with us at all times, such as smartphones, not only “lengthen the arm of abuse” but also allow for the abuse outside of the home and beyond the direct victim. Family and friends witnessed threatening messages, and saw pictures and other digital documentation of abuse. The interviewees also claimed that the abusive man was the main suspect when contacts in the social network experienced hacking of their own social media accounts or received friend requests from unknown accounts. In all of these instances, the perpetrator managed to be present despite being physically absent. Constant texting, calling, and messages draw attention to the troubled relationship as others respond to the incessant activity on the victim’s phone. The smartphone may in such instances function as an involvement magnet. People who are present may focus on how this material object absorbs the victim, rather than her being focused on her work or on the interaction between those physically present. As the incessant use of the mobile phone deviates from norms of expected behavior: engaging in small talk with friends or family, or focusing on one’s work tasks, it may in such situations invite questions. At times this leads to forcing the victims to show the messages to family and friends, whereas harassment, control, and degrading words could previously, in a non-digital world, be experienced without such witnesses. The fact that the intensive use of the smartphone can draw attention from others is thus a type of interaction that deviates from the more commonly held representation of the smartphone as an “involvement shield” (Persson, 2001) or as a tool of alienation among interactants engrossed in their own smartphones while physically together (e.g., Morandin et al., 2018). In this chapter we have not problematized the label ‘victim’ but our findings may be used in a discussion of how this identity is a result of interactional and definitional processes (Holstein and Miller, 1990). In the early days of what later became acknowledged as cases of domestic violence, our interviewees had been engaged in reflecting and wondering about either the women’s or the men’s behavior. Why was she fiddling with her phone all the time? Why did he constantly text her, and look me up on Facebook? The beginnings of an interpretation-process before settling on one definition, in our case acknowledging the problem as “domestic violence”, is often marked with noticing that something “is not quite right”, trying out different explanations, at times efforts of normalizing that which deviates from what is expected. When we re-collect early signs of various negative experiences arising from interactions with others these may concern moments of awkwardness or discontent. These can be characterized as “relational disfluencies”, everyday discontents and glitches that arise in our ongoing contacts with others (Emerson, 2015: 31). Such moments occur when behavior or interactions do not follow an expected pattern but initiate surprises of unanticipated behavior, suspicions, or worries. As times went by, and the identity of the women as “abused victims” crystallized, friends and family became involved in the victim’s troubles by using

Being family and friends to abused women 39 digital devices in ways they saw as beneficial. They used digital cameras, usually on smartphones, to document injuries and kept other digital proof of the abuse such as social media messages or texts. They explained that digital documentation could be used in police investigations or courts, and it also played an important role for family and friends in understanding why the abuse occurred. In summary, we have explored how smartphones and social media emerge as important in the early stages of growing recognition of the violence, as crucial tools in the period when a victim is still living with the perpetrator, and in the aftermath of violence, when the woman has left her violent partner. Digital technology is not only highly integrated in cases of intimate partner violence but also in relation to the victim’s social network. The abuser may target the social network directly and use technology-facilitated violence towards family and friends, or involve the network in efforts to embarrass or shame the victim. Furthermore, the victims’ somewhat deviant use of digital media may raise suspicions from others that something is wrong, or act as an involvement magnet disclosing abuse. Digital technology is important not only for abused women in domestic violence situations but also for their friends, families, and other acquaintances; for both parties the new technology may act as especially rhetorically convincing in producing identities of victims and offenders through their immediacy, semi-public, and encompassing character. Note 1 The concept of absent presence often references communication settings in which people may be present but engaged in other things such as books or using mobile phones or other electronic devices (Gergen, 2002).

References Åkerström, M. 2013. Curiosity and Serendipity in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Sociology Review, 9(2): 10–18. Åkerström, M., & Wästerfors, D. 2021. Ethnographic Discovery after Fieldwork on Troubled Youth. In Doing Human Service Ethnography, edited by Katarina Jacobsson and Jaber F. Gubrium, 171–189. Bristol University Press. Ali, P. A., Dhingra, K., & McGarry, J. 2016. A Literature Review of Intimate Partner Violence and Its Classifications. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 31: 16–25. Bellotti, E., Boethius, S., Åkerström, M., & Hydén, M. 2021. Ambivalent and Consistent Relationships: The Role of Personal Networks in Cases of Domestic Violence. Social Inclusion, 9(4): 211–221. https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v9i4.4545. Boethius, S. 2015. Män, våld och moralarbete [Men, Violence, and “Moral-Work”]. Lund University. Boethius, S., & Åkerström, M. 2020. Revealing Hidden Realities: Disclosing Domestic Abuse to Informal Others. Nordic Journal of Criminology, 21(2): 186–202. Boethius, S., Åkerström, M., & Hydén, M. 2022. The Double-Edged Sword. Abused Women’s Experiences of Digital Technology. European Journal of Social Work: 1–13.

40  Susanne Boethius and Malin Åkerström Borrajo, E., Gámez-Guadix, M., Pereda, N., & Calvete, E. 2015. The Development and Validation of the Cyber Dating Abuse Questionnaire Among Young Couples. Computers in Human Behavior, 48: 358–365. Dimond, J. P., Fiesler, C., & Bruckman. A. 2011. Domestic Violence and Information Communication Technologies. Interacting with Computers, 23(5): 413–421. doi:10.1016/j.intcom.2011.04.006. Douglas, H., & Burdon, M. 2018. Legal Responses to Non-Consensual Smartphone Recordings in the Context of Domestic and Family Violence. University of New South Wales Law Journal, 41(1): 157–184. Dragiewicz, M., Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, J. B., Salter, M., Suzor, N. P., Woodlock, D.,  & Harris, B. 2018. Technology Facilitated Coercive Control: Domestic Violence and the Competing Roles of Digital Media Platforms. Feminist Media Studies, 18(4): 609–625. Emerson, R. M. 2015. Everyday Troubles – The Micro-Politics of Interpersonal Conflicts. University of Chicago Press. Fraser, C., Olsen, E., Lee, K., Southworth, C., & Tucker, S. 2010. The New Age of Stalking: Technological Implications for Stalking. Juvenile and Family Court Journal, 61(4): 39–55. Gergen, K. J. 2002. The Challenge of Absent Presence. Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private Talk, Public Performance, 227–241. doi:10.1017/CBO9780 511489471.018. Goffman, E. 1966. Behavior in Public Places. The Free Press. Hand, T., Chung, D., & Peters, M. 2009. The Use of Information and Communication Technologies to Coerce and Control in Domestic Violence and Following Separation. Australian Domestic and Family Violence. Clearinghouse, UNSW. Harris, B. 2018. Spacelessness, Spatiality and Intimate Partner Violence: Technology facilitated Abuse, Stalking and Justice. In Intimate Partner Violence, Risk and Security: Securing Women’s Lives in a Global World, edited by K. Fitz-Gibbon, S. Walklate, J. McCulloch, and J. M. Maher, 52–70. Routledge. Harris, B., & Woodlock, D. 2019. Digital Coercive Control: Insights From Two Landmark Domestic Violence Studies. The British Journal of Criminology, 59(3): 530–550. Hellevik, P. 2018. Teenagers’ Personal Accounts of Experiences with Digital Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse. Computers in Human Behavior, 92: 178–187. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.11.019. Hellevik, P., & Øverlien, C. 2016. Teenage Intimate Partner Violence: Factors Associated with Victimization among Norwegian Youths. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 44(7): 702–708. Holmes, M. 2011. Emotional Reflexivity in Contemporary Friendships: Understanding It Using Elias and Facebook Etiquette. Sociological Research Online, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.2292. Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. F. 1995. The Active Interview. Sage Publications. Holstein, J. A.,  & Miller, G. 1990. Rethinking Victimization: An Interactional Approach to Victimology. Symbolic Interaction, 13(1): 103–122. Hydén, M. 2015. What Social Networks Do in the Aftermath of Domestic Violence. British Journal of Criminology, 55(6): 1040–1057. Johnson, M. P., & Ferraro, K. J. 2000. Research on Domestic Violence in the 1990s: Making Distinctions. Journal of Marriage and Family, 62(4): 948–963. Morandin, G., Russo, M., & Ollier-Malaterre, A. 2018. Put Down That Phone! Smart Use of Smartphones for Work and Beyond. Journal of Management Inquiry, 27(3): 352–356.

Being family and friends to abused women 41 Persson, A. 2001. Intimacy Among Strangers: On Mobile Telephone Calls in Public Places. Journal of Mundane Behavior, 2(3): 309–316. Reed, L. A., Tolman, R. M., Ward, L. M., & Safyer, P. 2016. Keeping Tabs: Attachment Anxiety and Electronic Intrusion in High School Dating Relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 58: 259–268. Southworth, C., Shawndell, D., Fraser, C., & Tucker, S. 2005. A High-Tech Twist on Abuse. Violence against Women. https://vawnet.org/material/high-tech-twist-abusetechnology-intimate-partner-stalking-and-advocacy Stark, E. 2007. Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. Oxford University Press. Stonard, Karlie E., et al. 2014. The Relevance of Technology to the Nature, Prevalence and Impact of Adolescent Dating Violence and Abuse: A Research Synthesis. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 19(4): 390–417. Sylaska, K., & Edwards, M. 2014. Disclosure of Intimate Partner Violence to Informal Social Support Network Members. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 15(1): 3–21. Thiara, R. K.,  & Humphreys, C. 2017. Absent Presence: The Ongoing Impact of Men’s Violence on the Mother–Child Relationship. Child  & Family Social Work, 22(1): 137–145. Woodlock, D. 2017. The Abuse of Technology in Domestic Violence and Stalking. Violence against Women, 23(5): 584–602. Woodlock, D., McKenzie, M., Western, D.,  & Harris, B. 2020. Technology as a Weapon in Domestic Violence. Australian Social Work, 73(3): 368–380.

3 News, sex, and the fight between corporate control and human communication online Michael Dellwing

Centralization and decentralization, and relatedly monetization and hobbyism, find each other in perpetual conflict over dominance on the internet. This conflict is foundational: on the one hand, the internet is the first global two-way-communication structure that does not separate few senders from many receivers, like books, newspapers, radio, and television did. On the other hand, it exists within a corporate capitalist structure in which corporations will attempt to monopolize services, and within state structures where states and corporations are often allies against decentralization that puts information and communication outside of bureaucratic control. Decentralized spaces offer a distinctive structure: a non-corporate form of interaction that is not beholden to the tight legal and publicity webs that characterize institutional action. It is, in the best sense of the term, unprofessional interaction, that is, non-professional in the sense of not blatantly alienating human action into a conduit of institutional-corporate action. It is neither immediately beholden to the norms of profit within capitalism nor to the many legal frameworks that control institutional action. It is, therefore, framed as more authentic, more personal, more genuine. Problematic as these terms are, this is not entirely spurious; non-institutional interaction indeed offers a window through the iron cage of institutional modernity. Decentralized communication has widened this window and might even contribute to cracks in the cage. The fight over the control and marketization of non-institutional spaces consists of two prongs: destruction and colonization. On the side of destruction, moral panics that encircle decentralization in both news and sex are testaments to that loss of power, and seek to commodify these hobbyist spaces to bring them under capitalist control (Harvey 2014; Butsch 1984). They target the spread of non-corporate information and the concomitant loss of control by regulated legal entities to paint them with a wide brush as hotbeds of “misinformation” and crime. Pars pro toto, these attributes are painted as the main identifying characteristics of these spaces, which in turn marks them as “cesspools” to be cleaned out and destroyed. On the side of colonization, corporate conquest eats up the material of decentralized interaction, filters it, and provides ­corporate-controlled silos in which to hoard, control, and marketize it. DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-4

News, sex, and the fight 43 On the other hand, these kinds of capture also evoke different kinds of resistance against this capture. While resistance against destruction is mainly a practice of dismantling moral panics, resistance against conquest takes the form of evading the conquerors. The internet still offers ways to route around corporate-hegemonic discourses about information and the body, and the anarchist foundation of decentralized material fights back and uses both old and new tools to resist and counteract corporate capture. I want to look at two fields that, at first glance, seem to have little in common, but that both find themselves at the heart of this conflict: news and sex.1 On the one hand, news is perhaps the most respected element of media content; governments worldwide have long mandated it as a requirement for acquiring broadcast licenses for an “informed populace”. On the other hand, sexual content is often the dirty, embattled stepchild of media, with the assumption that a contribution to lust and arousal lowers the community. Governments have regularly excluded sexual content from broadcast media, though in the United States much more so than in Europe. The internet has been a decentralizing force for both sex and information. In both cases, the internet broke the corporate oligopolies over the definition of news and bodies, and with it the bottlenecks of bureaucratic control over both. In both fields, moral panics abound. 3.1.  Destruction: news and sex panics Moral panics are an old, time-tested, and sociologically much researched practice to try to fight insurgent social practices and groups by labeling them as destructive, harmful, corruptive, and noxious (Cohen 2011; Goode and Yehuda 1994). The moral panic over news mostly focuses on non-corporate, non-institutional content, with a narrative that has increasingly painted “fake news” and “misinformation” as a threat to truth, democracy, and a shared social reality. An early moral panic was the “filter bubble” discourse (Pariser 2011), the putative “fracturing” of common information sources and a lack of common trust in institutional information, a “society that is less frequently exposed to similar sets of facts” (Mihailidis and Viotty 2017: 7), with “an increasingly polarized and distrustful public spending an increasing amount of time in homophilous networks where contrarian views are few and far between” (Mihailidis and Viotty 2017: 1). In this frame, this decentralization of narratives and the visibility of the multipolar nature of social discourse are seen only as a problem (Pariser 2011; Easley and Kleinberg 2012; Thurman and Schifferes 2012; Valentine and Wukovitz 2013; Marth 2014; Lazer 2015). This has morphed into bemoaning putatively “easily debunked but widely circulating conspiracy theories” (Sismondo 2017: 3). Mostly journalistic, but also some academic, work has repeated the terms “fake news” and “disinformation” and added warnings over “post-fact” and “post-truth” societies (Harsin 2015; Viner 2016; Peters 2017; Sismondo 2017; Mihailidis and Viotty 2017), where, curiously, it is not the monopoly capitalism of corporate

44  Michael Dellwing news that is identified as a “filter bubble”, and not the commodification under news capitalism that is identified as the structural frame of “post-truth” societies, but rather decentralized challenges to these corporate structures that are framed as problematic. It is perhaps for this reason that this narrative is much more prevalent within corporate news than in critical social science: the “fake news” panic targets the displacement of “classical”, legacy news media through decentralized narratives framed as in need of “control”, and large corporations are painted as the only actors that can organize this control. While much of this moral panic aims at right-wing conspiracy theories, it is often left-leaning criticism of power structures that finds itself the actual target of such control, while right-wing content only serves as the rhetorical target. Actual control is exerted over citizen material from protests and war zones, including anti-institutional protests in the global north, but also targeting much educational material that was only available through university libraries before, including critical social science analyses of capitalism, imperialism, and the new cold war. Contemporary non-corporate news often includes a veritable universe of left-wing, socialist, anti-imperialist media: The Gray Zone, Primo Radical (formerly Primo Nutmeg), Mint Press News, CodePink, Breakthrough News, Socialist News, and many socialist education channels. It spawned non-­commercial organizations like Unicorn Riot, an independent, nonprofit protest journalism project that reports on Black Lives Matter, and a host of semi-commercial independent journalism projects (commercial in the sense that the creators aim to live off of the project, though not in a corporate frame). These programs mix with academia, and critical intellectuals appear here much more often than they do on legacy media; regularly, academics host them. In addition to these non-institutional creators, decentralized distribution structures allow media from the global south to be visible in the global north, also with offers specifically tailored to northern audiences, like Telesur, Kawsachun News, and also CGTN. Before the era of decentralized distribution, such access required inclusion in corporate cable systems, which was limited to state-­hegemonic offers within the West, like Deutsche Welle or AFP, or were adversarially broadcast into the territory of global rivals, such as Radio Free Asia or Radio Free Europe, which are widely recognized as strongly distorted western propaganda distributors.2 On the other side of the decentralization panic, sex is perennially targeted by moral panics, and moral(istic) panics over porn are still common and widespread (Herdt 2009; Halperin and Hoppe 2017). Much of this has targeted commercialized sexual material, but the parallel to decentralized news, freed from corporate structures, is decentralized mediatization of sex. This decentralized, personal sex is, again, demonized, in the common equation of sex with danger in Western discourses. In addition to the general danger narrative, the panic also encompasses the uncontrolled and uncontrollable nature of decentralized material. This has especially hit private, peer-to-peer communication in the age of simple pictures and videos, in the sexting panic. Like many moral panics, it uses the non-adult population as the nexus of constructing

News, sex, and the fight 45 dire dangers; the sexting panic comes up as a problem construction about the actions of teenagers (i.e., Albury et  al. 2010; Drouin et al. 2013; GordonMesser et al. 2012; Döring 2012: 4), so much so that adults had been largely deleted from the academic and public discourse about sending sexual material between each other for a long time, even though adults make up the vast bulk of this practice (Döring 2012: 22). This panic has many elements. There is the revenge porn panic of nude pictures of others being put online without their consent.3 The “stain on reputation” panic follows the old “party pictures on facebook” panic from the 2010s, especially where they reveal that one is not always a buttoned-up professional in front of one’s employer. This panic not only completely depends on the tabooization of nudity, it also normalizes the colonization of all life hours by an employer and their expectation that an employee is a representative of the company not only in off-duty hours but retrospectively in everything they did before that position.4 There is a curious convergence here: while news and sex are often portrayed as foundationally different, the panics over decentralization are remarkably similar in both. Moral panics over online information lay bare that the freedom to access information, in media democracies, was tacitly understood as a freedom to access corporate- or state-managed media, information distributed through channels that exerted institutionalized editorial control and could themselves be controlled. Panics over information take the form of “disinformation” or “fake news” panics, which can easily be identified as panics over audience access to non-institutionally controlled information, and access of a plurality of noninstitutional voices to wide audiences. Conversely, embedded, corporate-produced sex distributed from centralized and monetized platforms (the classical “porn” of porn panics) finds itself under constant panic narratives. In decentralized sex, the moral panic also passes through the nexus of the fig leaf of “fighting trafficking”, which has led to sex platforms deleting sexual content (like Craigslist and Tumblr), shutting down altogether (like Backpage), or severely restricting upload access to users who identify themselves via state IDs. Properties of Facebook (including Instagram) and Amazon (including Twitch) have long strongly controlled for nudity, a practice that has spawned its own debates on sexism (Hewison 2020) as a form of unequal censorship. Other networks that had allowed nudity, like Tumblr, have curtailed the practice, mostly at the pressure by Apple as an app distributor and also by financial processors. Especially MasterCard and PayPal are strongly opposed to financing sex-related interaction under the guise of fighting sex trafficking, a term that has been expanded under FOSTA/SESTA regulation in the United States (Tusikov 2021; Bronstein 2021) to mean any economic activity that includes the exchange anything of value in any context that also includes sex, and therefore casts a wide net on sex-related activity and relabels much quite pedestrian sexual activity as “sex trafficking” that would, in the vernacular, not have been framed as such.5 This, again, introduces an old power dynamic into the centralization-decentralization contest: large corporate actors are much

46  Michael Dellwing freer to handle their own sexual speech than that of users. Classical corporate media – movies and television, think HBO – therefore do not have to adhere to the limits that corporate social media platforms impose on people. Hence, corporate sexual depiction on subscription cable networks in the United States takes liberties that, on commercial platforms like OnlyFans, would quickly result in bans.6 The resources corporate actors can muster to defend possible regulatory control strongly skews the ability to engage in sexual free speech in favor of corporations, in turn disempowering private actors. Platforms like Onlyfans of Chaturbate thus also collect decentralized production of material and centralize monetization. Again, like in news, the bulk of the panic aims at non-corporate distribution, and implicitly supports corporate control. Personal, hobbyist, private action entails much wider possibilities to challenge hegemonic orders. It is therefore not surprising that decentralized, personal, hobbyist action elicits much stronger moral panic constructions through institutionalized channels than centralized, corporate action does. 3.2. Anti-panic The panic narrative is, as always, a state and journalistic pastime; academic work tends to be skeptical. For one, historical sociology can put current panics in context and note that similar strategies have been used again and again to discredit movements of change as dangerous. This is true for information and news as well as sex. Moral panics as technopanics, that is, panics over shifts in technology that enable shifts in cultures of practice with phenomena that are entangled with these technology shifts, are boringly common. The past has seen moral panics over games, television, movies, novels, and book printing. In all of these cases, these could be construed as defensive fights of the existing power structure against new venues to destabilize and change it (e.g., Gusfield 1986). The most prominent historical technopanic-as-information-panic is book printing, also a “misinformation” panic much like the current one: the sudden ability to produce texts outside of the painstaking reproduction by hand led authorities to decry the rise of “non-authorized” information, which was equated with “fake”, with harsh repressive measures to defend the church’s information authority.7 A critical analysis can point out that the current fake news panic is merely the same process again, where existing hegemonic power structures defend themselves against a loss of narrative control. The terms “fake news” and “misinformation”, “fact checks” and counter-narratives that ridicule information that contradicts that from centralized sources, as well as descriptors like “post-truth society” that come up in moral panics are parts of this defense process; an ascription of a narrative as a “conspiracy theory” is among the hardest forms of defense used in these contexts (see Anton et al. 2013). While the “misinformation” trope is favored among states and in journalism as a way to privilege corporate news and state pronouncements, work in sociology has rarely painted official sources as trustworthy. For traditional news, Herman and Chomsky (1988) identify the filters through which corporate

News, sex, and the fight 47 information production must pass: ownership of the news media by transnational corporations with their internal politics; financing content through advertisement, making these corporations dependent on the support and goodwill of other corporations; dependency on access to sources, which are most often government and other institutional spokespeople and PR departments, to provide them with official information and access to them for interviewing, which cannot be alienated lest journalists become excluded from these sources; and ideological socialization into middle-class trust in institutions. No intentional framing of information towards certain ideological approaches, and therefore no “conspiracy” in the interpersonal, backroom collusion sense, is (strictly) necessary for these filters to work (though of course, managers talk, and they talk to government officials as well). Finally, “flak” denotes “negative responses to a media statement” (Herman and Chomsky 1988: 26), practices that are used to discredit forms of knowledge that challenge dominant narratives, such as “warning labels”, “fact checks”, and “correcting information”. Thus, while public debates make this a narrative about “protecting truth”, it could also be read as being about protecting the remnants of the power structures in which structural constraints on information distribution had existed in the twentieth century. Sex panics have also seen much challenge in social science, which has pointed out the historical development of the particularly modern puritan connection of sex with danger (Foucault 1976, 1992, 1990, 2021; Lautmann and Klimke 2018). Western, and especially Anglo-American, narratives have framed sex – one of the most normal human actions – as inherently dangerous and exploitative. Academic work has, in turn, emphasized the normality and quite often harmlessness of the targets of these panic narratives. Beyond (or rather, before) commercialized individual commercialization, there is private and recreational use of the internet as a sexual tool. Dennis Waskul noted that most media technologies have been used as, in effect, mediatized sex toys: the rise of the Polaroid camera allowed people to take naked pictures without having to have them developed, and the rise of super 8 and video cameras has allowed people to film themselves in various sexual situations (Waskul 2004: 1–2). The proliferation of digital cameras, cameraphones, various editing and capture software, and easy peer-to-peer transmission has only increased the use of media in sexual interaction in everyday life. Critical appreciation can note that the use of the internet in the same manner is merely a further extension of this development, and what has been called “sexting”8 is thus now a normal and everyday adult practice, a playful interaction. Making naked and sexual content privately, sending, as well as posting it online is now a normal part of contemporary sexual interaction: “making self-portraits available to strangers [is, M. D.] becoming [a, M. D.] current practice[.] for a growing number of Internet users” (Lasén and Gómez-Cruz 2009: 205), and Drouin et al. (2013: 26) already note ten years ago that 54% of adults had shared sexually explicit pictures with partners; in 2022, as the saying now goes, “everyone has nudes” and that often includes uploading pictures and videos as well.9 They also serve

48  Michael Dellwing to recreate and revolutionize sexual stories (Plummer 1995). While corporate sexual presentations, both in porn and in mainstream movies and media, have privileged idealized bodies – thin, tall, white, blond, with large breasts and buttocks, pliable and willing, at the service of men (see already Goffman 1976 on gender images in advertisements), decentralized sexual story communication has been much more diverse, not only pluralizing body and sexual presentation but also allowing a rejoining of the nude body to the person occupying it (Tiidenberg 2014; Dellwing and Drescher 2016). One of the most common confessions from people who participate in public displays of the naked body is how the general positive, supportive feedback has given them a confidence in their body that mass-media body presentations have not been able to do. The widespread danger narratives over nude pictures again reproduce Puritan narratives of sexual exceptionalism; they name, as dangers of the practice, “promiscuity, unsafe sex, or sexual infidelity” (Döring 2014), the negative evaluation of which is, of course, quite contingent and strongly transports Anglo-Saxon animosities towards the body and sexuality. The danger narrative also lists risks of nude pictures that are not risks of the practice itself but rather risks that stem out of this moral panic and the taboo nature it transports: potential consequences such as “bullying” and “exclusion from educational and career opportunities if a private sext becomes public” (Döring 2014) are consequences of stigmatization, deviantization, and social control of the practice by dominant institutions, not of the practice itself; the same way incarceration is only a danger of drug use in regimes where being caught with these substances is a justification for state oppression of users (Döring 2014). The trafficking panic is also identified as a source of control, first and foremost. Criticism has pointed out that while identification requirements may seem sensible at first glance, in online contexts, they are anything but. Not only do they create barriers to hobbyist online nude culture, the members of which might not want to be exposed with their identity to corporate platforms, but also create identity theft dangers. Whereas age checks in sex stores or porn cinemas are ephemeral affairs – an employee takes a look at an ID and lets the person pass, creating no permanent record – age checks online create databases of compromising information, creating what is known as a “honeypot”, large collections of data that can be harvested at once. Beyond the ­compromising aspect of the sex stigma (which is only harmful due to the stigma, not due to sex), more material dangers arise, like ID theft, ­stalking, and financial fraud. These dangers can discourage private, hobbyist, non-­ commercial use of these services and therefore effectively kill online sex cultures if they are marketized.10 Somewhat ironically, the online sex panic targets this very normality that the danger narrative counters, where the problem consists of commodifying and alienating what is constructed as a thoroughly personal affair. The panics entail an implicit construction of sex as a “last bastion of humanity” in a commodified culture, as the rock that needs to be protected from erosion through commodification; this is, of course, a facade when it comes from corporate

News, sex, and the fight 49 mouths. This focus on sex as an exception also carries an implicit concession of the normality of commodification everywhere else, thereby normalizing the rest of neoliberal life as thoroughly colonized. At the same time, online sex panics reproduce the moral exceptionalism that specific historical developments have managed to impress on sex. Much anti-sex work stigmatization stems from this exceptionalism within Puritan commercialization, and this is where practical criticism of members of the field intersects with academic criticism: this is, classically, the internal narrative in critical sex work and the “sex work is work” movement. To think sex work specifically is exploitation and “regular” work is not, or that sex work is especially exploitative of the body, and other kinds of corporate appropriation of the body are not, are rather naive misrepresentations of capitalism and its foundation on wage slavery, the physical exploitation of the vast majority of people on the planet for the profit of the few. Sex work is work, but all work is exploitative. Sex work is merely no more or less so than many others; singling out sex work is not concern for the exploited; it is Puritanism hiding behind a savior complex (Jones 2020; Halperin and Hoppe 2017). 3.3.  Decentralization against conquest While control seeks to diminish non-institutional sources, conquest seeks to colonize and integrate them into the corporate system. After an early history as a decentralized space, the colonization of the internet with the world wide web and “web 2.0” has digested decentralized material within centralized services, and thus within the control of these silos, like Facebook and YouTube.11 While their network effects lure decentralized creation into these silos, as that is where the audience is, monetization also opens up another possibility to lure material in by sharing parts of the marketization with creators. In the one-way street variant, the corporate networks monetize material made without compensating creators; this is Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, which monetize posts by users, usually through advertisement, where users who provide this material usually receive no payment. In the two-way variant, the platform uses part of its revenue as a lure. These silos now interject points of collection, distribution, network effect, paying out a small part of their monetization to creators, and, through that, also add a point of control between decentralized creation and the audience. This control includes algorithmic censorship, where keywords in print and speech are parsed, reporting, where other users flag content they find offensive, and moderation, where site moderators – employed or volunteer – check content. This content can then be deleted, muted, and users banned for certain time periods or indefinitely (“deplatforming”). Governments, in spite of all rhetoric on digital monopolies, invite and support this control, deputizing networks for control, as action that runs through these silos can be observed and controlled easily. Online sex was a domain of hobbyist interaction from the beginning (Waskul 2003, 2004, 2006; Waskul and Vannini 2008; Tiidenberg 2014,

50  Michael Dellwing 2016; Dellwing and Drescher 2016), with commercial porn an early entrant – and driver – of the development of the internet. News has seen a similar trajectory, with early internet newsgroups as a hobbyist endeavor, and corporate news as an early, and continuing, driver of the utility of the internet. On the side of resistance against conquest, the internet’s basic decentralization is still a resource to be used, and it has been: material that was removed, blocked, censored, demonetized, and otherwise throttled on corporate social media has moved to places apart from it. This resistance against this corporate capture often takes the form of decentrally produced and distributed material. Next to smaller, niche commercial silos, there are non-commercial actors that facilitate information exchange and thus allow for resistance to this form of commercialization. The major space of non-corporate distribution, built on the infrastructure of the old internet, is podcasting, which uses the RSS feed, a technology that was implemented by Netscape as open architecture in the early days of the internet, to gain access to millions of subscribers without being routed through one central platform. While podcasts appear on centralized services such as Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, and Spotify, independent podcast apps can search through these feeds as well and add them to a listening queue directly from the hosts’ web pages, where they are stored (rather than on Apple’s own servers, as YouTube videos are on Google’s servers). In this more decentralized system, the editorial nexus of media corporations is defanged. Telegram, as a newer entrant that is not corporate-owned, also allows for non-siloed distribution; the service was founded as a way for dissidents to communicate, financed by a “Digital Fortress” fund, and dedicated to not allow corporate and (single) state pressures to influence its internal control mechanisms (Shu 2013).12 One of the more maligned sites is 4chan, which is run by a private person and is known to be a little-moderated playground for irreverent interaction. While podcasting, telegram, and also 4chan could be termed “hard” resistance removed from the pressures of corporate-institutional control, niche commercial operators that operate within the corporate structure make up “soft” resistance: these are still corporate, but not as intertwined with hegemonic political structures as transnational stock-based corporations are, which therefore allows for more leeway. Those are often privately held, instead of stock-market, corporations. These include Rokfin, Medium, or Substack for information, which use the increased control exercised by major platforms as a marketing tool to promote services that offer somewhat more freedom than the strict controls of the quasi-monopolist networks (see Mackenzie et al. 2022). On the sex side, sex-centered platforms like Fansly, Frisk, Peach, OnlyFans, and Chaturbate have always been a private-corporate niche (where Chaturbate has been around for over a decade, while OnlyFans and its clones are rather new). They remain removed from the main rails of advertisement financing that power the large content platforms. They are, however, more prone to deleting, banning, and otherwise censoring users than alternative news platforms are, and often with even less recourse. The equivalent to

News, sex, and the fight 51 decentralized and user-operated structures on the side of sex are remaining parts of nude Reddit, Fetlife, Newbienudes, or Literotica, but also Omegle and private play groups in messengers as places of interaction beyond immediate corporate control. Yet, commercialization still runs through these communities, as the forces of conquest find them and either transform them into advertiser-friendly spaces by swallowing them up in corporate entities, and then remove sexual material (like Tumblr), or link them to the commercialized sites. Reddit, which is corporate, has become one of two major networks used by commercialized-decentralized online sex to gain followers through hobbyist spaces: independent, semi-hobbyist sex workers advertise their Onlyfans, Fansly, Frisk, Peach, Chaturbate, or other monetized sexual content on Reddit (the other is Twitter, and there is some activity on Tinder and Instagram.13) One of the spaces that still accommodates hobbyist nudity is the imageboard r/gonewild (van der Nagel 2013; van der Nagel and Frith 2015). Here, users post naked pictures of themselves, for the art and entertainment of it; it is not the only such space, as Reddit is full of non-commercial nudity, often artistic (as in communities like r/strikeaposegw or r/ArtFullNudes), or specialized (such as r/nerdyGW, r/PublicBoys, r/NakedAdventures, or r/spitfetish), or focusing on audio content (like r/gonewildaudio). The encroachment on hobbyist spaces on Reddit by commercialized content has led to its own fights over hobbyism: the r/gonewild subreddit has become ground zero for the fight to preserve noncommercialized nudity cultures. As a hobbyist community, it tries to keep advertisement for monetized services off of its pages. Moderators will check the profiles of any poster on the subreddit for a link to any commercial site as a matter of routine and immediately ban any user from ever posting in the community again if such a link is found. The sex workers who advertise through Reddit see this as anti-­sexwork discrimination, and that is not incorrect. However, rather than puritanically excluding sex work because of the sex aspect, it excludes monetized nudity and sexuality from a hobbyist space, with an aim to protect the nonmonetized, personal, hobbyist character of the subreddit. This fight can be found to different extents in different Reddit communities: while Gonewild will ban any poster who has any post history referring to a paid service, other communities allow nudeposting from commercial actors, provided the posts in that community are not advertisement posts and the person is seen to participate in a hobbyist manner, even if there is a commercial history. In nude culture, the commodification of hobbyist nudity has thus led to backlashes from the hobbyist culture in ways that the commercialization of decentralized information distribution has not. Other online communities like Fetlife or NewbieNudes, text communities like Literotica and fanfiction sites like AO3, audio communities like Soundgasm, or art communities also offer spaces for Hobbyists to engage with erotic and sexual material apart from commercial silos. These sites are usually privately held and removed from corporate and advertiser pressures; often, they are privately managed alternatives after commercial sites purge sexual content, as PasteBin did for scripts with sexual

52  Michael Dellwing content and SoundCloud did with erotic audios. The retreat point for widespread assaults on sexual content, more and more, is therefore a collection of sites the future of which is insecure and often rests on private efforts by passionate hobbyists. They are still obligated to pay for servers and infrastructure and need at least a modest income to pay the fees. Finally, a major step in the practical decentralization of online interaction, now in information, can be found in old and new peer-to-peer services. Federated services like Mastodon allow different users to run interoperable instances which are locally controlled, but not under the authority of a centralized management (thus “federated”). Actors who run instances can block untrusted instances, but users can move between them, as they interoperate on a network where segments can talk to each other. Old services like ­BitTorrent, which rely on no central servers but instead connect users oneon-one through a number of open client software programs, have allowed the sharing of content for more than 20 years, and attempts at capture and control have all failed, as decentralized architecture is built to function without central points of failure – like the original internet itself. Finally, in the last decade, the Bitcoin network offers a decentralized system that is leaderless and censorship-free, as the information on accounts is saved in a large decentralized system of Bitcoin nodes spread throughout the globe. The succession of account information is managed in blocks, which are protected by Bitcoin mining, which works through attaching an energy cost to creating new blocks, which keeps the network secure and decentralized by making manipulation costly, and keeping it independent of ownership. Predictably, this network has also been the target of moral panics, often targeting precisely this energy cost.14 This already breaks the control mechanisms that made payment rails venues for censorship, and bitcoin is used regularly for legal, but bankexcluded services, like sex work; it can also circumvent the (now dwindling) US control over the money system, which is the basis on which unilateral US sanctions on countries will make it impossible for third countries to engage in commerce with them.15 On top of this network, on a second layer, newer software upgrades like Segwit and Taproot, much more elaborate systems can be built, and uncensorable social networks have been built on this decentralized system, like Zion.16 3.4.  Wiggling the chokepoints of control The sociology of social problems and social control is full of studies of moral panics that, in hindsight, were misrepresentations, simplifications, or outright lies about marginalized, niche parts of the social body that would threaten the hegemonic order. Time and again, they have shown that these moral panics serve to defend this existing order and its established structures. This is no different in news and sex panics, and no different in the technopanic that unites these two perhaps unlikely bedfellows. We are witnessing a fight over

News, sex, and the fight 53 corporate and centralized control of online spaces. In the present, this conflict has evolved into something odd, yet predictable: rather than a widespread defense of decentralized peer-to-peer interaction against corporate, consumerist capture, prevailing media narratives have started to target this decentralized culture with moral panics, many of them fueled by legacy media and governments as well as corporate internet media. In both news and sex, the moral panics have fueled attempts at re-­ centralization and an attempt by corporate actors, under heavier regulatory control, to regain dominance over both spaces. While there were some problem discourses about the marketization of news in the 1980s and 1990s, the corporate capture of news was, of course, never a threat to the corporatecapitalist system, and therefore the problem construction could remain largely symbolic, without much political action to counter the trends of privatizing mediatized information systems; on the contrary, it was of course political action in Western countries that solidified corporate dominance on news narratives. The decentralized dethroning of this corporate structure is, however, very much a danger to the corporate-capitalist control over shared narratives. Consequently, not only is the moral reaction much stronger, the institutional response is also heated. Narratives like the “fake news” moral panic, the “hate speech” frame, or sexual danger narratives do not exist outside the structures they ultimately defend: they serve to put pressure on distributors and payment rails to use the existing structural choke points to reinstate structural constraints on information content. Where they have succeeded, they have lodged an image of “dangerous misinformation” and “dangerous channels” in the public discourse, as fights over what is socially accepted as “true” and normal. By supporting efforts to police these media panic topics of the day on major platforms, they strengthen the silos and power structures in which the internet is increasingly marketized and commercialized, and with it, the structures that make scandal and outrage profitable in the first place (Dellwing 2017). Not only, then, are such moral panics finally panics in defense of power structures, they often actively undermine the very aims they aim to reach, as they are often easily transparent and stoke up resistance. Thus, moral panics of this kind have often been quite successful in the short term to only lose in the long term, especially when they were attempts to block wider social shifts, made possible and supported through technological change. Book printing panics, romance novel panics, and television panics have come and gone. The video game panic is in the process of subsiding. Queer panics, extramarital sex panics, and independent women panics are only shameful in retrospect. That did not happen because the existing power structures graciously accepted them; it happened as these shifts rebuilt the social practices and power structures around them. In past moral panics, it was niches at a distance from the bourgeois mainstream whose fights and resistance secured social change, with actors who, in their time, polite society would not associate with; but “polite society” changed and shifted around and towards them.

54  Michael Dellwing They also build fences and reinforce traditional frames. As Carolyn Bronstein notes, Digital platforms are central to sexuality, and thus we must articulate and defend our rights against government intrusion and overreaching corporate content moderation. Citizens deserve to pursue consensual sexual lives and protecting the ability to do so, even when that entails challenging laws and oligopolistic technology corporations’ policies, is a social justice mandate. (2021: 1) The same is true for news. With fights over liberating information and sex from corporate control, we may hope for the same process, with a bit of luck. Contrary to much of the public debate, this does not mean unleashing an Armageddon of polarization; polarization is not an effect of decentralized, personal interaction but rather currently monetized and built in much of centralized, corporate commercialization of speech, while the perceived one-sidedness in publicized narratives serves to incite resistance. Notes 1 The material on news comes from multiple bouts of research into Fake News ­Panics. The material on nudity and sex stems from an upcoming ethnography of hobbyist nudity spaces online, in which I  have been a member for more than a decade now. 2 It is interesting, here, to watch the twitter threads that follow strongly propagandistic claims about US rivals, sourced with news from these distributors. When, for instance, Radio Free Asia is cited to support some new, bizarre claim about North Korea and China (such as “everyone can only have one of three state-approved haircuts” or “High School student executed for watching Squid Game”, claims that Winnie the Pooh was banned in China after being used for Satire on Chairman Xi, or that there is a genocide in Xinjiang), the Twitter threads following these news today regularly contain chains of ridicule for anyone who believes these obviously antagonistic, exaggerated, and often completely invented claims (regularly backed up with evidence that contradicts these Western media stories, like pictures of Winnie the Pooh in Disneyland Shanghai or the search results on Winnie the Pooh on Baidu, the Chinese search engine, or the glaring omission in the West that no ­Muslim-majority country seconds the Western/northern allegations over Xinjiang; we are, again, supposed to only believe white countries as the ones with “no agenda”). 3 Nicola Döring notes that only 3% of people who engaged in sharing nudes had problems with others posting and sending these images and videos without the consent of the people depicted (Döring 2014), which hints at this being used as a pars pro toto argument. This refers to privately sent material, though. Openly posted nudes on the internet are sometimes copied without consent and then used to create scam profiles for short-term profit. 4 This is an Anglo-Saxon problem. In the United States, it is a combination of at-will employment, that is, the right of the employer to terminate for any reason that is not explicitly illegal, and the “negligent retention” doctrine, which allows third parties to sue an employer for actions the employee engaged in outside of work

News, sex, and the fight 55 (https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/employer-liability-employees-badacts-29638.html). This makes it legally profitable to do surveillance on employee activities outside of work. Since danger narratives permeate sex, anything overtly sexual can be used by an employer to terminate employees out of fear they might be held liable for future criminal acts, a fear only understandable through the pervasive association of sex with danger. 5 This widening of the term serves to evoke images of the narrow use when it comes up, of women locked in transport containers, even though it now covers regular and consensual sex work. 6 Corporate entertainment depicts much sexual activity involving minors, though with adult actors; typical High School movie formulas depend on it. On small platforms, adults ageplaying as minors is not permitted and harshly controlled. Corporate entertainment also depicts much sexual activity in connection with drug use, also a banned activity on sex platforms. The depiction of BDSM, blood, and urine are also controlled on platforms like OnlyFans and Chaturbate, so as to not have to fight potential obscenity charges associated with US Supreme Court decisions that classified urine and other bodily fluids that are not sperm or female ejaculate as obscene (Cusack 2012). 7 http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0067/_PG.HTM 8 The term could first be found as an outside description by moral entrepreneurs; the internal term has long been “sending nudes”, though the outside term has since extended to the culture itself and can now regularly be found in everyday action. 9 Technically, almost every picture we have is uploaded, as most phone and messenger storage is backed up in cloud services. There is, of course, a distinction between those service that are meant to only be accessed by the owner of the picture (though that is never guaranteed), and those that are uploaded specifically for others, and also strangers, to see (see Dellwing and Drescher 2016). 10 Policies that claim to limit exploitation therefore often encourage it; this is even more so in the case of online sex work, which affords people the ability to engage in sex work without the corporate, wage-slave conditions endemic to work in neoliberal capitalism of all kinds. Online sex work is usually self-managed, with free schedules and no oversight by corporate managers, which has often been noted to be a clear improvement compared to both corporate porn work as well as offline sex work. 11 Much corporate centralization can be found in the infrastructure that underpins the internet, with infrastructure and hosting, especially through Amazon Web Services, which account for 40% of the Western internet, adding a “no single point of failure” and control. 12 Telegram’s servers are spread out globally, with data also split up between them; any state order to access (and delete) material would have to come from different governments in a coordinated manner, thereby ensuring that only the kind of material that is widely illegal can be affected. In this structure, localized, politically motivated control is made more difficult: https://telegram.org/faq#q-do-youprocess-data-requests 13 However, unlike Twitter and Reddit, Instagram does not allow nudity and tends to algorithmically quarantine accounts that link to these sites. Tinder is also used, but links on tinder will result in users being banned for advertising. 14 Like most moral panics, this panic is also insincere. The bitcoin network not only runs on much lost (i.e., produced and not otherwise used energy that is needed to ensure the stability of the power grid; energy that would sink away unutilized instead) and renewable energy; it incentivizes the expansion of renewable energy: https://www. coindesk.com/business/2021/03/05/the-frustratingmaddening-all-consumingbitcoin-energy-debate/. The panic narrative sometimes recommends “alternative” blockchains that use ownership of money in that chain network. Those, however,

56  Michael Dellwing give control of the network to those who own the most coins, replacing decentralization with a centralized system of moneyed hegemony (again). Bitcoin ownership, conversely, gives no control over the network at all. Also, existing money systems like the U.S. Dollar use much more energy, which is neither lost nor renewable: the dollar is backed and secured by the full environmental impact of the US military and the petrodollar system ( Hensman and Correggia 2005). 15 The United States held total control over the world banking system through its power over SWIFT, until anti-Russian sanctions destroyed much of this control. Famously, the Chinese government could not pay the governor of Hong Kong, its own civil servant within its own country, after the United States sanctioned her: https:// fortune.com/2020/11/30/carrie-lam-salary-cash-hong-kong-sanctions/ 16 “Zion” is a Matrix reference, where it is the name of a city controlled by humans instead of machines.

References Albury, Kath, Funnell, Nina, and Estelle Noonan. 2010. “The politics of sexting: Young people, self-representation and citizenship.” In Media, Democracy and Change: Refereed Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Conference. NOVA. Anton, Andreas, Michael Schetsche, and Michael K. Walter, eds. 2013. Konspiration: Soziologie des Verschwörungsdenkens. Springer-Verlag. Bronstein, Carolyn. 2021. “Deplatforming sexual speech in the age of FOSTA/ SESTA.” Porn Studies: 1–14. Butsch, Richard. 1984. “The commodification of leisure: The case of the model airplane hobby and industry.” Qualitative Sociology 7: 217–235. Cohen, Stanley. 2011. ‘Whose Side Were We on? The Undeclared Politics of Moral Panic Theory’. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 7(3): 237–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741659011417603 Cusack, Carmen. 2012. “Obscene squirting: If the government thinks it’s urine, then they’ve got another thing coming.” Textile Journal Women & Law 22: 45. Dellwing, Michael. 2017. “Un-doing things together.” Zeitschrift für Theoretische Soziologie 6: 85–102. Dellwing, Michael, and Jennifer Drescher. 2016. “Fingierte privatheit.” In: Daniela Klimke und Rüdiger Lautmann (eds.), Sexualität und Strafe. This book citation originally lacked both a city and a publisher. They all did. Of course, the publisher made me change it and add a publisher; of course, they’d think this is important. A modest proposal: it was once necessary to list both so that interested parties could locate the publisher to order the book. They needed a city so they could track down an address or a phone number from a phone book or a 411 service. These are remnants of pre-digital times. Today, none of this information is actually necessary; it remains as pure tradition and ritual without purpose. In a text on digital worlds, let’s move publishing forward into the digital era as well and finally abandon this empty ritual that, in the contemporary world, only leads to online searches on the location of publishers or scrambles for the first pages of books you had already found long ago. Döring, Nicola. 2012. “Erotischer Fotoaustausch unter Jugendlichen: Verbreitung, Funktionen und Folgen des Sexting.” Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung 25: 4–25. Döring, Nicola. 2014. “Consensual sexting among adolescents: Risk prevention through abstinence education or safer sexting?” Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 8: article 9.

News, sex, and the fight 57 Drouin, Michelle, Kimberly Vogel, Alisen Surbey, and Julie R. Stills. 2013. “Let’s talk about sexting, baby: Computer-mediated sexual behaviors among young adults.” Computers in Human Behavior 29: A25–A30. Easley, David, and Jon Kleinberg. 2012. “Networks, crowds, and markets: Reasoning about a highly connected world.” Significance 9: 43–44. Foucault, Michel. 1979 [1976]. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. Vintage. Foucault, Michel. 1990 [1984]. The History of Sexuality Volume 3: The Care of the Self. Vintage. Foucault, Michel. 1992 [1984]. The History of Sexuality Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure. Vintage. Foucault, Michel. 2021 [2021]. The History of Sexuality Volume 4: Confessions of the Flesh. Vintage. Goffman, Erving. 1976. “Gender display.” In Goffman, Erving (ed.), Gender Advertisements. Communications and Culture. Palgrave. Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 1994. ‘Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction’. Annual Review of Sociology 20(1): 149–171. https://doi. org/10.1146/annurev.so.20.080194.001053. Goode, Erich, and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. 1994. “Moral panics: Culture, politics, and social construction.” Annual Review of Sociology 20: 149–171. Gordon-Messer, Deborah, J. A. Bauermeister, A. Grodzinski, and M. Zimmerman. 2012. “Sexting among young adults.” Journal of Adolescent Health 52: 301–306. Gusfield, Joseph. 1986. Symbolic Crusade. Wiley. Halperin, David, and Trevor Hoppe, eds. 2017. The War on Sex. Duke University Press. Harsin, Jayson. 2015. “Regimes of posttruth, postpolitics, and attention economies.” Communication, Culture & Critique 8: 327–333. Harvey, David. 2014. Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism. Oxford University Press. Hensman, Rohini, and Marinella Correggia. 2005. “US dollar hegemony: The soft underbelly of empire.” Economic and Political Weekly: 1091–1095. Herdt, Gilbert, ed. 2009. Moral Panics, Sex Panics: Fear and the Fight Over Sexual Rights. Johns Hopkins. Herman, Edward, and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent. Pantheon. Hewison, Emma Louise. 2020. “Does censorship within online media promote attitudes of hegemonic masculinity?” PhD diss., University of Hull. Jones, Angela. 2020. Camming. Wiley. Lasén, Amparo, and Edgar Gómez-Cruz. 2009. “Digital photography and picture sharing: Redefining the public/private divide.” Knowledge, Technology, and Policy 22: 205–215. Lautmann, Rüdiger, and Daniela Klimke. 2018. Sexualität und Strafe. Juventa. Lazer, David. 2015. “The rise of the social algorithm.” Science 348: 1090–1091. Mackenzie, Hamish, Jay Best, and Sethi Jairaj. 2022. “Society has a trust problem. More censorship will only make it worse.” On Substack, 26 January. https:// on.substack.com/p/society-has-a-trust-problem-more. Marth, Merja. 2014. “Vom Lagerfeuer zur filter bubble–Konsequenzen der Nutzung digitaler Medien für die Integrationsfunktion von Medien.” P. 127-–146 in Medienkonvergenz und Medienkomplementarität aus Rezeptions-und Wirkungsperspektive. Mihailidis, Paul, and Samantha Viotty. 2017. Spreadable Spectacle in Digital Culture: Civic Expression, Fake News, and the Role of Media Literacies in “Post-Fact” Society. American Behavioral Scientist.

58  Michael Dellwing Pariser, Eli. 2011. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. Penguin. Peters, Michael. 2017. “Education in a post-truth world.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 49: 563–566. Plummer, Ken. 1995. Telling Sexual Stories. Taylor and Francis. Shu, Catherine. 2013. “Meet Telegram, a secure messaging app from the founders of VK, Russia’s largest social network.” TechCrunch, 27 October. https://techcrunch. com/2013/10/27/meet-telegram-a-secure-messaging-app-from-the-founders-ofvk-russias-largest-social-network/. Sismondo, Sergio. 2017. “Post-truth?” Social Studies of Science 47: 3–6. Thurman, Neil, and Steve Schifferes. 2012. “The future of personalization at news websites: Lessons from a longitudinal study.” Journalism Studies 13: 775–790. Tiidenberg, Katrin. 2014. “Bringing sexy back: Reclaiming the body aesthetic via selfshooting.” Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace 8: article 3. Tiidenberg, Katrin. 2016. “Boundaries and conflict in a NSFW community on tumblr: The meanings and uses of selfies.” New Media & Society 18: 1563–1578. Tusikov, Natasha. 2021. “Censoring sex: Payment platforms’ regulation of sexual expression.” In Media and Law: Between Free Speech and Censorship. Emerald Publishing Limited. Valentine, Allyson, and Laura Wukovitz. 2013. “Using the filter bubble to create a teachable moment: A case study utilizing online personalization to engage students in information literacy instruction.” Pennsylvania Libraries 1: 24. Van der Nagel, Emily. 2013. “Faceless bodies: Negotiating technological and cultural codes on Reddit Gonewild.” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture 10: 1–10. Van der Nagel, Emily, and Jordan Frith. 2015. “Anonymity, pseudonymity, and the agency of online identity: Examining the social practices of r/Gonewild.” First Monday. Viner, Katherine. 2016. “How technology disrupted the truth.” The Guardian, 12 July. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disruptedthe-truth (accessed 10 May 2018). Waskul, Dennis. 2003. Self-Games and Body-Play: Personhood in Online Chat and Cybersex. Peter Lang. Waskul, Dennis. 2004. Net. seXXX: Readings on Sex, Pornography, and the Internet. Peter Lang. Waskul, Dennis. 2006. “Internet sex: The seductive ‘freedom to’.” In Steven Seidman, Nancy Fischer, Chet Meeks (eds.), Handbook of the New Sexuality Studies. P. 262– 270. Routledge. Waskul, Dennis D., and Phillip Vannini. 2008. “XII Ludic and Ludic (rous) relationships: Sex, play, and the internet.” Remote Relationships in a Small World 41: 241.

4 Terminal violence Online interactions and infra-humanization Simon Gottschalk

The growing machine-mediated absence, absent- mindedness, and absent-­ heartedness . . . renders the (Enlightenment ideal of) the human as a self-aware, knowing, thinking, and feeling “I”, obsolete and ridiculously absurd.1

In the Obsolescence of Human Beings, German philosopher Günther Anders decried the perils of a technologically advanced society that would be bereft of humans and of humanity. Similar warnings of human mutation, irrelevance, and replacement have formed a consistent theme in popular culture, art, sciences, and other social Figure 4.1  I am not a robot. spheres for quite some time and seem to be growing in number and intensity.2 Recently, for example, French sociologist Paul Virilio denounced a new technological fundamentalism that is imposing a “monotheism of information” and whose “hyperviolence slides towards a future without humanity” (1999: 87). In this chapter, I examine the subtle and normalized violence that we experience when we interact with terminals and with others through terminals.3 This chapter develops on the basis of a few interrelated ideas that I have discussed elsewhere (Gottschalk, 2021, 2018). Those posit: (1) In order to participate in everyday life, we must interact with terminals. (2) Because terminals function according to a computer logic, we must routinely adjust our emotional and mental habits to this logic. (3) Among other effects, these adjustments foster infra-humanization. Infra-humanization, terminal interaction, and violence Scholars define dehumanization as “the denial of full humanness to o ­ thers” (Haslam, 2006: 252) and have typically approached this phenomenon through the prism of group conflicts. In contrast, Leyens et al. (2003) define infrahumanization as a subtle process of de-humanization that can occur outside of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-5

60  Simon Gottschalk awareness and that requires neither group conflict nor strong negative emotions. Haslam and Loughnan (2014) also distinguish between a ­ nimalistic and mechanistic infra-humanization. Animalistic i­nfra-humanization denies that others are endowed with qualities that compose “human ­uniqueness.” Those qualities include cognitive capacity, civility, refinement, moral sensibility, rationality, logic, maturity, and others that distinguish humans from animals. In contrast, mechanistic infra-humanization denies that others are endowed with qualities that compose “human nature.” Those qualities include cognitive openness, emotionality, vitality, depth, warmth, and others that distinguish humans from inanimate objects (Haslam and Loughnan, 2014: 403). Mechanistic infra-humanization can be manifested in “an indifferent, instrumental, distancing, and objectifying orientation” toward others (Haslam, 2006: 261). Individuals who infra-humanize in this mode will probably not physically aggress their victims but will likely react with indifference when others do. Researchers have usually understood infra-humanization as an interpersonal process occurring between humans. When people interact with terminals, however, infra-humanization can also be an intrapersonal experience that is induced by non-human agents, such as bots, software, emails, and so on. As digital media design pioneer Jaron Lanier puts it, when developers of digital technologies design a program that requires you to interact with a computer as if it were a person, they ask you to accept in some corner of your brain that you might also be conceived of as a program. (2010: 4–3) As the most social object sitting on our desk, strapped to our wrist, or shoved in our pockets, the terminal transmits signals from – and to – concrete significant others, virtual generalized ones, and even bots. Randomly appearing as words, graphics, electric vibrations, voice messages, pictures, or audiovisual clips, these signals command our instant and complete attention. Some require an immediate answer, others can wait, and others can be ignored. Their style can range from the informal to the official, their content can range from the religious to the pornographic, and their tone can range from the flirtatious to the vitrioloc. The terminal is a purposefully personalized window into a constantly changing universe where the boundaries between real and virtual, private and public, present and absent, time and place have effectively collapsed. While there are always exceptions and while terminal devices vary greatly in terms of their affordances, terminal interactions – especially on text-based ­platforms – distort interactants’ presence to each other, and this distortion compromises their ability to correctly imagine the other’s perspective, to achieve mutual perceptiveness, to role-take with others intelligently, and to selfreflect from their points of view accurately (Gottschalk, 2018; Gottschalk and

Terminal violence 61 Fuller, 2021; Gottschalk and Whitmer, 2013). These interactions restrict the exercise of qualities such as cognitive openness, vitality, emotionality, depth, and warmth – those very qualities that define human nature. In so doing, they normalize mechanistic infra-humanization in users. Since we derive a sense of self by interacting with others, with terminals, and with others through terminals, our subjective experience of infra-humanization does not magically disappear when we shut our terminals down. It continues to shape our face-to-face interactions and our internal conversations. Both domains are intertwined and populated by real and virtual others. The infra-humanization that interests me here occurs on the omnipresent and personalized terminals we use to conduct everyday life. In contrast to other technologies, however, terminals learn and evolve. Rapid mutations in the artificial intelligence powering terminal technologies may very well bring non-human agents to the “point of singularity” when they become self-aware and autonomous. As Dator, Sweeney, and Yee (2015: 109) warn: Humans may in many ways, no longer be primarily in the driver’s seat. As a result, we may see the technologies themselves taking on a much more profound role in the shaping of society in the futures beyond the capacity of human agency, which has already been shaped by the tools that make and remake us as humans. When terminals are increasingly able to develop their own non-human agenda, I believe it is important to critically examine those seemingly benign interactions with or at the terminal that effectively infra-humanize users to each other and to themselves. Vignettes: motivations and limitations I use vignettes of routine interactions with terminals and with others through terminals because this style is (hopefully) most realistic in evoking these interactions and most aligned with the approach guiding this chapter. Günther Anders believed that since technology had become the new subject of history and the “single true and global revolution that has taken place in our era” (Dawsey, 2019: 41), social scientists should provide a critical interpretation of its effects and risks in a style that resonates with the wide public and mobilizes it for action. Extending Marx’s famous dictum, he declared: It is not enough to change the world, we do this anyway, and it mostly happens without our efforts. . . . What we have to do is interpret these changes so we in turn can change the changes, so that the world doesn’t go on changing without us and does not ultimately become a world without us. (cited in Schraube, 2005: 78)

62  Simon Gottschalk Every one of the vignettes in the following evokes countless similar encounters that, I trust, you reader, have also experienced in some form. To protect the identity of the individuals and institutions discussed here, I have assigned them pseudonyms and have removed identifying information. It goes without saying that experiences of mechanistic infra-humanization take many other forms than the ones I  present here. In addition, individuals’ experiences of mechanistic infra-humanization at (and away from) the terminal differ in terms of their intersectionalities. Accordingly, and inevitably, the experiences of infra- humanization I encountered as an educated, middle-class, aging, heterosexual white male living in the United States will have limited resonance. On the other hand, the purpose of these vignettes is neither to generalize from my experience to others nor to propose any grand theoretical statement. It is rather to (hopefully) encourage readers to critically analyze their own experiences of mechanistic infra-humanization, to denounce its subtle violence, and to resist it. Understanding both the intersectionality-specific and the widely shared experiences of infra-humanization is both sociologically interesting and politically useful. It is also important to note that my focus on mechanistic infra-­humanization does not minimize the volume, stridency, and frequency of overtly de-humanizing messages that routinely “go viral” and contaminate society’s communication stream (see, for example, Gottschalk, 2020; Martin, Ryan-Coyier, and VanSistine, 2013). But while recipients and analysts of such messages can clearly see this verbal or graphic violence, analyze it, report it, respond to it, share it, and so on, the infra-humanizing violence that interests me here is more insidious than the overt form precisely because we do not recognize it as such and therefore tend to normalize it. Finally, it goes without saying that terminal technologies have revolutionized our everyday life in countless helpful ways and that they will continue to do so in ways we cannot yet imagine. Here, I am more concerned with the risks they pose to humanity and the human experience. Solicitations overload Aug 28, 2021: 9:25 am–9:28 am

Figure 4.2  Like, comment, share.

• Take the pledge. • Add your name.

Terminal violence 63 • • • • • • • • •

Sign the petition. Add your voice. Fight for the wolves. Vaccinate the world. Save the elephants. Save democracy. Donate now. Read their stories. Never forget.

Opening my desktop window for a Facebook morning scroll confronts me with a first subtle form of terminal violence. Whether it’s money, time, validation, support, concern, attention, participation, compassion, or sympathy, I am, on every scroll, asked to give something of myself. Because there is no way that anyone could reasonably honor all those requests, I  am inevitably found lacking in support for most of those noble causes and in empathy with their victims. Since most of those causes ultimately concern human needs, my de facto virtual triage implies that some are worth my investments and others are not, or less so. This refusal or inability to respond to multiplying images of suffering and destruction already hints at mechanistic infra-humanization and the indirect form of violence it entails. Of course, this forced exposure to human misery and these constant pleas for empathy and money are not unique to terminal interactions. What is unique, however, is the juxtaposition of such pleas to completely unrelated and frivolous posts, as it minimizes the seriousness and urgency of the misery that is forced to my attention. Unique also is the frequency of this exposure that is simultaneously produced by faceless organizations and yet personalized to us. Often calling us by our first name, these pleas intrude daily in our private space, on our private terminals, in our minds, with the same ease of access as colleagues, friends, and relatives. Some evoke our moral duty, others our humanitarian ethic, political convictions, religious beliefs, ethnic solidarity, or civic responsibility. If the postmodern self was hopelessly fragmented across different spectacles and selves, the hypermodern one is paralyzed and exhausted by this constant torrent of often personalized virtual pleas for attention and empathy. As a result, users are likely to develop empathic hedonism – “a decline in the quality of our empathic interaction,” and “a difficulty to engage authentically with the experiences of others” (Recuber, 2016; cited in Ruiz-Junco, 2021: 555). Academic organizations follow this trend and routinely post professional requests on their websites and in their mass-distributed emails: • Submit a paper. • Circulate book release announcement. • Register for the conference.

64  Simon Gottschalk • Deadline Approaching. • Register for our June Strategic Leadership Program Today. • Sign up for our workshop. • Join us for our annual meeting. • Circulate our call for papers. Join the conversation. • Your colleagues are asking to use Hypothesis social annotation in their courses. • Hurry! Only a few workshop spots left. • R. L. and others shared their thoughts. • D. S. wants to connect. The suspicion that we are lacking in those emotional qualities associated with human nature complements the routine experience of ineptitude in cognitive capacity, a key quality composing human uniqueness. Thus, in addition to all the important information we will clearly miss if we fail to engage with the multiplying audiences seeking our attention and requesting our participation, we also realize the immensity of our cognitive limitations whenever we interact with our terminals. On the one hand, we must interact with them in order to simply manage the everyday and participate in social life. On the other, we are also completely ignorant of their increasingly sophisticated functioning, multiplying capabilities, and perplexing secrets. As a result, interacting with terminals simultaneously bestows a dizzying sense of omnipotence and induces negative self-evaluation. “The smarter our technologies become the more stupid we feel,” writes Hartmut Rosa (2012: 87). Feeling dependent, ignorant, and inept, we are more likely to turn to terminals to accomplish an ever-growing number of activities that once both necessitated and nurtured unique human qualities. The increasingly necessary and frequent turn to the terminal further deteriorates those qualities, in a downward spiral of dependence, ignorance, and ineptitude. This idea was elegantly captured by Günther Anders’ concept of “Promethean shame.” As Müller and Mellor (2019: 17) explains: In praxis, the automation of ever more complex technological processes is necessitated – as much as explained and justified – by the fact that the growing power of machines makes human beings look ever more (embarrassingly) unreliable, excitable, and cognitively and physiologically limited. When we interact with terminals, therefore, we both experience a solicitation overload that incapacitates those emotional qualities associated with human nature (emotional vitality, depth, warmth), and we confront our deficiency in those qualities associated with human uniqueness (cognitive capacity, rationality, logic). As I develop in the next sections, other features of terminal interactions intensify this deterioration.

Terminal violence 65 Mobilization for instantaneity, urgency, and visibility September 10, 2021

Figure 4.3  Initial email. Text Message Today 12:05 Hi Simon! This is Helen with UHMC Media relations. I hope you’re doing well! I just forwarded you an email interview request from Discover Magazine. Please let me know if you’re interested/available to answer the reporter’s questions. Their deadline is EOD Monday. Thanks so much!

Figure 4.4  Follow-up message.

In the terminal exchanges in Figure 4.3 and Figure 4.4, a person I’ve never met emails me a question at 11:33 am and sends me a text message 32 minutes later because I have not yet answered the email. It does not occur to her that during those 32 minutes, I might have been attending a meeting, teaching a class, having a conversation with someone, or being involved in an activity that I simply could not or did not want to interrupt. Instead, this two-step solicitation implies that: 1. the sender’s need for attention supersedes every other imaginable social situation, 2. the addressee is expected to (a) meet that need as soon as s/he has been made aware of it, and (b) carry at all time at least one terminal device that is always “on” and that should become the immediate focus of attention whenever it is activated remotely.

66  Simon Gottschalk Our ability to communicate whenever, wherever, and with whomever gives us a powerful sense of omnipresence that is unique in human history and psychology. Its price, however, is a new mobilization for instantaneity, urgency, and visibility. Since we can communicate easily, we are now pressured to respond immediately when summoned. In his research on cell phone use in France, Jauréguiberry (2014: 30) concludes: In just a few years, and with no one paying attention, to not immediately answer one’s mobile phone must now be justified. One must explain, get off the hook, even apologize for one’s lack of reactivity. . . . The norm is now to answer one’s phone immediately, especially if it’s a mobile one. As for e-mails, the norm is now to respond within half a day, or even the hour. And as terminal interactions with others become more frequent, spontaneous, decontextualized, immediate, and occurring in the intensity of the moment, they fail to provide the distance necessary for reflection (Aubert, 2006c). Feeling freer to express themselves, interactants are less likely to censor emotions, opinions, or reactions that had traditionally been tempered by decorum and civility. Thus, Aboujaoude (2011) detects an “everyday viciousness” that seems frequent in terminal interactions, and research verifies that a majority of internet users have witnessed or have been victimized by verbal harassment online (Duggan, 2017). In sum, individuals interacting with others through terminals are less able and willing to attend to the other’s emotional integrity and well-being. This disregard is the heart of mechanistic infra-humanization. May 14, 2021 UHST PROVOST ALERT: Approved New Certificate 10:36 AM Official Advanced Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research. Office of the Executive Vice President & Provost ­MEMORANDUM May 14, 2021 Figure 4.5  Provost alert.

Figure 4.6  Citi alert.

Terminal violence 67 The imperative to act immediately, which is implicit in the email-messages couplet of Figure 4.3 and Figure 4.4, is normalized and conveyed more explicitly in many other terminal interactions. The emails in Figure  4.5 and Figure 4.6 contain the word “alert” (in capital letters in the Provost one). The dictionary defines “alert” as “an attitude of vigilance, readiness, or caution, as before an expected attack.”4 In the context of relatively benign bureaucratic announcements, one can reasonably wonder about the wisdom of using a word that evokes immediacy and danger. On the one hand, we could just dismiss the alert metaphor as unremarkable or even amusing. On the other hand, however, messages carrying this warning are frequent at the terminal, originate from a wide variety of sources, and can refer to both trivial events and important ones where failure to respond promptly could have devastating and lifelong consequences. Those warnings of danger needlessly waste recipients’ attention and emotional resources. May 13, 2021 Inscription 14:21 Veuillez compléter votre inscription dans les 15 prochaines minutes. La réservation de billets que nous tenons pour vous sera libérée à d’autres.

Figure 4.7  Conference registration.

If terminal users might feel empowered by the technological affordance of immediacy, they are increasingly oppressed by a “tyranny of urgency” (Laidi, 1999) that is explicitly enforced in the most mundane interactions with terminals. The box in Figure 4.7 appeared on the registration screen of an interdisciplinary conference at a Canadian university where I had been invited. The message in the light-gray box translates as: “Please complete your registration in the next fifteen minutes. In fifteen minutes, the reservation tickets we hold in your name will be given to others.” The digital clock to the left of the text is counting backward from 15:00 to 00:00. In other words, I have 15 minutes to read about a dozen lines that each requires me to enter personal information such as name, professional affiliation, presentation title, address, credit card information, email address, phone number, and so on. For some reason, a once simple and calm activity must now be accomplished at high speed, under conditions of urgency, and under threat. As I am quickly answering every line and correcting typos, someone rings the doorbell. Who is it? I wonder. I can’t stop my registration right now. Sorry, come back later. I try to focus again. The next line asks me for my credit card number. Is this website safe? I don’t really have a choice. Where are my credit cards? In my wallet. Where is my wallet? In the bedroom. The clock reads 07:48. Quick! Run to the bedroom, find the wallet, and come back here so that I can

68  Simon Gottschalk continue. Which credit card should I use? I fish my three favorite ones out of my wallet. One is almost maxed out, one has a predatory interest rate, and the third one promises lots of rewards. The registration fee is in Canadian dollars. How much is it in US ones? As I am trying to answer these questions, my iPhone suddenly vibrates. Is it important? Is it urgent? Is it a scam? I can’t answer right now. The clock is showing 05:23; I have to focus. From experience, I  know that entering incorrect information will prevent my progress towards successful registration or can even completely paralyze the terminal. And even if the terminal does proceed, I also anticipate that entering incorrect information will result in improperly filed electronic documents and bureaucratic debacles that will take countless emails and phone calls to resolve. 02:11. I  am done! I’ve beaten the clock! The reservation is mine. I  am safe. I  can relax. My sense of victory quickly dissipates, however. Later today, I will have to submit to the same logic when logging into my bank website. It tolerates neither incorrect information nor idle time. Such interactions also beg the question why fifteen minutes? Why not twelve or eighteen? What is the rationale behind this number that has been inexplicably invested with such despotic powers? One would reasonably assume that the fantastic capacities of terminals would enable more flexibility and generosity with time. Instead, we must endure the latent violence inherent in the “totalitarian mobilization” of urgency (Aubert, 2018) and suffer its consequences. For political scientist Zaki Laidi (2001: 533), Urgency translates itself as having a subjective relation to time. It expresses one’s anxiety – or outright panic – when confronted with an immediate future loaded with uncertainty and risk. It is a state of emotional overload in which one is unable to evaluate oneself and one’s situation in reasoned calm. This uncertainty is accompanied by anguish and often fear. In addition to needlessly wasting human emotional resources, this recurring mobilization for urgency also contributes to mechanistic infra-humanization by degrading users’ ability to reflect and question, and by crippling their ability to see, listen, and connect (Haroche, 2012). In so doing, it mutes “human nature” qualities such as cognitive openness, emotional depth, and warmth. Closely associated with the mobilization for instantaneity and urgency is a “tyranny of visibility” that reduces individuals to the signals they transmit and to what they present of themselves at the terminal. In order to remain visible and relevant in our hyperactive terminal networks, we have to react, to show that we are engaged, that we are paying attention, and that we care. This is especially noteworthy at work. Although research finds that the mere anticipation of afterhours work-related emails increases employees’ stress, anxiety, and burnout, they are implicitly expected to answer those calls for attention every day, all day, and immediately.5 Failure to do so will result in accusations of “ghosting” and of not contributing to team efforts. In contrast, those who respond immediately – nights, weekends. and holidays included – are deemed good “team players” as they implicitly set the standards for response time.

Terminal violence 69 Hypermodern scholars find that individuals experience this imperative of visibility as self-inflicted violence. By requiring users to expose themselves to the others’ gaze, this enforced visibility limits their autonomy and induces a sense of panic to the experience of constant intrusion (Birman, 2011: 43). For Spurk, it causes a growing alienation that one can neither avoid nor manage (2011: 324). And as the invisible aspects of interiority tend to become less relevant at the terminal, some users approach their inner experience as correspondingly less significant (Haroche, 2011: 85) in orienting their self-concept and their interactions. Others react to this imperative in the opposite direction and impose on others an unrequited emotional exhibitionism. In order to sustain others’ attention and be validated, they post progressively more self-compromising and “authentic” messages that both increase their vulnerability and that, paradoxically, are also likely to be met with a “contemptuous indifference” (Carreteiro, 2011: 242), by an audience that is both emotionally exhausted by the volume of such messages and increasingly suspicious of their veracity. The imperative to visibility thus encourages users to both (1) reduce the importance they grant emotional interiority and depth in their subjective experiences and relations to others and (2) normalize the self-directed emotional violence that is implicit in and inherent to forced visibility. Both adjustments weaken qualities associated with human nature, such as depth and emotional vitality. Digital labor exploitation

Because complex organizations can typically function better when they have more information at their disposal, they will “naturally” seek to increase the amount and granularity of the information they collect about their operations, personnel, customers, resources, and so on. However, information is not free, and the increasingly ravenous terminal hunger for it must be fed by humans (see Andrejevic, 2013). Practically, this means that in order to access desired resources at the terminal, users must submit to various types of digital labor exploitation and to the subtle violence it entails. Here, I am especially interested in three types that contribute to mechanistic infra-humanization: delegation, emotion-management, and system/self-protection. Delegation April 14, 2021

Waiting at a doctor’s office, I  am sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair, answering about eight double-sided pages of questions. Since all my medical information exists in digital format and can be easily retrieved by any medical practitioner “in my network,” this imposition is a bit puzzling, but I oblige. Forty-five minutes past my appointment time, I am finally led to the examination room by the young medical assistant. • Assistant: “Please sit there. The doctor will be in shortly. In the meantime, I must first ask you a number of questions.” Turning her back to

70  Simon Gottschalk

• • • •

me, she sits facing her terminal and starts scrolling and typing. “Any allergies?” she asks, looking at her computer screen, her fingers poised above the keyboard. SG: “But I just answered that question on the paper questionnaire while I was waiting for my consultation.” Assistant: “Yes, but that questionnaire was for the front desk; this is the examination room.” SG: “Do you mean that the front desk could not give you a copy of that information and I have to now answer all those same questions verbally?” Assistant [frustrated]: “Yes. Any allergies?”

When the doctor finally arrives, he immediately sits in front of the terminal, turns his back to me, and starts reading aloud a series of numbers that he does not bother to explain. Both our respective roles have changed as our interaction is now mediated by the terminal: it suggests questions to the doctor  the doctor transmits them to me  I answer them to the doctor  the doctor enters the answers into the terminal. Patients are reduced to a nexus of variables, and doctors are reduced to spokespersons for the terminal and data analysts. December 2, 2020

Every year, faculty must submit a form that lists their accomplishments during the previous year. A mere decade ago, this form would consist of a document in Microsoft Word that would begin with a narrative about progress, unanticipated challenges, and noble accomplishments (if any). The authors would then provide a bit more details about these accomplishments, which they organized in the three domains of scholarship, teaching, and service. Once you had developed a good template, you could retrieve the form you submitted the previous year and enter the necessary changes. Depending on one’s accomplishments, this task could be adequately accomplished in about two to three hours. Today, as the email message in Figure 4.8 shows, preparing the same yearly report requires that faculty first watch a 24-minute video just to get acquainted with the “new and improved” software that will require them to enter (in small rectangular boxes) a growing volume of ever-increasing granular information about every item they type in. Failure to properly enter and format the information will inevitably result in error messages and delays. This obligation to locate, format, and enter always more information is not imposed by an unusually cruel administrator but by an inhuman terminal logic that exacts countless hours of human labor to produce a most peculiar and distorted type of “knowledge” about the academic world. For example, all the very personal and often emotional resources faculty have invested in students, colleagues, administrators, other scholars, community organizations, mass media outlets, members of professional networks, and others disappear into the mass grave of aggregate “metrics.”

Terminal violence 71

Hi Everyone, It’s time to start thinking about the Faculty Annual Evaluation. You’ve each likely received an email indicating that “your 2020 Annual Evaluation Case is ready.” If you have not, please let me know. If you have, this means that the Faculty Affairs office has created a “case” for you to submit your Faculty Annual Evaluation information in UHMD Folio. Faculty Annual Evaluations are due by 5pm, January 29th. If you submit your Faculty Annual Evaluation earlier, please let me know so I can review it and start on your evaluation. Below, I provide some instructions that I hope will help with this process. This is only our second time through with UHMD Folio and they’ve changed some things from last year. I think these changes are mostly helpful. Hopefully, the following information will help smooth the process for us. The UHMD Folio dashboard/home page has been slightly modified and seems a bit more intuitive. You can view the changes here. You can review UHMD Folio procedures here and enroll in training here. You want also want to review this updated UHMD Folio Basic Training video (24 mins). An overview for the “Activities” pages starts at the 7.40 mark; adding “Scholarly and Creative Work” starts at the 8.50 mark. There’s also a helpful FAQ page. Creating the Faculty Annual Evaluation (FAE) To create the FAE, you’ll first need to input all your academic year 2020 activities. To do this, click into the “Activities” area in the left- hand options menu. This will open a list of sections that include a) the narrative/opening statement. b) a “general” category for items such as awards and honors, professional memberships, etc.; c) sections for teaching; d) sections for scholarship; and e) sections for service. Click on the relevant sections and use the “Add” button at the bottom of the page to open a window to input your 2020 information. When possible, be sure to indicate start and end dates, to all activities For a list of section that may be used in the FAE click here. You’ll find some sections – e.g., Scheduled Teaching and Courses, Contracts, and Funded Activities will be pre-populated with information, though you can also add information. And, if anything is amiss in those sections, you should contact UHMD Folio support at [email protected]. When you’re finished inputing your information, you can review the FAE by clicking into the “Vitas & Biosketches” area in the left-hand options menu. You’ll see the “Faculty Annual Report,” listed. Click on the eye icon under “view” to open the FAE and review the information. Set the date for “begin” – Spring 2020 – and “end” – Fall 2020. Click “Refresh Vita,” and then scroll down to review the information. Click Export/Share, and then choose “pdf” you want to print the FAE precisely as it will look when you submit through UHMD Folio.

Figure 4.8  Faculty annual evaluation.

72  Simon Gottschalk The demotion of faculty (or patients) to data-entry workers coincides with other trends whereby an increasing number of functions once performed by organizations and experts are now delegated to private citizens. For example, every time my medical information is updated on the website of my healthservices organization, I  receive an email that invites me to navigate to my “personalized” page. Once there, I am told to read mountains of data and follow countless hyperlinks that explain what the different diagnoses and measurements mean. The personal and sometimes emotional conversations with the family doctor have been delegated to the isolated patient who must now educate him and herself about rather complex medical information. Importantly, however, this delegation of work assumes not only that patients have the time, energy, and capacities to do so but also that they can manage this task on a purely cognitive level. But as anyone who has been diagnosed with a serious medical condition and who has had to educate him or herself about it will quickly attest, there is much more to this exercise than just learning medical facts. It also includes an emotional dimension that can be challenging to manage. This most human dimension has, however, been conveniently purged from this activity. Emotion-management September 4, 2020

In February 2020, just a month before the Covid-19 pandemic would paralyze everyday life, I  had borrowed Hartmut Rosa’s Resonance through a local library’s interlibrary loan service, and it was due back to that library on April 24, 2020. However, because of Covid-19, the library had been offering limited services since March 2020. Typically, when patrons borrow a book through interlibrary loan services, the library sends them daily reminders about two weeks before it is due, and until it is returned. Because I had not received any such reminder, because the library was working on a limited schedule, and because I  did not want to venture in public spaces unnecessarily, I  had not returned the book by the due date. Today, I  received an email from my local library indicating that Resonance is overdue and threatening me with fines and a blocked account if I do not return it immediately (Figure 4.9). Reading the email, I  panic, drop everything I  am doing, quickly get dressed, grab Resonance, my mask, my cell phone, my car keys, and my wallet, and drive to the library at supersonic speed. Pumped on adrenalin, I find a parking spot by the library, drop a quarter in the parking meter, rush to the circulation desk, and ask the young person working there about the cruel punishment awaiting me. He does not know but gives me the email of an administrator who does. Irritated, I  drive back home in a hurry and find an email from said administrator who is apologizing profusely for a “system error” that autonomously (?) sent the threatening email to apparently quite

Terminal violence 73

Dear Simon Gottschalk, An item that you have borrowed is VERY OVERDUE. You have been blocked from using the Interlibrary Loan system and fines are accruing at $1 per day. Please return the item immediately. After 21 days overdue, in addition to Interlibrary account, your library account will be blocked. Tile: Resonance, a sociology of our relationship to the world/ Author: Rosa Hartmut, 1965 – author, aut Dur Date: 4/24/2020 TN: 332837 After returning this item, please call or email the library to have your account unblocked.

Figure 4.9  Library notice.

a large number of patrons. Of course, she promises, no fine will be exacted, no account will be blocked, and my good name will not be tarnished by digital stigma. And of course, I try to be understanding and absolve her for the panic triggered by the wayward email. As usual, no one is to blame for this mini-crisis, except for a capricious “system” that, in spite of all of its faults, has become a supreme authority in a growing number of administrative matters. On the one hand, therefore, we are daily displaced by terminals whose administrative powers make us irrelevant, but on the other, we have to graciously accept their patent inadequacies, random bouts of paralysis, and catastrophic errors. Randomly mobilizing our attention by way of sonic, vibrational, or visual signals, computer-generated messages and warnings produce unnecessary tension, stress, and other noxious reactions. In order to fully appreciate the latent violence they trigger, it is informative to monitor what we physically experience when we receive an email warning us that our computer access to important digital resources is now blocked, that our privacy has been compromised, or that other digital calamities have befallen us. If many of those are admittedly false alarms, they still trigger strong physiological reactions and we’ll now have to invest quite a bit of time and energy finding the information that will reassure us that we are not really in immediate danger and that our worry is unfounded. Until further notice. Terminal messages do not even have to contain threats or a sense of urgency to produce adverse reactions. To wit, our breathing patterns change by just opening our email inbox (Rheingold, 2012), both our heart rate and blood flow to our skin increase, and 83% of us even hold our breath when we receive a text message (Harris, 2014: 69).

74  Simon Gottschalk As a stable emotionality is becoming an increasingly important asset in today’s complex organizations and as emotions quickly flare up in terminal interactions (Gottschalk, 2018), we are also expected to perform the “deep acting” (Hochschild, 1983) that transforms negative emotions into benevolent forgiveness when interacting with the “customer representatives” of those organizations. This labor further depletes users of emotional vitality and energy. System/self-protection April 1, 2021

Practicing strong cybersecurity habits is essential to preventing data breaches and cyberattacks. To support good digital citizenship, UPD requires university employees to complete cybersecurity awareness training annually. Next week, you will receive an email from the Office of Technology with instructions on how to access the Cybersecurity Awareness Training. The training needs to be completed within 60 days. If you would like more information, please visit the Cybersecurity Awareness Training webpage. By working together, we can protect the university’s data and information systems. Thank you for doing your part to keep your computing environment safe. Best regards.

Figure 4.10  Cyber-awareness training.

As the email in Figure 4.10 suggests, users must now also serve as guardians of the campus computer system about which they have very little knowledge or control. Because of its increasing complexity, they must educate themselves about the variety of threats that lurk everywhere and be wary of messages that impersonate chairs, colleagues, students, friends, relatives, and others. This new duty is evidently quite stressful, as users are often reminded that a breach in one account endangers the entire system. As they also quickly learn, those organizations to which they entrust their most private information often fail to communicate it efficiently to those who should have it and to protect it from those who should not. While we are told to fear the hackers from without, we must surrender to the inquisitors from within all those organizations where we work,

Terminal violence 75 live, and consume. To the hypermodernists’ critique of the debilitating tyranny of visibility, we should also denounce the dictatorship of “soft” surveillance. In this sense, terminal interactions also infra-humanize users by negating the human need for privacy. According to legal scholars, to have a backstage promotes personhood and autonomy; it protects dignity. “When others breach the rules that protect these buffers, they damage a person by discrediting his identity and injuring his personality” (De Armond, 2018: 287–289). For Schwartz (1968: 748) also, “to be subject to limitless intrusion is to exist in a state of dishonor.” Unsurprisingly, research finds that individuals victimized by an online violation of privacy experience “emotional, psychoanalytic and corporeal responses which are sometimes stultifyingly profound” (Ball, 2009: 650). Among those, Turkle (2011) notes despair, hopelessness, anxiety, plain denial, or complete resignation. Acquisiti (2011) reports psychological distortion, and Dubey (2001) decries that living under such a regime induces a relationship to authority that blends culpability, panic, a feeling of inferiority, and, eventually, submission. As a form of psychological intimidation, terminal interactions contribute to mechanistic infra-humanization by denying users a sense of privacy and of safe interiority. Ontological disruptions

Although I haven’t heard it in years, Alice in Chains’ song “Your Decision” is playing non-stop in my head. I grab my guitar and try to play it, but I  realize I’ve forgotten the chords. I  know I’ve created a music sheet with lyrics and chords. It’s in a folder on my hard drive. Holding my guitar in my left hand, I quickly click on a sequence of folders that will lead me to the music sheet. I  know I  also have a printed copy someFigure 4.11  File not found. where, but it’s easier to access the digital one. I confidently open the digital folder where the music sheet is supposed to be, but it’s no longer there! (Figure 4.11). I know the music sheet exists in digital format. I created it. Come to think of it, I could only have a printed copy because it existed first in a digital format. I have not looked at it in years but I know there is absolutely no way I would have deleted it. Did I file it elsewhere? Feeling a bit disappointed at my poor clerical skills, I think about other plausible classification systems and locations where I  might have misplaced it. I  quickly click on other folders and study their contents with nervous anticipation. Nothing. OK then, time to bring in the big guns and conduct a comprehensive “search” on my entire hard drive. Still nothing.

76  Simon Gottschalk In material physical space, we typically experience concrete objects as having a physical, relatively enduring, and intersubjectively recognized existence. They have weight, size, volume, taste, texture, temperature, smell, a feel, a set location in space, and a history. Their sudden absence is as noticeable as their presence. This “lesson” is at the heart of Piaget’s idea of object permanence, which children develop around 18 to 24 months. It is an essential foundation of subsequent cognitive development and of one’s orientation to physical reality and others. I know it’s just a music sheet, but this experience of sudden loss is frequent at the terminal, and with more important documents. It happened with an entire book chapter I was about to submit to an editor, a PowerPoint presentation I had lovingly prepared for a sociology class, a letter of recommendation I had enthusiastically written for a colleague, and pictures of magic moments I had captured on my smartphone. Depending on their importance, the sudden loss of these documents can induce a sense of horror and panic as we realize that what we mistakenly believed to be permanent, secure, or quasi-sacred has vanished for good. As we quickly learn, any document, regardless of its importance, size, date of creation, purpose, quality, or the labor we invested to create it, is always at risk of suffering a similar fate. Accordingly, the experience of loss may not just about a particular document but about ontological stability. Digital documents, websites, links, access to certain sites, and other online resources do not just disappear, but do so without apparent rhyme or reason. We neither know why they have suddenly disappeared nor can Figure 4.12  Netflix no longer available. we predict which is next (see Figure  4.12 and Figure  4.13). It is not unreasonable to suggest that the resigned attitude we develop when adjusting to the sudden loss of important documents or denied access to valued resources can easily migrate to civil and other rights that can also become “corrupted,” “lost,” “unavailable,” “denied,” or “not matching our records.” By normalizing such ontological disruptions, terminal interactions require users to adjust to conditions that routinely violate expectations of predictability, that negate the experience of efficacy, and that discourage Figure 4.13  Access is denied. attachment.

Terminal violence 77 Silencing March 30, 2021

Today, I received a message from a faceless and anonymous staff person (or bot) announcing that my book request for a course I will teach in about six months Figure 4.14  Do NOT reply. is due to an invisible office, on an apparently strict date. Like other emails I received yesterday from financial, political, medical, and commercial organizations, it features the “Do NOT reply” (notice the capitalized NOT in Figure  4.14) command as a return address. Although seemingly trivial, this now routine command and other similar ones deserve critical consideration as they reveal a few troubling lessons about those who issue the command, those who receive it, and the relationship between the two. Concretely, the Do NOT reply command signifies that those who issue the message are not interested in the recipient’s reply. On their end, recipients are to unquestioningly obey. They do not have the permission, option, or even way to reply. In other words, “do not reply” means you cannot reply. Under what other conditions do free adult citizens find themselves ordered to – basically – shut up and obey? Under what conditions would they find it acceptable? Scholarship in social psychology suggests that being silenced, being excluded from a conversation, and being denied the ability to participate in an interaction when one desires to do so are typically experienced as undesirable and emotionally painful. However, silencing and exclusionary commands that would be considered invalidating and disrespectful in face-to-face interactions have become normalized in terminal ones. Repeated ad nauseam, commands such as these summon obedient subjects who do not “talk back” because they are simply no longer technologically able to do so and because, they are implicitly told, what they have to say does not matter. This routine type of interaction also infra-humanizes users by precluding the exercise of qualities such as cognitive openness and by effectively reducing them to negligible variables in digital decision-making. Conclusions: mechanistic infra-humanization as perspective In this chapter, I have used vignettes of routine terminal interactions to discuss the adjustments they impose on users and to suggest that these adjustments infra-humanize them. Seen as isolated incidents, these routine interactions might seem trivial and benign. Doing so, however, would be mistaken as what matters is their interacting and compounding effects. Users do not experience mechanistic infra-humanization as a visible and palpable assault on their humanness. It is a subtle, unaware, and normalized form of violence that

78  Simon Gottschalk degrades those qualities that compose human uniqueness and human nature. The former become increasingly negligible and the latter become increasingly exploited, wasted, or incapacitated. Humans’ replacement by intelligent machines requires humans’ adjustment to those machines. Unless we resist mechanistic infra-humanization, the technological great replacement will be able to rapidly proceed to the alarming point of singularity that scientists, internet experts, and others are increasingly warning us about. One strategy social scientists might find useful in resisting this process and the silent violence it entails includes using infra-humanization as a perspective to examine our interactions with terminals, with others through terminals, and with others away from them, if such encounters are still possible. Promoting human qualities and humanitarian principles, a perspective guided by the problematic of infra-humanization would guide scholars to ask new questions and, in so doing, evoke the very qualities that are being purged by terminal interactions. This chapter is a modest step in that direction. Notes Anders (1956), cited in Müller and Mellor (2019: 5). 1 2 See, for example, Aubert (2018, 2008a, 2008b, 2006a, 2006b, 2005a, 2005b, 2003), Castells (2006), Dubey (2001), Dyens (2001), Ellul (1964), Ferrara et al. (2016), Gauchet (2005), Haroche (2012), Kurzweil (1990), Lipovetsky (2006), Marcuse (1998), Mayer-Schönberger (2011), Rosa (2012), Turkle (2011, 2009), Zimbardo and Coulombe (2015), Zuboff (2015). 3 “Terminals” refers to all those devices (software and hardware) with which we daily interact to go online and perform an ever-growing number of activities. They include iPads, laptops, desktops, smartphones, Apple watches, virtual assistants, etc. Accordingly, I use the terminal interchangeably with “online,” “digital,” “virtual,” and other synonyms. 4 A secondary definition is “a warning or alarm of an impending military attack, a storm, etc.” As a verb, it means “to warn (troops, ships, etc.) to prepare for action,” and “to warn of an impending raid, attack, storm, etc.” 5 Dimas (2016), Farber (2016), Hampton (2018), Martin and Curzan (2018), Sanfilippo (2021).

References Aboujaoude, E. (2011). Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E- Personality. New York: W. W. Norton. Acquisiti, A. (2011). Les Comportements de Vie Privée Face au Commerce Éléctronique. Réseaux, 167, 107–130. Anders, G. (2002) [1956]. L’Obsolescence de l’Homme. Paris: Éditions de l’Encyclopédie des Nuisances. Andrejevic, M. (2013). Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know. New York: Routledge. Aubert, N. (2003). Le Culte de l’Urgence: La Société Malade du Temps. Paris: Flammarion. Aubert, N. (2005a). Un Individu Paradoxal. In N. Aubert (Ed.), L’Individu Hypermoderne (pp. 13–24). Toulouse: Érès.

Terminal violence 79 Aubert, N. (2005b). L’Intensité de Soi. In N. Aubert (Ed.), L’Individu Hypermoderne (pp. 73–87). Toulouse: Érès. Aubert, N. (2006a). Sur L’hypermodernité et de la Société Hypermoderne. Next Modernity, 10, 30. Aubert, N. (2006b). Hyperformance et Combustion de Soi. Études, 405(10), 339–351. Aubert, N. (2006c). Interview de Nicole Aubert à Propos de l’Hypermodernité et de la Société Hypermoderne. NextModernity, October 30. Aubert, N. (2008a). Violence du Temps et Pathologies Hypermodernes. Cliniques Méditerranéennes, 78, 23–38. Aubert, N. (2008b). Les Pathologies Hypermodernes: Expressions d’Une Nouvelle Normalité? Revue Internationale de Sociologie, 18(3), 419–426. Aubert, N. (Ed.). (2018). @ La Recherche du Temps: Individus Hyperconnectés, Société Accélérée. Toulouse: Érès. Aubert, N. & Haroche, C. (Eds.). (2011). Les Tyrannies de la Visibilité: Être Visible pour Exister? Toulouse: Érès. Ball, K. (2009). Exposure: Exploring the Subject of Surveillance. Information, Communication and Society, 12(5), 639–657. Birman, J. (2011). Je Suis Vu, Donc Je Suis: La Visibilité en Question. In N. Aubert & C. Haroche (Eds.), Les Tyrannies de la Visibilité: Être Visible pour Exister? (pp. 39–52). Toulouse: Érès. Carreteiro, T. C. (2011). Compassion et Visibilité du Malheur. In N. Aubert  & C. Haroche (Eds.), Les Tyrannies de la Visibilité: Être Visible pour Exister? (pp.  237– 244). Toulouse: Érès. Castells, M. (2006). The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy. In M. Castells & G. Cardoso (Eds.), The Network Society: From Knowledge to Policy (pp. 39–52). Washington, DC: Center for Transatlantic Relations. Dator, J. A., Sweeney, J. A. &. Yee, A. M. (2015). Mutative Media: Communication Technologies and Power Relations in the Past, Present, and Futures. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. Dawsey, J. (2019). Marxism and Technocracy: Günther Anders and the Necessity for a Critique of Technology. Thesis Eleven, 153(1), 38–56. De Armond, E. (2018). Tactful Inattention: Erving Goffman, Privacy in the Digital Age, and the Virtue of Averting One’s Eyes. St. John’s Law Review, 92(2), 283–325. Dimas, J. (2016). Anticipatory Stress of After-Hours Email Exhausting Employees. Colorado State University College News, December  17. https://source.colostate. edu/anticipatory-stress-of-after-hours-email exhausting-employees/. Dubey, G. (2001). Le Lien Social à l’Ère du Virtuel. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Duggan, M. (2017). Online Harassment. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewre search.org/internet/2017/07/11/online-harassment-2017/. Dyens, O. (2001). Metal and Flesh: Technology Takes Over. Cambridge: MIT Press. Ellul, J. (1964). The Technological Society. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Farber, M. (2016). How Checking Email After Work Is Burning You Out. Fortune Magazine, August 2. https://fortune.com/2016/08/02/checking-email-after-work/. Ferrara, E., Varol, O., Davis, C., Menczer, F.  & Flammini, A. (2016). The Rise of Social Bots. Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery, 59(7). DOI:10.1145/2818717. Gauchet, M. (2005). Vers une Mutation Anthropologique? In N. Aubert (Ed.), L’Individu Hypermoderne (pp. 290–301). Toulouse: Érès.

80  Simon Gottschalk Gottschalk, S. (2018). The Terminal Self: Everyday Life in Hypermodern Times. London: Routledge. Gottschalk, S. (2020). Accelerators, Amplifiers, and Conductors: A Model of Tertiary Deviance in Online White Supremacist Networks. Deviant Behavior, 41(7–9), 841– 855. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2020.1734746. Gottschalk, S. (2021). Click, Validate, and Reply: Three Paradoxes of the Terminal Self. In N. Ruiz-Juno, W. Gibson, & D. Vom Lehn (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism. London: Routledge. Gottschalk, S. & Fuller, C. (2021). Dehumanization and De-Realization: A Theory of Symbolic Interaction with Digital Technologies. In W. Brekhus, T. Degloma, & W. Force (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interaction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gottschalk, S. & Whitmer, J. (2013). Hypermodern Dramaturgy in Online Encounters. In C. Edgley (Ed.), The Drama of Social Life: A  Dramaturgical Handbook (pp. 309–334). Farnham: Ashgate. Hampton, R. (2018). New York City’s Proposed No After-Hours Email Law Is a Good, If Flawed, Attempt at Promoting Work-Life Balance. Slate, April 4. https:// slate.com/human-interest/2018/04/nyc-no-email-after-hours-law- would-promotework-life-balance.html. Haroche, C. (2011). L’Invibilité Interdite. In N. Aubert  & C. Haroche (Eds.), Les Tyrannies de la Visibilité: Etre Visible pour Exister? (pp. 77–102). Toulouse: Érès. Haroche, C. (2012). Généalogie des Processus Hypermodernes (De La Condition de L’Homme Moderne à La Condition de Sujet Visible). Connexions, 97, 27–40. Harris, M. (2014). The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection. New York: Current. Haslam, N. (2006). De-humanization: An Integrative Review. Personality and Social Psychology, 10(3), 252–264. Haslam, N.  & Loughnan, S. (2014). Dehumanization and Infra Humanization. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 339–423. Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jauréguiberry, F. (2014). La Déconnexion aux Technologies de Communication. La Découverte-Réseaux, 186(4), 15–49. Kurzweil, R. (Ed.). (1990). The Age of Intelligent Machines. Cambridge: MIT Press. Laidi, Z. (1999). La Tyrannie de l’Urgence. Montréal: Fides. Laidi, Z. (2001). Urgency: The Sacred Present. Queen’s Quarterly, 108(4), 530–538. Lanier, J. (2010). You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. New York: Vintage. Leyens, J. P, Cortes, B., Demoulin, S. Dovidio, J. F., Fiske, S., Gaunt, R., Palafino, M-P., Rodriguez-Perez, A.  & Vaes, J. (2003). Emotional Prejudice, Essentialism, and Nationalism. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 703–717. Lipovetsky, G. (2006). Le Bonheur Paradoxal: Essai sur la Société d’Hyperconsommation. Paris: Gallimard. Marcuse, H. (1998). Technology, War and Fascism: Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 1. Routledge. Martin, A. C. & Curzan, A. (2018). What Happened When the Dean’s Office Stopped Sending Emails After-Hours. Chronicle of Higher Education, April  12. https:// www.chronicle.com/article/what-happened-when-the-deans-office-stoppedsending-emails-after-hours/.

Terminal violence 81 Martin, R. C., Ryan-Coyier, K. & VanSistine, L. M. (2013). Anger on the Internet: The Perceived Value of Rant-Sites. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16(2), 118–122. Mayer-Schönberger, V. (2011). Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Müller, J. C. & Mellor, D. (2019). Utopia Inverted: Günther Anders, Technology, and the Social. Thesis Eleven, 153(1), 3–8. Rheingold, H. (2012). NetSmart: How To Thrive Online. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Rosa, H. (2012). Alienation and Acceleration: Towards a Critical Theory of Late Modernity. Helsingforth: NSU Press. Ruiz-Junco, N. (2021). Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Self. In S. Abrutyn & O. Lizardo (Eds.), Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory: Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research (pp. 534–557). Switzerland: Springer Nature. Sanfilippo, M. (2021). What After-Hours Emails Really Do to Your Employees. Business News Daily, December 10. https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/9241-check-emailafter-work.html. Schraube, E. (2005). “Torturing Things Until They Confess”: Günther Anders’ ­Critique of Technology. Science as Culture, 14(1), 77–85. Schwartz, B. (1968). The Social Psychology of Privacy. American Journal of Sociology, 73(6), 741–752. Spurk, J. (2011). De la Reconnaissance à l’Insignificance. In N. Aubert & C. Haroche (Eds.), Les Tyrannies de la Visibilité: Être Visible pour Exister? (pp. 323–336). Toulouse: Érès. Turkle, S. (2009). Simulation and Its Discontents. Cambridge: MIT Press. Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Demand More of Technology and Less of Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Virilio, P., Kittler, F.  & Armitage, J. (1999). The Information Bomb: A  Conversation. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 4(2), 81–90. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/09697259908572036. Zimbardo, P. & Coulombe, N. (2015). Man (Dis)connected: How Technology Has Sabotaged What It Means to Be Male. London: Rider. Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), 75–89.

5 Summing up the criminal case online David Wästerfors

People’s online engagement with criminal cases is often interpreted as either a kind of ‘running wild’ towards cyber-bullying or as intelligent crowdsourcing. Researchers tend to problematise this engagement, pointing to the risk of virtual witch-hunts or lynching (see Myles et al. 2016; Loveluck 2020, on digital vigilantism), or to celebrate how posters collaboratively assemble new knowledge in ways they would never have been able to do on their own (Nhan et al. 2017; Wikhamn et al. 2019; Trottier 2014). In an ongoing project I, with two other Swedish sociologists – Veronika Burcar Alm and Erik Hannerz – have tried to navigate around these two poles. In our observations of posters’ interactions in discussion threads on the nationally well-known platform Flashback in Sweden (and in our interviews, where the interactions are described and evaluated), we have found plenty of data leading us in relatively unexplored directions. What occurs within this digital setting cannot be reduced to punitive storms or information crowdsourcing, even though these also occur. Posters may, for instance, become deeply familiar with the cases at issue and deliver evidence to one another in and through their posts in discussion threads, so that confirming responses from other posters (rather than the original post alone) come to constitute ‘familiarity’ and ‘evidence’. With the help of the subsequent exchanges, posts become case-related familiarity and evidence, in line with the basic assumptions of symbolic interaction (Blumer 1969/1986: 2–4). Local authority is similarly accomplished interactionally, as when certain posts become celebrated further down the thread, as their authors gradually receive increased respect for their hypotheses and conclusions (Wästerfors et al. 2023). Moreover, posters sometimes engage in activities that combine hard work with an element of play (Burcar Alm et al. forthc.) and tend to set up a series of epistemic quests for themselves, based on the crime case and its attractive mysteries. When aiming for these quests, and when reaching various peaks in their collaborative efforts, the posters seem to experience a particular feeling: an online version of collective effervescence (Hannerz et al. 2022). A key approach to get at these elusive and still ubiquitous features is to read the data through the lens of interactionism and ethnomethodology. Instead of looking at these settings as crowdsourcing laboratories, willing to lend a DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-6

Summing up the criminal case online 83 hand to justice, or as collectives of zealous ‘digilantes’, eager to hunt down deviants with the help of the internet no matter what the formal justice system says, we may highlight their character as social – and quite mundane – gatherings. In these gatherings, there are interactions going on, designed to make the setting accountable and to legitimise and honour the posters’ continuing membership. In short, digital crime case communities are social worlds, with constantly unfolding practices and identities. In this chapter I will look closely at one particular practice: that of summing up the discussion ‘so far’. It is common in crime case discussion to recapitulate it – to produce a condensed case description, going over the alleged main points and providing an overview – and thereby display an ambition to reduce the complexity of the sprawling threads. At some point during our research, I started to wonder about the specific character and function of this practice. A summary not only provides posters and lurkers with a synopsis, it may also reboot the discussion and multiply its directions. To cut away what is defined as redundant and propose a ‘core’ often fuels further comment. This practice is a delicate act of rhetoric, one which is requested to create order (‘Can somebody please summarise?’) but also criticised for resulting in errors (or ‘wrong’ orders), for instance omitting or simplifying what is seen as essential (‘In this summary, we lack . . .’). The data I will present belong to the Citizens as Crime Investigators project, financed by the Swedish Research Council, in which we ethnographically follow discussion threads on crime cases on Flashback and conduct interviews with lurkers, posters and journalists.1 Flashback is one of Sweden’s largest online forums, with 1.4 million members who share opinions anonymously on anything from gardening to prostitution and serious crime, typically in ‘free’ and unpolished ways. Anyone over the age of 18 can register an account and start or join a discussion, subscribe to threads, exchange private messages and check what others have posted. The forum started in 2000 with its roots in a punk magazine from the 1980s, and its moderators are known to be tolerant. Thirty-three per cent of Swedes say they use Flashback, although mostly sporadically (only 1 per cent use it daily), and it is more commonly used by those with higher household incomes. Men aged 26–35  years are the largest category of users (60 per cent of them use Flashback; see the report Svenskarna och internet 2018: 55–56). 5.1.  Analytical frame My analysis joins ethnomethodology’s ambition to discover and specify orderliness in terms of a setting’s ‘endogenous tasks, competent courses of action and organizational objects’ (Burns 2012: 175), and it also joins ethnomethodology’s interest in accounting procedures that both address and belong to the conversations at issue, procedures that work as members’ ‘machinery’ (Garfinkel and Sacks 1970: 355). To summarise a case is characteristic for social order, action and meaning in this setting, and it belongs to its routine grounds. As

84  David Wästerfors they refer back to and ‘assemble’ previous posts, summarising posts invoke a mutually known and locally acknowledged history – at least supposedly so – of which the summarising poster makes consequential use (cf. Burns 2012: 185). To summarise is therefore locally meaningful, and the fact that it is also contested in its details underlines its consequential aspect. As a task it originates from the online community (endogenously), as a course of action it is judged by members in terms of competence, and as an object it is both locally organised and organising. Summaries formulate the discussion, not only by assembling bits and pieces from previous posts but also by articulating the ‘whole’ discussion, as if saying ‘this is what we, altogether, up till now, are saying’. This is done within and as part of the very discussion. Garfinkel and Sacks (1970: 350) observe that conversationalists often treat some part of their conversations in such a way: as an occasion to describe that conversation, to explain it, or characterize it, or explicate, or translate, or summarize, or furnish the gist of it, or take notes of its accordance to rules, or remark on its departure from rules. This is what Garfinkel and Sacks call ‘saying-in-so-many-words-what-we-aredoing’, namely a way for conversationalists to comment on and demarcate their actions. They do so as an integral part of precisely these actions, in situ. Conversationalists treat such ‘formulations’ as ‘constituent features of the ­conversation in which they are done’ (Garfinkel and Sacks 1970: 351). Garfinkel and Sacks (1970: 350) use examples as the following one to illuminate their ideas: – Isn’t it nice that there’s such a crowd of you in the office? – You’re asking us to leave, not telling us to leave, right? The rejoinder ‘You’re asking us to leave . . .’ is part of the ongoing conversation and yet it formulates the conversation, since it tries to characterize and explain it, summarise it, if you will. Garfinkel and Sacks argue that conversationalists routinely accept and recognize such formulations as accountable features of the very conversations in which they are done. (Also, see Heritage and Watson 1979; Deppermann 2011; Van der Houwen and Sliedrecht 2016.) Summaries in online discussions, I argue, exhibit similar features and are treated in a similar fashion. They, too, function as members’ ways of ‘saying-in-so-many-words-what-we-are-doing’. This indexical, reflexive and accountable character of summaries will characterise my analysis in this chapter. When posters recapitulate a long thread and aspire to ‘furnish the gist of it’, they – sort of – step out of the thread and stay inside of it at the same time. Even if the aim is to ‘formulate’ it all, the very formulations, are posts, too. Summaries are ‘exhibited in’ the discussion, and thereby available for the involved posters’ subsequent reports and comments,

Summing up the criminal case online 85 and thereby – in Garfinkel and Sacks’ (1970: 351) terms – ‘exhibitable for the telling’. As I will try to show, to summarize is an accountable and reportable phenomenon, a phenomenon that members perform, and it is also very much observed by members. It is accomplished in digital interactions, and it is not seldom expanding rather than ending the discussions. My interpretations draw on data from the subsection of Flashback that is devoted to criminal cases and the variously structured and composed summaries that sometimes emerge here, but my idea is not to make summaries represent the whole field or to idealise them, as if it were possible to distinguish true summaries from false ones, but to pursue how thread participants themselves engage in such (and other) distinctions and what this tells us about their online culture. Today’s online sleuthing communities are built around the infotainment aspects of true crime stories, and ultimately depend on the community members themselves and the skilful ways they employ to sustain interest (cf. Loveluck 2020: 224; Yardley et al. 2018). As I will touch upon in my analysis, and return to in my conclusion, summaries epitomise a particular set of qualities of this culture: the spirit of collaboration among online sleuths and their sense of being hardworking underdogs, constantly watching not only the crimes ‘out there’ but also one another. To summarise is one of the members’ methods, and it cuts through the jumble of posts in a given thread whilst also, in one way or another, contributing to it. Some studies in the ethnomethodology of law are similar to my approach. To discuss criminal cases online is certainly not the same as applying the law or producing a locally accepted ‘just outcome’ (Burns 2009), and still some features of the field come close to the practical details of ‘doing justice’. The posters try to establish consensual and commonplace formulations of the cases, formulations that somewhat ‘foreshadow its disposition as technical matters of law’ (Burns 2009: 109). The online discussion is not a legal negotiation on this or that type of criminal offense, but it is pursued as if such things were at stake, since a crime stands in the centre. Summarising posts strive to be recognised as particularly reasonable in this respect, as if written by a ‘reasonable person’ who takes all relevant aspects of the case into account and present them in a ‘just’ way (Burns 2009: 110). They represent a practical and locally handy organisation of common sense in this digital setting, as they seek to settle discursive agreements among the involved posters about ‘what happened’ (Burns 2009: 128). What ethnomethodology can do, then, is to show how such digital what-happened-organisations are accomplished. Consensus on crime cases – or testable candidates for consensus – do not emerge out of nothing, but they are done with the help of locally recognisable procedures. As I will try to show, these procedures are intrinsically interactive. In what follows, I will analyse posters’ requests for and deliveries of summaries with the help of excerpts from online data and interviews. Online data can help us distinguish the sequence of ‘doing summaries’ and the contexts in which they take place, while interview data can help us distinguish narratives

86  David Wästerfors and interpretations. Most of the interviewees have been contacted through the message system of Flashback and many of the interview conversations have been carried out as a series of such messages. We have asked about people’s ways of using Flashback, their interests and engagement, and their motivations to follow crime case discussions online. My approach to the online data is inspired by the expanding circle of researchers who use conversation analysis to analyse online interaction (see Meredith 2019), even though my level of empirical details is far from proper CA expectations. The interactions on Flashback are not quasi-synchronous, like in multi-party chat rooms or one-to-one instant messaging, but asynchronous like in newsgroups and email. Posts are lined up in the order they were submitted, but posters do not need to be online at the same time to participate in the discussion or review its development. It is important to point out the difference between online and offline interactions in these respects, since the platform impacts how users interact with one another (and with the technology), but as I will try to show – and as Meredith (2019) underlines – local norms and expectations also matter. Meredith draws on Hutchby’s (2003) work on ‘affordances’ and argues that any object affords particular possibilities for interaction, even though the exact shape is an empirical and emergent issue. I will also integrate a methodological reflection in the analysis, as I discuss how I started to focus on summaries in the first place and how my feelings of being overwhelmed by true crime data can be illuminating for understanding the local meanings and functions attached to the summarising practice. Here I  make use of personal experiences from my participant observation of the discussion threads. 5.2.  Order! Order! A summary for what’s happened plz? Somebody got a summary? As a researcher diving into online crime case discussions, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of posted data – and posters themselves indicate similar feelings. Interviewed posters say that they want to know ‘more’, that they seek in-depth information about the case, preferably from people locally connected to the crime scene or its social context (those who know hitherto-hidden facts), since mainstream media cannot be trusted or reports too little and too slowly. But they also say that this ‘more’ aspect can become problematic. Threads often grow rapidly, especially when there is breaking news in the mainstream media, as when somebody is caught or when a caserelated court procedure starts. Such events typically make new information accessible and warrant new questions. Many threads are quickly filled with a plethora of unsorted posts, and newcomers may find it hard to know where to begin.

Summing up the criminal case online 87 Requests for summaries stem from this situation, for instance in the form of the oneliners I cited earlier. Simply by posting such a request, posters imply a need for clarity. To indicate that a summary would be helpful is to point out the disorder that the requested method is supposed to resolve. The request is addressed to ‘anyone’ in the forum who is willing to summarise and considers themselves sufficiently knowledgeable to do so, but it is also implicitly addressed to the previous disorder in the thread in general. The meaning of ‘disorder’ is ascribed and recognised, as if saying, ‘Look at this mess, we’d better clarify and condense’. Thus, summary requests define disorder for the sake of its opposite, and others may respond affirmatively or protest. There might already be summaries posted, which have been overlooked by latecomers, so the new request may be framed as redundant. A call for order may, in that case, be met by reaffirmed order, re-actualising a respected summary (or even series of summaries) that were earlier defined as ordering and now can serve this function again. Interviewed posters rank useful summaries as examples of ‘good’ posts in any thread, but they also point out that requests for summaries can be quite annoying in threads where such summaries already exist, since these requests then simply testify that the poster making the request has not bothered to read the previous posts and consequently failed to notice all the effort made. In one thread, for instance, one of the moderators listed a range of previously posted summaries ‘for certain reasons’, implying that many newcomers were obviously ignoring them. This moderator ended the post by stating that anyone asking for summaries in this thread from now on ‘will be kicked in the balls’. Ideally, new posters are expected to pay respect to previous interactions in a thread when starting to interact within it, especially when it comes to the issue of ordering the case. The phenomenon of summaries exposes this ideal. 5.2.1.  Indicating an overwhelming chaos in need of objectivity and decency

With the help of slightly more complex summary requests than the ones I cited earlier, their interactional character can be specified further: Hi, I’m new here cause just this event has troubles to leave my brain. Could any kind soul briefly summarise what most likely has occurred? How did it happen? Why? The thread is way too long to read through. 8,000+ posts and no summary. Anybody has read it all, is wellinformed and copes with writing a summary that the MOD perhaps could nail to the thread start? Thanks in advance, then! I’m curious. The latter post is replied to: Same for me. Hopeless to be away for some days and catch up. Summary, anyone?

88  David Wästerfors Later in this thread, a poster refers to previous summaries, and one poster writes ‘see my signature’ to guide the posters to his or her summary. (By clicking a signature on Flashback, all previous posts belonging to this signature are revealed.) He or she also refers to another and extensive summary laid out in 47 bullet points and divided into subsections: ‘What do we know?’, ‘What seems true!’, ‘What do we think or what are rumours?’ and ‘Without evidence’. In this way, the case at issue seems neatly condensed, and the very act of referrals to this summary contributes to this impression. The subsections, with their bullet points, communicate order. Another poster expresses gratitude for another summary: Thank you for your work with this very good and objective summary! The thread is very long – with your summary one gets the essentials. Perhaps something a Mod can put into the thread start? First, in these posts there are explicit markers of the abundance of information and the difficulty of managing it: ‘too long’, ‘8000+ posts’, ‘hopeless . . . to catch up’ – so that the wild and sprawling online setting is put on display, quantified and problematised. To request and appreciate summaries is to lament the extensive activity by the online sleuths themselves, that is, to not only enjoy the number of suggestions and speculations regarding the cases but to define them as overwhelming. There is an emotion being expressed in and through summary requests, more specifically a sort of information stress or exhaustion. Still, the thread at issue is defined as vital. It is not the case ‘as such’ – the crime and its circumstances – that annoys the posters but the messiness that emerges because of all the disparate efforts to illuminate and comment on it online. Posters who answer a call for summaries claim a certain role: they are those who have been present for a long time in the thread, those who have read it all and possess a certain overview. To request and honour summaries is to conquer the messiness by appealing to veterans to take a stand. Second, there is a moral aspect of summaries that is tied to their ordering function. Posters in crime case discussions often complain about what researchers call ‘noise’ or redundant ‘self-expression’ (Wikhamn et al. 2019: 63; Nhan et al. 2017: 346–347): trolling, off-topic messages, racist or aggressive threats, spiteful epithets or just distracting and unnecessarily repeating posts. Summaries are a cleansing device in this respect, an instrument to uphold decency. They are supposed to bring posters back to the original topic and the crime case at issue, since they are typically intended to encompass only the allegedly factual dimensions of the thread, pruning away ‘the rubbish’. One poster, who was interviewed through private messages, employs the metaphor of a chaotic library: Imagine a library where all the books are placed higgledy-piggledy, so that there is no subject classification any more, nor alphabetic order. And imagine that among the books, all sorts of rubbish have been placed,

Summing up the criminal case online 89 not really belonging to a library, and that you need to find your way through all this rubbish to find any book to begin with. That’s roughly the long-term effect of an Internet-based forum [like Flashback] increasingly being filled with off topic-posts, nonsense, posts that only intends to mock/threat other users, etc. In the light of such a metaphor, a summary serves not only an ordering function but a moral one. This ‘rubbish’ stands for the miserable and corrupt content that it is often necessary to wade through, whereas summarising efforts are conceptualised as counteracting this. No poster, not even the dedicated racists or conspiracy theorists, would count a list of personal attacks or spiteful sarcasms as a ‘summary’; it must contain what is defined as facts. Another interviewee, a lurker, identifies ‘people who put together threads’ by ‘writing like a summary, from the beginning to the end’ as fulfilling a specific role within the threads, making it possible for others to get an overview and avoid having to read too much. If this role did not exist, ‘the rubbish’ would drown them all. Third – and closely related to the above – both summary requests and summarising posts typically indicate a preferred kind of summary, accomplished by a preferred kind of poster: ‘objective’, ‘well-informed’, ‘reasonable’ (Burns 2009: 110) and by those who possess overview and experience. On closer inspection, the solution proposed to the problem of chaos and moral decay is not ‘any’ summary but a particular one, carefully crafted, substantiated and balanced. Of course, this begs the question of how to define ‘objective’, ‘wellinformed’, ‘listed facts’ and so on; there is certainly no consensus in this regard. On the contrary, a given case can be summarised in countless ways, and one summary may quickly be questioned with the help of another one, but still the ideal seems to be a ‘neutral’ one. When feeling overwhelmed by the amount and character of all posts in a given thread, one is definitely not helped by a biased summary, written by somebody who is not particularly informed, or which is a personal interpretation of the case, written in a poetic or indignant way. No matter how ‘biased’ or ‘uninformed’ is defined, all posters unite in an implicit conviction that such an ideal should be possible and aimed for. I will return to this implicit character of an accountable and ‘proper’ summary, which is very much honoured within this online setting. Here, it suffices to say that status is granted to the locally recognised summary (within the thread), shown for instance in terms of suggestions to put it on top, at the start of the thread or through posters’ repeated references and approving quotations. Flashback administrators may also elevate ‘approved’ summaries of criminal cases by creating a separate thread exclusively devoted to these summaries, as a sort of crime-case reference in their chaotic ‘library’. 5.2.2.  The urge for summaries – a reflection on fieldwork

How did I start paying attention to this practice – to request and accomplish summaries – in the first place? Let me relate my initial observations of the

90  David Wästerfors threads to Katz’s (2019: 27) reflections on ethnographic fieldwork in general and the importance of taking into account the fieldworker’s initial confusion in particular. In parallel to his observations regarding offline ethnography, I came to a turning point in my analysis when I realised that ‘your problem is their [the field-members’] problem’, as Katz puts it. With the help of this reflection I  would like to deepen our understanding of the local urge for summaries within a quite volatile online setting and point out the potential to learn from one’s concern as fieldworker. Katz’s example is a participant-observation study in a different (offline) ­setting – a support agency for immigrants – in which the ethnographer found it difficult to classify people. The site was filled with people with multiple national, regional, ethnic and religious backgrounds, speaking different languages and dialects, and the ethnographer was unsure about how to go about finding out who was who without clumsy and quite unsubstantiated attributions. ‘The turning point comes’, Katz (2019: 28) writes, ‘when the researcher realises that the problem of the identification is not her in the first place but a dilemma for those at the site’. The problem of identification turned out to be the subjects’ problem, too, in their relations with each other at this support agency. The research interest then shifted, from an effort to find out how people of this or that type act (for instance, those emigrating from country X) to an effort to find out how people typify one another in a setting characterised by intense and confusing traffic. Similarly, it struck me after some months in the Flashback project that my problem with sprawling crime cases was ‘their’ problem, too. Even seemingly quite experienced online sleuths continually ask for summaries, produce them, evaluate, review and refine them, and so on, since even if they are not new to the thread, they may become ‘new’, so to speak, after a break or some personally inactive days. Most of the earlier examples in this chapter are taken from a long Flashback thread on a family murder in Bjärred, Sweden, in 2018. Two parents were found dead, together with their two daughters, also dead. The police version of the case – that the parents agreed to kill their daughters because of their chronic diseases and then committed suicide (as stated in a suicide note) – was soon questioned by the online sleuths of Flashback. This thread is extensive: today it amounts to almost 67,000 posts. Different teams crystallised, some defending the parents, others digging up unclarities, for instance in terms of the suspicion that the father was more active in the murder than the mother. As I started to read this Flashback thread and tried to follow some of its themes, I  was soon overwhelmed. I  longed for a clarifying summary and started to move in and out of the thread, comparing it with the news report and a journalist’s true crime book on the case, compiling a sort of summary in my own mind with the listed facts. I had trouble in understanding the details, and I agonised over the simplifications I must impute to summarise the case and then get on with writing fieldnotes. I realised this would probably impose too much meaning from me as analyst, since I would become a sort of amateur

Summing up the criminal case online 91 investigator myself. I also had to investigate other threads that – similarly – tended to stress me out. I had started with an implicit and untenable idea of, on the one hand, ‘The Case, neutrally described’, and on the other, ‘online responses to it’, but I found it increasingly impossible to define and demarcate the cases to begin with. What was a case? It was just an endless discussion. I  was stuck in the idea of having to have a ‘correct’ overview of a criminal event in order to digest the different opinions about it. Gradually, and through Katz’s text, I came to understand that the summarising problem is also the members’ problem. I continued reading the threads and realised that the posters, too, were frustrated and that many would prefer a neutral case description as a baseline. Indeed, in this digital setting, there seem to be tacit practices that sustain an unstated understanding that there should be ‘a defined case’ to begin with (cf. Katz 2019: 29). An ideal, wished-for, order is taken for granted, even though it most likely never comes into existence – but the requested and honoured summaries indicate that it can exist. In other words, the study of online sleuthing is helped by interactionism and ethnomethodology. By pursuing the unfolding interaction online, we may discern how summaries are requested and accomplished. By acknowledging that this basically never-ending interaction consists of tacit practices to sustain intersubjectivity, we may start to understand that engaged posters seem to act on the members’ presumption that somewhere, at some point, there is an objective case description. 5.3.  Creating a ‘faithful core’ For the posters in crime-case communities, a summary should represent the case and thereby sustain and refresh its continued investigation. But the exact composition of a summary inevitably zooms in on certain aspects and zooms out on others, opening up its construction for debate or question. To represent the case ‘faithfully’, and yet to never be able to do so – that is the dilemma the posters argue about, mull over and work with. This is true for entire threads, but the summarising parts really makes this concern salient and critical. This dilemma is rhetorically inevitable. Any summary – or condensed representation – will, at least from some perspective, not only represent the case ‘so far’ but also transform it and potentially redirect the discussion. Seemingly peripheral details or the wording of a posted text may, from some angle, be considered misleading. To paraphrase Burke (1969: 59), posters seek to create summaries that are faithful reflections of the case, but to this end they must develop texts that are selections of it – and selections are, in one way or another, also deflections.2 5.3.1.  A risky business . . .

The vulnerable quality of summaries is shown in several ways in our data. First, posters who summarise may anticipate and integrate others’ reception of the

92  David Wästerfors summary, so that their narrative work is framed as unfinalised right from the start. By opening up one’s summary to others’ constant revisions, one communicates it as provisional, thereby disarming critique. ‘No more facts arrived since Saturday?’ a summarising poster comments, adding, ‘If I’m wrong [at some point in the listed summary] just PM me or post, and I’ll add in the list’. This is an effective way to signal openness and workability, and it may prolong the lifetime of the posted summary considerably. It also ties into a cultural feature of the online crime-case community, namely its collaborative working spirit. Similarly, another poster responds to a summary request: Poster 1: Could somebody fix a summary? Poster 2: Search for the word ‘summary’, I’ve done one which is quite free from thread truths [meaning: local and probably false ideas]. Please expand this. Again, openness and workability are conveyed, along with the implicit notion of reachable neutrality. Just develop the posted summary, Poster 2 seems to imply, and keep it ‘free’ from misunderstandings, and the thread will be guaranteed with a solid bank of facts. Even though the poster surely promotes their own summary, this is done with markers of humbleness: ‘quite’ free from misunderstandings, ‘please expand’. Fallibility is indicated, which serves as a communicated indication of relative trustworthiness. Second, the vulnerable quality is also shown in reviews of summaries, which can be quite harsh. In the family murder thread I described earlier, some summarising efforts are fiercely attacked and described as deeply biased, theorydriven and incomplete. Some posters do not accept them. They start arguing about how they should be done and the debate can turn quite intricate. In the following exchange there are artfully packed layers of critique and irony within a defence of a criticised summary – and similar layers can be found within its response. Poster 3: Who gives you [Poster 4] the right to decide what I summarise or how my summaries look like? If you hadn’t been trying to present yourself as the master of nuances and grayscales, after having constantly posted your own opinion about MURDER for over a month, I would not even bother to answer your posts. Usually I don’t even read them. The fact that you write that I  appear to be querulous towards you makes my heart jump for joy and my throat to break out in a cheer, like a diver [the bird] a silent summer night. My day has been given a golden lining. Thank you [Poster 4], and that’s the truth of the day! Poster 5: [Poster 4] probably just mean to say, like me, that your summary sounded sarcastic. Read it again and pretend that [Poster 4] has written it. On the other hand, whoever had tried to summarise this thread had failed. Totally impossible.

Summing up the criminal case online 93 Here, Poster 3 responds to Poster 4’s critical review of a summary with an attack on Poster 4’s own biased view and with a defence of the right to summarise as one wishes. The post is filled with sarcasm and scorn, portraying the antagonist as both hopelessly theory-driven (‘your own opinion about MURDER . . .’) and insignificant. In Poster 5’s response, a third position is carved out: the summary is reviewed critically (‘. . . sounded sarcastic’) but the task is also described as ‘impossible’; the case discussion is so chaotic that any summary would fail. Poster 5 also manages to mirror Poster 3’s sarcasm by suggesting he or she take the role of the other and pretend that Poster 4 was the author of the summary. In this way, Poster 5 puts the whole summary debate in an ironic frame, as if saying that all posters are basically stuck in biased positions. Poster 5 then inserts a meta-commentary about this online genre which is close to Burke’s (1969: 59) thinking on rhetoric in general: a reflection it might seem, but a deflection it certainly is. 5.3.2.  . . . paying off

Despite the vulnerability of summaries, they may eventually pay off. Let’s say that a poster succeeds in providing a ‘good’ summary, one that is respected and cited by many. It might be a long summary, bringing together a range of previous posts and the facts and clues listed in these, or it might be a shorter one, giving a succinct overview of the case. This poster’s authority may rise in the eyes of others, who may start to approach him or her with further information or suggestions. Even though a summary is a risky project, it can also be locally rewarding. This is what a male poster in his fifties – here called Fafter32 – describes in an interview. Once he made a ‘huge summary’ of a thread (not the one on the Bjärred family) when he happened to be spending some days at home with a cold (‘it took one night to write’). He tried to list what was ‘fairly corroborated’ and what was ‘claims and rumours’ about the case, which revolved around a missing person. He had previously received several private messages on the case after being ‘a [reliable] person one could turn to’ in the thread, and in order to create an overview he started to summarise all he knew: the previous posts, his personal information, his conclusions. In our interview through Flashback’s private messaging system, Fafter32 wrote: When I  had written that summary I  started to get even more PMs from different persons around [the disappeared person] who wanted to tell me things and who partly knew confidential things that the police couldn’t get to know. So I got in contact with old friends to [the disappeared person’s] dad and to his girlfriend .  .  . Everybody told me everything. . . . I got strongly engaged and my role turned into . . . trying to put some sensible questions with the existing overall picture as a point of departure. To get some systematics in the friends’ searching and wondering.

94  David Wästerfors Eventually the disappeared person was found drowned or frozen to death. Fafter32 said in the interview, ‘I probably didn’t make any difference for the course of events and I didn’t provide any new information’, ‘but I maybe contributed with some structure’. He said that if you write substantiated summaries, people who know the perpetrator or victim at issue, ‘or at least lives in the same place’, may start to contact you privately with new information. They would not post in the thread themselves but still want others to know, since they appreciate the seriousness of good summaries and honour the work behind them. You can turn into an expert in the eyes of others because of an elegant and useful summary, Fafter32 argued, and with exclusive information channels supporting your detective work, your expertise will grow. Fafter32’s long and successful summary got a good reception in the thread. ‘Fafter32’, a poster wrote, ‘you’ve done an amazing synthesis!!’, then asked a follow-up question about a gang that the disappeared person was said to be linked to: ‘To what [club] did some of the ex-members of [another club] go?’ To this, another poster later replied: ‘That question is not relevant in this thread’. This brief exchange relates to the cleansing and still complicating consequences of summaries. A long and detailed summary may, on the one hand, clarify the case for posters, since it is defined as elevating the discussion to new heights. On the other hand, it may also distract and confuse. By simply citing the summary and asking about a gang link, in the example above, a thread might quickly fill with a multitude of questions and theories about gangs (which, in part, also happened in this thread). Other posters may try to ‘tidy up’ the discussion and get rid of this theme, despite it being seemingly strengthened by the posted summary. How posters read a summary, and the ways they stress certain things at the expense of others, construct a review of the summary, which in turn can be reviewed, and so on. This creates a series of efforts to ‘formulate the conversation’, in Garfinkel and Sacks’ (1970) terms, so that the thread is quite much centred on saying-in-so-may-words-whatwe-are-saying and what-we-are-talking-about. Occasions to describe the discussion are multiplied and treated as integral parts of the discussion. So even though a given summary may seem complete, it is seldom defined as a final say and is typically dealt with in ways that create new and sprawling spin-offs. 5.4. Conclusion Kenneth Burke (1941: 110–111) gives a vivid picture of what occurs when people enter a discussion: Imagine that you enter a parlour. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of

Summing up the criminal case online 95 them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defence; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. The conversation is ‘too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about’, but that explanation is also what posters in the online setting I have investigated often want. Ideally, a summary in an online crime-case discussion points out the hitherto messiness of the debate, tries to cleanse it of ‘noise’ and ‘rubbish’, and provides the thread with a longed-for objective list of facts that can refreshen the discussion by serving as a shared baseline. It is supposed to be acknowledged as an establishment of a consensual formulation of the case, foreshadowing its ultimate interpretation, and it is presented as if written by ‘the reasonable person’ who sees ‘what happened’ (Burns 2009: 110, 128). In this respect, this local organisation of common sense shares qualities with ‘doing justice’ (Burns 2009). But, in situated practice, the phenomenon also works in other ways. Even though posters may anticipate the critique and design their summaries to be relatively open to revision and review, the summary may still be taken – by at least some other posters – as yet another argument. ‘Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defence . . .’ – the heated interaction in this social gathering is unfinalized and relentlessly ongoing. A posted summary may easily be placed along the other comments, as yet another utterance. And, even though the popularity of ‘good’ or credited summaries indirectly ascribe explanatory and moral disorder to large chunks of a given thread, indicating a need for clarity as well as neutrality, they can also be treated as more of the same, or even exacerbating the disorder. Summaries may be reviewed harshly and scornfully, and defined as messing up rather than clarifying a discussion. But, if crafted carefully – with due respect to previous posts and, perhaps, adding a little extra information – summaries may also grant the poster sleuthing status. They can motivate other posters to send personal messages to the author with more and exclusive case-related data. I think such interactions around summaries of crime cases illustrate the online sleuthing culture. Within this culture, one is interested in finding out objective facts about crimes, and since one cannot fully trust the mainstream media or the authorities to provide all the crucial details accurately or quickly, free speculation, such as one can find on Flashback, offers an arena. One is supposed to work hard to sort out the event being debated, both in terms of

96  David Wästerfors posting new information and in terms of clarifying already posted information, and one is expected to pay respect to prior work. This leads to internal social control, since an ‘accurate’ representation of the case ultimately depends on nothing else than the existing posts and their authors. Recurring requests for summaries point out the disorder that is supposed to be resolved and sometimes lament the abundance of sprawling threads, and yet the dilemma of an objective and unbiased representation is basically unsolvable. Summaries never fully summarise. They may fuel the debate as much as any other post – perhaps even more, since they are filled with pretensions to objectivity. Summaries never really do what they promise, but still they epitomise this online culture: the meaning of unfinalised and longed-for order and an unfolding and never-ending ordering activity. As formulations of digital conversations, summaries are illuminating sites for a setting’s cultural reproduction of meaning. As Deppermann (2011: 126) argues, ‘formulations are one of the major sites of displaying understanding and epistemic stance vis-à-vis co-interactants’. A summarising task tend to ‘hopelessly’ elaborate the features of this task, so that it hardly can be seen as definite, verified or established (Garfinkel and Sacks 1970: 354). The task as such exhibits for the posters an orientation to the fact that their conversational activities are – and should be – accountable. But as we learn from ethnomethodology, any action is accountable not in a finite way but infinitely. Ethnomethodological experiments have identified the endless character of accounting procedures. To simply write ‘what the parties to a conversation were overheard to have said’ and ‘what the parties actually were talking about’ – to ‘formulate’ or ‘summarize’ what was going on – is never an easy and quick affair (Garfinkel and Sacks 1970: 354). There is, essentially, no difference in this respect between offline and online conversations. Summaries belong to members’ concerns, and that is why they are so hotly debated and, at times, respected. In online sleuthing, the posts constitute the data to work with – any investigative effort must take them into account and somehow organise or draw on them. Thus, in this online culture there are distinct background expectations to ‘set things right’ by managing a huge information flow, expectations that are exemplified by the double-edged sword of summaries. On the one hand these are clarifying, on the other hand obscuring; at certain occasions they are timely requested, and at other times they contribute to and multiply the ‘rubbish’. The local hopes and disappointments articulate these background expectancies. As Meisenhelder (1981: 45) points out regarding Burke’s sociology of law: social order implies its opposite, disorder. ‘[N]either order nor disorder exists without the other’. When posters unfold their practices of reasoning, claimsmaking and assertiveness, they ‘name’ the elements of the crime cases in ‘such a way that we have a sense that life is more or less orderly’ (Meisenhelder 1981: 45). But simultaneously they indicate ‘the negative’: the incompleteness of these ‘names’ and ways of reasonings, the instable character of the claims and the weak spots of what is just asserted. The fact that online discussions

Summing up the criminal case online 97 lack the final judgement or assessment of institutionalised legal procedures underlines this volatility. Nobody nods in a finalised way to the law so that a ‘just outcome’ is produced (Burns 2009: 129), or a ‘rebirth of social order’ (Meisenhelder 1981: 52). Disorder continues to coexist together with all the ordering efforts. These things, I argue, cannot be studied merely as information crowdsourcing or digital lynch-mob justice. We need to come closer to the actual and mundane exchanges in communities and observe how they are shaped and received in all kinds of posts, not just those that ‘really’ solve a case or those that mobilise punitive self-justice. Interactionism and ethnomethodology may liberate us from the idea that cognitive puzzle-solving or frenzied witch hunts are the sole or most suitable etiquettes to grasp what today’s sleuthing gatherings are about (cf. Nhan et al. 2017; Wikhamn et al. 2019; Trottier 2014; Myles et al. 2016; Loveluck 2020). We can start to understand that a prerequisite for explaining the attraction of these communities is a scholarly interest in what goes on inside them, and not only an interest in their consequences outside. By following the interaction and what it accomplishes, we can detect the tight fabric of inwardly directed engagement that constitutes this setting and how this fabric makes the setting accountable as well as attractive to its members. I would say that phenomena like summaries – and other formulations, in Garfinkel and Sacks’ (1970) terms, that function as candidate understandings of what participants have said earlier and thereby negotiate ‘what we are talking about’ (Van der Houwen and Sliedrecht 2016) – may offer an analytic window into the study of online crime case communities as social gatherings and thereby an opportunity to understanding them quite close to the members’ own understandings. My chapter is a contribution to this approach. Notes Most of these interviews were conducted by our colleague Johanna Oellig. 1 2 Burke (1969: 59) writes: ‘Men seek for vocabularies that will be faithful reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as deflection of reality’.

References Blumer, Herbert. 1969/1986. Symbolic Interactionism. Perspective and Method. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Burke, Kenneth. 1941. The Philosophy of Literary Form. Berkeley: University of California Press. Burke, Kenneth. 1969. A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: The University of California Press. Burns, Stacy L. 2009. “Doing Justice and Demonstrating Fairness in Small Claims Arbitration”. Human Studies 32(2): 109–131.

98  David Wästerfors Burns, Stacy L. 2012. “ ‘Lecturing’s Work’. A Collaborative Study with Harold Garfinkel”. Human Studies 35(2): 175–192. Deppermann, Arnulf. 2011. “The Study of Formulations as a Key to an Interactional Semantics”. Human Studies 34(2): 115–128. Garfinkel, Harold & Sacks, Harvey. 1970. “On Formal Structures of Practical Actions”. In McKinney, John C. & Tiryakian, Edward A. (Eds.), Theoretical Sociology. Perspectives and Developments, pp. 337–366. New York: Bow Historical Books. Hannerz, Erik, Burcar Alm, Veronika  & Wästerfors, David. 2022. “Accomplishing Reality Media: The Affective Lure of Online Crime Discussions”. Cultural Sociology Online First https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221113944. Heritage, John & Watson, David R. 1979. “Formulations as Conversational Objects”. In Psathas, G. (Ed.), Everyday Language, pp. 123–162. New York: Irvington. Hutchby, Ian. 2003. “Affordances and the Analysis of Technologically-Mediated Interaction”. Sociology 37(3): 581–589. Katz, Jack. 2019. “On Becoming an Ethnographer”. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 48(1): 16–50. Loveluck, Benjamin. 2020. “The Many Shades of Digital Vigilantism. A Typology of Online Self-Justice”. Global Crime 21(3–4): 213–241. Meisenhelder, Thomas. 1981. “Law as Symbolic Action. Kenneth Burke’s Sociology of Law”. Symbolic Interaction 4(1): 43–57. Meredith, Joanne. 2019. “Conversation Analysis and Online Interaction”. Research on Language and Social Interaction 52(3): 241–256, DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2019. 1631040. Myles, David, Millerand, Florence & Benoit-Barné, Chantal. 2016. “Solving Crimes Online. The Contributions of Citizens on the Reddit Bureau of Investigation”. Réseaux 197–198(3): 173–202. Nhan, Johnny, Huey, Laura & Broll, Ryan. 2017. “Digilantism: An Analysis of Crowdsourcing and the Boston Marathon Bombings”. British Journal of Criminology 57(2): 341–361. Svenskarna och internet. 2018. Stockholm: Internetstiftelsen. https://svenskarnao chinternet.se/rapporter/svenskarna-och-internet-2018/ Trottier, Daniel. 2014. “Crowdsourcing CCTV Surveillance on the Internet”. Information, Communication & Society 17(5): 609–626. Van der Houwen, Fleur & Sliedrecht, Keun Young. 2016. “The Form and Function of Formulations: Co-constructing Narratives in Institutional Settings”. Journal of Pragmatics 105: 55–58. Wästerfors, David, Burcar Alm, Veronika & Hannerz, Erik. 2023. “The Bumpy Paths of Online Sleuthing: Exploring the Interactional Accomplishment of Familiarity, Evidence, and Authority in Crime Case Discussions”. New Media & Society Online First https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221149909. Wikhamn, B. R., Ljungberg, J., Rolandsson, B. & Bergquist, M. 2019. “Given Enough Eyeballs, All Crimes Are Shallow – The Organizing of Citizen Collaboration to Solve an Online Detective Story”. Journal of Technology Management & Innovation 14(2): 59–67. Yardley, Eizabeth, Lynes, Adam G. T., Wilson, David & Kelly, Emma. 2018. “What’s the Deal with ‘Websleuthing’? News Media Representations of Amateur Detectives in Networked Spaces”. Crime Media Culture 14(1): 81–109.

Part 2

Identity and community

Identity and community are key concepts in interactionism. They are closely related to discussions about the management and negotiation of identity, the development of subcultural identities, the vulnerability of identity, and the techniques deployed to shield and protect identities from threats by ­others. The discussions in Part 2 of this book contribute to the large body of ­interactionist theory and research in these areas by investigating how people orient to, deploy, and embed technology within their social relationships. They explore the intertwining of social media technology with the practices through which people project and display their identity and their belonging to a particular subculture. The contributors study stigmatization processes on social media and online dating sites and show how people’s activities on these sites reflect normative standards of beauty. And they investigate how people differentiate their orientation to technology and thus help negotiate and help maintain their community’s identity.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-7

6 Organizing subcultural identities on social media Instagram infrastructures and user actions J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah The proliferation of social media in recent years has had an immense impact on social interaction. Web 2.0 has changed spatial and temporal modes of communication between individuals and within/among groups and spawned a significant body of interactionist literature that unpacks emergent, yet patterned practices mediated by social media platforms, virtual domains, and technological affordances through which personal and collective identities are constantly in the making (Varis et al. 2011). Authors like Housley and Smith (2017), for example, are keenly interested in delineating “interaction orders” emergent from “social relations and patterns of integration/exclusion, categorization/ reification, and production/consumption” rearticulated in and through online spaces (pp. 190). According to Lunt (2020: 2958), interaction orders in the digital realm constitute the formation and maintenance of online sociability, or “sociation” (Szabla and Blommaert 2020: 256); that is, the ordered forms of communicative behavior through which we share and exchange symbolic content vis-a-vis social identities and relationships. This chapter contributes to interactionist scholarship on social media and identity through exploring aspects of contemporary subcultural identification on Instagram. Focusing on the straightedge subculture, we pay close attention to users’ productive and consumptive behaviors as embodied in Instagram’s “vernacular visual culture” (Caliandro and Graham 2020: 2). This vernacular visual culture has two parts. First is Instagram’s “platform vernacular” (Gibbs et  al. 2015): the combination of its unique infrastructural affordances and users’ practices of capturing, (hash)tagging, and sharing mundane, personal moments from their everyday lives. Second is straightedge’s subcultural vernacular: the everyday, patterned practices through which individuals identify themselves individually and collectively. Our particular interest is in how the subcultural and the technological are intertwined in people’s everyday practices. To study this, we focus on the observable vernacular practices through which subcultural identities are made recognizable and intelligible by others through interactions on Instagram. In the following sections, we first describe the straightedge subculture, Instagram, and our methods to provide some context for our research. We then draw on Blommaert’s (2019a and b) discussion of infrastructure and action DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-8

102  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah to sensitize our investigation of the organization of subcultural identities on social media, situating that approach within a larger interactionist research tradition on social media. We subsequently turn to our analysis of Instagram content and divide our analysis to consider the infrastructures and actions that characterize straightedge as it is practiced on Instagram. 6.1.  Straightedge subculture Straightedge subculture emerged from the 1980s American hardcore-punk music scene and subsequently grew into a worldwide abstinence-based movement that now extends well beyond punk. The basic tenets of the subculture were formulated in two songs by Washington D.C. punk band Minor Threat in 1981.1 In the first song entitled “Straight Edge,” lyricist Ian MacKaye wrote about how being “straight” (i.e., abstaining from recreational drug use) gave him an “edge” over youths whose hedonistic behaviors did not translate into a meaningful, purposeful existence. The lyrics of a second song entitled “Out of Step” quickly became a set of subcultural rules for like-minded youths interested in promoting positive social change in their lives and the larger society. Drawing inspiration from the cover of the 1980 EP “Minor Disturbance” by Minor Threat’s progenitor The Teen Idles, punks who empathized with these ideals began using the symbol “X” to identify themselves. Within a year of the songs’ releases, some youths had begun calling themselves straightedge. A distinct subcultural identity became recognizable, predicated on collective resistance to mainstream cultures of excess (Haenfler 2004; Irwin 1999). The “X” and “sXe” (an abbreviation of “straight X edge”) becoming key aesthetic symbols both in both face-to-face and virtual communities (Sklar et al. 2022b; Williams 2003). Classic research typically framed subcultures in terms of coherent sets of characteristics shared by bounded groups of individuals, such as social class, socioeconomic status, ideological beliefs, or behavioral norms (e.g., Gordon 1947; Clarke et  al. 1976). From such a perspective, subcultures were conceptualized as being relatively homogenous and analytically separable from mainstream or dominant society, as well as from other subcultural groups. However, as scholarship on youth cultures, consumerism, and media has demonstrated over the last few decades, what we might call subcultures today are quite likely to be embodied in much more diverse and dynamic networks of individuals who share some things in common, but not necessarily to the extent that classic subcultural research suggested (Williams, in press). Straightedge has in many ways retained its distinctive subcultural existence since the early 1980s, particularly through its connection with hardcore music scenes. Yet, the internet and social media have also greatly influenced how people identify with and express their connections to straightedge. Williams’s (2006) research found that, by the late 1990s, there was not only a diverse range of people who self-identified as straightedge but such diversity created conflict as adherents argued whether straightedge was inseparable from its punk

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 103 subculture foundations or whether it could become a symbol for personal commitment to a drug-free lifestyle. Given the proliferation of social media since the early 2000s, this chapter considers how straightedge has continued to contend with this argument and evolve alongside digital culture. 6.2. Instagram While straightedge is clearly visible across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, we focus our attention in this chapter on Instagram. As with many social media platforms, Instagram has become a major site for social science research, with scholars focusing on a range of data units (e.g., users, images, networks, hashtags) from various disciplinary perspectives (communications, psychology, media studies, sociology, and visual studies to name but a few). Yet, Instagram is more than a research site: it is an app; it is a series of programs and algorithms; it is a gigantic database of images, videos, captions, comments, geolocative tags, location tags, likes, emoji and more and more items over time; it is a collection of personal data (connected with similar sets of personal data after the purchase by Facebook); it is an application program interface (API) which enacts rules to allow different apps, platforms and partners to access, add or remove data from the Instagram database; it is a series of decisions and developments over time that create different versions of each of these things. (Leaver et al. 2020: 8) As a platform, Instagram bears many of the affordances and interactions that characterize social media more broadly, such as multimodal content-curation, public commenting as well as private messaging, and personalization of one’s “feed” according to preferences and tastes. It thus facilitates how individuals express identities, which users do through dynamically producing and consuming content that aligns with specific culturally framed lifestyles, values, and interests (Lovelock 2016; Maragh 2017). These may be mainstream phenomena such as motherhood (Tiidenberg and Baym 2017) or subcultural topics such as tattooing (Force 2020). Recent research demonstrates that Instagram is not only personalized and intimate but also broadens users’ interactional networks. As a result, users routinely engage with “the views of [both] proximate and distant others” (Boy and Uitermark 2020: 8). What does this mean for contemporary subcultures such as straightedge? What does what was originally a music-centered subculture rooted in local punk scenes look like on a platform where cultural identities are available for potentially anyone to produce, share and consume? Research shows a loosening of traditional subcultural boundaries on social media, yet Instagram users are neither just part of an undifferentiated mainstream audience nor a distinct subcultural community sealed off from the rest

104  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah of society (Ging and Garvey 2018). Rather, the platform’s infrastructural features allow users and images alike to connect with one another in constellations of similar practices, aesthetics, values, and lifestyle interests. Subcultural studies have demonstrated that Instagram photos can become centerpieces in ritual interactions that create or renew a sense of group membership and belonging, as well as provide the opportunity for users to obtain and exchange (sub)cultural and social capital, and display authenticity (Dupont 2020; Hannerz 2016). Such studies strengthen Lobinger’s (2016) argument that photosharing occurs in multiple ways and for various reasons. For example, photos may be used to communicate something visually, serve as an object around which other narratives or interactions are built, and linked to significant and distal relations (e.g., ‘friends’ or followers) through hashtags. In line with this thinking, our study of Instagram avoids focusing on photos alone but rather on users’ vernacular practices, including the content of images, how they are posted, as well as how they are captioned and (hash)tagged. 6.3.  A flow-oriented approach to studying Instagram Researchers have proposed various methods for studying Instagram, from quantitative analyses of large datasets (see Rogers 2021) to qualitative analyses of smaller data sets (Baker and Walsh 2018; see also Caliandro and Graham 2020). Following Markham and Gammelby (2018), we decided to take a s­ituated and experiential flow-oriented approach. They define flows as involving movement in and through meaning, materiality, time, space, bodies . . . [and] situations to attend to the flows of meanings within material and digital culture. [. . . W]ithin the huge density of entanglements in digitally saturated cultural phenomena, a key characteristic of flow as a process is that it becomes analytically selective, not comprehensive. (pp. 7) This flow-oriented approach is underpinned by a “network sensibility” (Markham and Lindgren 2014) that aligns with our interactionist perspective in two ways. First, rather than emphasizing discrete objects, we recognize the dynamic and iterative entanglement of various online activities that constitute webs of signification. And second, the approach resonates strongly with the interactionist tradition of focusing analytical attention on how identity and meaning come to be made real through ongoing dialogical processes. We conducted an initial hashtag search for #straightedge and #sxe, which seemed like a straightforward (though not a guaranteed) strategy for identifying a wide swathe of content and practices across the platform. Then being analytically selective, we reviewed hundreds of Instagram posts and user profiles, following and taking notes on photos, hashtags, and links as they appeared. At the outset, our only research question was how straightedge identities were

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 105 communicated on Instagram. We were sensitive to visual and (hyper)textual elements of the platform and quickly found a variety of practices of straightedge identification. As Markham and Gammelby (2018) note, “in a flow-oriented research process, the relevance of data emerges as a product of one’s active analysis and reflexivity rather than as an a priori assumption” (pp. 9). We focused on how users constructed and communicated straightedge identities aesthetically through their photos, rather than engaging in a disembodied and decontextualized analysis of photographic content. Moving through subcultural flows soon turned us on to patterns regarding hashtag vernaculars, user accounts and profiles, and how navigating on the platform affected the identity performances we observed. It quickly became apparent, for example, how important hashtags were alongside photographs in communicating straightedge subculture and identity. Highfield and Leaver (2015: 2) describe hashtags as “markers for the main subjects, ideas, events, locations, or emotions featured in [Instagram] images.” We saw hashtags not only as markers (i.e., signifiers) but also as instances of purposeful action taken by users in the process of subcultural practice. Searching the hashtags such as #straightedge, #straightedgegirls, #straightedgehardcore, and #edgeday led to different “metapictures” (Rogers 2021) representing distinct patterns of straightedge lifestyle practices, ideologies, and embodiments. Rogers describes the significance of metapictures for social media research – namely, that their use early in the research process can uncover patterns that warrant further analysis. Figure 6.1 shows two metapictures we created to organize visual patterns of embodied straightedge identity we found as we flowed through subcultural Insta-space.2 The first organizes straightedge identities embodied through music, while the second highlights veganism and

Figure 6.1 3 × 3 Metapictures of straightedge identities connected to music (left) and veganism (right).

106  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah animal activism. Such images were often accompanied by relevant hashtags such as #straightedgehardcore or #xVx (a V for vegan surrounded by a pair of straightedge Xs). We also found a variety of user accounts and account uses – from personal accounts where individuals posted pictures of themselves with subcultural hashtags to non-personal accounts that posted interviews with self-identifying members of the subculture, marketed subcultural merchandise, circulated subcultural memes, or generated new shared knowledge and interactions among users through activities like surveys. We collected and organized Instagram photos and other images, hashtags, comments, and hyperlinks using qualitative analysis software and used Instagram’s algorithmic affordances to make notes about how many followers, views, likes, and shares posts and accounts had, when possible.3 Interactionist scholars often emphasize the enduring relevance of actionoriented and practice-focused ethnography, which pays attention to both the processual nature of social organization and the plurality of identity repertoires online (Housley and Smith 2017; Varis et  al. 2011). Blommaert (2019a) argues for a contextualized, empirical approach that focuses explicitly on the reflexive actions and interactions of individuals in addition to the shared sensibilities that make identities recognizable and intelligible as subcultural (e.g., Holt 2010; Khazraee and Novak 2018). On the one hand, we acknowledge the postmodernist and post-subcultural literatures, which argue that individual selves are becoming increasingly “fragmented” due to the proliferation of consumer and media technologies into everyday life and that what was once seen as subcultural is now often framed as lifestyle instead (Muggleton 2000; Wahlen and Laamanen 2015). Certainly, social media afford varied and multivalent trajectories of leisure and lifestyle activities (Boy and Uitermark 2020). However, the “substance” that characterizes subcultures – distinctive values and tastes, shared identity, practical commitment, and a significant degree of autonomy vis-a-vis mainstream culture (Hodkinson 2004) – remains clearly visible on social media. In the rest of this chapter, we explore how subcultural identities are empirically visible in Instagram posts. As we will show, patterned activities in straightedge’s vernacular culture made subcultural identities come alive as a “mosaic” (Ulusoy and Firat 2018) through diverse yet patterned sets of practices on Instagram. 6.4.  Organizing subcultural identities Referring back to Figure  6.1, our approach frames such photos as identity presentations, made real through the practical and symbolic interaction of people doing things together. Identities are communicated through interactions and are formatted, reflexive, recognizable, and intelligible as specific sorts of identities and actions by others (Blommaert 2019a). This approach presupposes “at least two things: (a) that no social action is ‘individual’ in any

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 107 sense of the term but always interactional; (b) that the formats of social action need to be learned [and] acquired” (ibid: 4). These ideas apply to how we conceptualize identities as well as actions. Blommaert (2019b) further suggests focusing on three elements that together lay the foundations for a “programmatic analytical strategy” for the study of identities through social media practices: infrastructures, actions, and moralizations. First, infrastructures refer to the physical, technical, or otherwise objective conditions that surround social practices. For example, the physical size and layout of a music venue will enable and/or constrain how identities might be performed by bands or audience members. Likewise, Instagram’s infrastructure offers a unique set of affordances when it comes to communicating identities (Davis 2020; Leaver et  al. 2020). Second, the focus on actions acknowledges people’s actual, observable, situated behaviors as the “hard evidence” of identification, rather than relying on assumptions about who people are. Research has shown that identities are shaped by the interplay between digital infrastructures on the one hand and presentational strategies on the other (Zhao 2005; Davis 2014). Third, moralizations refer to actions through which moral-normative interactional orders are made by and for users on social media platforms. Moralizations may be observed through articulations of users’ existing understandings of subcultural beliefs, values, or norms, or through substantive or phatic actions that are more situationally than culturally relevant (Graham 2019; Tovares 2019). Limited space prevents us from discussing moralizations in this chapter, but we now turn to an exploration of how infrastructures and actions afford expressions of straightedge identities on Instagram. 6.4.1. Infrastructures

Interactionists have long noted the significance of both physical and social elements of settings that afford individuals’ social behaviors and s­ elf-presentations (Thomas and Thomas 1928; Goffman 1961). Today, social media’s technological infrastructures shape the what, how, and why of such processes. Commenting on Twitter, Giles et al. (2015: 49) point out how the platform’s limit of 140 characters per tweet constrained its communicative content, while the use of “links, #hashtags and other paralinguistic devices often has a rhetorical effect.” But Twitter is not Facebook, is not Reddit, is not Instagram – each has a unique set of features and affordances. Further, it is not that such digital infrastructures simply enable and/or constrain identity expressions but rather that they afford negotiations of them among a multitude of actors, intentions, and actions (Klowait 2019). Instagram’s infrastructure supports its primary function, which Manovich (cited in Leaver et al. 2020: 39) describes as “aesthetic visual communication.” Focusing first on the production aspect of Instagram use, the app is mobile and allows users to create usernames and profiles, and then take and upload

108  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah pictures from smartphones directly to the platform, and to share those pictures as posts. It simultaneously makes such information available to other users on the platform based on the uploader’s account settings, which manage who can see their content. Users can edit pictures before uploading and add a caption, hashtags, and location information. Once posted, pictures are archived chronologically in the user’s account and thus provide a visual history of the user’s actions. Instagram users can later delete or customize information they post, affording a constantly editable digital self. Shifting to the consumption aspect, Instagram is available as a smartphone app as well as an internet website. As users interact with content, the platform records their behaviors and algorithmically builds a personalized feed that they can swipe or scroll through. Users can search for and follow accounts and hashtags, and they can then tap or click to open specific posts or go to specific account profile pages. They can like, bookmark, and share posts as well as comment on them using text and emojis. Using the @ and # functions, users can also link their comments back to specific individuals/users or to topics/ themes. Finally, Instagram allows users to DM (direct message) each other, thus facilitating private communication. When searching Instagram by hashtag, the platform presents results in the form of photographic collages, organized in two ways. First, the app organizes

Figure 6.2 Example of a personal post with straightedge symbols visible in the photo, caption, and hashtags.

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 109

Figure 6.3 3 × 3 Metapictures of #straightedgegirls (left) and #straightedgehardcore (right).

the results under two categories: “top posts” and “most recent” posts. Instagram does not share precisely how it determines what to share under “top posts,” but we found that when we searched the hashtag #straightedge from our own individuals Instagram accounts, we got similar but not identical results. (Because we independently followed the subcultural flows, we were drawn down separate, unique paths of content with distinct algorithmic consequences.) Second, the app organizes the pictures into three columns with an endless number of rows. In this way, Instagram’s infrastructure provided us with naturally occurring metapictures of straightedge. Figure 6.3 showcases two naturally occurring metapictures generated by the app when we searched using the hashtags #straightedgegirls and #straightedgehardcore. These 3 × 3 sets of photos were not as cohesive as the metapictures we manually assembled in Figure  6.1 but nevertheless demonstrated distinct visual patterns in straightedgers’ vernacular patterns of identity presentation. Most obviously, the metapictures cohere with their hashtags. For example, all eight of the photos on the left (one is a screenshot advertising a survey, rather than a picture) present women in various contexts and poses, while all nine of the photos on the right present aspects of hardcore music (mostly records, but also bands and music equipment). While the focus on infrastructure is helpful, it may be seen to offer only superficial approximations of human action and relations. When a consideration of interaction is reduced to a focus on infrastructural features alone, the complexities and nuances of actions and context can be undermined (Hall 2016). In the next section, we will therefore explore identity-making online as an emergent, dialogical process contextualized within aesthetic and discursive orders, where photos, captions, and hashtags can be fruitfully analyzed in terms of actions as well as infrastructures.

110  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah 6.4.2. Actions

“In observing online discourse, we cannot as a rule use reliable a priori assumptions about the participants” involved in social-media communications (Blommaert 2019b: 489). Rather than assume what straightedge identity already is before going onto Instagram, we wanted to see how straightedge identities become knowable through platform and subcultural vernaculars. Our interactionist approach therefore paid special attention to Instagram posts as actions rather than to photographs as objects. Instead of taking a strictly content-analytic approach, we approached posts as links in interactional chains wherein users intentionally produce, present, view, and act towards others’ presentations of straightedge identity. Figures  6.2 and 6.4 show how straightedge identities are instantiated through users’ actions – most immediately apparent on Instagram through photos. Figure 6.4 shows a 3 × 3 set of photos from an individual user’s feed

Figure 6.4  Presenting identities visually through Instagram.

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 111 posted over a two-month period, with the oldest (1) in the bottom-right. Each post (including photo, hashtags, and caption) articulates personal or social identities connected to (1) dirt biking, (2) clothing, (3) a past self, (4) straightedge, (5) black metal, (6) Halloween, (7) fandom, (8) clothing, and (9) photography. Seven of the photos are selfies that emphasize what she is wearing. Clothing is often used to articulate social identities (Sklar et  al. 2022a) and the XXX on the shirt in post (4) indexes straightedge in the same way that the band shirt in post (5) indexes black metal or the helmets, goggles and jackets in post (1) index dirt biking. By themselves, these posts are polysemic and could signify any number of things. However, text is also an important aspect of Instagram’s platform vernacular and the captions and tags anchor subcultural meanings. Looking at post (4) in more detail (see Figure 6.2), we see a caption that begins “Happy Edge Day!”4 and continues with a story about how the user’s father’s substance abuse and death motivated her to take on and maintain a straightedge lifestyle. Here, we see a second kind of action that works alongside photos – narrative captioning. Research has highlighted that generating and maintaining narratives online are important strategies for instantiating identities because narratives are articulated through interactive frameworks of relationality and belonging (Bates et al. 2020; Cover 2012; O’Leary and Murphy 2019). In their study on gamers, Albrechtslund (2010) observed how gamers generated collective identities through storytelling and how social media provided unique opportunities to express the core values and self-image of the community (p. 122). Similarly, by narrating her personal experiences with family substance abuse, the user crafts a straightedge identity within a larger personal biography that is oriented toward core subcultural values of abstinence and personal well-being and presented as an individual lifestyle choice (see also Haenfler in press). Her identity narrative is simultaneously visual and textual. However, subcultural identity narratives on social media cannot be aggregated into a single, cohesive form. Comparing the above discussion with Figure 6.5, we see another “Edge Day” post that also features a straightedge T-shirt, but with a quite different accompanying caption. The user in Figure 6.5 first wishes “happy #edgeday” to his straight edge “family,” which he says he has been part of for 21 years. He identifies a specific hardcore music show at which he made his “lifelong oath” to be drugfree and then describes his “passion” for the hardcore music scene and straightedge community. Instead of an individual lifestyle, straightedge identity here is generated as, first and foremost, a social identity centered on hardcore punk. While users typically communicated their identities subjectively through photographs and captions, they also employed a third kind of action – hashtags – to strategically direct those self-presentations to relevant or “significant” others. Hashtags thus served a relational or intersubjective function by affording users the ability to make their posts more easily locatable and accessible to other users. Hashtags have long been employed to organize and communicate identities across online/offline contexts and communities. On Twitter,

112  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah

Figure 6.5  Presenting straightedge identity through hardcore music.

hashtags were originally designed to function as “meta data” that provided referential information to tweets and to be both reusable and repeatable to “improve contextualization” for users’ online actions (Cooper 2013). Baker and Walsh’s (2018) Instagram study found that users employed hashtags to both signify their belonging to and address a community or “imagined audience” of similar healthy lifestyle enthusiasts. Similarly, our data show that hashtags are not merely ‘texts’ but relational hypertexts that generate and signify interactions. Turning once again to Figure  6.2, we see that in addition to the selfie displaying an XXX T-shirt and the narrative discussed earlier, the user lists 15 hashtags: #straightedge #straightedgeday #edgeday #edgeday2021 #nationalstraightedgeday #straightedgeforlife #straightedgeworldwide #straightedgesociety #straightedgehardcore #straightedgeshirt #straightedgegirls #girlswithtattoos #girlswithpiercings #proudofmyself #neverbreak Housley and Smith (2017: 196) liken hashtags to Goffman’s concept of “frames,” which organize users’ understandings and experiences of Instagram posts. We argue that, additionally, hashtags frame understandings and experiences of subcultural identity. In this particular post, 11 of the 15 hashtags include the term “straightedge” or “edge,” thus clearly framing the post as subcultural. About half are broad and inclusive (#nationalstraightedgeday, #straightedgeworldwide, #straightedgesociety), with only one specifying hardcore music culture. Three frame identity in terms of personal commitment and self-esteem (#straightedgeforlife, #neverbreak, #proudofmyself), while three link to heterogeneous gendered identities (#straightedgegirls,

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 113

Figure 6.6  Hashtags as relational identity expressions.

#girlswithtattoos, #girlswithpiercings). We also found that many users regularly employed hashtags to present straightedge alongside other identities. Figure 6.6 shows three examples. In post A, the user grounds her straightedge identity in the hardcore punk scene, like in Figure 6.5, through her “straight edge hardcore” T-shirt and the hashtags #bostonhardcore and #youthcrew. In post B, the user embeds her straightedge identity within the fitness lifestyle

114  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah identity discussed by Baker and Walsh (2018) as demonstrated through a photo at the gym with the hashtags #fitfam, #gymgirl, #bodybuilding, and so on. Finally, in post C, the poster articulates straightedge identity as personal and value-laden and centered on abstinence and well-being, like in Figure 6.2, through the user’s “sober AF” T-shirt and hashtags such as #alcoholfree, #cleanandsober, #mentalhealthawareness, and so on. These findings reiterate the importance of hashtags for connecting individual identity presentations to larger cultures and lifestyles (Barron and Bollen 2022). Viewed as analytically distinct but working together, photos, captions, and hashtags constitute a set of mutually supportive actions that culminate towards unique subcultural identity expressions through which users communicate their understanding of and orientation to straightedge identities alongside a plethora of other late-capitalist lifestyle identities (Jameson 1991). Some scholars might see such examples as indicative of the disintegration of subcultures (Bennett 2014) or as context collapse within networked publics (Vitak 2012) – both alleged outcomes of social fragmentation via the rise of “asynchronous interaction with unspecified audiences” (Housley and Smith 2017: 197). We instead interpret these data as demonstrating strategic actions through which users seek to contextualize their Instagram posts within specific networks of users with shared values or tastes. 6.5. Conclusion In this chapter, we explored how subcultural identities are afforded and expressed on Instagram. In the interactionist tradition, we paid close attention to users’ “practices, routines, and competencies that are reflexively sensitive to context whilst producing the context in which they occur” (Housley and Smith 2017: 189). We explored two elements proposed by Blommaert (2019a) to be significant for understanding identities on social media: infrastructures and actions. We first described how Instagram’s infrastructure affords users’ identity expressions as well as researchers’ analysis of them through metapictures. Looking at infrastructure brings to light the unique technological affordances that facilitate subcultural identity work on any given social media platform. We then looked at posts as actions that portrayed straightedge identities visually through photos, narratively through captions, and hypertextually through hashtags. Our focus on action highlights the discursive and constructed nature of subcultural identities. Research has shown that Instagram posts can signal cohesion and belonging by presenting “those things that hold us together” (Baker and Walsh 2018: 4565). We found support for this idea but also saw that photos, captions, and hashtags afforded a diverse set of ways to communicate identity. Social media platforms like Instagram boast discursive affordances for the construction of identities that are visually, narratively, and hypertextually embodied. Our interactionist perspective foregrounds how photos, captions, and hashtags represent distinct yet aligned actions that not only make subcultural identities

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 115 come to life but also articulate the intensification of social activity and sociality discussed in other social media research (see Kennedy 2016) through which such identities are communicated. Photos, captions, and hashtags are all continually unfolding resignifications of experience tethered to personal understandings of who users are as individuals and as members of communities (Granic et al. 2020). Social media technologies influence how identities are defined and redefined in a network of multimodal discourses, practices, interactions, and situations. Identity prosumption on social media is inherently characteristic of the “participatory cultures” perpetuated via web 2.0 and is closely related to how knowledges associated with identity-making are co-constructed through interpersonal interactions and not simply the circulation and exchange of freefloating information and ideas, as is often suggested by cultural media scholars (Hara and Sanfilippo 2016). How identities come to be online is always contextually layered. Actions become referents for meaning through mutually reflexive, recognizable, and intelligible communication to a “plurality of others” (Thompson 2018: 10) that draw on contextualized experiences, (sub) cultural norms, and symbols and are uniquely mediated by the infrastructures of social media platforms themselves (Chernoff and Widdicombe 2014). Notes The lyrics for these songs can be easily found online. 1 2 We collected photos only from publicly available Instagram accounts and blurred individuals’ faces. We also reordered sets of hashtags and reworded or paraphrased captions to further obfuscate users’ identities. 3 Interestingly, web browsers directly and differentially affected our research efforts. The most striking example of this was the first author’s ability to see the number of likes and shares on some posts, while the same information was not visible to the second author, despite both of us being logged into our personal Instagram accounts and both of us using Google Chrome on Windows OS. 4 Edge Day, October 17, is celebrated annually by many self-identifying straightedgers to symbolize their individual and collective refrain from what they see as mainstream hedonistic practices around alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

References Albrechtslund, Anne-Mette. 2010. “Gamers telling stories.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Vol.16 (1): 112–124. Baker, Stephanie Alice, and Michael James Walsh. 2018. “ ‘Good morning fitfam’: Top posts, hashtags and gender display on Instagram.” New Media & Society Vol.20 (12): 4553–4570. Barron, Alexander T. J., and Johan Bollen. 2022. “Quantifying collective identity online from self-defining hashtags.” Scientific Reports [preprint]. https://doi.org/0.21203/ rs.3.rs-960863/v1. Bates, Adam, Trish Hobman, and Beth T. Bell. 2020. “ ‘Let me do what i please with it . . . Don’t decide my identity for me’: LGBTQ+ youth experiences of social media in narrative identity development.” Journal of Adolescent Research Vol.35 (1): 51–83.

116  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah Bennett, Andy. 2014. “Youth culture and the internet: A subcultural or post-­subcultural phenomena.” In Subcultures Network (eds.), Subculture, Popular Music and Social Change, 89–103. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. Blommaert, Jan. 2019a. “Online with Garfinkel.” Tilburg Papers in Cultural Studies #229. Tilburg University (https://alternative-democracy-research.org/2018/01/17/ online-with-garfinkel/). Blommaert, Jan. 2019b. “From groups to actions and back in online-offline sociolinguistics.” Multilingua Vol.38 (4): 485–493. Boy, John D., and Justus Uitermark. 2020. “Lifestyle enclaves in the Instagram city?” Social Media + Society Vol.6 (3): 2056305120940698. Caliandro, Alessandro, and James Graham. 2020. “Studying Instagram beyond selfies.” Social Media + Society Vol.6 (2): 2056305120924779. Chernoff, Nathalie, and Sue Widdicombe. 2014. “ ‘I was bored so . . .’: Motivational accounts of participation in an online emo group.” Journal of Youth Studies Vol.18 (3): 305–321. Clarke, John, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts. 1976. “Subcultures, cultures, and class.” In Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds.), Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, 9–74. London: Routledge. Cooper, Belle B. 2013. “The surprising history of twitter’s hashtag origin and 4 ways to get the most out of them.” Retrieved 7 June 2022 (https://buffer.com/ resources/a-concise-history-of-twitter-hashtags-and-how-you-should-use-themproperly/). Cover, Rob. 2012. “Performing and undoing identity online: Social networking, ­identity theories and the incompatibility of online profiles and friendship regimes.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Vol.18 (2): 177–193. Davis, Jenny L. 2014. “Triangulating the self: Identity processes in a connected era.” Symbolic Interaction Vol.37 (4): 500–523. Davis, Jenny L. 2020. How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things. Harvard: MIT Press. Dupont, Tyler. 2020. “Authentic subcultural identities and social media: American skateboarders and Instagram.” Deviant Behavior Vol.41 (5): 649–664. Force, William Ryan. 2020. “Tattooing in the age of Instagram.” Deviant Behavior Vol.43 (4): 1–17. Gibbs, Martin, James Meese, Michael Arnold, Bjorn Nansen, and Marcus Carter. 2015. “#Funeral and Instagram: Death, social media, and platform vernacular.” Information, Communication & Society Vol.18 (3): 255–268. Giles, David, Wyke Stommel, Trena Paulus, Jessica Lester, and Darren Reed. 2015. “Microanalysis of online data: The methodological development of ‘digital CA’.” Discourse, Context & Media Vol.7: 45–51. Ging, Debbie, and Sarah Garvey. 2018. “ ‘Written in these scars are the stories I can’t explain’: A  content analysis of pro-ana and thinspiration image sharing on Instagram.” New Media & Society Vol.20 (3): 1181–1200. Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books. Gordon, Milton M. 1947. “The concept of the sub-culture and its application.” Social Forces Vol.26 (1): 40–42. Graham, Sage L. 2019. “A wink and a nod: The role of emojis in forming digital communities.” Multilingua Vol.38 (4): 377–400.

Organizing subcultural identities on social media 117 Granic, Isabela, Hiromitsu Morita, and Hanneke Scholten. 2020. “Young people’s digital interactions from a narrative identity perspective: Implications for mental health and wellbeing.” Psychological Inquiry Vol.31 (3): 258–270. Haenfler, Ross. 2004. “Rethinking subcultural resistance: Core values of the straight edge movement.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Vol.33 (4): 406–436. Haenfler, Ross. In press. “Subculture, scene, lifestyle, or movement? Conceptualizing straight edge from insider and academic perspectives.” In J. P. Williams (ed.), Interpreting Subcultures: Approaching, Contextualizing, and Embodying Sense-Making Practices in Alternative Cultures. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Hall, Jeffrey A. 2016. “When is social media use social interaction? Defining mediated social interaction.” New Media & Society Vol.20 (1): 162–179. Hannerz, Erik. 2016. “Scrolling down the line: A  few notes on using Instagram as point of access for graffiti research.” SAUC Journal Vol.2 (2): 37–40. Hara, Noriko, and Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo. 2016. “Co-constructing controversy: Content analysis of collaborative knowledge negotiation in online communities.” Information, Communication & Society Vol.19 (11): 1587–1604. Highfield, Tim, and Tama Leaver. 2015. “A  methodology for mapping Instagram hashtags.” First Monday Vol.20 (1): 1–11. Hodkinson, Paul. 2004. “The goth scene and (sub) cultural substance.” In Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris (eds.), After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture, 135–147. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Holt, Thomas J. 2010. “Examining the role of technology in the formation of deviant subcultures.” Social Science Computer Review Vol.28 (4): 466–481. Housley, William, and Robin James Smith. 2017. “Interactionism and digital society.” Qualitative Research Vol.17 (2): 187–201. Irwin, Darrell D. 1999. “The straight edge subculture: Examining the youths’ drugfree way.” Journal of Drug Issues Vol.29 (2): 365–380. Jameson, Fredric. 1991. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Kennedy, Jenny. 2016. “Conceptual boundaries of sharing.” Information, Communication & Society Vol.19 (4): 461–474. Khazraee, Emad, and Alison N. Novak. 2018. “Digitally mediated protest: Social media affordances for collective identity construction.” Social Media+ Society Vol.4 (1). Klowait, Nils Oliver. 2019. “Interactionism in the age of ubiquitous telecommunication.” Information, Communication & Society Vol.22 (5): 605–621. Leaver, Tama, Tim Highfield, and Crystal Abidin. 2020. Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Lobinger, Katharina. 2016. “Photographs as things–photographs of things. A textomaterial perspective on photo-sharing practices.” Information, Communication  & Society Vol.19 (4): 475–488. Lovelock, Michael. 2016. “Catching a catfish: Constructing the ‘good’ social media user in reality television.” Television & New Media Vol.18 (3): 203–217. Lunt, Peter. 2020. “Beyond Bourdieu: The interactionist foundations of media practice theory.” International Journal of Communication Vol.14: 2946–2963. Maragh, Raven S. 2017. “Authenticity on ‘Black Twitter’: Reading racial performance and social networking.” Television & New Media Vol.19 (7): 591–609. Markham, Annette N., and Ane K. Gammelby. 2018. “Moving through digital flows: An epistemological and practical approach.” In U. Flick (ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

118  J. Patrick Williams and Samuel Judah Markham, Annette N., and Simon Lindgren. 2014. “From object to flow: Network sensibility, symbolic interactionism, and social media.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction Vol.43: 7–41. Muggleton, David. 2000. Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style. Oxford: Berg Publishers. O’Leary, Killian, and Stephen Murphy. 2019. “Moving beyond Goffman: The performativity of anonymity on SNS.” European Journal of Marketing Vol.53 (1): 83–107. Rogers, Richard. 2021. “Visual media analysis for Instagram and other online platforms.” Big Data & Society Vol.8 (1). Sklar, Monica, Jessica Strübel, Katharine Freiberg, and Sara Elhabbassi. 2022a. “Beyond subculture the meaning of style: Chronicling directions of scholarship on dress since Hebdige and Muggleton.” Fashion Theory Vol.26 (6): 715–735. Sklar, Monica, Jessica Strübel, and Ross Haenfler. 2022b. “Sold out or bought in? Complexities of the X Swatch as subcultural accessory for the straight edge scene.” Fashion, Style & Popular Culture Vol.9 (1–2): 43–64. Szabla, Malgorzata, and Jan Blommaert. 2020. “Does context really collapse in social media interaction?” Applied Linguistics Review Vol.11 (2): 251–279. Thomas, W. I., and D. Thomas. 1928. The Child in America. New York: Knopf. Thompson, John B. 2018. “Mediated interaction in the digital age.” Theory, Culture & Society Vol.37 (1): 3–28. Tiidenberg, Katrin, and Nancy K. Baym. 2017. “Learn it, buy it, work it: Intensive pregnancy on Instagram.” Social Media + Society Vol.3 (1): 2056305116685108. Tovares, Alla V. 2019. “Negotiating ‘thick’ identities through ‘light’ practices: YouTube metalinguistic comments about language in Ukraine.” Multilingua Vol.38 (4): 459–484. Ulusoy, Emre, and Fuat A. Fırat. 2018. “Toward a theory of subcultural mosaic: Fragmentation into and within subcultures.” Journal of Consumer Culture Vol.18 (1): 21–42. Varis, Piia, Xuan Wang, and Caixia Du. 2011. “Identity Rrpertoires on the Internet: Opportunities and Constraints.” Applied Linguistics Review Vol.2: 265–284. Vitak, Jessica. 2012. “The impact of context collapse and privacy on social network site disclosures.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media Vol.56 (4): 451–470. Wahlen, Stefan, and Mikko Laamanen. 2015. “Consumption, lifestyle and social movements.” International Journal of Consumer Studies Vol.39 (5): 397–403. Williams, J. Patrick. 2003. “The straightedge subculture on the Internet: A case study of style-display online.” Media International Australia Vol.107 (1): 61–74. Williams, J. Patrick. 2006. “Authentic identities: Straightedge subculture, music, and the internet.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Vol.35 (2): 173–200. Williams, J. Patrick. In press. “Making sense of subcultures: Interpretive practice and/ in subcultural theory.” In J. P. Williams (ed.), Interpreting Subcultures: Approaching, Contextualizing, and Embodying Sense-Making Practices in Alternative Cultures. Bristol: Bristol University Press. Zhao, Shanyang. 2005. “The digital self: Through the looking glass of telecopresent others.” Symbolic Interaction Vol.28 (3): 387–405.

7 A queer kind of stigma Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan

Digital technologies are increasingly present in our everyday lives and progressively displacing “offline” modes of interaction. The introduction of geo-­location-based dating apps represents one of the ways in which such technologies have changed the way we interact. A recent study conducted by researchers at Harvard found that 65% of same-sex couples met online, compared to just 39% of heterosexual couples (Rosenfeld et al. 2019). They argue that online dating has become one of the preferred ways that relationships are forged; however, it remains an understudied topic in sociology. We are interested in analyzing these online social interactions through a Goffmanian lens to understand the ways in which stigma is implicated in these relationships and how stigma functions within the marginalized community of gay men. The most popular geo-location-based dating app is Grindr, which boasts 6 million monthly active users and was recently bought by a Chinese tech company for $152 million (Reyes-Velarde 2018). While many individuals, especially heterosexuals, take for granted the ability to access traditional institutions for finding short- and/or long-term intimacy, gay men, historically, have not enjoyed the same privileges. In urban areas, Grindr’s introduction provided gay men with alternatives for finding intimacy not based upon participation in gay cultural spaces (i.e., gay bars, bath houses, and other outlets) which have increasingly become gentrified, making participation in these spaces more expensive and less accessible by those of lower-class position (Matteson 2015, 2021).1 Outside of urban areas, Grindr also provides those in more rural spaces with unprecedented access in the absence of “traditional” gay institutions and safe spaces for intimacy. Thus, Grindr represents a techno-social innovation occurring at a time in which gay urban enclaves are becoming more gentrified, and exclusive to those occupying privileged class positions, and in which digital alternatives were not yet available. 7.1.  Towards a sociology of gay spaces While Goffman’s work has often been applied in a variety of offline settings, this chapter is part of a growing literature utilizing the work of Goffman and DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-9

120  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan other interactionists to understand the online world. As we will demonstrate, the stigma management concepts identified by Goffman (1963) as information control, passing, and covering exist in the online world but are far more overt. This not only extends Goffman’s work into the online world but also provides us a unique opportunity by which to study stigma and to further develop its sociological significance. Beyond this, it also illustrates the ways gay men in particular navigate privilege and stigma at the micro level and also reproduce the stigmatizing categories they experience within the dominant culture. While Grindr represents a relatively new frontier, offering new possibilities for gay men to interact, we argue that it is an extension of what sociologists refer to as a sexual field (Green 2013). As such, Grindr is an important part of the history of queer space, rather than a distinctly new phenomenon. Queer spaces and locales arose out of the oppression and stigmatization of LGBTQIA2+ individuals who sought to create spaces in which they could express their desires, and to find intimate “others” (Humphreys 1970, 1972; Weinberg and Williams 1974; Ghaziani 2014; Orne 2017). However, as social acceptance for LGBTQIA2+ persons has increased, the need for these spaces has been called into question (see Ghaziani 2014), and the role of gay dating apps, like Grindr, has allowed for users to connect beyond the confines of physical locations (Brekhus 2003; Woo 2013; Ghaziani 2014; Orne 2017). Early scholarship on gay intimate spaces traces their etiology to their stigmatized sexual identity (Goffman 1963; Weinberg and Williams 1974; Orne 2017). The ontological stance of these studies is that gay spaces emerged in response to societal-wide stigma experienced by gay men. More recent studies taking a critical approach have argued that the egalitarianism observed in these early studies missed the inequalities experienced within those spaces and also in who was able to access those spaces (Valocchi 1999; Han 2008; Callander et al. 2015; Robinson 2015, 2016, 2017, Forbes and Ueno 2019). The result is the creation of a hierarchy of sexual identities rooted in queer cultural capital that becomes transmitted to participants in these settings (Bourdieu 1977). Grindr then is an extension of gay male culture and builds upon the socially constructed queer reality that has existed before it, and continues despite it, even as it shapes its development. Like other social media apps, users bring with them the norms of interaction found in the offline world. While users often try to apply the same norms as those found in “real life” interactions, as Gottschalk (2019) has unpacked in greater detail, the digital world is marked with ambiguities over how we relate to each other, how to perform cultural norms of interaction, and how to enforce violations of norms. While interaction in the offline world is governed by norms of civility (Musolf 2003: 156), the world of Grindr is ambiguous as its status for some users is that of a “hook up” app, for others a dating site, and still for others a space to find platonic friendship (Rosen 2010; Vernon 2010).2 However, in situ, as Licoppe et  al. (2016) found, users often find themselves utilizing linguistic strategies that illicit sexual relationships (i.e., hookups) over other relationships – however, other research has also factored

A queer kind of stigma 121 in the app design (Conner 2019, 2023). Our findings here mirror this often overt linguistic strategy that problematizes notions of community, by emphasizing the hedonistic characteristics and sexual capital of users. Sociologically, users’ interactions and presentations of self on Grindr act as a window onto the dominant ideologies of gay culture and identity (Levine 1998; Mulvey 1975; Wood 2004). Further, Grindr can be thought of as an encapsulation of what it means to be a gay man, or, at least, what a successful performance of this looks like (Conner 2019). As a group, gay men engage in a variety of performative acts to reaffirm their identities, making them prime candidates in which to further understand the presentations of gay selves and social stigma (Levine 1998; Dhoest and Szulc 2016). As we will show, the online world of Grindr amplifies these performances due to the limitations on how individuals communicate. Grindr also exists as part of a digital ecosystem in which communication is sped up in the name of efficiency, and for many scholars at the expense of quality (Gottschalk and Whitmer 2016; Hogan 2010; Gottschalk 2019). 7.2.  Life on Grindr Our findings3 here are organized based on Goffman’s theory of stigma. First, because stigma exists in relationship to a “normal” identity, we explore the normative environment of the app. Second, we explore the ways in which users employ stigma management techniques (information control, passing/ covering) to show how users reinforce cultural norms and punish those who transgress. In doing so, we also consider how digital technologies allow for new ways to stigmatize others (blocking and non-responding) and manage stigmatized identities. Finally, we conclude by discussing the broader implications of this study including how this chapter extends Goffman’s theory of stigma by looking at an already marginalized group and how they reproduce stigma within their own separate culture. This chapter frames being rejected on Grindr as a form of stigma experienced in the online dating marketplace provided by the app. While we prompted our interviewees to talk generally about their experience of the app, like student evaluations of college courses or other forms of online social media, the respondents likely focused on their own most negative experiences. As such, some caution is urged when interpreting these findings in any kind of Grand narrative and more as a general process of interaction and interpretation of behavior. This is not unlike Goffman’s studies, such as Gender Advertisements, which were largely based on convenience sampling rather than a systematic analysis of data. 7.2.1.  The normative erotic social order

Grindr is one of the first dating apps to organize its members into a grid of pictures which displays others based on their proximity to the user – see

122  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan

Figure 7.1  Grindr marketing data from www.grindr.com.

Figure  7.1. Grindr’s reliance on images as the initial means by which users present themselves means that it is also the way in which users’ performances are judged, making these images key components of user’s online impression management. These performances utilize cultural tropes in which users fit themselves into predefined categories rooted in heteronormative, or perhaps homonormative (see Ferguson 2005), standards of beauty (Mulvey 1975; Duncan 1994; Burke 2016; MacCallum et al. 2016; Gottlieb 2017). The goal

A queer kind of stigma 123 for users then is to accentuate their sexual capital and to avoid being stigmatized (Green 2008). Even before users have the chance to engage with others, the app orients users towards cultural tropes found in gay culture (Levine 1998). The app consists of 14 categories called “tribes”: Bear, Clean-Cut, Daddy, Discreet, Geek, Jock, Leather, Otter, Poz, Rugged, Trans, Twink, Sober, and Not Specified. Most of the “tribes” correspond to users’ appearances using the slang terminology of gay culture (see Levine 1998; Barrett 2017). Users selfidentify among these groups just as they do with other characteristics such as height, weight, gender identity, sexual position, eye and hair color, and “looking for”. Thus, users must evaluate where and how they fit into categories of gayness even before they are presented with images of others. Users attempted to establish norms in the digital world of Grindr by posting rules within their profiles on how users should approach them. It was not uncommon to see users put “please say hello”, “get to know me”, or caution others against sending nude photos of themselves in their profile. Such requests can be understood, sociologically, as an example of a norm of civility (Musolf 2003: 156), demonstrating how users attempt to transfer offline norms of interaction onto the digital world. In this way users’ profiles became ways in which users established boundaries and communicated their desires. This is perhaps why we observed a variety of users posting criteria on their profiles that warned against other users of a particular race, body type, HIV status, or age attempting to contact them.4 Figure 7.2 is one such example of a profile. Profiles such as these communicate cultural narratives of desirability, and for users who do not meet these definitions, potential stigma. Most users who had profiles, such as those mentioned earlier, justified such “lists” as “preferences”. By framing them this way, it reified and masked the underlying implicit biases stemming from mediated images in both hetero and queer cultures (Callander et al. 2016; Conner 2021). It also glosses over the well-documented fact that people of color are in a marginalized position within queer culture. As the first author has argued elsewhere, this reifies the racialized tendencies of desire in the gay life world (Warren 1974; Conner 2023). It also illustrates the “silent” problem that people of color face within digital spaces: the ability to filter out other users who are deemed undesirable without them knowing (Benjamin 2019). Such lists and filters are also used towards other traits which we unpack below. Some journalists within the gay popular press have drawn attention to the wide variety of stigmatizing behaviors occurring online that would be sanctioned in offline settings (Curry 2015). Despite efforts by Grindr to address this issue (Gollayan 2018), profiles still contain phrases which contain derogatory remarks towards others on the basis of body type, gender expression, race, age, and a variety of other statuses. It is not uncommon to see phrases such as Figure 7.3, which states, “If you are obviously stereotypically gay for the way you look or talk we probably would not connect”. We

124  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan

Figure 7.2  Age and race.

also saw profiles with statements like “Masc 4 Masc”, or “No Fems”, in their profile illustrating the premium placed on hypermasculine displays of the self within the gay male community (Eskridge 2019; Singer 2020; Mushtaq 2021). Beyond the profile texts, users often present themselves shirtless, flexing their muscles, or in ways which express their physical prowess. The result is a hypersexualized space where sexual encounters become a normative feature of the app.

A queer kind of stigma 125

Figure 7.3  Stigma for those exhibiting a stereotypical gay gender expression.

7.2.2.  Information control

Many users we observed engaged in what Goffman describes as information control by limiting the amount of personal biographical details available on their profiles. While Goffman (1963: 42) originally conceptualized this as omitting certain facts from one’s personal narrative, the digital environment enables other ways users can engage in this. On Grindr, the simplest way users

126  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan engaged in this stigma management technique was by not placing a photo of themselves online. Among those that were interviewed, men who did not display a photograph said that it was due to a fear of being “outed” and for reasons of job security. As one user who taught in a conservative school district explained: All it takes is one phone call from an angry parent and then I will have lost my job. There are no laws protecting gay people and when you interact with the public you have to be very careful. (White, Male, 35) Thus, like Brekhus’s (2003) gay suburbanites, Grindr is also a mechanism by which identities are navigated and negotiated. In the case of the above participant, he was employed by a wealthy Midwestern school district that had a reputation for being particularly hostile towards openly gay school teachers. These same sentiments were echoed by the following participant: I’m a public figure and don’t want to tell you where or what I do, but I’m pretty high up. If word were to get out that I was gay then I would have a lot of questions to answer. It’s just easier this way. Of course it is not ideal, but until things change that is the way it is. I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am at to sacrifice it all. (Male, 45) In both instances the individuals felt a sense of strain as they struggled to protect their careers while satisfying their need for intimacy. As we discuss later, outness, even on Grindr, is a privilege not distributed equally. Some users that were interviewed talked about the stigma they faced if they chose not to display a photo of themselves. User profiles often contained the expression “no pic no chat”, which, coupled with Grindr’s focus on images, serves to establish a cultural norm of disclosure. We saw examples of the one in Figure 7.4: In interviews conducted with Grindr users, they explained that those without images were hiding something. As this user we interviewed explained: Sexy men always have sexy pictures, if they don’t then they probably aren’t sexy. Most gay men’s phones are filled with all kinds of [nude] pictures. I mean if I’m going to meet up with someone I want to know that they look like what they look like. And if they don’t have pics to prove what they look like then it’s suspicious. And I don’t mean just one face pic. I want at least two, and at least two body pics, and maybe one or two “naughty ones” for good measure. I once invited this kid over and he said he was 26, but when he got here he looked like he was 60! That is when I started implementing the pics policy. (Male, 35)

A queer kind of stigma 127

Figure 7.4  Face pic required.

Since this user had been misled about someone’s age in the past, he became distrusting of users without an adequate number of photos. He makes a generalization that gay men should have a plethora of photos on their phones and figures that if another user is attractive, they would be interested in advertising that. This viewpoint does not consider the complexities of one’s ability to be publicly “out” on Grindr. Another variation observed was known as the “headless torso”,5 including images focusing only on the body. Using images of themselves like this allowed users to maintain a degree of anonymity and presumably diminish shortcomings in sexual capital. However, it was only slightly more ­acceptable than having no image at all – as Figure 7.5 illustrates. The headless torso users that were interviewed had two explanations for their profiles. Some users explained they used headless torso profiles to simultaneously highlight their sexual capital and avoid being stigmatized for perceived sexual promiscuity. Jody Ahlm (2017) found a similar pattern of “respectable promiscuity” on Grindr, whereby gay men engage in stigmatized sexual practices and negotiate those meanings within a particular socio-political context (Renfrow and Rollo 2013). Users’ inability to be openly gay outside the world of the app may also cause them to limit the information or photos available on Grindr for fear it could

128  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan

Figure 7.5  Faceless profiles and headless torsos.

be used to identify them. However, other users interpreted this as a shortcoming of the user. As one interview participant explained, “Well you know these days people don’t really have an excuse to be in the closet. Even so, 99% of the time these guys are either damaged goods or just downright nasty (Male, 25)”. This quote illustrates how gay men link representations of the self to other biographical insights – that is, outness. It is assumed that men who do not have a photograph or who are unwilling to show a photograph are somehow

A queer kind of stigma 129 lacking in the kinds of sexual capital that are used to evaluate Grindr users. It also obscures the way in which “outness” is a privileged status. However, on Grindr, closetedness is a potentially stigmatizing characteristic. As such, this illustrates the intersectional ways in which stigma is an intersectional phenomenon. For some it is a survival strategy as much as it is a form of impression management. Another way we observed users controlling information was in their decisions to disclose their HIV status. Several profiles observed described their status as “clean” to indicate they were HIV-negative. In interviews with men who were HIV-positive, they indicated that they felt pressure and feelings of stigma due to their status. As one interviewer described: I’ve had long conversations with guys on Grindr and it eventually gets to the question about status. It’s always the last thing they bring up and if I disclose they block me without hesitation. There was one guy who I spoke with for nearly a month and we made arrangements for him to come over and then he finally popped the question. I  asked him, “so why are you just asking about this now” and I honestly can’t recall his response. But, I do remember using it as a teaching moment and talking to him about viral loads and that since I’m undetectable I can’t transmit the disease and about Prep and the importance of condoms. More importantly it strikes me as odd that gay men don’t recognize the importance of wearing condoms and that they make gay sex virtually safe. If we are having safe sex then it shouldn’t be an issue at all. (Gay Male 40) Other men we spoke with reported similar incidents of talking to someone and having all contact broken off once their HIV status was disclosed. While some profiles indicated that the user only wanted to talk to HIV-negative individuals, these were less common than other forms of stigma and shaming. 7.2.3.  Passing and covering

Passing as a sociological phenomenon practiced by gay men on Grindr is perhaps a far more complicated experience than ever understood by Goffman. Grindr allows gay men to express themselves and meet people, thereby providing these men with opportunities to meet others. However, in their desire to be accepted by others like them, Grindr reproduces, rather than eliminates, the heteronormative norms many of these men seek to escape. Just as Levine (1998) found, the gay men we observed measured other users according to a heightened sense of masculinity. We also observed individuals who essentialized these hypermasculine standards, which we attribute to the flattening out and reducing of users to images due to the app’s structure. F ­ igure 7.6 illustrates this point by demonstrating how one user emphasized their physique while downplaying the importance of his educational background. However,

130  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan

Figure 7.6  Six-pack abs and a Master’s degree.

this also demonstrates the ways in which social class shapes both of these elements.6 Moreover, in the case of Figure 7.7, these profiles also paint a false dichotomy between personality and beauty by associating “fatness” and “rudeness” together. One of the ways in which Grindr users cover is by how they choose which image to select for their profiles. Interviewed users spoke about how they curated their images to hide certain features that might stigmatize them. Those who were older, overweight, or lacked some other desirable physical features

A queer kind of stigma 131

Figure 7.7  The fat ones are always rude.

would sometimes opt to not have a profile picture. As one user explained, “Why put myself out there for a bunch of queens to judge me. I am happy with myself and don’t need them to validate me” (Black, Male, 24). Another strategy observed involved users who were overweight displaying only a picture of their face – drawing attention away from their bodies. This is not unlike Goffman’s original concept of covering where a person hides elements of their physical body that might stigmatize them as disabled. Two users interviewed chose to show a shirtless profile picture in which the face was cut off. Both of these men had very defined, chiseled bodies, and muscular arms. However, one of these interviewees had a very prominent hair lip, and the other was trying to appear younger. By choosing to not display

132  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan their faces, they attempted to pass as someone that fits the idealized standard of beauty, which they did by covering up other less conventionally attractive features while highlighting their desirable traits. Another interview with a Grindr user provided some insight into how users try to present themselves: Participant: You have to get the angle just right. You have to keep taking photos until you find what your angle is, keep taking them, and eventually you will find it. All it takes is one perfect photo and you’ll have all kinds of guys trying to pick you up. Interviewer: So what is the perfect photo? Participant: One that makes you look attractive you know, one that hides anything you don’t want other people to see . . . or shows off your more attractive features. Like if you got a big . . . well you know. [laughs] (Gay Male 18) As this participant explains, users of the app engage in a variety of editing techniques with their photographs. Even those who did not seem to be lacking in sexual capital curated their photographs in some way to present a desirable image of themselves – and avoid “spoiling” their identity (Goffman 1959). 7.2.4.  New forms of stigma

When a user does not wish to engage another user in conversation, they may simply ignore that user and not respond to their messages. When a user is blocked, on the other hand, they no longer can communicate with the user that blocked them. Moreover, this can be done in such a way that it is not obvious to the blocked user. Users that I spoke with found non-responses to be more stigmatizing and psychologically damaging than being blocked. In the words of my respondents, “If they ain’t going to talk to me, then they just need to block me, so they can free up space on my screen” (Black, Gay, Male 35). Other respondents talked about this phenomenon in other ways: There are so many people who I’ve chatted with [on Grindr] who just stop talking to me suddenly. It’s the worst! I can’t tell if it’s me, if they fell asleep, or if they found someone else to go out with . . . at least let me know that I’m not your type. It lets me know if I am barking up the wrong tree. It also lets me know that what about me I  need to fix in order to attract people. (Latino, Gay, Male 45) Licoppe (2020) notes that this is the result of the culture of Grindr in which users interact with other in fleeting ways, due in part to how the app organizes and facilitates connections with others. As he shows, other apps which facilitate rich thoughtful communication and mutual attraction that result in different types of computer-mediated interactions. We would add to this

A queer kind of stigma 133 by pointing out that the principles underlying Goffman’s (1959) notion of impression management, and symbolic interactionism more broadly, relies on open and free exchange of communication. Grindr, as a platform, problematizes this process. When other users do not communicate their desires or provide feedback on the performance others give, they not only disengage with the performer but they give them the impression that they have failed in their performance. While this happens for a variety of reasons, the one who is abandoned may feel slighted and excluded from the community. While Goffman understood the suffering of the stigmatized to be a result of “the stare that makes him uncomfortable” (16), Grindr shows us how it can also be the lack of staring that signals one has been stigmatized. Further, it is apparent how hurtful that lack of attention can be when we consider the preference for blocking over ignoring. The unblocked user continues to appear in their feed after their denied interaction, serving as a reminder of a past rejection. Grindr, for some men, acts as a validator allowing its users to post images of themselves that are then judged by other users. However, for users who lack the desired sexual capital, they risk being stigmatized by others, which was felt when users stopped communicating with them or blocked them through the app. It is not uncommon for users to talk at great length and then terminate their conversation abruptly. Although some may argue that new modes of communication via text have emerged to replace some of the subtle features of communication (i.e., Emojis), there is still a lack of information that occurs in the online world – and a tendency to perceive disturbances to the flow of such communication as negative. Additionally, in profiles, we saw phrases that suggested “if I  don’t respond after two messages I’m not interested!”, the frustrated users who struggled to interpret this behavior, and in their confusion, felt stigmatized by this apparent rejection. Of course no one has an obligation to return amorous advances; in the case of the men we interviewed, they expressed far less stigma if the other users clearly communicated their lack of reciprocal interest. Thus, among those in our study, stigma was experienced as a result of the lack of information and communication between users. 7.3. Discussion This chapter makes a variety of contributions to our theoretical empirical understandings of gay men, online identity, and Goffman’s theory of stigma. While most of the research on the gay life course is focused on iconic urban gay spaces, also known as gayborhoods (see Ghaziani 2014), and face-to-face interactions, much less has been done on the LGBTQIA2+ experience as it plays out in online settings. While early theorizing on online environments heralded the online world as a way of creating new possibilities for self-expression (see Turkle 1995; Chayko 2008), more recent work has argued that online worlds and social media exaggerate performances of self and users more often

134  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan behave in negative ways (Turkle 2011; Rudder 2014; Robinson 2015, 2016, 2017; Conner 2019). Moreover, the ambiguous normative environment, lack of a community by which to hold individuals accountable for their actions, and other problematic elements of online spaces create a space well suited for misunderstanding in social interaction (Gottschalk 2019). As we have shown, the online world of geo-location-based apps like Grindr creates augmented realities which are embedded within historical and cultural contexts (Couch 1996; Walsh and Baker 2017). The elements of stigma management originally developed by Goffman were present and drew upon the pre-existing cultural norms of traditional gay institutions. Just as gay men create hierarchies in the offline world based on sexual capital (see Green 2013), these hierarchies also exist online. It would appear that online behaviors we observed were far more overt than what Goffman had in mind for his theory. However, because of the way in which users communicate, it suggests that the online world may be amplifying preexisting hierarchies of beauty (Licoppe 2020). This chapter also contributes to our understanding of how humans reproduce processes of marginalization and stigma found within the dominant society in already marginalized subgroups. As we show, the primary mechanism by which stigma occurs is through the creation of a homonormative environment, whereby users create hierarchies and cultural practices that reify socially constructed hierarchies of erotic capital. Homonormativity, however, is a nuanced process by which internal hierarchies are constructed and embodied through participants’ presentation of self (Burke 2016). As other scholars have discussed (see Orne 2017; Duberman 2018), homonormative standards are in fact rooted in the heteronormative world that many gay men seek to escape. Based on our findings, homonormativity functions through the reification of sexual capital and is naturalized through desirability.7 Finally, this chapter considers how apps enable new ways of interacting with others, like blocking and ignoring, and situate these behaviors within Goffman’s framework of stigma and stigma management. While a stigmatized person in the offline world still requires us to interact with them, online users may be stigmatized, discarded, and outright ignored. There are a multitude of overt forms of discrimination on Grindr, but there also exist subtler forms of discrimination that were enabled by these new technologies. It remains unclear if such perceptions by users were justified (i.e., that they were being stigmatized due to a lack of response), but regardless, these subtler forms of stigma are the most stubborn to resolve (Bonilla-Silvia 1997; Benjamin 2019). 7.4. Conclusion While the digital world of Grindr gives users the promise of finding a place to belong and to resolve other issues (i.e., loneliness, isolation, and desirability), empirically speaking, apps like Grindr have yet to be utilized to their full

A queer kind of stigma 135 liberating potential. Just as Turkle (2011) has asserted, if we are to unlock the potential of new communications technologies, the environments we create need to be designed purposefully to reflect the norms that draw out the best in human potential (Kellner 1989). There’s also some irony that an app designed to provide an online space for marginalized people a way to communicate has brought forth instead a breakdown in the way that group communicates. Future research should not only look to other gay dating apps for similar behaviors but should also see if users behave differently and seek out ways to broaden interactions between users. Moreover, while Grindr does not use algorithms to sort users, other dating apps do, and paying attention to this process will be significantly important as more of our lives continue to move into online spaces. The interactionist perspective is well poised to resolve some of the conflicts and complications that new communications technologies have created for society as they are problems resulting from interruptions in communication. Moreover, as other research in this area shows us, the experience of being stigmatized carries with it serious implications for the mental well-being of those so afflicted (Wade and Pear 2022; Hannem and Schneider 2022). This study then adds insight into the ways in which we can resolve ongoing issues facing an already marginalized population. As more of our world moves online, future research ought to explore ways in which such apps can be utilized to connect others in ways that allow them to experience the full range of the human experience. Notes 1 This is a contested aspect in the literature on Grindr, both in the gay and popular presses. However, exploring this point is beyond the scope of this chapter, which focuses on the interpretive stigmatizing process in what we observed. 2 Early studies of the internet made a distinction between offline and online interactions, more recent scholarship has called this into question. Those studying online interactions note it is part of our everyday experience; such distinctions between offline and online are erroneous. See Mary Chayko (2008) for a summary of this. 3 The data from this study is drawn from a multiple methods qualitative research project that began 2015. Specifically, we conducted in-depth interviews with 40 users of the app. Sensitizing concepts came from prior literature and our own ethnographic observations (Blumer 1954: 7; Suchar 1997). Our interviews consisted of 5 Black, 5 Latino, and 30 white gay men and was evenly divided between rural and urban regions of the West and Midwest United States. 4 Not surprisingly, such lists correspond to the existing literature on gay culture, which prioritizes youthfulness, vitality, health, masculinity, and whiteness (Humphreys 1972; Robinson 2016, 2017; Bonner-Thompson 2017). 5 In earlier reviews of this chapter a question of ethics was raised on posting such images. While we had a relatively non-descript image, we chose to err on the side of caution. 6 Even as these individuals reify, gloss over, and ultimately normalize “6 pack abs” as a standard of beauty that all gay men ought to possess. 7 While we did not focus on race in this chapter, the first author has published on this previously (see Conner 2019; Conner 2023).

136  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan References Ahlm, Jody. 2017. “Respectable Promiscuity: Digital Cruising in an Era of Queer Liberalism.” Sexualities 23(3). doi: 10.1177/1363460716665783. Barrett, Rusty. 2017. From Drag Queens to Leathermen. New York: Oxford University Press. Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Race After Technology. Medford, MA: Polity Press. Blumer, Herbert. 1954. ‘What Is Wrong with Social Theory?’ American Sociological Review 19(1): 3–10 https://doi.org/10.2307/2088165. Bonilla-Silva, E. 1997. “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation.” American Sociological Review 62(3):465–480. Bonner-Thompson, Carl. 2017. “The Meat Market: Production and Regulation of Masculinities on the Grindr Grid in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.” Gender, Place & Culture 24(11):1611–1625. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. “Cultural Reproduction and social Reproduction.” Pp. 487– 511 in Power and Ideology in Education, edited by Jerome Karabel and A. H. Halsey. New York: Oxford University Press. Brekhus, Wayne. 2003. Peacocks, Chameleons,  & Centaurs: Gay Suburbia and the Grammar of Social Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Burke, Nathaniel. 2016. “Straight Acting: Gay Pornography, Heterosexuality, and Hegemonic Masculinity.” Porn Studies 3(3):238–254. doi: 10.1080/23268743.2016. 1196117. Callander, Denton, Martin Holt, and Christy E. Newman. 2015. “Is Sexual Racism Really Racism? Distinguishing Attitudes Towards Sexual Racism and Generic Racism Among Gay and Bisexual Men.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 44:1991–2000. Callander, Denton, Martin Holt and Christy E. Newman. 2016. “Not Everyone’s Gonna like Me: Accounting for Race and Racism in Sex and Dating Web Services for Gay and Bisexual Men.” Ethnicities 16(1):3–21. doi: 10.1177/146879681 5581428. Chayko, Mary. 2008. Portable Communities. Albany: University of New York Press. Conner, Christopher T. 2019. “The Gay Gayze: Expressions of Inequality on Grindr.” The Sociological Quarterly 60(3):397–419. doi: 10.1080/00380253.2018.1533394. Conner, Christopher T. 2023. “How Sexual Racism and Other Discriminator Behaviors Are Rationalized in Online Dating Apps.” Deviant Behavior 44(1):126–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2021.2019566. Couch, Carl J. 1996. Information Technologies and Social Orders. Chicago: Aldine Transaction. Curry, Tyler. 2015. “Grindr Fatigue and the Dehumanization of Gay Men.” HIV Equal Online (http://www.hivequal.org/on-health/grindr-fatigue-and-the-dehumanizationof-gay-men). Dhoest, Alexander and Lukasz Szulc. 2016. “Navigating Online Selves: Social, Cultural, and Material Contexts of Social Media Use by Diasporic Gay men.” Social Media + Society 2(4):np. Duberman, Martin. 2018. Has the Gay Movement Failed? Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Duncan, Margaret Carlisle. 1994. “The Politics of Women’s Body Images and Practices: Foucault, The Panopticon, and Shape Magazine.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 18(1):48–65. Eskridge, Marty. 2019. “Falling in Love with Algorithmic Compatibility in a Digital Dating Landscape: Sexually Affective Data, Networked Intimacy, and Online Gendered Identity Constructions.” Journal of Research in Gender Studies 9(2):92–98.

A queer kind of stigma 137 Ferguson, Patrick. 2005. “Race-Ing Homonormativity: Citizenship, Sociology, and Gay Identity.” Pp. 52–67 in Black Queer Studies, edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson. Durham: Duke University Press. Forbes, TehQuin D. and Joki Ueno. 2019. “Post-gay, Political, and Pieced Together: Queer Expectations of Straight Allies.” Sociological Perspectives 63(1):159–176. Ghaziani, Amin. 2014. There Goes the Gayborhood. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Double Day Books. Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster. Gollayan, Christian. 2018. “Grindr Wants You to Be Kinder – and not Racist.” New York Post, September 20. Retrieved June 25, 2019 (https://nypost.com/2018/09/20/ grindr-wants-you-to-be-kinder-and-not-racist/). Gottschalk, Simon. 2019. The Terminal Self: Everyday Life in Hypermodern Times. New York: Routledge. Gottschalk, Simon and Jennifer Whitmer. 2016. “Hypermodern Dramaturgy in Online Encounters.” Pp. 309–34 in The Drama of Social Life: A Dramaturgical Handbook, edited by Chuck Edgley. New York: Routledge. Gottlieb, Jeremy. 2017. “When the Male Gaze Falls on Male Gays.” The Chronicle, November  29. Retrieved June  25, 2019 (https://www.dukechronicle.com/ article/2017/11/171129-duke-mens-project-male-gaze). Green, Adam Isaiah. 2008. “The Social Organization of Desire: The Sexual Fields Approach.” Sociological Theory 26(1):25–50. Green, Adam Isaiah. 2013. Sexual Fields: Towards a Sociology of Collective Sexual Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Han, Chong-Suk. 2008. “No Fats, Femmes, or Asians: The Utility of Critical Race Theory in Examining the Role of Gay Stock Stories in the Marginalization of Gay Asian Men.” Contemporary Justice Review 11(1):11–22. doi: 10.1080/10282580701850355. Hannem, Stacey and Christopher J. Schneider. 2022. Defining Sexual Misconduct: Power, Media, and #METOO. Saskatchewan, Canada: University of Regina Press. Hogan, Bernie. 2010. “The Presentation of Self in the Age of Social Media: Distinguishing Performances and Exhibitions Online.” Bulletin of Science, Technology  & Society 30(6):377–386. doi: 10.1177/0270467610385893. Humphreys, Laud. 1970. Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction. Humphreys, Laud. 1972. Out of the Closets: The Sociology of Homosexual Liberation. New York: Prentice-Hall. Kellner, Douglas. 1989. Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Levine, Martin P. 1998. Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone. New York: New York University Press. Licoppe, C. 2020. “Liquidity and Attachment in the Mobile Hookup Culture: A Comparative Study of Contrasted Interactional Patterns in the Main Uses of Grindr and Tinder.” Journal of Cultural Economy 13(1):73–90. Licoppe, C., C.-A. Rivière and J. Morel. 2016. “Grindr Casual Hookups as Interactional Achievements.” New Media & Society 18(11):2540–2558. MacCallum, Fiona and Heather Widdows. 2016. “Altered Images: Understanding the Influence of Unrealistic Beauty Images and Aspirations.” Health Care Analysis 26(3):235–245. doi: 10.1007/s10728-016-0327-1.

138  Christopher T. Conner and Sarah Ann Sullivan Massanari, Adrienne. 2015. “#Gamergate and the Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures.” New Media  & Society 19(3):329–346. Matteson, Greggor. 2015. “Style and the Fate of Gay Nightlife: Homonormative Placemaking in San Francisco.” Urban Studies 52(16):3144–3159. Matteson, Greggor. 2021. “Style and the Value of Gay Nightlife: Homonormative Placemaking in San Francisco.” Pp. 45–66 in The Gayborhood: From Sexual Liberation to Cosmopolitan Spectacle, edited by Christopher T. Conner and D. Okamura. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16(3):6–18. doi: 10.1093/screen/16.3.6. Mushtaq, Omar Ali. 2021. “Erotic Capital and Queer Men of Color.” Pp. 125–142 in The Gayborhood: From Sexual Liberation to Cosmopolitan Spectacle, edited by Christopher T. Conner and D. Okamura. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Musolf, Gil Richard. 2003. Structure and Agency in Everyday Life: An Introduction to Social Psychology. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield. Orne, Jason. 2017. Boys Town. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Renfrow, Daniel G. and Elisabeth A. Rollo. 2013. “Sexting on Campus: Minimizing Perceived Risks and Neutralizing Behaviors.” Deviant Behavior 35:903–920. Reyes-Velarde, Alejandra. 2018. “Chinese Gaming Company Buys Remaining Stake of Grindr.” Los Angeles Times 8 Jan. Robinson, Brandon A. 2015. “’Personal Preference’ as the New Racism: Gay Desire and Racial Cleansing in Cyberspace.” Sociology of Race & Ethnicity 1(2):317–330. doi: 10.1177/2332649214546870. Robinson, Brandon A. 2016. “The Quantifiable-Body Discourse: ‘Height-Weight Proportionality’ and Gay Men’s Bodies in Cyberspace.” Social Currents 3(2):172–185. doi: 10.1177/2329496515604638. Robinson, Brandon A. 2017. “Doing Sexual Responsibility: HIV, Risk Discourses, Trust, and Gay Men Interacting Online.” Sociological Perspectives (online first). Rosen, Z. 2010. “Interviews: The Father of GRINDR, Joel Simkhai.” The New Gay, February 18. Retrieved July 21, 2016 (http://thenewgay.net/2010/02/the-fathrof-GRINDR-joel-simkhai.html). Rosenfeld, Michael J., Reuben J. Thomas and Sonia Hausen. 2019. ­“Disintermediating Your Friends: How Online Dating in the United States Displaces Other Ways of Meeting.” PNAS 116(36):17753–17758. Rudder, Christian. 2014. Dataclysm: Who We Think We Are When No One’s Looking. New York: Crown Publishers. Singer, S. N. 2020. “Implication for Psychological Practice with Sexual Minority Men Around Body Image Issues: An Addendum to the APA’s Guidelines for Psychological Practice.” Journal of Homosexuality 68(14):2410–2416. Suchar, Charles S. 1997. “Grounding Visual Sociology Research in Shooting Scripts.” Qualitative Sociology 20(1):33–55. doi: 10.1023/A:1024712230783. Turkle, Sherry. 1995. Life on the Screen. New York: Touchstone. Turkle, Sherry. 2011. Alone Together. Philadelphia: Basic Books. Valocchi, Steve. 1999. “The Class-Inflected Nature of Gay Identity.” Social Problems 46(2):207–224. Vernon, Polly. 2010.“GRINDR: A New Sexual Revolution?”TheGuardian, July 3. Retrieved July 21, 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/jul/04/GRINDR-thenew-sexual-revolution).

A queer kind of stigma 139 Wade, Ryan M. and Matthew M. Pear. 2022. “Online Dating and Mental Health Among Young Sexual Minority Black Men: Is Ethnic Identity Protective in the Face of Sexual Racism?” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 19(21):14263. Walsh, Michael James and Stephanie Alice Baker. 2017. “The Selfie and the Transformation of the Public-Private Distinction.” Information, Communication & Society 20(8):1185–1203. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2016.1220969. Warren, Carol. 1974. Identity and Community in the Gay World. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Weinberg, Martin S. and Colin J. Williams. 1974. Male Homosexuals: Their Problems and Adaptations. New York: Oxford University Press. Woo, Jamie. 2013. Meet GRINDR: How One App Changed the Way We Connect. Canada: Self Published. Wood, Mitchell J. 2004. “The Gay Male Gaze.” Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services 17(2):43–62. doi: 10.1300/J041v17n02_03.

8 Symbolic separation The Amish and 21st-century technologies Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran Isaac and Rebecca Yoder,1 members of an Old Order Amish church, realized their family needed more space for their growing family. Rebecca, pregnant with their fifth child, thought the family’s home was becoming too cramped. Thanks to Isaac’s profitable hardware store and unused acreage on their small farmstead, the family commissioned the construction of a substantial house. The new home featured roomy bedrooms for each child and a large kitchen and great room suitable to accommodate every member of the Yoder’s church when it is their turn to host services.2 Shortly after moving into this beautiful house, Rebecca invited us to visit. We sat on a comfortable new couch, outfitted, to our surprise, with an automatic reclining mechanism powered by an electric motor. Floor lamps, box fans, and other devices were connected to electrical wall sockets. These discoveries puzzled us. The Yoders belong to an Old Order Amish Church, well known for rejecting modern conveniences, including electricity. We tactfully asked Rebecca about the couch, lamps, and fans. She gestured at an array of solar panels mounted on the barn roof. These panels, she explained, comply with church rules, provided they don’t connect to the public grid. Solar energy systems had become increasingly common in Rebecca’s church, though not everyone thought it proper. At first, Rebecca hesitated to install the equipment. She had never lived with electricity before and managed just fine. A natural gas system powered the refrigerator and freezer, while kerosene lamps provided sufficient light in her last house. She did not feel deprived. However, Rebecca and Isaac suspected that kerosene fumes were unhealthy. One of her children had asthma, and Rebecca hoped eliminating kerosene would solve that problem. Since they had the financial means, they installed solar power. While agreeing that solar power enabled a variety of labor-saving comforts, Rebecca also emphasized her family’s restraint. Though these panels generated enough electricity to power central air conditioning, the Yoders never considered installing a complete HVAC system. Since they designed the great room to accommodate large church gatherings, we asked her if they considered installing ceiling fans or an attic fan, which would make church services more comfortable. She replied, “Oh, no, that would be too much.” She wasn’t DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-10

Symbolic separation 141 sure if the church rules explicitly prohibited such things, but she was confident that other members would disapprove. This anecdote highlights technology’s double role in modern society. On the one hand, innovations enable people to manage their environment. Tools, vehicles, and other household conveniences reduce labor and increase comfort. But, these technologies also project social meaning. The Yoders’ church regulates technology (among other things) in pursuit of holy discipline. A member’s use, rejection, or modification of certain technologies signals sacred importance. Members of this Old Order church may not own automobiles or connect their homes to various public utilities (electricity, telephone, internet, and so on). While restricted, these rules stop short of total prohibition. Members may, for instance, ride in cars driven by neighbors or a hired driver. Most connect their homes to the local natural gas utility providing heating fuel and an alternative power source for reengineered large appliances. Gasoline and battery-powered tools fill their sheds and workshops. The church’s stance on certain technologies changes over time. It forbids some technologies that were acceptable in the past and accepts others formerly banned. Shifts in rules and rationales shed light on how the Amish and other plain Anabaptist communities negotiate order. These distinctions, qualifications, adjustments, and negotiations constitute a prime space for sociological analysis. 8.1.  Negotiated order How do we make sense of these dynamics? How is order achieved? Interactionists presume that social order emerges through processes driven by voluntary action (Fine 1984; Hall 1972). People act based on cultural meanings created and reinforced through ongoing interaction (Hallett 2010; Hallett and Ventresca 2006; Fine and Hallett 2014; Blumer 1969a). However, conditions and contexts that shape meaning change. People achieve stability by adapting to changing environments. Therefore, we must consider how specific contexts explain order’s emergence, persistence, and decay. Anselm Strauss (1978) argued that people use negotiation adaptively to create social order. That is, people establish, renew, revise, and reconstitute their agreements over time. Changes at the structural level force revision in the negotiated order. Sociologists often treat businesses, churches, schools, and other sites where people engage in coordinated activity as social structures. One school of thought attributes active properties to these “social structures,” suggesting they generate or motivate human action. A maturing body of symbolic interactionist thought argues that people, embedded in relationships and engaged in mutually oriented interaction, produce and reproduce social structure (Blumer 1969b; Fine 1984, 1993; Maines and Charlton 1985; Strauss 1978). From this point of view, structures act as containers. Within them, people work and react. Thus, structurally bounded interaction makes the social world.

142  Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran Symbolic interactionists treat joint action (that is, the action produced when two or more actors intersect) as the root unit of analysis (Blumer 1966, 1969b). Meanings, generated and adjusted recursively, drive human behavior. However, contexts and conditions situating meaning change over time, forcing actors to adapt and accommodate. As contexts and conditions dictate, agreements must be renewed, revised, or reconstituted. Order is not stable forever. Negotiation (or mutual reorientation) is fundamental to achieving ongoing social stability. Negotiations are interactive encounters between agents embedded in broader contexts and conditions. Therefore, if we wish to explain technological practices among the Amish, we must first explore the meanings that Amish people attribute to technical things. These meanings dynamically shift over time. People negotiate them embedded in time and space. According to Maines (1982), negotiated order rests on three central concepts: negotiation encounters themselves (joint acts), the immediate contexts in which negotiations take place (contextual factors enveloping the joint act), and social structural contexts (material and ideological forces shaping or constraining action). We believe this perspective offers a great deal to theorists trying to make sense of Amish and plain community cultures. If we follow the interactionist standard and treat joint action as our starting point, we can look for ways these recursive contexts shape behavior and culture. 8.2.  Case study: the Amish Today’s Amish and Mennonites of North America emerged from the Anabaptist radical reformation of the 16th century in Western Europe (Nolt 2004, 2016). Anabaptist doctrine encouraged members to separate themselves from the world (Nolt 2016). Churches interpreted this mandate in varying ways. Lacking centralized governing institutions, each church congregation independently sets its boundaries. Within that context, dissensus and schisms characterized the Anabaptist movement. Disputes over church discipline and boundaries are endemic. Anabaptist history includes a long record of meetings, conferences, and confessions seeking to resolve these disputes (Nolt 2004). The account also chronicles a growing list of offshoot church fellowships established because the broader movement became too comfortable with the world. Anabaptists sacramentally believe that the “true church” aligns action with God’s plan. Their conviction to separate from the “fallen church,” which they considered corrupt and no longer connected to God’s plan, invigorated their efforts to split from other Protestants in the 16th century (Hostetler 1993; Kraybill et  al. 2013). Anabaptist doctrine emphasized that the true church maintains its purity by separating from the world and worldly things (including governmental service, which became a political problem for the early Anabaptists). This separation from the world forced Anabaptists to rely on the land. Amish became master farmers, producing crops and raising livestock.

Symbolic separation 143 Indeed, Amish farmers were often at the vanguard of agricultural innovation in the 19th century (Yoder 1991). Their theology evolved to embrace this reality. Amish find biblical support for their lifestyle; God called his people to care for the living things, plants, and animals (Hostetler 1993; Kline 1990; McConnell and Loveless 2018). The traditional occupation of farming among the Amish allowed extended Amish families to work together at home, reinforcing the centrality of family and community in the Amish charter (Hostetler 1993). Anabaptist communities emphasize interpersonal relationships. Amish people rely on their community for fellowship, material support, and spiritual fulfillment (Nolt 2016). Amish hold church services in members’ homes, blurring boundaries across the sacred and commonplace. Services in the home emphasize family and community connections (Kraybill et al. 2013; Nolt 2016). The reliability of community support diminishes the need for the Amish to interact with the non-Anabaptist world. Their ability to stay separate from non-Amish culture allows the Amish to lead a slower pace of life, evident in their use of horses and buggies for travel and their tendency to remain off the electrical grid. The Amish organize their lives around face-to-face interaction, promoting relationships (Nolt 2016). Interactions occur in many contexts, from the formal rituals of church services to the more informal visiting practices. However, the Amish believe the modern world encroaches on their practices. Anthropologist John Hostetler’s (1963, 1993) research program was preoccupied with threats to the longevity of these communities brought on by modernity in the middle of the 20th century.3 Mass media, mechanized farming, air travel, interstate highways, consolidated school systems, and suburbanization seemed to encroach on the plain communities and their distinctive ways of life (Hostetler 1964). They could not avoid conflict. Amish communities repeatedly clashed with civil authorities over compulsory schooling and social security between 1950 and 1970 (Kraybill 2003; Peters 2003). Agricultural technologies disrupted the farming sector, pushing Amish farmers to adapt. Soaring land prices, driven by the suburban migration of automobile commuters, further added to the pressure. Hostetler (1963, viii) concluded technology and “the lifeways of the urban world” fundamentally threatened the Amish order. Amish responded to these changes in several ways. Some communities relaxed rules regulating economic exchange. Many Amish men and women went to work at construction sites, shops, factories, and retail establishments to earn a living. Through their labor market activity, Amish workers increasingly came into contact with the “Englisha” (non-Amish) and anner Satt Liet (“other people”) (Eicher 2013), opening a vector of cultural exchange. Some communities responded by tightening their rules and reinforcing the community’s boundaries. Others responded by adapting and relaxing the rules. These dynamics reflect negotiated order. Amish communities live according to unwritten rules called “the Ordnung,” meaning “divine order” in Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect spoken by

144  Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran North American Amish people. Each church formulates and revises its Ordnung. These rules encourage members to live life “as it should be lived” based on traditional Anabaptist doctrine (Kraybill et al. 2013, 42). Accordingly, they encourage members to keep selfish desires in check. They often promulgate imperatives regulating dress, grooming, and displays of vanity. Specific cultural practices vary considerably from one Amish group to another. As a result of these differences, disputes over boundaries separating sacred from profane (Durkheim 1995) proliferated in Amish churches throughout history and continue to the present day (Hurst and McConnell 2010; Kraybill 2004; Kraybill 2001; Kraybill et  al. 2013; Kraybill and Nolt 2004). Kraybill et  al. (2013) identify more than forty Amish affiliations in North America. These affiliate groups cluster into family-like arrangements that array along an orthodoxy continuum. For instance, in the sizable Amish settlement of Holmes County, Ohio, we find “New Order,” “Old Order,” “Andy Weaver,” and “Swartzentruber” Amish groups. The most conservative of these (Swartzentrubers) minimize intermixing with outsiders and insist that their members abide by narrow rules of behavior. The comparatively progressive “New Order” churches impose far fewer regulations on members’ lives (Hurst and McConnell 2010). Yet, the church and its Ordnung provide a unifying authority on either end of the orthodoxy continuum (Hurst and McConnell 2010). Amish people negotiate their order through the church. 8.2.1.  Interpreting technology

The core values of the Amish faith mediate their relationship with technologies. Nolt (2015) argues that the Amish value humility and embrace limitations of human capacity. Consequently, Amish people evade the siren songs of efficiency and productivity promulgated in the broader culture. However, interpretation of any given technology’s meaning varies considerably across affiliations and groups. Johnson-Weiner (2014) demonstrates that the most conservative Amish affiliations, such as the Swartzentrubers, distrust most technological conveniences, suspecting they erode communal bonds. Accordingly, Swartzentrubers prohibit those tools and techniques that they believe encourage individual isolation. Instead, they promote collaborative and cooperative activity within the family and community network, even at the expense of efficiency. Church Ordnungs specify the interaction Amish may have with non-Amish people (Johnson-Weiner 2014). Some even limit employment and commercial activities, forbidding members to work in specific trades or for non-Amish employers. Accordingly, farming is the dominant occupation within those conservative churches most concerned with their community boundaries. Family farms permit kin and neighbors to work together in planting, harvesting, and preserving food. Technological simplicity is evident in these communities. Most heat and cook with wood-burning stoves. The absence of centralized heating keeps the family together, especially in the colder months, as the wood

Symbolic separation 145 stove in the kitchen provides a warm place for the family to gather. Additionally, maintaining the wood stove engages the entire family in preparing fuel and keeping the fire. Families work, play, and worship together. They have few internal boundaries but substantial external fence lines. In contrast to the Swartzentrubers and other conservative groups, less conservative Amish groups increasingly work outside the home (Corcoran et al. 2020). Amish populations are increasing, on pace to double in size over the next two decades (Donnermeyer 2015). Inflation limits access to affordable farmland. Over the past three decades, these factors funneled Amish people into labor markets outside the home. Some of their employers rely on technologies otherwise prohibited by the church. For instance, many contemporary commercial businesses rely on internet connectivity to manage inventory, fulfill orders, transact sales, and track workflows. Employees of these businesses must use computers to perform their duties. This development put church leaders in a bind. Holding a hard line could have disastrous financial consequences for the community. If members cannot make a living and feed their families, they will leave the congregation or church. On the other hand, these rules define their cultural boundaries and function like cultural fences (Kraybill 2004; Kraybill et al. 2013). The churches resolve the dilemma through negotiation (Kraybill 2001, 2019). For example, most churches resolved the dilemma posed by workplace technology by allowing their members to use work tools so long as they were engaged in their economic activity (Ems 2019; Kraybill and Nolt 2004; Nolt 2015). This compromise permits members to pursue financial objectives while maintaining their cultural boundaries. Churches tried to retain prohibition against these tools in the home. Thus, an Amish carpenter employed by a building contractor might use an electric circular saw at the job site but not in his home workshop. The Amish baker may run a kneading machine in the bakery but not in her home kitchen. This distinction reinforced the essential symbolic boundaries. However, the initial resolution does not hold forever. As church members become more familiar with the utility of these technologies, elements begin to creep into the home. The drift is evident in the proliferation of natural gaspowered household appliances in Amish homes, from refrigerators to sewing machines and food processors. Similarly, tools powered by air, natural gas, and solar power find their way into workshops and barns. These novel adaptations of formerly alien technologies require ongoing negotiation to resolve. 8.2.2.  Negotiating technology

Strauss (1978) presupposed three levels to negotiated order. The negotiation encounter itself forms the first level. Two or more actors seek agreement in mutually oriented interaction. These encounters occur within “negotiation contexts,” constituting the second level. For instance, negotiations between relatively equal parties differ substantially from those involving asymmetry.

146  Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran Finally, “structural contexts” mediate and shape negotiation contexts at the macro-level. Ideologies, missions, values, norms, folkways, mores, and so on fill out this level. These three levels of negotiated order establish a frame for understanding the dynamics of social order and change. Negotiated orders depend on how interactants perceive the structure enveloping them. Rules are contextual (Manning 1977; Sudnow 1965). Some shape all human action, while others are invisible, forgotten, or ignored, muting their influence. This emphasis on perception and context enables negotiated orders to accommodate change. Individuals and groups constantly adapt to changing situations. Since they are conscious of context, they act strategically to maximize their advantages. Amish people are no different. Over the past 250 years, they cultivated three distinct strategies for dealing with technological incursions into their communities. First, they often reject the technology. For example, Amish communities universally exclude radios, televisions, cameras, smartphones, internet devices, and similar technologies (Kraybill et al. 2013; Nolt 2015). The Amish believe that these implements of entertainment and communication threaten to transmit the vices of the modern world into their homes. These unnecessary items harbor the potential for more harm than good. Accordingly, they banish these items from their midst. Amish embrace technologies that they deem harmless at the continuum’s other end. For example, few churches prohibit gasoline-powered lawnmowers, chainsaws, propane gas grills, battery-powered flashlights, or chemically engineered laundry detergents. Though these things are technological, the Amish interpret them as culturally harmless. Between the extremes of acceptance and rejection, the Amish try to adapt technologies to reap their benefits while conforming to community rules (Kraybill 2001; Kraybill and Nolt 2004; Kraybill et al. 2013). Of course, a technology’s meaning is never predetermined or fixed. Instead, it emerges through negotiation processes. These processes begin with ambiguity. A novel tool, technique, convention, or practice not addressed by the Ordnung or normative framework comes to light. One or more members wish to use this novelty. They initiate a set of negotiation encounters situated in different negotiation contexts and embedded in the structural context of the Amish Church in North America. For example, Ems (2015) writes of an Amish farmer who started using a gasoline-powered corn picker to harvest his crop. The Church Ordnung prohibited machinery of this sort. Others in the community, particularly the church elders, disapproved. The farmer said he wouldn’t use this tool again. Even so, the following year, other farmers in the community tried using gas-powered corn pickers at harvest. As this technology proliferated in the church, the structural context changed. Mechanized corn picking became “normal,” injecting pressure into the negotiation context and structure. Old boundaries were obsolete, leading to their renegotiation. Gas-powered corn pickers became acceptable in this community, and the church revised its Ordnung recognizing this change.

Symbolic separation 147 We illustrate the dynamics of this process with two additional examples of business innovation in North American Amish communities. These cases show the extent to which negotiations are contingent on structural factors. Though strikingly similar in detail, they resulted in opposite outcomes. In the first case, the mores and values of the 1960s contributed to technological rejection. Cultural norms of the 21st century led to accommodation in the second. 8.2.3.  Rejecting technology in Ontario

Jerry Eicher (2013) was born into a conservative, Old Order Amish enclave in Aylmer, Ontario. His father made a living as a builder. Over time, elders in the church became concerned over the “worldly influences” entering their community through construction work and interaction with non-Amish construction workers. The elders instituted several regulations or prohibitions for church members engaged in construction to stem the worldly tide. First, they prohibited members from working on construction projects within the municipal limits of Aylmer. A few years later, the church intensified its position, prohibiting tradespeople from accepting rides in automobiles to get to job sites. These prohibitions, in tandem, functionally ended construction as an occupation in this community.4 In Alymer, the church came to view construction work as a threat. It wasn’t the act of building, per se, that threatened the community. Instead, threats emanated from the daily practices and norms of construction work. Building projects are collaborative, requiring coordinated communication between contractors. A telephone was a practical necessity. Subcontractors without telephones face insurmountable competitive disadvantages in this marketplace. Similarly, the pace of joint commercial production is challenging to sustain without power tools. While carpenters may cut studs and joists with hand saws, an electric circular saw enables them to complete the task quickly. If a carpenter can’t keep pace with the broader production schedule, he will soon be without contracts. The Alymer church Ordnung permitted neither telephones nor power saws. Eicher’s father and like-minded neighbors lobbied the church to change these rules. They argued that the power saw and telephone were merely tools, like a hay rake, enabling them to work and feed their families. Business tools shouldn’t be categorically prohibited. The conservatives within the congregation pushed back, asserting that construction work was a vector allowing the winds of worldliness to infect the community. The conservatives eventually won this battle and later expanded prohibitions on building work, ultimately ending construction as an occupation in the community (Eicher 2013; Wagler 2011). The victors insisted this outcome was best for the community. God provides. It’s better to find new sources of livelihood than risk entanglement with the world. To the losers, on the other hand, the Ordnung was

148  Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran “rules made by farmers who viewed all work outside the family acreage with suspicion. Rules made to limit Amish involvement with Englisha endeavors” (Eicher 2013, 32). Eicher’s memoir includes additional anecdotes that support the conservatives’ point of view. His father bought and used power tools at job sites despite the church’s rules. Mr. Eicher “gave” these tools to a realtor who “allowed” the workers to use them, circumventing the Ordnung’s ownership prohibition. The crew took a diesel generator to job sites to power their saws, drills, and other construction implements. Mr. Eicher also had a telephone installed at job sites for his business, even though the Ordnung expressly forbid telephone use at the time. Such subterfuge supports the conservatives’ concern that the construction business corrupts its associates. Were it not for these business pressures, Eicher would have no reason to flirt with the world. 8.2.4.  Innovating in Indiana

Ems (2015) describes a similar scenario in the 21st century. Noah, an Amish entrepreneur, grew a very successful construction business. As his company took on more projects, he struggled with keeping track of inventory. This inability affected their bottom line. The firm lost several hundred thousand dollars within a short time. Recognizing this shortfall, one of Noah’s partners suggested installing a computerized inventory control system. Commercial software could track their inventory and help them properly adjust their bids. To comply with the church Ordnung, they did not connect this computer to the internet. Since the machine was simply a terminal, running in leased office space and not linked to any other devices, they concluded this technology conformed with the church Ordnung. However, as the business grew further, the owners recognized they needed additional computing resources only available in networked enterprise systems. They would need to connect their computers to broadband internet to remain competitive. The owners decided to proceed, reasoning that the computers and connectivity were “essential tools” for the business climate. However, they received swift pushback from their church almost immediately. The church treated internet connectivity as a hard boundary line. No matter how they limited it, church members using the internet posted too grave a worldly threat to the community. To “solve” this problem, they “gave” the computers and software to one of their vendors (though the equipment remained physically installed at their office). That vendor then leased the equipment back to them. Since they no longer “owned” the equipment and were merely “using” it for legitimate business purposes, they were not violating any church rules. In making his case, Noah said that this arrangement is no different from that of an Amish person who accepts a ride to work in a neighbor’s truck. Amish churches draw the line at ownership, not use. Noah’s church accepted this rationale, and his business plan proceeded with their blessing (Ems 2015).

Symbolic separation 149 8.2.5.  Limiting technology

We find many instances of Amish modifying or altering technologies to mediate the poles of acceptance and rejection. Regardless of where they draw the boundaries, Amish churches emphasize the centrality of family and community. Negotiations over any technology carefully consider how the technology will lead to individualism, independence, and self-reliance. If it promotes these behaviors, the community will be wary (Nolt 2015). For instance, internet access on phones enables individualism and independence. The Amish believe individuals cannot consistently make good decisions when left to their own devices (Nolt 2015). The Amish try to disarm threats. We see this in the relationship between Amish farmers and their equipment. They are known to “Amish-ize” equipment to make it work for them within the bounds of their Ordnung (Kraybill 2001; Kraybill and Nolt 2004; Kraybill et  al. 2013; Ems 2015, 2019). Every year, innovators display creative tinkering at a massive convention called “Horse Progress Days.” This event, which draws over 30,000 attendees (including Amish and non-Amish), showcases horse-powered agricultural products and tools. Kraybill and colleagues (2013) suggest that this tinkering demonstrates innovation in a culture defined by restraint. That is, tinkering embodies negotiated order. Ems (2015) notes that the Amish tend to alter technologies in ways that limit them. Such limitations mute worldly threats while retaining the tools’ utility. Kraybill (2001, 222–237) illustrates this point with a fascinating history of “the tractor debate” in Amish culture. As previously noted, Amish farmers were at the vanguard of agricultural innovation in the 19th century (see Yoder 1991). They discovered the utility of small gasoline engines, which they pulled around the farm on horse-drawn wagons to power saws, grind feed, pump water, and complete other tasks. This practice was uncontroversial. The arrival of tractors in the 1920s was different. Though tractors offer an exponential increase in power,5 their expense, weight, and capacity for self-propelled mobility made them dangerously similar to automobiles. Rather than flirt with worldliness, Amish churches across North America banned tractors. While the Amish stuck with horsepower, agricultural manufacturing did not. Manufacturers produced mowers, balers, harvesters, combines, and other essential field tools as tractor accessories. These new units became too heavy to be pulled by horses. Old machinery and parts became hard to find, threatening the Amish farm enterprise. Necessity being the mother of invention, Amish mechanics engineered “limited” gasoline engines capable of powering the new machinery but still light enough to be moved by horse. These developments led to extensive negotiations within Amish churches. Market pressure, manufacturing priorities, and the developing cultural conflicts of the mid-20th century set the structural context. Consider John Hostetler’s assessment in the early 1960s: We live in a world that is being transformed before our eyes by new inventions, new forms of communication, and new folkways. If hunger

150  Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran and disease are abolished by industrializing, mechanizing, and urbanizing the population of the world, is the cost not sometimes too great? What is the use of introducing a tractor or an automobile if in so doing the human qualities of Gemeinschaft (the natural groupings) are cut into shreds? (Hostetler 1963, viii) The stakes in these negotiations were high. Church elders believed their way of life was under assault. Holding the line was their duty. Schisms and demographic mobility shaped the negotiation context. Many Amish farmers left their communities and joined less strict Mennonite fellowships (which did not prohibit tractors and other mechanized farm tools). The result was slow, uneven change. Some churches allowed these “limited technologies,” hewing to the maxim “if you can pull it with horses, you can have it” (Kraybill 2001, 229). Other churches rejected them, judging their worldly payload to be too high. And still, other churches allowed tractors with steel wheels, which limited their use to farm purposes rather than transportation. These negotiating dynamics contributed to the differentiation of Amish fellowships in North America (Hurst and McConnell 2010). Negotiations over electricity and household power follow a similar script. As electrification spread across North America in the early 20th century, a group of Amish ministers gathered in 1920 to consider the likely impact of this new technology.6 They concluded that these power lines carried worldly threats. Electricity disrupts the natural rhythm of day and night. It enables modern entertainment devices that are wasteful at best and threaten the soul at worst. “These devices cannot easily come into the home if the usual door of entrance is not present” (Scott and Pellman 2016, 9). The ministers did not, however, forbid all forms of electricity. They differentiated between high voltage alternating current, delivered over power lines, and low voltage direct current supplied by batteries already in general use. Electricity offers undeniable utilities. Battery technology allows for limited small-scale adoption of select electric tools (such as flashlights, shavers, alarm clocks, small tools, etc.). When adopted judiciously, the Amish believe these tools do not threaten anything. They are “handy but not ‘too handy’ ” (Kraybill 2001, 198). In contrast, the alternating current delivered over power lines connects homes to the outside world. “For a people trying to remain separate from an evil world, it made little sense to literally tie one’s house to the larger world and to fall prey to dependency on outside power” (Kraybill 2001, 201). Powerlines provide a vector for worldly invasion. As one of Kraybill’s Amish informants articulated, electricity carries “all the things we don’t need.” “If you have an electric line coming in, then you’d want a full line of appliances on it. The Amish are human too, you know” (Kraybill 2001, 201). This distinction between batteries and public electric utilities reflects principled limits. The Amish fear worldly incursion. They recognize the frailty of

Symbolic separation 151 their human nature and erect cultural fences to serve as guideposts in navigating the world. They have no problem harnessing technology when used in moderation and only for specific purposes. But they also recognize that technology is hard to control. Access to technology, such as electricity through solar panels, pushes boundaries in uncomfortable ways. 8.3. Discussion The Amish and other plain Anabaptist churches strategically limit technologies. These limitations emerge, crystalize, and change through negotiation. Starting from shared principles privileging community over self, they establish reasonable boundaries for Amish people to live their lives. They harbor no principled opposition to labor-saving conveniences if these implements do not threaten their values. But, when technologies appear to enable and invite worldly behavior, they move swiftly to contain it. These reactive maneuvers described elsewhere as “defensive structuring” build solidarity (Hostetler 1977; Siegel 1970; Kraybill 2001). The tensions that emerge with the appearance of new technologies enable the ongoing process of negotiated order. These dynamics draw communities together. This practice marks the Amish and other plain Anabaptist fellowships as religious sects. Sociocultural tension has become a core concept to explain religious vitality in the Sociology of Religion. Iannaccone (1994) argues that religious rules serve two functions. First, they culturally mark members, differentiating them from non-members. Second, they discourage free-riding, concentrating commitment, and intensifying bonds of solidarity. Smith and colleagues (1998) identified inter-group conflict as the animating force driving the American evangelical movement. Their book’s subtitle, “Embattled and Thriving,” encapsulates its thesis. Sociocultural conflict and tension reinforce solidarity within religious movements. Far from being a liability or threat, tension is an asset enabling collective identity work. Following this logic, Stark and Finke (2000) proposed treating sociocultural tension as an indexical marker of sectarianism. Sociological studies have consistently found that sects tend to reduce their tension with society over time (Bainbridge and Stark 1980; Stark and Bainbridge 1979; Stark and Finke 2000). As denominations and churches grow, their boundaries become porous. Incidence of free-riding increases, muting the effectiveness of strict rules and dissolving solidarity (Stark and Finke 2000). The traditional sect to church theory assumes a linear process driven by internal factors. Over time, sects relax their rules, lower their tension with broader society, and morph into churches. That theory fails to consider the dynamics of negotiation. Sects don’t simply reduce their tension. Instead, their members push for adjustments within the negotiation and structural contexts. These negotiations produce variations in tension – loosening in some ways and tightening in others, contingent on structural changes – as we’ve shown in this case study of the Old Order Amish.

152  Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran Tension is an interactional and relational property rooted in how sect members interact with and distinguish themselves from the outside world (Wellman and Corcoran 2013). However, much of the sociology of religion literature treats the church-sect distinction as an attributional property of denomination, doctrine, or theology. These analyses consider the distinction a dichotomy. Either the group is a high-tension sect or a low-tension church. This dichotomy is not analytically useful. Instead, as the present case study demonstrates, tension and adaptation are dynamic attributes mediated through negotiated order. Structural contexts change, altering the stakes on which church rules rest. Thus, a church can relax and retain its sectarian character in tension with the broader society. We began this chapter by describing our encounter with Rebecca Yoder’s solar-powered electric reclining couch. The increasing adoption of home-­ generated electricity with the Amish and plain Anabaptist fellowships presents a strategic vantage point to explore negotiated order. We suspect that Amish churches would have forbidden this capacity if it existed fifty years ago. The structural context of 1963 supported vigilance against creeping technology. What is the cost in terms of the human spirit? How much destruction of old values, of alienation of parents from children, of neighbor from neighbor, of the spirit of man from the faith of his traditional culture must there be? How fast dare we change? (Hostetler 1963, viii–ix) But the structural context of 2023 differs. Novel technologies of the 20th century are commonplace in the 21st. That doesn’t mean that the Amish embrace old technology out of reflex. Indeed, they increase their vigilance (Nolt 2015). But they also renegotiate boundaries, retaining sectarian tension. Notes 1 Unless otherwise noted, we have changed the names and other details that might disclose our informant’s identities. 2 Sunday worship services in most Amish churches take place in member homes rather than a dedicated church building. Each family takes a turn hosting church. Consequently, Amish people value space for communal assembly on their properties. 3 See the essays in (Weaver-Zercher 2004), especially (Kraybill 2004), for an overview of Hostetler’s ideas and influence on study of the Amish. For a more critical take, see Anderson (2017). 4 These policies contributed to a group of families leaving the Alymer settlement and try to establish a new Amish colony in Honduras. That settlement failed after a few years (Eicher 2013). 5 The original single cylinder tractor manufactured by the International Harvester Company generated power equivalent to twenty horses (Kraybill 2001). 6 As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Amish churches are self-governing. Each congregation sets its own Ordnung and regulates its affairs. But the Amish also periodically hold “ministers meetings,” which call together elders from across North America to discuss pressing issues confronting the plain people (Yoder 1991).

Symbolic separation 153 References Anderson, Cory. 2017. “Seventy-Five Years of Amish Studies, 1942 to 2017: A Critical Review of Scholarship Trends (with an Extensive Bibliography).” Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies Vol.5 (1): 1–65. doi:10.18061/1811/81076. Bainbridge, William Sims, and Rodney Stark. 1980. “Sectarian Tension.” Review of Religious Research 22 (2): 105–124. Blumer, Herbert. 1966. “Sociological Implications of the Thought of George Herbert Mead.” American Journal of Sociology Vol.71 (5): 535–544. Blumer, Herbert. 1969a. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Blumer, Herbert. 1969b. “The Methodological Position of Symbolic Interactionism.” In Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method, 1–60. Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs. Corcoran, Katie E., Rachel E. Stein, Corey J. Colyer, and Brittany M. Kowalski. 2020. “Familial Ties, Location of Occupation, and Congregational Exit in GeographicallyBased Congregations: A  Case Study of the Amish.” Review of Religious Research (November). doi:10.1007/s13644-020-00438-7. Donnermeyer, Joseph F. 2015. “The Amish Population: County Estimates and Settlement Patterns.” Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies Vol.3 (1): 94–109. Durkheim, Emile. 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Karen E Fields. New York: The Free Press. Eicher, Jerry S. 2013. My Amish Childhood: A True Story of Faith, Family, and the Simple Life. Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers. Ems, Lindsay. 2015. “Critical Making: Amish Innovation for Community Empowerment.” In Selected Papers of Internet Research 16. Vol. 16. Phoenix, AZ. http://spir. aoir.org. Ems, Lindsay. 2019. “Amish Philosophies on Information Communication Technology Design and Use.” ACM. https://authentic.soe.ucsc.edu/philosophy-hci-­ workshop/papers/P20-Ems.pdf. Fine, Gary Alan. 1984. “Negotiated Orders and Organizational Cultures.” Annual Review of Sociology Vol.10: 239–262. Fine, Gary Alan. 1993. “The Sad Demise, Mysterious Disappearance, and Glorious Triumph of Symbolic Interactionism.” Annual Review of Sociology Vol.19 (1): 61–87. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.19.080193.000425. Fine, Gary Alan, and Tim Hallett. 2014. “Group Cultures and the Everyday Life of Organizations: Interaction Orders and Meso-Analysis.” Organization Studies Vol.35 (12): 1773–1792. doi:10.1177/0170840614546153. Hall, Peter M. 1972. “A  Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Politics.” Sociological Inquiry Vol.42 (3–4): 35–75. doi:10.1111/j.1475-682X.1972.tb00229.x. Hallett, Tim. 2010. “The Myth Incarnate: Recoupling Processes, Turmoil, and Inhabited Institutions in an Urban Elementary School.” American Sociological Review Vol.75 (1): 52–74. doi:10.1177/0003122409357044. Hallett, Tim, and Marc J. Ventresca. 2006. “Inhabited Institutions: Social Interactions and Organizational Forms in Gouldner’s Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy.” Theory and Society Vol.35 (2): 213–236. doi:10.1007/s11186-006-9003-z. Hostetler, John A. 1963. Amish Society. 1st ed. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press. Hostetler, John A. 1964. “Persistence and Change in Amish Society.” Ethnology Vol.3 (2): 185–198.

154  Corey J. Colyer, Rachel E. Stein, and Katie E. Corcoran Hostetler, John A. 1977. “Old Order Amish Survival.” Mennonite Quarterly Review Vol.51: 352–361. Hostetler, John A. 1993. Amish Society. 4th ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hurst, Charles E., and David L. McConnell. 2010. An Amish Paradox: Diversity and Change in the World’s Largest Amish Community. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1994. “Why Strict Churches Are Strong.” The American Journal of Sociology Vol.99 (5): 1180–1211. Johnson-Weiner, Karen M. 2014. “Technological Diversity and Cultural Change Among Contemporary Amish Groups.” Mennonite Quarterly Review Vol.88: 5–22. Kline, David. 1990. Great Possessions: An Amish Farmer’s Journal. Wooster, OH: Wooster Books. Kraybill, Donald B. 2001. The Riddle of Amish Culture. Rev ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. 2003. The Amish and the State. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. 2004. “The Redemptive Community: An Island of Sanity and Silence.” In Writing the Amish: The Worlds of John A. Hostetler, edited by David L. Weaver-Zercher, 36–55. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Kraybill, Donald B. 2019. “Response: How Do We Know What We Know About the Amish and Other Minorities?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (August). doi:10.1111/jssr.12619. Kraybill, Donald B., Karen M. Johnson-Weiner, and Steven M. Nolt. 2013. The Amish. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kraybill, Donald B., and Steven M. Nolt. 2004. Amish Enterprise: From Plows to Profits. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Maines, David R. 1982. “In Search of Mesostructure: Studies in the Negotiated Order.” Urban Life Vol.11 (3): 267–279. doi:10.1177/089124168201100301. Maines, David R., and Joy C. Charlton. 1985. “The Negotiated Order Approach to the Analysis of Social Organization.” Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Supplement 1): 271–308. Manning, Peter K. 1977. Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. McConnell, David L., and Marilyn D. Loveless. 2018. Nature & The Environment in Amish Life. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Nolt, Steven M. 2004. History of the Amish: Revised and Updated. Rev. and Updated ed. Intercourse, PA: Good Books. Nolt, Steven M. 2015. “ ‘You Hold the Whole World in Your Hand’: Cell Phones and Discernment in Amish Churches.” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology Vol.16 (Fall): 27–37. Nolt, Steven M. 2016. The Amish: A Concise Introduction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Peters, Shawn Francis. 2003. The Yoder Case: Religious Freedom, Education, and Parental Rights. Lawrence, KN: University of Kansas Press. Scott, Stephen, and Kenneth Pellman. 2016. Living without Electricity: Lessons from the Amish. Rev. and Updated ed. New York: Good Books. Siegel, Bernard J. 1970. “Defensive Structuring and Environmental Stress.” American Journal of Sociology Vol.76 (1): 11–32.

Symbolic separation 155 Smith, Christian. 1998. American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stark, Rodney, and William Sims Bainbridge. 1979. “Of Churches, Sects, and Cults: Preliminary Concepts for a Theory of Religious Movements.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion Vol.18 (2). [Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Wiley]: 117–131. doi:10.2307/1385935. Stark, Rodney, and Roger Finke. 2000. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Strauss, Anselm L. 1978. Negotiations: Varieties, Contexts, Processes, and Social Order. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sudnow, David. 1965. “Normal Crimes: Sociological Features of the Penal Code in a Public Defender Office.” Social Problems Vol.12 (3): 255–276. Wagler, Ira. 2011. Growing Up Amish: A Memoir. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House. Weaver-Zercher, David L. 2004. “An Uneasy Calling: John A. Hostetler and the Work of Cultural Mediation.” In Writing the Amish: The Worlds of John A. Hostetler, edited by David L. Weaver-Zercher, 56–97. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Wellman, James K., and Katie E. Corcoran. 2013. “Religion and Regional Culture: Embedding Religious Commitment within Place.” Sociology of Religion Vol.74 (4): 496–520. Yoder, Paton. 1991. Tradition and Transition: Amish Mennonites and Old Order Amish 1800–1900. Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History 31. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press.

Part 3

Practices and technology

Despite the long-standing interest in technology of interactionist theory and research, still relatively few studies investigate how technology features in action and interaction. The contributions in Part 3 of this book, which notably all draw on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, investigate how people orient to technology in “observable-and-reportable” ways. Through careful analyses of audio-/video-recordings of interaction in everyday situations they reveal how people embed technology within their work activities, how novel online teaching tools influence the organization of question-answer sequences, how in online games participants systematically deploy the movement of the course in interaction with others, how in public service encounters difficulties in the use of computer systems impact the interaction between citizens and the welfare state, and how visually impaired people embed the opportunities offered by a smartphone app in their shopping activities.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-11

9 Receiving phone calls during medical consultations The production of interactional space for technology use Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut Medical encounters were a subject of numerous interactionist studies (see, among others, Atkinson 1995; Davis 1978; Silverman 1987; Stimson and Webb 1975; Strong 1979; Strauss et al. 1985). These studies underlined the importance of revealing the meaning-making practices that are accomplished both by doctors and by patients when they communicate. A medical encounter, from an interactionist perspective, is a continuing process that has broad implications for the shape of doctor-patient relationships and for the participants’ selves. The importance of studying face-to-face medical interactions is even greater today, when everyday life and medical profession become increasingly technology-mediated. As research in science and technology has shown, technology is not something that restricts and directs interaction, but something that is constructed and reconstructed in the process of its use (Clarke and Star 2003). This chapter investigates how technology-related situations are managed by participants in medical consultations. More specifically, the study examines how doctors answer incoming landline telephone calls during face-to-face interactions with patients in the course of medical consultations. Our study shows that to utilize medical technology, participants take into account the interactional features of the current situation and collaboratively produce an appropriate social context for using technology. From a variety of interactionist approaches, in this chapter, we will adopt Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA) to study medical encounters. Because “An underlying principle of ethnomethodology is that the coordination of social actions is possible because people mutually render their orientation toward shared practice witnessable to others” (vom Lehn et al. 2021: 8; emphasis in original), we find ethnomethodology particularly suitable for studying interactional use of technologies, for technology use is always made witnessable to the participants of social situations. The witnessable character of the coordination of social actions means that we have to focus on the details of social interactions that participants orient to and which they use to produce orderliness in the situation. Such detailed analysis will allow us to DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-12

160  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut capture observable intersubjective processes that constitute meaning-making in social life. Using EMCA, we will focus on the actions of doctors and patients who together create slots for answering a phone call. Doctor-patient interaction has been a topic of Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic research for a long time. As this type of interaction transforms, and new technologies become widespread in medical consultations, topics of research change as well. Besides face-to-face medical consultations, researchers have previously studied telephone consultations (Lopriore et  al. 2019), videomediated consultations (Stommel et  al. 2020), and consultations where specific medical apps are used (Gibson et al. 2006). In the context of faceto-face medical consultations, researchers have also focused on the use of a computer by a doctor (Greatbatch et  al. 1993; Newman et  al. 2010). Another technology that is often used by doctors during a medical consultation is a landline telephone. In medical research, phone calls are treated as distractions that can potentially negatively affect diagnostic accuracy (e.g., Balint et al. 2014; Yu et al. 2014; Bonafide et al. 2020). However, its use and its effect on the unfolding interaction between doctors and patients have not been studied in this institutional context. The present chapter will fill in this gap by focusing on the ways participants orient to incoming phone calls for a doctor. In early Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic research, audio data have been used to study phone calls (e.g., Schegloff 1986; Hopper 1992; Hutchby 2001). Later, researchers started to use video data which opened new topics for the analysis of phone calls (Mondada 2008). Various phonerelated interactional aspects have been studied in the context of advisory sessions (Rae 2001), interaction in cars (Haddington and Rauniomaa 2011), travel agency (Ticca 2014), office space (Licoppe and Tuncer 2014), call center (Mondada 2008), and so on. Intrahospital telephone calls, however, have been analyzed only based on the audio data (e.g., Sterie and GonzálezMartínez 2017; Gonzàlez-Martínez and Drew 2021). This chapter is specifically focused on the incoming phone calls, which are often studied in the context of multiactivity (Haddington and Rauniomaa 2011; Ticca 2014; Liccope and Tuncer 2014), because, when a phone rings, a necessity for the management of multiple courses of actions (co-present interaction and a phone call) emerges. Incoming calls, due to their unpredictability, can have a disruptive effect on the copresent interaction (Ticca 2014: 203). However, when exactly this potential interruption occurs (when the phone rings, is looked at, or picked up) is a more difficult question (Licoppe and Tuncer 2014). Participants either immediately attend to/orient to a ringing phone (Haddington and Rauniomaa 2011) or they do not (Ticca 2014). They can produce a multiactivity situation, disengage from the conversation in favor of attending to a summon, or ignore the summon (Licoppe and Tuncer 2014). The transformation of a

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 161 phone ring from an occurrence in the world to a relevant event is an interactional achievement, achieved through, for example, embodied noticings (Schegloff 1986; Licoppe and Tuncer 2014). The way participants orient to the ring depends on the situation and ongoing activities. The possible temporary disengagement from the ongoing copresent conversation, which often follows a phone ring, can also raise a moral issue (Licoppe and Tuncer 2014), and it is often preceded by some preliminary work (Haddington and Rauniomaa 2011). In this chapter, we will describe different ways doctors and patients orient to a ringing phone on a doctor’s desk and manage this potentially disruptive event. The analysis will elicit interactional circumstances that play a role in the way the ring is oriented to and show the role of institutional context in these situations. We will focus on what precedes the first ring and what follows it up to the moment when the first utterance is said via the handset. The participants’ activities during the phone conversation, at the end of it, and immediately after it deserve special attention in another paper. 9.1.  Data and methods Our data consists of 151 video recordings of consultations with various specialists collected at a private clinic in Moscow, Russia, in 2018–2019. Data collection was facilitated by the employee of the clinic, whose role is to develop doctors’ communication skills. This specialist was interested in having video recordings of medical consultations for teaching and training purposes, as well as in the conversation analytic study of the collected data. She, therefore, assisted the researcher in the process of acquiring permission to record doctor-patient interactions from the clinic’s administration. Among the doctors who participated in the study, there were four pediatricians, three general practitioners, two ophthalmologists, one oncologist, one endocrinologist, and one gynecologist. Almost all of them received special training in communication with patients, and most of them were interested in doctorpatient communication problems. Patients were asked if they would like to participate in the study before their consultations, at the clinic reception. Participation in the study was voluntary, and all participants signed written consent forms. All participants are native speakers of Russian. Video recordings were made using a stationary camera in doctors’ offices. The researcher was not present at the consultations. The collected dataset was used in several research projects, including one discussed in this chapter. The official duration of a consultation in the clinic is 30 minutes. However, judging by the collected recording, consultations last from 15 to 40 minutes. Most doctors have around 10 consultations per day, but this may vary depending on the specialty. Similar to medical consultations in some other countries, acute primary care visits in this clinic have a repeating structure: Opening>

162  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut Problem presentation> History taking> Physical exam> Diagnosis> Treatment> Closing (Byrne and Long 1976; Robinson 2003). In the collected data, we have found 26 cases where doctors and patients receive calls during medical consultations. However, most cases are calls for doctors (19), and so we focused on them. Every doctor’s office has a landline telephone with the same ring sound. Most of the calls are from the reception, and they are usually notifications about the arrival of other patients and test results. Since these calls happen quite often, doctors usually know what they are about and expect them to be short. In our dataset, most of the calls occur in endocrinological, gynecological, and general practice consultations. Telephone conversations following these calls are relatively short (5 to 30 seconds). On rare occasions, doctors receive calls from other doctors. In all cases doctors answer calls. Data were analyzed using the method of Conversation Analysis, which has been widely applied to everyday (see, for example, Atkinson and Heritage 1984) and institutional interaction (Heritage 2005). The transcripts are based on Jefferson’s notational system (Jefferson 2004), Mondada’s conventions for transcribing multimodality (Mondada 2019), and Bolden’s Cyrillic transliteration conventions (Bolden 2004). The first line of transcripts is transliterated Russian speech, and the second line is an idiomatic translation. All transcripts are anonymized. 9.2.  Receiving calls during the doctor’s turn During medical consultations incoming phone calls can appear at three moments: when the doctor is speaking, when the patient is speaking, and when none of them is speaking (they can be engaged in physical examination or this can be an inter-turn gap). In the following, we will consider the first two possibilities because they create organizational pressure on the participants who have to coordinate their actions to create a slot for answering a phone. This section will focus on cases where doctors receive calls during their turns. We will show that doctors do not immediately abandon their turns to pick up the phone, but instead, they orient to the features of the patients’ turns and their current institutional tasks. As a result, they can either finish the turn before answering the phone (Ex. 1) or, if the turn is projected to be long, suspend their ongoing institutional activity (Ex. 2) and resume it after the call is over. Excerpt 1 shows how a doctor finishes answering a patient’s question and, after that, takes the call. The excerpt takes place at the treatment recommendation stage of the gynecological consultation. The patient gave birth a year and a half ago and had postpartum complications which the previous doctor could not help. So she came to another clinic for a second opinion. Before the excerpt, the doctor gave the patient a series of recommendations regarding the next course of action.

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 163 Excerpt 1 01 DOC esli=e ↑dejstvitel’no diskomfortno if=uhm (it) is really discomforting 02 mozhno svechki e sdelat’. [°( )°] (you) can use candles. 03 PAT [a ka]kie what kind 04 °(vot [posovetuete)°] would (you) recommend 05 DOC [nu=s Geksi]kon prosto obychnye well just usual Hexicon 06 [(tam) s *khlorgeksi]dinom %esli na nego# with chlorhexidine if (you) 07 PAT [a::::: ] a::::: tel    *ring--------------------------> doc %reaches for tel-> #Fig.1

Figure 1 08 DOC net +allerg*%ii# don’t have an allergy tel -->* pat +looks down to her phone-> doc ------------%picks tel up->    #Fig.2

Figure 2 09 (0.3)% -->% 10 da+ yes ->+

164  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut After the doctor suggests a treatment (lines 1–2), the patient asks her for a name of a specific medicine (line 3). The doctor starts answering the question before it is finished, which leads to an overlap with the patient’s talk (lines 4–5). The doctor names the medicine (line 5) and then extends her turn clarifying possible contraindications to its use (lines 6 and 8). In response to the medicine’s name, the patient produces a change-of-state token (Heritage 1984), which indicates that the received information is new for her (line 7). In the middle of the doctor’s turn and the patient’s overlapping change-of-state token (lines 6–7), the phone on the doctor’s desk starts ringing. It is important to note here that the volume of the ring is not excessively loud and thus both doctors and patients can speak without raising the voice and hear each other unproblematically. In this case, the patient shows no visible orientation to the ring as a relevant event in the world and continues looking at the speaking doctor. As the phone rings, the doctor starts extending her arm towards the telephone while finishing her turn about a possible contraindication – allergy (line 6). This action demonstrates to the patient that the call will now be answered, and it is noticed by the patient who quickly glances at the doctor’s hand reaching for the handset (Fig. 1). The doctor reaches the telephone and picks it up at the end of her turn, while the patient turns her gaze away from the doctor and starts looking down (line 8, Fig. 2). The change of the patient’s gaze orientation, followed by 0.3-second gap (line 9), and the patient’s not taking a turn suggest that the patient treats her conversation with the doctor as suspended. The excerpt demonstrates that both doctors and patients do not immediately stop the ongoing course of action when the phone rings. If the doctor speaks at the moment of the ring, there is a preference to finish the turn before answering the call. It is worth noting that the doctor’s turn, in this case, is a response to the patient’s question, and this particular response does not require a long utterance, so she can finish her turn while reaching for the phone. The patient does not expect the doctor to maintain two activities simultaneously and disengages from conversing with the doctor by averting her gaze and staying silent. These collaborative actions create a slot for the doctor’s use of the phone. The next excerpt demonstrates how a doctor can abandon her turn to answer a call. The case takes place during the closing stage of an endocrinological consultation. The patient has a set of psychological changes and suspects that these changes are related to the hormonal system. Before the excerpt, the doctor suggested that not all of the changes they discussed could be related to hormones.

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 165 Excerpt 2 01 DOC ja vam o ochen’ rekomenduju sxodit’ pogovorit’ I strongly recommend you to go and talk 02 s nashim psixiatrom. with our psychiatrist. 03 (0.7) 04 DOC [xoro ]sho? okay? 05 PAT [°mghm°] mgmh 06 (0.3) 07 DOC  .hh Galya schas vy idete f::=e pjatyj ↑kabinet# .hh Galya now you are going to the fifth room #Fig.3

Figure 3 08 a*naliz sdaete %(0.3). h# esli tam* vsë%# to take an analysis (0.3). h if everything tel *ring----------------------------* doc %reaches for tel--------% #Fig.4 #Fig.5

 

Figure 4 Figure 5 09 %f: ↑porjadke% (0.5) # nu- # (0.5)% °uhm-° alë#  is fine (0.5) well- (0.5) uhm- hello doc %touches tel-%picks tel up--------% #Fig.6#Fig.7 #Fig.8

Figure 6

 

Figure 7

 

Figure 8

166  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut In lines 1–2, the doctor advises the patient to consult a psychiatrist. In the absence of a response from the patient (line 3), the doctor pursues it (line 4). In overlap with it, the patient produces a minimal acceptance token (line 5). Next, the doctor starts a multi-turn-constructional unit (TCU) turn (lines 7–9) instructing the patient on what to do after the consultation. In lines 7–8, the doctor announces the first step (visiting another room to take an analysis), but at the end of this first TCU, the phone starts ringing (line 8). The doctor turns her gaze toward the telephone and begins to extend her arm towards it, indicating to the patient that the call will be answered soon (line 8, Fig. 4). A 0.3-second pause emerges, after which the doctor returns her gaze to the patient (Fig. 5) and continues giving an instruction by starting a new conditional sentence without a change in her intonation. By doing that, she lets the patient know that the instruction sequence is not over yet despite the upcoming switch to another activity (answering the phone call). The doctor will, however, produce only a conditional clause (lines 8–9), after which the production of the sentence will be abandoned and the doctor will answer the phone. The shift from one activity (talking with the patient) to another activity (talking on the phone) is done gradually. The doctor’s verbal turn will also have some characteristics, which are specific to turns preceding answering the phone call in other institutional settings – pauses and cut-offs (Licoppe and Tuncer 2014; Ticca 2014). As the doctor finishes producing a conditional clause, she picks up the phone, makes a 0.5-second pause and then utters “nu-” while looking at the patient (line 9, Fig. 6). Unlike in the first excerpt, the patient continues looking straight at the doctor and does not show any visible orientations neither to the phone ring nor to the doctor’s action of picking up the phone throughout the excerpt. In this situation, the patient, therefore, held the doctor accountable for managing the demands of multiactivity and providing the rest of the instruction sequence. The first cut-off (“nu-”) is followed by a pause (0.5 seconds), during which the doctor puts the handset close to her ear, thus bodily indicating a switch to a different activity (Fig. 7). The doctor then turns her gaze away from the patient and utters “uhm-”, after which she answers the call (line 9, Fig. 8). Although in this case there is no visible change in the patient’s pose and gaze when the doctor reaches for the phone and picks up the handset, the doctor displays her engagement in a new activity and disengagement from the communication with patient by turning her head to the phone and slightly bending toward it (Fig. 6). These bodily “brackets” mark an observable deviation to the telephone conversation from the ongoing medical consultation and allow the patient to project the suspension of the ongoing activity. The excerpt demonstrates that when the phone rings during the doctor’s turn, sometimes they can abandon their turns in order to answer the call. In our collection, it happens in the context of multi-TCU turns that cannot be finished quickly. In this particular case, the doctor uses a two-part compound

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 167 TCU “if–then” (Lerner 1991) but produces only the first part. The character of action (instruction) makes it even more difficult for the doctor to finish her turn since it assumes providing instructions for the patient on what to do if the results of medical tests will be “fine.” At the same time, the doctor tries to find a way to finish her turn until the last moment. The doctor’s preference for finishing her turn is demonstrated by her continuing to speak to the patient even after touching the handset and picking it up. Despite the attempt to finish the turn before switching to another activity, the doctor abandons her turn after two cut-offs. The full instruction will be given to the patient after the call is over. In this section, we have shown that doctors have a preference for finishing their turns before answering a phone call, even though it is not always possible in the context of multi-TCU turns. Next, we will show that when the phone rings during patients’ turns, doctors do not initiate a suspension in the same way as they do during their turns. 9.3.  Receiving calls during the patient’s turn This section explores how doctors answer incoming phone calls if they occur during patients’ turns. In such cases, patients usually continue to speak in the same way. Doctors either wait until patients finish their turns or take the turn by themselves and initiate the transfer to the telephone during their turn. Excerpt 3 shows how a doctor waits until a patient finishes her turn to answer a call. The excerpt is from the history-taking stage of an endocrinological consultation. The patient has a blood pressure problem. She consulted with a cardiologist who directed her to an endocrinologist. Just prior to the excerpt, the patient talked about a problem with her menstrual cycle and its possible connection to a medicine she had been taking. Excerpt 3 01 PAT v itoge ja ne znaju:, as a result I don’t know, 02 libo eto:: svjazano vsё-taki kak-to s preparatom,   either it is somehow connected to the medicine, 03 libo net, or not, 04 ne- ne sovsem ponimaju chto proisxodit, (I) do- don’t fully understand what is going on, 05 .hh*h poetomu poka chto ego ne prinimaju,* .hhh so for now (I) don’t take it, tel *ring---------------------------------* 06 no skoree vsego skoro snova nachnu.  but most likely (I) will start (taking it) again. 07 %(0.4)#(1.1) %# (1.0)% doc %reaches for tel------%picks tel up-%

168  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut



#Fig.9 #Fig.10

Figure 9 08 DOC #↓da Mari#na? yes Marina? #Fig.11 #Fig.12

Figure 11 09 (2.7)





Figure 10

Figure 12

In lines 1–6, the patient finishes a multi-TCU response to a doctor’s question in which the patient discusses a medicine she had been taking for some time. During this multi-TCU turn, the doctor looks at the screen and types in the information provided by the patient. The phone starts ringing at the beginning of the patient’s TCUs (line 5). Even though this TCU potentially concludes an answer to the doctor’s question, the patient does not orient to a phone ring as an event that can suspend an activity in the ongoing interaction. The patient extends her multi-TCU turn (line 6), while the doctor too does not display any orientation to a phone ring and continues typing. As soon as the patient finishes her turn, which is indicated by the falling intonation, the doctor starts extending her arm towards the telephone (Fig. 9). The patient then immediately lifts her gaze and looks at the telephone as the doctor picks the handset up (Fig. 10) and puts it to her ear (Fig. 11). It is at this moment that the phone ring becomes relevant to the patient and she can project the suspension of the ongoing activity. After this, the patient turns away from the doctor and starts looking ahead (Fig. 12). As this case suggests, when the incoming phone call happens during the patient’s turn, the doctor waits for its end to answer the call. The doctor extends her hand to the phone only after the patient has finished. The patient, on her

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 169 side, cooperates with the doctor by turning her gaze away, thus displaying to the doctor that the continuation of the talk is not expected at this moment. Just like in the previous excerpt, in the next excerpt the doctor orients to the end of the patient’s turn when picking up the phone. However, identifying a possible end of a turn can sometimes be problematic, and we will show how doctors can act in this situation. The excerpt takes place at the history-taking stage of an endocrinological consultation. The patient (an adolescent) came with his mother. He has been noticing various psychological changes over the year and assumes the hormonal nature of these changes. Before the excerpts, the patient said that he experiences loss of energy, unstable sleep, and unstable emotional state. Excerpt 4 01 DOC >skazhite pozhalujsta< u:hm (0.3) tell me please u:hm (0.3) 02 ne zamechaete li vy v svete togo chto didn’t you notice in the light of 03 vot takoj upadok si:l this loss of energy 04 >no tut mogut byt’ tel *second ring----------* #Fig.15 #Fig.16

Figure 15



Figure 16

16 (0.5) 17 DOC >schas izvinite% odnu sekundu% #Fig.17

Figure 17 18 ↑da An’na Vasil’evna? yes Anna Vasil’evna? 19 (0.7)

In lines 1–8, the doctor asks if the patient experiences decreased sexual desire. She designs the question in a delicate way by excluding the word “sexual” (line 8). After a 1.3-second gap (line 9), which indicates trouble with answering the question, the patient prefaces his response with the Russian particle “nu” (line 10), displaying that the response will somehow depart from the question’s constraints (Bolden 2018). Next, he produces the prolonged sound “m::::::::::,” during which the phone starts ringing (line 10). The prolonged sound and two pauses (lines 10 and 11) also indicate that the patient

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 171 has some trouble with answer formulation. Eventually, he minimally confirms that he experienced a decline in sexual desire (lines 10–11) and finishes his turn with a falling intonation (line 11). While the patient displays trouble with the formulation of the answer, the doctor quickly glances at the phone (Fig. 13, the phone is not visible), possibly to display that the phone will be answered as soon as the patient finishes his turn. As the patient gives an answer, which can be heard as a completed one (lines 10–11), there is a 0.8-second gap, and then the doctor produces a third-turn acknowledgment (line 13). Next, the doctor immediately turns her gaze toward the phone and starts extending her arm toward the handset, displaying again that the phone will be answered (Fig. 15). However, in overlap with the end of the doctor’s acknowledgment, the patient produces an increment to his response (line 14). The phone then starts to ring the second time, and the doctor produces one more “mhm” (line 15) while holding her hand close to the handset (Fig. 16). She, however, does not pick it up immediately but waits until the end of the patient’s increment before switching to this new activity. After the increment, there is a 0.5-second gap, during which the doctor lifts up the handset, which is not only visible but also hearable for the patient (line 16). The doctor previously displayed that she is going to answer the phone by first glancing at it (line 11) and by putting her hand on it (line 14). She then indicates a transfer to a phone call conversation by lifting the handset up and apologizing (line 17). The apology in Excerpt 4 may be related to the uncertainty concerning whether the patient will produce one more turn. Although the patient uses a falling intonation (line 14) before the doctor picks up the handset, he used the same intonation earlier (line 11) but started a new turn after that. So, the doctor, when picking up the phone, may not be sure that this time the patient will not produce a new turn. Here the doctor’s apology is used to accomplish a nonapology action (Robinson 2004), but the apology itself is caused by the possible interruption of the patient’s talk. Nevertheless, it can be observed that the doctor waits for the patient to finish since she starts extending her arm towards the handset only after the patient’s SPP (line 11) and a 0.8-second gap (line 12). In Excerpts 3 and 4, patients do not show any visible orientation to a phone ring and continue speaking in the same way until doctors display that they are going to answer the call by reaching for the handset. The ringing of the phone becomes a relevant event only when it is oriented to as such by the doctor. In other words, it is the doctors who initiate the suspension of the conversation with patients and transition to the telephone conversation. Both cases also show that when the phone rings during patients’ turns, doctors do not immediately display that they are going to answer the call by extending their arm towards the telephone. Instead, they usually wait until patients finish their turns and do it right afterward.

172  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut However, as the next excerpt will show, in some cases, the doctor does not wait until the end of the patient’s turn and uses other methods of creating a slot to answer the phone. The excerpt is taken from the history-taking stage of an endocrinological consultation. In the last couple of minutes before the excerpt, the patient has been displaying signs of emotional distress (forced expiration and inspiration, high pitch and speech cut-offs). While doing this, she has been talking about her experience with other doctors, who could not help with her problem. Excerpt 5 01 DOC chto vas rastrevozhilo? what made you upset? 02 chto: vy:- i chto stalo takoj what you- and what happened to be such 03 boleznennym (.) triggerom painful (.) trigger 04 (1.6) 05 PAT da prosto h:::: (.) °den’° well just h:::: (.) the day 06 den’ neudachnyj na samom dele it’s really a bad day 07 PAT °eto kak [by°] ↑nervy, it’s kind of nerves 08 DOC [u:h] 09 (0.3) 10 DOC mghm= 11 PAT =.hh ↓vot# *chto menja ne ↑ustroilo:,= .hh well what didn’t suit me,= tel *first ring-------------->   #Fig.18

Figure 18 12 DOC =da (0.4)* >potomu chto vot# =yes (0.4) >because well tel -->*

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 173

#Fig.19

Figure 19 13 chto-to ja tak ponimaju chto #Fig.20 #Fig.21

Figure 20



Figure 21

15 vni*%manija udelili# (.) situatsii, attention was paid to the situation, tel -->* doc -->%picks tel up and holds it----> #Fig.22

Figure 22 16 >i: ne sdali naprimer ↑da?  >a:nd (they) didn’t take (tests) for example yes?

174  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut 17 ne po- ne poreko%mendovali# gormony?>   #Fig.23

Figure 23 18 =da Masha =yes Masha 19 (2.2)

In lines 1–3, the doctor asks what exactly upset the patient, implying that it is related to the patient’s experience of previous medical consultations since they discussed it before the question. After a 1.6-second gap, the patient disconnects her distressed state from her previous experience of medical consultations by producing an account of why she feels upset (lines 5–8). Next, there is a 0.3-second gap, after which the doctor produces a continuer engendering further talk by the patient (line 10). The patient then rephrases the doctor’s question (line 1) displaying that she is going to continue with her answer (line 11). As a continuation is projected, the doctor leans closer to the keyboard and starts typing (Figs. 18–19). However, as the patient restates the question, the phone starts ringing. The doctor then begins to produce a candidate answer to her question (lines 12–17) latching with the end of the patient’s turn (lines 11–12). In the mid-TCU position of the doctor’s turn, the phone rings for the second time, after which she starts extending her arm towards the telephone (line 14, Figs. 20–21). However, she does not carry the handset to her ear immediately, but first holds her hand over the phone for several moments while continuing the production of her turn (lines 14–15). After picking up the phone (line 15), she also does not immediately answer the call, but instead holds the phone in the air for several more moments (Fig. 22). The way the doctor answers the phone call in this excerpt can be also connected to the distressed state of the patient, as the doctor has to answer the phone call while also doing face-saving work (Goffman 1955) by attending to the patient’s emotional state. As she nears the end of her turn, the doctor finally puts the handset close to her ear, turns her gaze away from the patient (Fig. 23), and then answers a call latching it at the end of her own turn (lines 17–18). As this excerpt shows, to create a slot for answering the phone when it rings during the patient’s turn, the doctor can use the transition relevance places

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 175 to intercept and take the turn in order to produce an appropriate ground for suspending conversation and using the phone. When doing so, the doctor orients to the projectable length of the patient’s turn: if it is potentially long, the doctor can start their turn before the end of the patient’s turn. The doctor’s intercepting turn can, however, be long itself, as in Excerpt 5, where the doctor, in order to help the upset patient, provides a candidate answer to her own question. She waits for the end of her turn to answer the phone, although her turn is quite lengthy. Doctors can also employ other methods to construct the phone use as an event happening during their own, not the patients’, turn. For example, in another fragment from our collection the doctor finishes the patient’s turn in place of the patient. Such examples show that doctors avoid initiating suspension of conversation with patients during patients’ turns. In Excerpt 5, like in the previous ones, the patient shows no visible orientation to the ringing phone. It can be projected that she is going to extend her turn while the phone continues to ring: she half-opens her mouth right before the doctor starts to speak (line 12). This indicates that for the patient taking an incoming call is the doctor’s responsibility. But this responsibility can be fulfilled only within the ongoing interaction. To make such “division of technological labor” possible, patients coordinate their activities with the doctor’s actions by restraining from talking and by suspending their other activities when the doctor is using the phone but staying alert to getting back to medical consultation after the phone conversation is over. 9.4. Conclusion In this chapter, we examined how doctors and patients orient to an incoming phone call during a medical consultation. Our primary focus was on doctors’ verbal and embodied actions that precede answering the call. We have found a certain pattern in the examined cases: doctors tend to initiate the suspension of the conversation with patients and transition to the telephone conversation during their turns. If the phone rings during a doctor’s turn, they can either finish their turn before picking up the phone (Ex. 1) or abandon their turn in favor of answering a phone call (Ex. 2). The latter “solution” is usually observed in the context of multi-TCU turns, which are expected to be lengthy. If the phone rings during a patient’s turn, a doctor usually waits until the patient finishes their turn (Ex. 3). In some cases, answering a phone call can also be preceded by an apology (Ex. 4). If a patient’s turn is projected to be lengthy, a doctor usually does not wait until the end of the patient’s turn. Instead, they can take the turn, for example, by providing a candidate answer before picking up the phone (Ex. 5). Extending the arm towards the phone projects that the call will be answered and works as a display of an upcoming suspension of the activity at hand. It is evident in the way patients treat such actions: when patients notice that doctors are reaching for the telephone, they tend to disengage. Patients, therefore, do not expect doctors to maintain two activities (doctor-patient conversation and

176  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut telephone conversation) in medical interaction as in some other institutional settings (e.g., in an office setting; see Licoppe and Tuncer 2014). Since extending the arm towards the phone works in this way, doctors avoid doing it during patients’ turns but can do it during their turns and even abandon their turns (Ex. 2). In this relation, extending of the arm makes the doctor’s answer to the phone call less disruptive because it clearly displays the doctor’s next action. As our data shows, the ringing of the doctor’s phone does not suspend the copresent interaction right away, as it is not oriented to as a relevant event in the world per se. Both doctors and patients continue talking after the first phone ring occurs, and sometimes several rings can occur before the phone is picked up (Ex. 4 and 5). Just as in other institutional contexts (e.g., Rae 2001; Liccope and Tuncer 2014), additional interactional work has to be done to make a phone ring a relevant event and an action of answering a phone call – the next relevant action. The moment of answering the phone call is collaboratively and multimodally negotiated by participants of the interaction, but the action of answering a phone call is primarily a doctor’s concern. While patients manage to continue talking despite the (relatively quiet) phone ring, answering a phone call is a part of the doctor’s job, and it is therefore a relevant action. Doctors receive phone calls in different interactional contexts and at different stages of medical consultations. Despite this diversity, we have found highly routinized practices of answering a phone call in this setting, which occur even if the current topic of a discussion is sensitive (Ex. 4), or if the patient is in a strong emotional state (Ex. 5). It has been noted that in most of the studied institutional settings phone calls are routine and expected (Rae 2001; Licoppe and Tuncer 2014). The ringing phone is also a routine part of a doctor’s work, and as our data shows, it is always answered. The doctor’s task is, therefore, to find or create a proper sequential slot to answer a phone call before the phone stops ringing. While patients do not initiate a suspension of the ongoing interaction themselves, they orient to the doctor’s actions and collaborate in a process of creating a slot for answering the phone after the relevancy of a phone ring is displayed by the doctor. The chapter contributes to studies on medical authority. From the perspective of Conversation Analysis, authority is not something that exists on its own, but it is a result of the interactional organization (Maynard 1991; Perakylä 1998; Robinson 2008). It means that, first, doctor-patient interaction can be more or less authoritative depending on how it is organized or how doctors and patient construct their actions. Second, the doctor’s authority is not omnirelevant for participants, and we need to focus on specific situations in which authority is maintained (or not). Receiving phone calls can be one such situation. As we showed, when the phone rings during the patient’s turn, the doctor tends to wait until the patient finishes their turn to answer the call. By prioritizing the patient’s turn over the call, the doctor prioritizes the patient’s narrative over other institutional businesses. Additionally, this study contributes to a growing body of literature on the management of multiactivity (Haddington et  al. 2014), particularly in the

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 177 context of institutional settings. More research is needed to investigate how doctors resume or restart the activity which was suspended or abandoned due to the phone call. Further research might also investigate how patients answer personal calls and/or calls related to the ongoing institutional tasks during the medical consultation. Another possible area of future research is the management of calls when the phone is on silent or vibrate mode. As was evident from our data, participants have different ways of switching to another activity when they receive a phone call without an audible notification. All these situations were, however, left out of the scope of this chapter. Transcription conventions [] Beginning and end of the overlap. = “Latching”: no interval between adjacent utterances. (0.2) Timed silences in tenths of a second. (.) “Micropause”: a hearable silence of less than 0.2 second. word. Falling/ending intonation contour. word, Continuing intonation contour. word? Rising questioning intonation contour. word Stressed sound (increased loudness or higher pitch). wo:rd Prolonged sound. wo- Cut-off sound. °word° Quieter than surrounding talk. WORD Much louder than surrounding talk. ↑word Markedly higher pitch. ↓word Markedly lower pitch. >word< Faster than surrounding talk. Slower than surrounding talk. .hh Hearable inhalation. hh Hearable exhalation. wo(h)rd Interpolated particles of aspiration. (word) Uncertain hearing. ((knock)) Transcriber’s comments. References Atkinson, Maxwell  & John Heritage (eds.). 1984. Structures of Social Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Atkinson, Paul. 1995. Medical Talk and Medical Work. London: Sage. Balint, Brad J., Scott D. Steenburg, Hongbu Lin, Changyu Shen, Jennifer L. Steele & Richard B. Gunderman. 2014. “Do Telephone Call Interruptions Have an Impact on Radiology Resident Diagnostic Accuracy?” Academic Radiology Vol.21 (12): 1623–1628. doi: 10.1016/j.acra.2014.08.001. Bolden, Galina. 2004. “The Quote and Beyond: Defining Boundaries of Reported Speech in Conversational Russian.” Journal of Pragmatics Vol.36 (6): 1071–1118. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2003.10.015.

178  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut Bolden, Galina. 2018. “Nu-prefaced Responses in Russian Conversation.” Pp. 23–58 in John Heritage and Marja-Leena Sorjonen (eds.), Between Turn and Sequence: Turn-Initial Particles across Languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Bonafide, Christopher P., Jeffrey M. Miller, A. Russell Localio, Amina Khan, Adam C. Dziorny, Mark Mai, Shannon Stemler, Wanxin Chen, John H. Holmes, Vinay M. Nadkarni & Ron Keren. 2020. “Association Between Mobile Telephone Interruptions and Medication Administration Errors in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.” JAMA Pediatrics The Quote and Beyond: Defining Boundaries of Reported Speech in Conversational Russian Vol.174 (2): 162–169. doi: 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2019.5001. Byrne, Patrick S.  & Barrie E. L. Long. 1976. Doctors Talking to Patients a Study of the Verbal Behaviour of General Practitioners Consulting in Their Surgeries. London: HMSO. Clarke, Adele E. & Susan Leigh Star. 2003. “Science, Technology, and Medicine Studies.” Pp. 539–574 in Larry T. Reynolds and Nancy J. Herman-Kinney (eds.), Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Davis, Alan G. (ed.). 1978. Relationships between Doctors and Patients. Farnborough: Saxon House. Gibson, Mark, K. Neil Jenkings, Robert Wilson  & Ian Purves. 2006. “Verbal Prescribing in General Practice Consultations.” Social Science & Medicine Vol.63 (6): 1684–1698. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2006.03.021. Goffman, Erving. 1955. “On Face-Work.” Psychiatry Vol.18 (3): 213–231. https:// doi.org/10.1080/00332747.1955.11023008 González-Martínez Esther and Paul Drew. 2021. “Informings as Recruitment in Nurses′ Intrahospital Telephone Calls.” Journal of Pragmatics Vol.186: 48–59. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2021.09.013. Greatbatch, David, Paul Luff, Christian Heath  & Peter Campion. 1993. “Interpersonal Communication and Human-Computer Interaction: An Examination of the Use of Computers in Medical Consultations.” Interacting with Computers Vol.5 (2): 193–216. doi: 10.1016/0953-5438(93)90018-O. Haddington, Pentti, Tiina Keisanen, Lorenza Mondada  & Maurice Nevile (eds.). 2014. Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Haddington, Pentti  & Rauniomaa Mirka. 2011. “Technologies, Multitasking, and Driving: Attending to and Preparing for a Mobile Phone Conversation in a Car.” Human Communication Research Vol.37 (2):223–254. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958. 2010.01400.x. Heritage, John. 1984. “A Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement.” Pp. 299–345 in J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage (eds.), Structures of Social Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heritage, John. 2005. “Conversation Analysis and Institutional Talk.” Pp.  103–147 in Kristine L. Fitch and Robert E. Sanders (eds.), Handbook of Language and Social Interaction. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Hopper, Robert. 1992. Telephone Conversation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hutchby, Ian. 2001. Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone to the Internet. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Jefferson, Gail. 2004. “Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction.” Pp.  13–31 in Gene H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Receiving phone calls during medical consultations 179 Lerner, Gene H. 1991. “On the Syntax of Sentences-in-Progress.” Language in Society Vol.20 (3): 441–458. doi: 10.1017/S0047404500016572. Licoppe, Christian & Sylvaine Tuncer. 2014. “Attending to a Summons and Putting Other Activities ‘on Hold’: Multiactivity as a Recognisable Interactional Accomplishment.” Pp. 167–190 in Pentti Haddington, Tiina Keisanen, Lorenza Mondada and Maurice Nevile (eds.), Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Lopriore, Stefanie, Amanda LeCouteur, Katie Ekberg & Stuart Ekberg. 2019. “ ‘You’ll Have to Be My Eyes and Ears’: A Conversation Analytic Study of Physical Examination on a Health Helpline.” Journal of Clinical Nursing Vol.28 (1–2): 330–339. doi: 10.1111/jocn.14638. Maynard, Douglas W. 1991. “Interaction and Asymmetry in Clinical Discourse.” American Journal of Sociology Vol.97 (2): 448–495. Mondada, Lorenza. 2008. “Using Video for a Sequential and Multimodal Analysis of Social Interaction: Videotaping Institutional Telephone Calls.” Forum: Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research Vol.9 (3). http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1161/2571. Mondada, Lorenza. 2019. “Conventions for Multimodal Transcription.” https:// www.lorenzamondada.net/multimodal-transcription. Newman, William, Graham Button & Paul Cairns. 2010. “Pauses in Doctor–Patient Conversation During Computer Use: The Design Significance of Their Durations and Accompanying Topic Changes.” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies Vol.68 (6): 398–409. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2009.09.001. Perakylä, Anssi. 1998. “Authority and Accountability: The Delivery of Diagnosis in Primary Health Care.” Social Psychology Quarterly Vol.61 (4): 301–320. doi: 10.2307/2787032. Rae, John. 2001. “Organizing Participation in Interaction: Doing Participation Framework.” Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.34 (2): 253–278. doi: 10.1207/S15327973RLSI34-2_4. Robinson, Jeffrey D. 2003. “An interactional Structure of Medical Activities During Acute Visits and its Implications for Patients’ Participation.” Health Communication, Vol.15 (1): 27–57. Robinson, Jeffrey D. 2004. “The Sequential Organization of ‘Explicit’ Apologies in Naturally Occurring English.” Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.37 (3): 291–330. doi: 10.1207/s15327973rlsi3703_2. Robinson, Jeffrey D. 2008. “Asymmetry in Action: Sequential Resources in the Negotiation of a Prescription Request.” Text – Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse Vol.21 (1–2): 19–54. doi: 10.1515/text.1.21.1-2.19. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 1986. “The Routine as Achievement.” Human Studies Vol.9 (2–3): 111–151. doi: 10.1007/BF00148124. Silverman, David. 1987. Communication and Medical Practice: Social Relations in the Clinic. London: Sage. Sterie, Anca-Cristina  & Esther González-Martínez. 2017. “Newcomer Nurses’ Telephone Calls to Porters and Doctors: Inquiring and Reporting as Vehicles for Requests.” Pp. 143–168 in Simona Pekarek Doehler, Adrian Bangerter, Geneviève de Weck, Laurent Filliettaz, Esther González-Martínez and Cécile Petitjean (eds.), Interactional Competences in Institutional Settings: From School to the Workplace. Cham: Springer. Stimson, Gerry & Barbara Webb. 1975. Going to See the Doctor: The Consultation Process in General Practice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

180  Aleksandr Shirokov, Iuliia Avgustis, and Andrei Korbut Stommel, Wyke, Christian Licoppe & Martijn Stommel. 2020. “ ‘Difficult to Assess in This Manner’: An ‘Ineffective’ Showing Sequence in Post-Surgery Video Consultation.” Social Interaction: Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality Vol.3(3). https:// tidsskrift.dk/socialinteraction/article/view/122581. Strauss, Anselm, Shizuko Fagerhaugh, Barbara Suczek & Carolyn Wiener. 1985. Social Organisation of Medical Work. New Brunswick: Transaction. Strong, P. M. 1979. The Ceremonial Order of the Clinic: Parents, Doctors and Medical Bureaucracies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ticca, Anna Claudia. 2014. “Managing Multiactivity in a Travel Agency: Making Phone Calls While Interacting with Customers.” Pp. 191–226 in Pentti Haddington, Tiina Keisanen, Lorenza Mondada and Maurice Nevile (eds.), Multiactivity in Social Interaction: Beyond Multitasking. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. vom Lehn, Dirk, Natalia Ruiz-Junco & Will Gibson. 2021. “Introduction.” Pp. 3–21 in Dirk vom Lehn, Natalia Ruiz-Junco and Will Gibson (eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism. Abingdon: Routledge. Yu, John-Paul J., Akash P. Kansagra & John Mongan. 2014. “The Radiologist’s Workflow Environment: Evaluation of Disruptors and Potential Implications.” Journal of the American College of Radiology Vol.11 (6): 589–593. doi: 10.1016/j. jacr.2013.12.026.

10 Non-talking heads How architectures of digital copresence shape question-silenceanswer-sequences in university teaching Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud1 In the spring of 2020, educational institutions worldwide were forced to conduct classes online due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, there were a few educational institutions that already offered virtual courses. However, most people used online communication primarily in the private sphere. The change to online teaching, therefore, was a social experiment. From an interaction analytic perspective, this change raised the question of how participants would transfer routine, everyday practices from lecture halls and seminar rooms to the digital space. To better understand this transformation, members of the SNSF-funded IntAkt-project (https://www.ds.uzh.ch/de/projekte/intakt/projekt.html) collected data from university teaching in the spring and autumn semesters of 2020 at the University of Zurich, in the immediate aftermath of the universitywide switch to “distanced” (or so-called “contactless”) teaching. In this chapter, we focus on question-answer sequences and moments of silence in their unfolding during university lectures and seminars. The impetus for this topic came from a participant in our data: In the third session after the switch to online teaching, Professor Waylon (all names used in this chapter are pseudonyms), whose literature seminar we had filmed, told his students that he had watched the recordings of the first two sessions and that he had learned something from them. He said to them that he needed to change his approach to questioning. Excerpt a shows the sequence. Professor Waylon’s image tile is marked by a white rectangle: Excerpt a: 01 WAY:  und ich habe einige dinge über mich selber erfahren and I have learned some things about myself 02 zum beispiel #10.1 (.) wann fragen funktionieren und wann nicht (--) for example when questions work and when they don’t inf almost all students look at their screen

DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-13

182

03

Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud

äh ob man selber #10.2 zuviel spricht oder nicht (-) uh whether one speaks too much oneself or not

#Fig. 10.2 04 05

06

inf several students smile (see white arrows) ich habe zum beispiel gemerkt äh fragen funktionieren nie: I have noticed for example uh questions never work

wenn man eine frage hat und sie dann dreimal umformuliert when you have a question and then rephrase it three times dann kommt eigentlich nie eine antwort then comes actually never an answer

Analyzing and reflecting on his behavior (lines 4–6), Professor Waylon concludes that he should no longer rephrase his questions three times – he will not get an answer if he does so. Some students begin to smile after Waylon mentions the topic of questions (compare Figure 10.1 and Figure 10.2: the arrows point to the students who show a change of display). In the following analysis, we will contextualize the students’ expressions of sympathy toward the self-critical lecturer within the interactive configuration

Non-talking heads 183 established here. This configuration is one in which participants are exposed to each other in ways very different from the lecture hall or the seminar room. We will argue that, consequently, for participants in ‘face-wall configurations’ of polyexponation (on videoconferencing platforms like Zoom and Teams), the organization of question-answer sequences – and moments of silence in between – can be particularly challenging (Section 10.2.2). In contrast, the analysis of a sequence on another platform (Adobe Connect) will reveal how reduced mutual visibility, the possibility to perform manipulations on a shared split-screen, and written communication in the chat allow for smooth bridging of moments of silence (Section 10.2.1.). We will preface this analysis with a review of interaction analytic work on questionanswer-sequences, silence, technically mediated communication, and the role of the architecture-for-interaction (Sections 10.1.1.–10.1.5). In the last section (Section  10.3), we discuss the role of architecture and single technological features in establishing mutual perception for negotiating moments of silence during question-answer-sequences on two digital videoconferencing platforms. The empirical contrast of diverging forms of participation framework (Goffman 1979) provides us with more detailed insight into how human interaction and the digital sphere become a part of our social world. The basis of our analysis is a data corpus of about 264  hours of video recordings of courses at the University of Zurich (spring semester of 2020, fall semester of 2020, spring semester of 2021). We informed the students and lecturers of the class about the recordings beforehand. They agreed that we could use the data for interaction analytic research. Nevertheless, we applied a filter to the video images to protect privacy so that personal details could not be easily traced (see Figures 10.1 and 10.2). As the participants’ facial expressions play an essential role in the analysis, we tried to find a good balance between visualization and anonymization. The data were analyzed within the theoretical-methodological framework of ethnomethodological conversation analysis (Sacks and Schegloff 1973; Sacks et  al. 1974) with a particular focus on aspects of the embodied (Goodwin 1981; Heath 1986; Streeck et al. 2013) and spatial (or architectural) nature (Hausendorf et al. 2012; Jucker et al. 2018) of interaction. 10.1. Literature 10.1.1.  Question-answer sequences: progressivity, preference and lapses

Question-answer sequences are diverse. They serve to exchange information on the surface: “Have you seen my keys?” – “No.” However, questions (and their responses) are never “innocent” (Kim 2016, p. 294). Each question implies a particularly preferred response (Hayano 2012). They are asked within a situational and relational context. Moreover, they “necessarily convey

184  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud information in the course of seeking [an answer]” (Clayman and Loeb 2018, p. 127; Conversion of sentence KH and JJ). Conversation analytic research has shown how responses that correspond to preference implied by a question (e.g., acceptance after invitation) are given more quickly than dispreferred responses (e.g., rejection, see Davidson 1984; Pomerantz and Heritage 2012). Delay of response has consequently been understood as an indication of a dispreferred response or “trouble.” Further specifying the relationship between delay and preference, Kendrick and Torreira (2015) showed that timing does not differ systematically between preferred and dispreferred responding actions; however, shifts in turn-design (the expected format of an utterance) do. Moreover, Stokoe et al. (2020) have discussed cases of question-answer sequences in which delays spark compliance. 10.1.2.  “Silence where talk should be”

Noticeable delay in producing an answer must be distinguished from lapses occurring in talk-in-interaction. These typically occur at the ends of sequences, when none of the present parties pick up talk for a considerable time (Hoey 2015, 2018, 2020). On the one hand, lapses can become noticeable as “silence where talk should be” (Hoey 2015, p.  442). On the other hand, activities like group work or watching TV can “provide for lapses” (Hoey 2018, p. 330). Silence can also express community in ritual practices and everyday life. For example, Skatvedt (2017) has shown how moments of “co-silence” between social workers and persons in therapy are appreciated by the latter as indicators of “everydayness” and interactional resonance. Whether and from whence moments of silence are perceived as “trouble” thus depend fundamentally on the social occasion and its underlying interactive order. Especially in digitally mediated interaction situations, the participants often attribute silence to technical problems (Hoffmann 2020). 10.1.3.  The teaching context

Interaction between students and lecturers is the topic of studies of classroom interaction (for reviews, see Koole 2013; Kunitz et al. 2021). In educational environments, particularly during lectures, talk is mainly organized by lecturers. In this context, a very typical example of a question-answer sequence can be found in a lecturer querying the students’ level of knowledge: “What is two plus two? Uh, yes, Imara?” – “Four!”. This kind of exchange paradoxically makes the unequal level of knowledge between lecturers and students relevant: Heritage speaks of “exam” questions (Heritage 2012, p. 21) – the lecturer checks whether the student understood

Non-talking heads 185 what he was trying to explain. Such question-answer-sequences are part of the general format of initiation-response-feedback-sequences, the “sequential structure that has . . . received the most attention in studies of classroom interaction” (Koole 2013, p. 3). What happens on an interactive level during a question-answer-sequence in university teaching? Analyzing the footing practices in giving a lecture, Goffman (1981, p. 167) mentions that, in principle, a lecturer can speak as a single person from the beginning of the lesson to the end and, therefore, “does not have to fight to hold the floor – at least for a stipulated block of time.” However, when lecturers ask their students a question, they must pass the floor to whoever might answer. From both the lecturer’s and the student’s point of view, questions can be regarded as potentially face-threatening undertakings – they may put at stake the student’s level of knowledge as well as the lecturer’s explanatory skills. The moment of silence that occurs after a lecturer has asked a question is a moment of uncertainty. Will a satisfactory answer be given soon, or does the silence testify to an underlying problem, such as students not understanding the lecturer – or worse, not wanting to understand? In the lecture hall and seminar room, such moments of silence could be mitigated by lecturers walking around. On the other hand, students could announce a response via minimal communicative gestures or become intently engrossed in reading the documents before them, making clear that they will not answer the question. While this chapter is primarily concerned with how such moments are negotiated on two digital videoconferencing platforms, we will make various comparisons in the analysis to the traditional lecture hall and seminar room setting. This allows us to better understand how the pandemic shift to digital platforms has forced participants in educational settings to re-explore the organization of copresence and communication (including silence) in technically mediated interaction. 10.1.4.  Configurations of technically mediated copresence

The interaction analytic research on technologically mediated interactions has grown considerably in recent years (see Mlynář et al. 2018; Due and Licoppe 2020; Haddington and Oittinen 2022). As Due and Licoppe (2020, p.  6) point out with reference to Garfinkel and Sacks (1970) and Suchman (2006), studies in the field of ethnomethodology examine “how technologies and media can be shown to be both relevant and consequential with respect to the sequential organization of interaction.” This is to avoid assigning a deterministic role to the technological medium or contrast mediatized interaction with a ‘normal case’ of unmediated interaction (Arminen et al. 2016, p. 293). Following this argument, the present chapter aims to trace the interactive consequences that the distinct architectures and features of the two video conference programs provide.

186  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud In doing so, we follow the ethnomethodological reasoning that interaction is always “mediated” by the participants’ use of local resources – these are, most usually, participants’ bodies (including speech generated by them), objects at hand, architecture, and, in the broader sense, the “social situation” as defined by Goffman (1964). Social encounters on digital videoconferencing platforms are not taking place in what Goffman called the “physical boundaries of a situation” (Goffman 1963, p. 21) but in “fractured ecologies” (Luff et al. 2003). The architecture of lecture halls and seminar rooms suggests specific forms of copresence and interaction (Hausendorf 2012; Hausendorf et al. 2021). Digital videoconferencing platforms, on the other hand, most commonly offer ways of bringing participants together for a variety of social activities. Thus, a distinctive feature of the pandemic transformation of university teaching to digital videoconferencing platforms is that the interactions associated with everyday education could no longer be conducted in the familiar (and specialized) architectural environment. But does this matter? What role does architecture even play in interaction? 10.1.5.  Interaction and architecture

People must negotiate forms of mutual perception and interactive participation wherever they meet. The environment in which we interact impacts how we (can) encounter each other. Given the communicative affordances (and specific conditions) of human bodies, there are forms of approaching, seeing, and hearing each other that are more plausible than others for every material surrounding. Studies in social interaction have emphasized the materiality of architecture and objects primarily for moments in which they are in-situ made relevant by the participants (for an overview, see McIlvenny et al. 2009, pp. 1881–1882). In recent years, some researchers have attempted to complement the ethnomethodologically grounded take on “natural boundaries” as a “member’s on-going accomplishment” (Ryave and Schenkein 1975, p. 266) by bringing into perspective how architecture can “facilitate certain types of interaction” (Jucker et  al. 2018, p.  86). Among others, Kesselheim (2021) has analyzed how “usability cues” (orig. Benutzbarkeitshinweise) guide the walk of museum visitors. By analyzing the opening of ceremonies in church halls, Hausendorf and Schmitt (2016) have elaborated the concept of “architecture-for-interaction” (orig. Interaktionsarchitektur) as a tool for understanding how built, designed, and equipped space imposes specific forms of interaction. The question about how architecture and interaction interrelate can, of course, also be asked for social situations that are produced by technical means. In many ways, this question touches on the subject of mediated interaction outlined above. In the following analysis, however, we aim to elaborate in detail on the technically provided conditions of mutual perception possibilities – in other words: the “architecture-for-interaction” (Hausendorf and Schmitt

Non-talking heads 187 2016, 2022) – for two different videoconference platforms. By doing so, we aim to reveal how the ways in which participants situate copresence under given technological possibilities of seeing and/or hearing each other can establish a different framework for organizing a question-answer-sequence. What do we know about the role of technological features in how participants organize social interaction? The two seminal studies of conversation analysis dealing with the exploration (and discovery) of the systematics of verbal turn-taking (Sacks and Schegloff 1973; Sacks et al. 1974) relied on data of mediated communication: telephone calls. The transmission of sound over telephone lines enabled participants to block out a large part of the embodied aspects of social interaction and focus primarily on the verbal aspects of talk-ininteraction, an ideal set-up for exploring the “turn-taking-machinery” (Sacks et al. 1974) analytically. Since talking over the phone was (and still is) a common form of everyday human conversation, the data was rarely investigated under the notion of “mediated interaction.” Instead, it was studied on medical video conferences (Mondada 2010; Stommel et  al. 2020), business meetings (Oittinen 2020), social breaks (Holmström et al. 2022), and video calls among friends and family (Licoppe and Morel 2012, 2013) in the context of multimodal analysis that revealed how participants calibrate their actions for technically induced forms of mutual visibility, relevant tasks at hand, and participants’ immediate environment. Of particular interest is Oittinen’s work on participants’ strategies for coordinating the interplay of “local space” and “meeting space” in screen- and audio-based business meetings (Oittinen and Piirainen-Marsh 2015, Oittinen 2018) versus video-based meetings (Oittinen 2020). By exploring the “complex digital social ecology” (Balaman and Pekarek Doehler 2022), all these studies have testified to an extensive range of interaction configurations. The present chapter aims to contribute to this field of study by contrasting in detail the constraints and possibilities of establishing copresence for two different videoconferencing platforms: Zoom and Adobe Connect. 10.2. Analysis 10.2.1.  The asymmetry of communication on Adobe Connect

The first sequence to be discussed comes from a mathematics lecture on Adobe Connect. Several decisions can be made about how the layout should look on this platform. In our example, the lecturer, Professor Huber (HUB), has chosen the option of being the only person visible (via webcam) and, above all, audible (via his microphone). On the other hand, students are listed as participants in a separate box. They can only participate via messages that appear in another separate chatbox. Figure 10.3 shows what it looks like when the instructor has his webcam turned on. The situation described for Adobe Connect could also be created with Zoom or MS Teams. We are not interested in comparing videoconferencing

188  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud

Figure 10.3 Adobe Connect provides a surface for shared content by default. Students can contribute to the lecture via chat messages.

platforms in terms of their technical features only but rather in contrasting forms of use and configurations of copresence. The most noticeable feature of the situation described here is that the students remain invisible throughout the lecture. Communication out of a “dark box”

Professor Huber cannot see whether or, importantly, how the students receive his words. For them, it would be possible to get up and go outside while the lecture continues on their computers. The lecturer, therefore, relies on chat messages to inform him of any technical problems with the connection. Analyzing a case of a teacher speaking to students invisible due to a bad internet connection, Guo and Zhan (2021, p. 368) speak of communication that comes out of a “dark box.” The pillars of this form of copresence become apparent in Extracts b and c, which show how the participants address a sound problem: The session has just started, and we see on one side a list of online student participants. On the other side, we see Professor Huber, who is visible on the webcam but not audible, as the students write in the chat. Confronted with the first messages, Huber asks the students in the chat to check their loudspeakers. It is typical in such situations that it takes a critical number of messages to confirm that there is a general (and therefore not an individual) sound problem. Several students affirm this with messages, as shown in Figure 10.4, including the (translated) chatbox messages: Apart from lip-reading, jokingly mentioned by student C, linguistic communication remains limited to the chat. In another chat message, the lecturer asks the students to “stay there” while he tries to call Mr. Meier – the technician

Non-talking heads 189 Excerpt b:

Figure 10.4  Left: Screenshot of the session, right: chatbox messages with translation.

(see chatbox message in Figure 10.4). Excerpt c shows how this copresence is fundamentally transformed once Professor Huber’s voice becomes audible again. The sequence starts after Professor Huber can be seen looking closer at his screen, then leaning backward, taking two sips from his mug. Thirty-five seconds pass, and then it becomes visible (to the students) that Professor Huber is talking to someone – his lips are moving. It can be assumed that Huber has reached Mr. Meier. After only ten seconds of ‘silent talking’, Professor Huber’s voice can be heard for the first time in this session. “Can you hear me?” (see line 1, Excerpt c), he asks. Professor Huber does not address this question to the students but to Mr. Meier (this becomes obvious in line 5, where he says: “maybe now the students can even hear me”). Nevertheless, a whole series of students immediately respond in the chat by posting messages like: “yes,” “YEES,” “yes now,” and so on (lines 2–6, Excerpts c and d). It may not be clear to them that the question was not addressed to them in the first place. Excerpt c (chatbox messages highlighted in gray): 01

HUB: hören Sie mich#10.5. can you hear me

02 (1.0)+(0.1) + (0.2) chat: + StuG, StuH are typing + StuG:Ja (yes), StuH: JAAA (YEES) StuI,   StuJ are typing 03

seit neustem wieder (.) now again chat: StuI: ja jetzt (yes now) StuJ: juh Multiples Attendees are typing. . .

190  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud

Fig. 10.5. 04  ja ich hör sie sehr gut, ich hör sie sehr gut(.) yes I hear you very well I hear you very well chat:  StuK: Ja, StuL: jetzt ist super (now is super), StuM: ja, StuN: ja, StuO: jaaa, StuP: ja: D, StuQ: juhu Multiple attendees are typing. . .

The technician’s voice is not included in the recording of the lecture. However, line 4 gives us reason to believe that Huber and the technician are talking to each other now (“yes I  hear you very well”). It makes sense for the lecturer to wonder whether the students might also hear him (Excerpt d, line 5: “maybe now the students can even hear me”). To answer this question, he turns his attention to the chat window, where students have already written several messages. When Huber reads out StuL’s message “jetzt ist super” (now is super, line 8), these messages become public as an official content of the lecture. Excerpt d, the continuation of events in Excerpt c. (Chatbox messages are highlighted in gray.): 05  vielleicht hören mich jetzt soga:r die studenten maybe now the students can even hear me chat: StuR: ja, StuS: ja, StuT: ja StuU, StuV are typing 06 (1.0) chat:

StuU, StuV are typing

07

ich ruf+ nämlich an= I was calling because +HUB’s face moves closer to the screen

08

=JETZT IST SUPER #10.6. NOW IS SUPER

Non-talking heads 191

Fig. 10.6.  HUB reads out the statement of StuL: jetzt ist super (now is super).

Solving technological problems or disruption is a standard practice in video-mediated interaction (Mondada 2016). By reading out the student’s written message from the chat, the lecturer establishes a state of perceptual awareness (Hausendorf 2008, p. 82), which – as trivial as this may sound – lays the foundation for the subsequent interaction to unfold: The lecturer knows that the students can now hear him. Even though the students cannot participate orally, they know that their written contributions can be read (and read out) by the lecturer, and through this small chat window, they can “become present.” Note that the lecturer turns his head to the left as he looks for a reaction from his students. When he reads out the chat message (line 8, “now is super”), he moves his face closer to the screen and webcam (see Fig. 10.6.). He does this presumably to read the chat messages, but the movement has a communicative relevance too. Visible to anyone who sees his webcam image, the lecturer is no longer in conversation with the technician (only) but (also) with his students, towards whom he moves. Huber’s appearance contrasts with the embodied orientation he maintained while opening his conversation with Mr. Meier (compare Figure 10.6 to Figure 10.5). The sequence confirms, on the one hand, that copresence is essentially an accomplishment of situated interaction (Goffman 1963, p. 21). It can be established through mere (and silent) acknowledgment of mutual copresence. Where participants are not visible to each other, like on Adobe Connect, copresence must be established by verbal, written, and oral means, such as “Can you hear me?” – “yes.” The sequence has shown how, on the other hand, the architectural features provided by Adobe Connect have been decisive for how the participants could establish togetherness in the first place. The use of the auditory channel, even if it can only be used unilaterally, is based on a resource that is technically provided by the ‘architecture’ of the digital videoconferencing platform.

192  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud

Figure 10.7 During the lecture, the participants do not see each other. The only thing they hear is the lecturer’s voice explaining mathematical formulas.

“What is the taylor series of f?”

After mutual perception is ensured, Huber shares his screen of a virtual blackboard where he writes down and explains mathematical formulas. The sharing of documents on the screen represents a far-reaching intervention in the “architecture-for-interaction” (Hausendorf and Schmitt 2016). Figure 10.7 shows a screenshot of the platform as it appears to the students. Professor Huber has turned down his webcam image. The students only hear his voice. The lecturer is not writing directly on an Adobe Connect page but on the virtual blackboard that he is sharing via the screen. Therefore, Huber cannot see the chat, as we will learn in Excerpt e. Only his actions (voice and writing) can now become the object of shared perception. The students are invisible, albeit assumingly copresent. In a way, the arrangement resembles the classic (and sometimes idealized) setting of the lecturing teacher in front of silent kids. Huber only brings out the chat window when he wants his students to respond to one of his questions. The agency of his students, therefore, heavily relies on his actions. The downside of this arrangement is that Huber is talking into the void. Asking a question to the hidden public can consequently help him to re-establish copresence and communication with his students. Excerpt e shows such a sequence. Professor Huber asks a question (“does anyone see what then the Taylor series of f is,” over lines 1–5) while simultaneously moving the virtual board aside and bringing up the Adobe Connect screen. About seven seconds pass, during which Huber has rearranged the screen – now looking at an Adobe Connect with chatbox – and finished asking the question.

Non-talking heads 193 Excerpt e: 01 HUB: sieht jemand? (.) was d+ann does anyone see what then +mouse arrow moves upwards 02 (1.0) #10.8. (1.0)

#Fig. 10.8.: HUB minimizes virtual blackboard 03 die::#10.9. the 04

(1.0)#10.10. (1.5)

05

taylorreihe von f ist.(0.5)+#10.11. taylor series of f is +HUB’s adobe page is now  the shared screen

The manipulations on the interface result in a reconfiguration of the “architecture for interaction” (Hausendorf and Schmitt 2022). The participants returned to the configuration in which they negotiated the sound problem at the beginning of the lesson. Now, Huber can read the students’ posts. The students can see this. Moreover, they can now see his face again via the webcam image. After a pause of another five seconds (line 6), Huber repeats the question, specifying it slightly (lines 7–9). Then student X types in the correct answer – which the lecturer confirms with an “exactly” (line 13): 06 (5.0)

07  sieht jemand also was die taylorreihe dieser f ­ unktion (.) does anyone see what the taylor series of this function

194  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud 08 09 10

f von x ist +die so #10.12 mit zwei (.) f of x is which with these two chat StuX is typing -->+ abschnitten definiert war sections was defined



(3.0) + (2.0)

12 (2.0) 13 HUB: genau #10.13 exactly #Fig. 10.12.

StuX:  Die Taylorreihe ­ verschwindet the taylor series disappears

#Fig. 10.13.

In the 30 seconds between when the lecturer asks the question and when he confirms that the answer is correct, the interactive configuration is transformed fundamentally. Making the chat window visible leaves no doubt: The lecturer is expecting an answer. But his manipulations of the interface let time pass. As long as Huber is busy, he does not have to receive an immediate response. In the lecture hall, the question may sometimes arise as to whether the students are still following the lecturer’s explanations. The technically mediated copresence on Adobe Connect is more fragile, as the treatment of the sound problem in Excerpts c and d showed. By asking a simple question, the lecturer ensures not only that the students follow his explanations but also that they are still copresent or that he is still visible and audible to them. These negotiations around the reduced mutual verifiability of mutual presence do not arise on platforms like Zoom or Teams, which arrange the webcam images of meeting participants on a face wall. Here, on the contrary, participants deal with a configuration that brings an unusually high degree of mutual visibility into play. 10.2.2.  The communicative affordances of a ‘face wall’

Participants in meetings on platforms like Zoom and Teams gather on a common (although not identical) webpage, where individual presence is linked to a tile on which the participant’s name and, if switched on, webcam image appears.

Non-talking heads 195 Those who share their webcam image undergo an embodied transformation. Participants’ virtual reflection on the screen becomes an elementary component of their copresence with other participants on the screen. In the words of Wasson (2006), they become participants “in two spaces at once.” As Oittinen (2018, p. 32) points out, the interesting question is how participants coordinate “local space” and “overall meeting space” by aligning and affiliating with fellow participants and the ongoing interaction. Excerpt f provides an insight into the relevant embodied strategies for participating in such a configuration by showing how the student Simone becomes part of a Zoom session. First, Simone logs into Zoom (1). Excerpt f, Figures 10.14-10.19: 0:10: SIM logs into Zoom, his name appears on the face wall

0:15: SIM engages with his mobile phone

Fig. 10.14.

0:19: SIM turns back to the Zoom session

Fig. 10.15.

Fig. 10.16.



Fig. 10.17. 0:24: SIM activates camera



Fig. 10.18. 0:26 SIM reaches out his hand to change the screen angle 0:28 SIM takes on

Fig. 10.19. “talking head”- position

After logging in (10.14), Simone moves his upper body forward (10.15), facing the webcam directly on top of the laptop. As his webcam image becomes visible in a tile on the face wall, he starts adapting the angle of the screen (10.16), bringing his upper body into the “talking head” position, which participants typically regard as optimal for video calls (Licoppe and Morel 2012). The following three images illustrate this transition, showing Simone’s point of view as an Eye Tracker recorded it: By slightly changing the angle of his laptop (Figs. 10.20–10.22), Simone actively contributes to the transformation

196  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud

 

 

Figures 10.20–10.22 Simone rearranges his visual appearance in the tile on the facewall within a second by slightly pulling the upper part of the laptop towards himself.

of his embodied presence, which is now enhanced by his virtual counterpart facing him on the face wall along with the other meeting participants. (Re-)arranging the appearance of one’s body is, of course, not a question that applies only to mediated interaction. Social interaction is always and very fundamentally an embodied matter. On digital videoconferencing platforms that show an individual’s webcam image, however, participants can control their physical appearance (the information we are “giving off,” cf. Goffman 1963, p. 13) directly. We can view our webcam image as if we are looking at it from another person’s perspective. We see who we visibly represent to others (although Zoom provides us with a mirrored image of self, while other participants see us ‘unmirrored,’ just as they would perceive us face-to-face). We see how we look as one among others. Polyexponation

In the gallery view, which shows a wall of faces, all the people appear around the same size. Instead of placing only one person in the foreground, as the architecture of a lecture hall usually suggests (think of the lecturer standing at the podium and facing the audience sitting in rows across him, cf. Hausendorf 2012), platforms like Zoom or Teams place each person in the visual field of all others – in tiles that are geometrically distributed across the screen. Each participant looks at the faces of all the others as if they were standing in front of an audience. We call this a social situation (Goffman 1964) of polyexponation. However, it is not certain where one’s webcam image might appear on another person’s screen. Although each participant can expect to be viewed by everyone they are looking at, nobody can verify or falsify their suspicion (Hjulstad 2016). Without technical aids, such an egalitarian form of copresence could not be established. We are dealing with an embodied way of accessing each together that is (hitherto) unfamiliar to us humans (Bailenson 2021). Face to face, we know precisely whether someone is looking us in the eye or not. Physical

Non-talking heads 197

Figure 10.23 Looking at the screen of a Zoom-meeting means seeing the expression on one’s own face in relation to others.

orientation, head movements, and small movements towards or away from our interlocutors cannot be read well virtually (Heath and Luff 1992). On the digital wall of faces, the communicative significance of looking each other in the eye – the sociologist Simmel (1908, p. 723) speaks of the “shortest connection between two people” (translation KH and JJ) – cannot unfold. We do not even know whether a person is looking at the face wall. It would be conceivable (and might become partly clear from a person’s facial expressions and eye movements) that people have called up another homepage. Considering that participants also see themselves, as we have explained earlier, we can note that the possibility of seeing and being seen is much higher in comparison to the situation on Adobe Connect. We would like to return briefly to the students’ smiles thematized in the introduction. One may think that the smiling of several students at the metacommunicative remark of the lecturer, discussed earlier (Section  10.1, see again here Figure  10.23), was motivated by other persons interpreting the lecturer’s statement as “smileable.” Of course, this might be true. However, our remarks on the spatio-physical arrangement aim to demonstrate that the architecture of a face wall creates a very distinctive form of copresence: Whoever looks at the face wall and sees an emotional reaction of his peer must relate the appearance of his image to it – to smile, to mourn, to marvel. In this sense, it can be said that the face wall, with its divergent multiplication of the surface into the living room of all participants, can function as an interactive echo chamber. An individual’s smile cannot be directed at only one recipient (in this case, the lecturer). Instead, it appears in concert with the actions of all other individuals. Therefore, any act of an individual must always be considered against the background of the underlying configuration of polyexponation here.

198  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud Non-talking heads

In Excerpt g, we outline a sequence in which Professor Waylon, the lecturer of the literature seminar, asks a question for the first time shortly after his metacommunicative remark about questions and answers (see Excerpt a). It is an introductory question, as he announces (line 1), which thus (also) serves the purpose of ending the sequence of informal talk at the beginning of the session and moving on to the main reason for the meeting – the seminar on Kafka. The transcript shows that Professor Waylon makes a considerable verbal effort to ask his question (lines 1–6: “as introductory question a completely open question (.) do you see connecting lines (.) or have you noticed connecting lines (.) that can be drawn from this text to themes (.) to discourses (.) to perspectives that we so far in the seminar have discussed”). More precisely: After a short break of almost a second (line 6), he expands his verbal contribution with a metacommunicative remark (“totally open-ended introductory question, which I won’t rephrase twice now,” lines 7 and 8) and an increment (“did you notice any references,” line 9). Excerpt g: 01

WAY:  als einstiegsfrage mal eine ganz offene frage (.) as introductory question a completely open question

02

sehen sie verbindungslinien (.) do you see connecting lines

03 oder #10.24 sind ihnen verbindungslinien aufgefallen (.) or have you noticed connecting lines

Fig. #10.24.

 

#10.25.

04  die man von diesem text zu themen (.) zu ­ diskursen (.) that can be drawn from this text to themes to discourses

Non-talking heads 199 05  zu perspektiven ziehen kann die wir bisher im seminar to perspectives that we so far in the seminar 06

schon besprochen haben (-#10.25-) have discussed

When the lecturer begins asking what he calls the introductory question, 10 of the 15 visible students look at the screen (line 3, Figure 10.24). The content of the question is not revealed at this point. This state of mutual visuality is considerably lowered when the question is – for the time being – finished (line 6). The lecturer takes a short break here, looking at the screen where only four students are looking – presumably at him (Figure 10.25). Many have turned their gaze downward or to the side. As we can see in Excerpt h, the lecturer adds a meta-comment to his question, saying that he will “not rephrase” the introductory question twice (line 7). However, he adds a short repetition of the question immediately afterward (line 9: did you notice any connections). During this time, in alternating formation, only about four students remain looking at the screen, while the rest are absorbed in thinking and/or reading displays. Excerpt h (continuation of events in Excerpt g): 07  ganz offene einstiegsfrage (.) die ich jetzt nicht totally open introductory question that I won’t

Fig. #10.26 08



#10.27

zweimal umformulieren werde#10.26 (---) rephrase twice

09  sind ihnen da sind ihnen da bezüge aufgefallen#10.27 did you notice any connections 10

(2.5)+(1.5) +student RR raises hand

11

WAY JA yes

200  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud The major difference from the situation described for Adobe Connect (Section 10.3.1) is that on this platform, participants are confronted with a whole row of people who are not or not yet responding right from the beginning. They may be giving off the iconic image of a “talking head” (as studied by Licoppe and Morel 2012 for two-party Skype conversations among friends and family), but as students whose lecturer has asked a question, their silence lets them appear primarily as non-talking heads. By participating in this moment of silence, students can observe themselves in a passive state when action is required – ‘what does it look like when I am not actively engaged’? This builds up an interactive pressure that cannot arise in the situation described for the mathematics lecture on Adobe Connect. Here, the students are invisible to the lecturer and each other. Of course, it’s conceivable that some of the students might feel pressure when Professor Huber asks a question. The point is that we don’t see any of this. In the analyzed Zoom-sequence, by contrast, participants are visually exposed. Here we see how they avert their eyes from the screen. The nontalking heads are not only silent; they are visibly silent. These heads can be seen moving faster, turning away (or down) the gaze, and increasingly being touched by hands as if to support them. Against this background, we can understand the lecturer’s repetition of the question and verbal commenting as a communicative device not only to shorten but also to fill the silence between question and answer. The situation is resolved when a student finally raises his hand (line 10). How the lecturer reacts to the student’s hand signal can be regarded as a further indication of the tension in play at this moment: Waylon says (or, euphorically, almost shouts): YES (line 11) as soon as he perceives the student’s gesture. At the same time, he visibly moves his head forward, thus approaching his computer screen. The following screenshot shows this moment (Figure 10.28). Participants cannot look at each other directly on Zoom. However, there can be no doubt here Professor Waylon is addressing the one person on the face wall who has raised their hand. The verbal call “JA” (yes) marks a clear transition of the floor from the person asking the question to the person who aims to answer it. The silence is over. An answer will be given soon. 10.3. Discussion Basic features like a webcam, microphone, chat, and the organization of tiles on the screen establish an “architecture for interaction” (Hausendorf and Schmitt 2016, 2022) on digital videoconferencing platforms. The analysis has demonstrated how different forms of mediated copresence can shape the unfolding of an interactive moment – the silence between question and answer in an educational context. On digital videoconferencing platforms like Zoom, presence and attention are mainly organized by movements of participants’ (non-)talking heads and

Non-talking heads 201

Figure 10.28 For once it is clear who is addressing whom on the face wall. The lecturer moves his body forward, says “yes” loudly and can only mean the student who has raised his hand (see the third tile from the left in the second top row).

their eyes, each facing the screen that displays webcam images of self and fellow participants. Looking past the laptop or even closing it goes in hand with losing sight of ‘the universitarian event’ and its digitally mediated architecture. Moreover, participants would be losing a part of their technically gained control over how others might perceive them by the image they are “giving off” (Goffman 1963, p. 13). The physical attachment to the webcam, through which participants ensure visibility, is coupled with the aforementioned multiplied visual exposure of individuals, all of whom cannot avoid being (or becoming) the center of attention of others. This combination of a lack of embodied communication resources with an unusually high amount of mutual visibility – a configuration of polyexponation – can render silence during question-answer sequences on Zoom interactionally difficult. By contrast, communication on Adobe Connect does not unfold under the conditions of visually given copresence on a face wall. Quite the opposite, the analysis has shed light on the relaxation that occurs when a question must not immediately be followed by an answer. The reasons for this are simple but essential to notice: On the one hand, the instructor must first bring out the chat to be able to read an answer. On the other hand, the participants are not confronted with an image of themselves showing how they are not (yet) answering the question. Moreover, it became clear how shared screens provide an

202  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud architectural element that allows for silent (but mutually visible) manipulations that do not need to be accounted for (in contrast to screen activities not visible to interlocutors, cf. Näslund 2016; Pekarek Doehler and Balaman 2021). By investigating how members of a supermarket chain accomplished the introduction and installation of computing technologies for their everyday work in a somewhat unplanned manner by proceeding from one step to the next, vom Lehn (2020) has applied the question of “social agency” by connecting Blumer’s reflections on industrialization (1990) to the process of digitalization. Following this interactionist perspective on supposedly macro-sociological processes, the present analysis offers empirical evidence of participants’ use of digital resources in everyday human interaction. In other words: Understanding how participants establish copresence and communication with the help of technical devices on digital videoconferencing platforms provides us with a glimpse into how the digital sphere is made part of the social world. The pandemic years have shown that university teaching can, if necessary, take place entirely outside the buildings built and designed for this purpose. It is hardly conceivable that the university will lose its status as a central reference point. However, a return to a university where the possibility of holding a hybrid session or switching to a digital format is not a latent alternative seems unthinkable. Against this backdrop, the present chapter clarifies how considerations about the arrangement of copresence in educational settings can no longer shape the design of furniture and technology in the lecture hall alone but must extend to the creation of copresence on digital videoconferencing platforms. The architecture of lecture halls and seminar rooms has evolved over several centuries (Hausendorf et  al. 2021), and digital videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom and Adobe Connect are comparatively young. Therefore, we may assume that digital videoconferencing media will undergo increased ­adaptation to the communicative formats for which they are needed in the coming years. Note 1 This chapter was written as part of a SNSF-funded research project on the relationship between architecture and interaction (https://www.ds.uzh.ch/de/projekte/ intakt/projekt.html) under the direction of Heiko Hausendorf and with the collaboration of Alexandra Zoller. We are particularly grateful to Wolfgang Kesselheim, Mari Holmström, Tuire Oittinen, Dirk vom Lehn, and Daniela Boehringer for insightful and helpful comments in the development of this chapter. Lastly, we would like to thank the students and lecturers who participated in the study.

References Arminen, Ilkka, Licoppe, Christian and Spagnolli, Anna. 2016. Respecifying mediated interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.49 (4): 290–309. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2016.1234614.

Non-talking heads 203 Bailenson, Jeremy N. 2021. Nonverbal overload: A  theoretical argument for the causes of zoom fatigue. Technology, Mind, and Behavior Vol.2 (1). DOI: 10.1037/ tmb0000030. Balaman, Ufuk and Simona Pekarek Doehler. 2022. Navigating the complex social ecology of screen-based activity in video-mediated interaction. PRAG Vol.32 (1): 54–79. DOI: 10.1075/prag.20023.bal. Blumer, Herbert. 1990. Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change. A  Critical Analysis. New York, NY: de Gruyter. Clayman, Steve E. and Loeb, Laura. 2018. Polar questions, response preference, and the tasks of political positioning in journalism. Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.51 (2): 127–144. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2018.1449438. Davidson, Judy A. 1984. Subsequent versions of invitations, offers, requests, and proposals dealing with potential or actual rejection. In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 102–128. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511 665868.009. Due, Brian L. and Christian Licoppe. 2020. Video-mediated interaction (VMI). Social Interaction Vol.3 (3). DOI: 10.7146/si.v3i3.123836. Garfinkel, Harold and Harvey Sacks. 1970. On formal structures of practical action. In Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments edited by J. C. McKinney and E. A. Tiryakian, 338–366. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behavior in Public Places. Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press. Goffman, Erving. 1964. The Neglected Situation. American Anthropologist Vol. 66 (6) Part 2: The Ethnography of Communication. 133–136. Goffman, Erving. 1979. Footing. Semiotica Vol.25 (1–2): 1–30. Goffman, Erving. 1981. The lecture. In Forms of Talk, edited by Erving Goffman, 163–198. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. Goodwin, Charles. 1981. Conversational Organization. Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press. Guo, Enhua and Fuxin Zhang. 2021. From offline to online: The reduced embodiment in teacher-initiated turn-taking in GSL instructions. In Learning Technologies and Systems. 19th International Conference on Web-Based Learning, ICWL 2020, and 5th International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Education, SETE 2020, edited by C. Pang, Y. Gao, G. Chen, E. Popescu, L. Chen, T. Hao et al., Ningbo, China, October 22–24, 2020, Proceedings, 357–369. Cham: Springer International Publishing; Imprint Springer. Haddington, Pentti and Tuire Oittinen. 2022. Interactional spaces in stationary, mobile, video-mediated and virtual encounters. In Pragmatics of Space, edited by Andreas H. Jucker and Heiko Hausendorf, 317–362. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Hausendorf, Heiko. 2008. Anwesenheit und Mitgliedschaft – eine soziologische Unterscheidung und ihr Wert für die linguistische Analyse von Organisationskommunikation. In Organisationskommunikation. Grundlagen und Analysen der sprachlichen Inszenierung von Organisation, edited by F. Menz and A. Müller, 71–97. München: Hampp. Hausendorf, Heiko. 2012. Der Hörsaal als Interaktionsraum. Ein exemplarischer Beitrag zur Archäologie der Vorlesung. Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliqué Vol.96: 43–68.

204  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud Hausendorf, Heiko, Hochuli, Kenan, Jud, Johanna and Alexandra Zoller. 2021. Der Raum der Vorlesung: Vom Auditorium zum “multi media hub”. Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik Vol.49 (3): 653–701. DOI: 10.1515/zgl-2021-2042. Hausendorf, Heiko, Mondada, Lorenza and Reinhold Schmitt (eds.). 2012. Raum als interaktive Ressource. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. Hausendorf, Heiko and Reinhold Schmitt. 2016. Interaktionsarchitektur und Sozialtopographie: Basiskonzepte einer interaktionistischen Raumanalyse. In Interaktionsarchitektur, Sozialtopographie und Interaktionsraum, edited by Heiko Hausendorf, Reinhold Schmitt and Wolfgang Kesselheim, 27–54. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. Hausendorf, Heiko and Reinhold Schmitt. 2022. Architecture-for-interaction: Built, designed and furnished space for communicative purposes. In Pragmatics of Space, edited by Andreas H. Jucker and Heiko Hausendorf, 431–472. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. Hayano, Kaoru. 2012. Question design in conversation. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 395–414. Chichester and West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Heath, Christian. 1986. Body Movement and Speech in Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Christian and Paul Luff. 1992. Media space and communicative asymmetries: Preliminary observations of video-mediated interaction. Human-Comp. Interaction Vol.7 (3): 315–346. DOI: 10.1207/s15327051hci0703_3. Heritage, John. 2012. Epistemics in action: Action formation and territories of knowledge. Research on Language  & Social Interaction Vol.45 (1): 1–29. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2012.646684. Hjulstad, Johan. 2016. Practices of organizing built space in videoconference-mediated interactions. Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.49 (4): 325–341. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2016.1199087. Hoey, Elliott M. 2015. Lapses: How people arrive at, and deal with, discontinuities in talk. Research on Language  & Social Interaction Vol.48 (4): 430–453. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2015.1090116. Hoey, Elliott M. 2018. How speakers continue with talk after a lapse in conversation. Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.51 (3): 329–346. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2018.1485234. Hoey, Elliott M. 2020. When Conversation Lapses. The Public Accountability of Silent Copresence. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hoffman, Sabine. 2020. Schweigen in Videokonferenzen: Vom Umgang mit Störungen in Online-Besprechungen. Studi Germanici – Quaderni dell’AIG. Il non detto/ Das Ungesagte Vol.3: 201–218. Holmström, Mari, Rauniomaa, Mirka and Maarit Siromaa. 2022. Zooming in on a frame: Collectively focusing on a co-participant’s person or surroundings in videomediated interaction. In Shaping the North through Multimodal and Intermedial Interaction, edited by Juha-Pekka, Alarauhio, Tiina, Räisänen, Toikkanen, Jarkko and Riika Tumelius, 95–120. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Jucker, Andreas H., Hausendorf, Heiko, Dürscheid, Christa, Frick, Karina, Hottiger, Christoph, Kesselheim, Wolfgang, Linke, Angelika, Meyer, Nathalie and Antonia Steger. 2018. Doing space in face-to-face interaction and on interactive multimodal platforms. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.134: 85–101. DOI: 10.1016/j. pragma.2018.07.001.

Non-talking heads 205 Kendrick, Koben H. and Francisco Torreira. 2015. The timing and construction of preference: A  quantitative study. Discourse Processes Vol.52 (4). 255–289. DOI: 10.1080/0163853X.2014.955997. Kesselheim, Wolfgang. 2021. Ausstellungskommunikation. Eine linguistische Untersuchung multimodaler Wissenskommunikation im Raum. Boston: de Gruyter. Kim, S. H. 2016. When speakers account for their questions. In Accountability in Social Interaction, edited by Jeffrey D. Robinson, 294–320, New York: Oxford University Press. Koole, Tom. 2013. Conversation analysis and education. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, edited by Carol A. Chapelle, 1–6, Malden, MA: Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell. Kunitz, Silvia, Markee, Numa and Olcay Sert (eds.). 2021. Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research. Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Pedagogy. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature. Licoppe, Christian and Julien Morel. 2012. Video-in-interaction: “Talking heads” and the multimodal organization of mobile and skype video calls. Research on Language & Social Interaction Vol.45 (4): 399–429. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2012.724996. Licoppe, Christian and Julien Morel. 2013. Interactionally generated encounters and the accomplishment of mutual proximity in mobile phone conversations. In Interaction and Mobility. Language and the Body in Motion, edited by Pentti Haddington, Lorenza Mondada and Maurice Nevile, 277–299. Berlin: de Gruyter. Luff, Paul, Heath, Christian, Kuzuoka, Hideaki, Hindmarsh, Jon, Yamazaki, Keiichi and Shinya Oyama. 2003. Fractured Ecologies: Creating Environments for Collaboration. Human–Computer Interaction Vol.18 (1–2): 51–84. DOI: 10.1207/ S15327051HCI1812_3. McIlvenny, Paul, Broth, Mathias and Pentti Haddington. 2009. Communicating place, space and mobility. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.41 (10): 1879–1886. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.014. Mlynář, Jakub, González-Martínez, Esther and Denis Lalanne. 2018. Situated organization of video-mediated interaction: A  review of ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies. Interacting with Computers Vol.30 (2): 73–84. DOI: 10.1093/iwc/iwx019. Mondada, Lorenza. 2010. Eröffnung und Prä-Eröffnung in medienvermittelter Interaktion: Das Beispiel Videokonferenzen. In Situationseröffnungen. Zur multimodalen Herstellung fokussierter Interaktion, edited by Lorenza Mondada and Reinhold. Schmitt, 277–334. Tübingen: Narr. Mondada, Lorenza. 2016. Operating together through videoconference: Members’ procedures for accomplishing a common space of action. In Orders of Ordinary Action, edited by Stephen Hester and David Francis, 51–68. London and New York: Routledge. Näslund, Shirley. 2016. Tacit tango: The social framework of screen-focused silence in institutional telephone calls. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.91: 60–79. DOI: 10.1016/j. pragma.2015.10.008. Oittinen, Tuire. 2018. Multimodal accomplishment of alignment and affiliation in the local space of distant meetings. Culture and Organization Vol.24 (1): 31–53. DOI: 10.1080/14759551.2017.1386189. Oittinen, Tuire. 2020. Coordinating Actions in and Across Interactional Spaces in Technology-Mediated Business Meetings. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä. Oittinen, Tuire and Arja Piirainen-Marsh. 2015. Openings in technology-mediated business meetings. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.85: 47–66. DOI: 10.1016/j.pragma.2015.06.001.

206  Kenan Hochuli and Johanna Jud Pekarek Doehler, Simona and Ufuk Balaman. 2021. The routinization of grammar as a social action format: A  longitudinal study of video-mediated interactions. Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.54 (2): 183–202. DOI: 10.1080/08351813.2021.1899710. Pomerantz, Anita and John Heritage. 2012. Preference. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 210–228. Chichester and West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Ryave, A. L. and Schenkein, James N. 1975. Notes on the art of walking (1974). In Ethnomethodology. Selected Readings. Reprint, edited by Roy Turner, 265–278. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Sacks, Harvey, Schegloff, Emanuel and Gail Jefferson. 1974. A  simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language Vol.50 (4, Part 1): 696–735. Sacks, Harvey and Emanuel A. Schegloff. 1973. Opening up closings. Semiotica Vol.8 (4): 289–327. Simmel, Georg. 1908. Soziologie. Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Skatvedt, Astrid. 2017. The importance of “empty gestures” in recovery: Being human together. Symbolic Interaction Vol.40 (3): 396–413. DOI: 10.1002/symb.291. Stokoe, Elizabeth, Humă, Bogdana, Sikveland, Rein O. and Heidi Kevoe-Feldman. 2020. When delayed responses are productive: Being persuaded following resistance in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.155: 70–82. DOI: 10.1016/j. pragma.2019.10.001. Stommel, Wyke, Licoppe, Christian and Martijn Stommel. 2020. “Difficult to assess in this manner”: An “ineffective” showing sequence in post-surgery video consultation. Social Interaction Vol.3 (3). DOI: 10.7146/si.v3i3.122581. Streeck, Jürgen, Goodwin, Charles and Curtis LeBaron (eds.). 2013. Embodied Interaction. Language and Body in the Material World. New York: Cambridge University Press. Suchman, Lucy. 2006. Human–Machine Reconfigurations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. vom Lehn, Dirk. 2020. Digitalization as “an agent of social change” in a supermarket chain: Applying Blumer’s theory of industrialization in contemporary society. Symbolic Interaction Vol.43 (4): 637–656. DOI: 10.1002/symb.502. Wasson, Christina. 2006. Being in two spaces at once: Virtual meetings and their representation. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology Vol.16 (1): 103–130.

11 The role of cursor movements in a screen-based video game interaction1 Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard This chapter investigates how people who are not physically copresent use cursor movements to interact with each other on the screen. More precisely, we show how this digital tool, the cursor, beyond its possibilities/functions for human-computer interaction (HCI, notably clicks), is made relevant as a means for attention management and turn organization within computermediated interaction (CMI). In contrast to face-to-face interaction, CMI is by default asymmetrical and has a particular spatial organization: participants can (inter)act in their physical real-life environment but also in the (shared) virtual environment and additionally have partial visual access to other participants’ physical real-life environment (see Wasson 2006; Spagnolli and Gamberini 2005). Nevertheless, their access to the different parts of this complex overall environment is restricted and asymmetrical, which Luff et al. (2003) therefore also call fractured ecologies. Therefore, interactional phenomena such as showing, pointing and achieving joint attention turn out to be quite challenging (Rosenbaun and Licoppe 2017). In our chapter, we analyze a video game setting with three players, situated in three different rooms. The players can talk to each other and see each other through the webcam. Nevertheless, the use of gesture and gaze is rather limited, since the webcam shows only thumbnail images of the players’ heads or possibly a part of their upper bodies. The cursor becomes therefore particularly important to point to an element on the screen, to highlight it, to draw attention to a special place, but also to display an ongoing turn or its closing, as possible, in face-to-face interaction, through pointing gestures (Mondada 2007) or object uptaking and releasing (Day and Wagner 2014). The game we draw on is a collaborative video game that has been developed to evaluate soft skills in recruitment processes. With the analysis of cursor movements, our study aims to contribute to a better understanding of showing/pointing practices through digital devices and their embeddedness in talk-in-interaction as well as functions of cursor movements in the establishment of joint attention and in turn-organization. The analysis of the players’ interaction in different configurations allows us to question the notion of embodied alignment. As Olbertz-Siitonen and Piirainen-Marsh (2021) have recently shown, cursor movements orienting towards the upcoming decision DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-14

208  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard concerning a future action can be a sign of early alignment or projection of other alignment and therefore execution of action by the participant who has the possibility to manipulate the visually shared interface. In our data, as we will see later, the participants without access to the interface manipulation use the cursor differently to display their alignment. 11.1. Showing and pointing on screens and the role of the cursor Showing is a very frequent ostensive practice in different types of interactions. It consists of making an object visible to co-participants (who did not have visual access before) and therefore potentially relevant for interactional purposes (Licoppe and Tuncer 2019). On the other hand, pointing takes place in situations where participants have symmetrical visual access to the pointed referent (Rosenbaun and Licoppe 2017) and serves to achieve joint attention (Enfield et al. 2007). Showing and pointing on screens have already been investigated, but generally in copresent interactions where participants use gestures and touch to draw their co-participants’ attention to the screen (or elements on the screen) in order to provide access and allow identification (Laurier et al. 2016; Due and Toft 2021), to share texts or images (Weilenmann and Larsson 2001; Raclaw et  al. 2016) or to give instructions (Tuncer et  al. 2021; Ursi and BaldaufQuilliatre 2021). In these studies, the participants can use different modalities to show or point (by gesture, gaze, body orientation etc.). As copresent interactants they are able to share and co-construct their sensorial experiences with regard to the screen/the element they point to, a phenomenon described as “phygital highlighting” by Due and Toft (2021). In our data, in contrast, participants are not copresent. The interaction is video-mediated, and interactants see each other only partly through the webcam. This limits the visual access both to the participants’ gestures and to the objects to which somebody might point and creates an asymmetry of perspectives which is problematic for pointing gestures (Licoppe 2017). This is where the player’s cursor – in our setting visible on the screen for one other participant – comes into play. Its “default” use is rather studied within HCI where the cursor can be analyzed as an element of the screen’s semiotic system. Within this sign system, it is an interactive sign that allows a user to operate on specific interactive zones of the interface (Andersen 1990, cited by O’Neill 2008: 39), notably by clicking. However, cursor movements and their function cannot be reduced to a series of clicks. As movements over a shared visual scene – in our case, the game interface – cursor movements may participate in a shared signification even though no sign at all is impacted. Those moves are not produced as to be interpreted by the computer but by the other participants. As such, cursor moves do not interact with the system but play with the signs to show, to point out some specific zone or to figure

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 209 out a trajectory. This makes the cursor a special technical affordance (Hutchby 2001) for interaction within the shared digital environment. A pointing gesture can only be efficient in catching an interlocutor’s attention if both the gesture and the pointed object are visible for them, which means they are in the mutual visual and referential field (Goodwin 2003). Therefore, using the index finger to point to an object on the screen would not be perceived by the co-participant in a distant interaction setting as in our study.2 Nevertheless, the players in our setting have at their disposal the cursor as a technical tool they can manipulate. It is visible to one of the co-participants (who shares the same perspective) and takes the color that is attributed to the player’s role (see the following section). It therefore allows the coparticipant to identify the player who controls the other visible cursor. In our context, the colors allow the players’ identification, but in other games, more informative representations exist, indicating for example a player’s leftover life points. Stach et al. (2007) call these representations Rich Embodiment. As the players control their cursor, which is visible in the game interface, with their computer mouse, it can be described as a User Representation as defined by Seinfeld et al. (2021: 400): “With User Representations we refer to virtual objects that extend the users’ physical bodies into virtual environments, enabling them to execute actions there.” We therefore interpret the virtual representation of a participant’s action in the game interface as an extension of the player’s physical, real-life body, giving the player the possibility to act and communicate in and via the virtual space (see also Arminen et al. 2016). The players in our context can actually monitor (more or less live as the game takes place online) another participant’s cursor movements. This creates a common virtual interaction space with shared visual access and therefore gives the players the possibility to show elements on the screen to their co-participants. Rather than showing in the sense of making something visible, like for elements of the real-life environment in video call interactions (e.g., Licoppe 2017), it will be about making something seen, drawing a co-participant’s attention to an element of the common virtual environment, that is, pointing to it (Rosenbaun and Licoppe 2017). The difficulty in this mediated interaction environment is to monitor the other participants’ (joint) attention (e.g., Stukenbrock 2020), notably because the participants cannot check the others’ gaze direction. We will see how moving the cursor can help with this challenge of displaying joint attention as well. 11.2.  Cursor movements as gestures? So if cursor movements are used with interactional purposes, this makes them function similarly to gestures which, by definition are “actions that have the features of manifest deliberate expressiveness” (Kendon 2004: 15). Thus, they can be used to show or point to something, making it visible to others and/ or drawing the co-participants’ attention to it. In this sense, they are parts of

210  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard turns-of-talk, allowing the co-participants to follow the unfolding turn and the process of action formation. But they are also used independently from verbal turns. As we will see, co-participants mobilize them to display understanding or affiliation, or to prepare counterarguments with regard to the current speaker. Which multimodal category can these “gestural” movements of the cursor be put in then? Even though they are movements that are produced with the help of a participant’s body and that carry meaning, they clearly differ from hand and arm gestures in the way they are physically produced – no gesture phases as described by McNeill (2005: 31–33) can be distinguished – as well as in the way they are perceived by the co-participant in the mediated context. The possibilities participants have to use cursor movements for interaction depend on the nature of the virtual, the mediated environment (e.g., shared/synchronized digital interface, which other affordances are present). 11.3.  Data and methods 11.3.1.  Game setting

The data have been collected within an interdisciplinary project on embodiment in collaborative serious games for soft skills training in Lyon (France).3 During the game, the participants can see and hear each other via a webcam and microphone feed embedded in the game interface (see Figure 11.1). As members of a submarine’s crew, they have to repair damages and bail water in the different rooms of the submarine to prevent it from sinking. In

Figure 11.1  Example of the game interface with webcams.

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 211

Figure 11.2  Inside the control center.

Figure 11.3  Submarine plan.

order to achieve this collective task, there are some basic actions which are common to all three players (moving, bailing water and repairing), but in addition to that, every player has a different special competency at their disposal, depending on their role. The players play in subsequent turns, one after the other. The active player (the one whose turn it is to play) sees the room they are in from an immersive 1st person perspective (see Figure 11.2), while the two inactive players see the plan of the submarine from a bird’s eye perspective (see Figure 11.3). The bird’s eye perspective allows situating the position of all three players via the (green, orange or violet) points. They also allow the two players sharing this view to follow the movements of each other’s cursors almost perfectly live.

212  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard The participants of our study are mostly students from French universities. Due to the sanitary context, they have all participated in the game from home. Therefore, the recording of the audiovisual data (video of webcam and screen capture) has been done at a distance as well.4 In the beginning of each session, the game was configured by the researchers through an interface called Wizard of Oz (Dahlbäck et al. 1993), which allowed them to intervene in the game action in a limited way. In order to win the game, the players have to repair four damages in the submarine. Therefore, they need to establish consent concerning both immediate actions to accomplish during the current turn and follow-up actions serving a global strategy. Thus, at this point, an epistemic asymmetry comes into play: the active player, who has an immersive first-person perspective, does not have any information concerning the water level in the rooms other than the one they are in. They therefore (often) need guidance from the other players who see the whole submarine from a bird’s eye perspective. The strategy has to be negotiated and decided on collectively which leads to many argumentation and explanation sequences. These are the moments we focus on to see how cursor movements are used to accompany these strategic discussions. 11.3.2. Methods

Our study is based on multimodal conversation analysis (henceforth CA) on the one hand (e.g., Mondada 2019a; Streeck et al. 2011) and gesture studies on the other (e.g., Kendon 2004; Cienki 2016). Out of a corpus of about seven hours of interaction (nine groups playing one to three gaming rounds), we have selected one larger extract which we will analyze in detail in order to show how cursor movements are used in argumentation and explanation sequences. The data are presented in two different forms: (1) as a graphic transcript (Laurier 2019), where talk occurring simultaneously to the represented cursor movement(s) is underlined, and (2) as a multimodal CA transcript following ICOR conventions for talk and Mondada convention for multimodality (see appendix). The graphic transcript allows to understand the unfolding of the extract and to focus on the succession of the different cursor movements in relation to the participants’ verbal exchanges. The multimodal transcript allows to observe in detail the fine-grained temporal unfolding of cursor movements, mimics, head movements and talk at particular moments of the interaction. We also focus on only one player’s point of view.5 11.4.  Analysis: cursor movements in game-related explanations The extract we analyze herein occurs at the beginning of the game (third round and first turn of GUI). FEL’s and ANN’s avatars (points) are located

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 213

Figure 11.4 FEL’s screen (white cursor  =  FEL’s cursor; dark cursor  =  ANN’s cursor; avatar (colored point, here in different shades of gray) in the control center = GUI; the two others are in the workshop).

Figure 11.5  GUI’s screen at the beginning of the extract.

in the workshop; GUI’s avatar is in the control center. As non-active players, FEL and ANN have a view of the whole submarine (Figure  11.4), while GUI has a view of the inside of the room where his avatar is situated (Figure  11.5). This perspective does not allow him to develop gaming strategies. For a better understanding, we divided the extract into six fragments.

214  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard

Fragment 11.1A  – “Help request” (00:03:49.918–00:04:05.236).

Our extract starts with GUI’s recruitment of assistance (Kendrick and Drew 2016) by reading aloud the movements proposed to him. FEL who has been visibly focused on the screen responds first (11.1A #A). He relates his turn to the previous one by repeating the last-mentioned items and then announces what

Fragment 11.1B  – Multimodal transcript.

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 215 his own avatar needs to do in the following round and why (11.1A #B–11.1A #D). While neither ANN’s nor FEL’s cursor moves at the beginning of this sequence, FEL now starts moving his cursor straightforward to the cabin (11.1A #B) where it does a swaying movement (11.1A #C) and finally moves to the changing room (11.1A #D) – the two last are the rooms that FEL mentioned explicitly in his turn. The detail of the temporal organization of FEL’s turn shows the unfolding construction of his explanation and its relation to the cursor movements (l.04–12). FEL starts reacting to GUI’s recruitment, but he suspends his turn after a syntactically incomplete sentence (l.8), in overlap with ANN breathing in and moving closer to her screen, displaying her change of focus and therefore her orientation towards GUI’s recruitment as well (l.9). This is followed by a rather long gap after which FEL uses his cursor for the first time, moving it straight to the office (l.10–11). Starting to move the cursor at this moment shows FEL’s activeness in the game and might hence be seen as a turn-holding device (e.g., Selting 2000), more precisely a sign of an upcoming continuation of talk. This is reinforced on the one side by the turn-suspending syntactically incomplete structure FEL has produced previously and on the other side by ANN lifting her thumb to her mouth (l.10) with which she displays her thinking (Hofstetter 2020) but not an intention to immediately take the turn (which might have been assumed by FEL due to ANN’s breathing in (l.9)). Both FEL and ANN now orient towards GUI’s recruitment but, as we will see, without actually offering the needed assistance. When FEL starts his explanation (l.11), he moves his cursor straight to the cabin, foreshadowing the place where he needs to go. He terminates the dislocation of the cursor with a short swaying/circling movement over the cabin before formulating (in the sense of Heritage and Watson 1980) the place (l.11). The formulation is

Fragment 11.2A  – “Objection” (00:04:05.236–00:04:15.211).

216  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard followed by an account, explaining the reason why he has to go there (l.12). The account is accompanied by a new straight cursor movement to the changing room, foreshadowing the mentioning of this room at the end of the turn. In contrast to the first cursor movement that occurs at the end of a rather long gap, in the middle of the speaker’s turn, the other movements are more than turn-holding devices, they point to places (rooms) shortly before these places are mentioned verbally. During the explanation, ANN steps in and objects in quite a dispreferred manner: FEL shouldn’t go to the changing room but to the engine room to bail the water there. FEL on his part objects to this counter proposal and repeats his initial proposal (11.2A #A). ANN interrupts FEL: she acknowledges his argument but maintains her own proposal (bailing the engine room), as another (equal) way to proceed. She moves her cursor straight (even if in a non-linear movement) to the engine room, pointing to the place that she ­indicates during the reiteration of her proposal (11.2A #B). ANN is herself interrupted by FEL who acknowledges the relevance of her counterproposal. ­Following ANN, he moves his cursor to the engine room as well (11.2A #C). However, he then argues explicitly against this proposal by explaining that there is not much water in the engine room which means that this room has no priority for bailing (whereas there is a lot of water in the changing room which makes it urgent to intervene there first). His explanation is accompanied by rapid swaying movements over the engine room. ANN simultaneously moves her cursor (that is still at the engine room) away, outside the plan of the submarine (11.2A #D).

Fragment 11.2B  – Multimodal transcript.

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 217 An analysis focusing on the temporal development of the different cursor movements shows three types of movements, occurring at different moments in the turn. The fragment starts with rapid swaying movements over the changing room (l.20), the place where FEL’s cursor has already been positioned. These movements follow FEL’s objection and the reiteration of his proposal (l.15–17: the changing room needs to be bailed) and occur during ANN’s reiteration of her counterproposal (l.20: the engine room needs to be bailed). At the end of FEL’s swaying movements, ANN moves her cursor straight to the engine room while mentioning this place (l.20). Both participants use the different cursor movements in a strategic way in their argumentation, to point to the places they want to bring into their co-participant’s attention. FEL moves his cursor after having reiterated his proposal and while ANN is still expressing her disagreement. Also, his cursor was already positioned over the changing room; he had to find another way to draw ANN’s attention to it. ANN, for her part, moves her cursor the moment she mentions the engine room, right after FEL’s movements. She aligns with FEL’s trajectory to highlight his argument. Her cursor has been at another place before; she therefore can just move the cursor straight to the designated place. FEL starts his second objection with an acknowledgment of ANN’s argument (“yes,” l.22), accompanied by a straight movement of his cursor to the engine room, the room ANN wants to bail first. Pointing with the cursor to this room not only highlights it but displays that FEL thoroughly follows ANN’s argumentation. He then explains why the engine room is not the most urgent one, swaying with the cursor over it (l.22). The two cursor movements are complementary: while the straightforward movement points to the room and brings it to the fore, the swaying movements highlight its importance with regard to the verbal turn. FEL goes (virtually, with his cursor) to the room designated by ANN and then, by swaying over it, draws the attention to the low water level. During FEL’s explanation and swaying movements, ANN’s cursor leaves the plan (l.22). She accomplishes a straight movement to another place on the screen, but during a second speaker’s turn. Also, the cursor is not moved to a specific place but away from a specific place – the direction is thereby less important. In other words, the cursor is placed out of the relevant space, out of the mutual referential field (Goodwin 2003), even if it is still visible on the screen. Interestingly, this cursor movement follows a series of different movements accomplished by both participants (l.20–22) and does not precede an attempt to take the turn. While FEL in fragment 1 used the movement inside the submarine’s plan as a turn-holding device, ANN, by moving her cursor out of the mutual referential field, aligns with FEL, leaving the floor to him and his (verbal and visual) explanation. At the end of FEL’s argumentative turn, ANN’s cursor comes back into the submarine’s plan and moves to the changing room (11.3A #A). This prefaces the understanding and agreement with FEL’s argument which she displays after a short gap. During this turn, FEL moves his cursor straight from the

218  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard

Fragment 11.3A  – “Closing and new beginning” (00:04:15.211–00:04:21.571).

engine room to the changing room and sways over it (11.3A #B). ANN closes her turn with a final agreement and FEL moves his cursor away, while GUI who could follow the verbal exchange between FEL and ANN, but could not see the cursor movements or the different levels of water immersion in the rooms, renews his recruitment (11.3A #C). FEL acknowledges GUI’s problem in overlap with his turn which announces alignment (FEL displays that he has understood the problem and that he is going to respond shortly after). Meanwhile, ANN, whose cursor has moved to the changing room at the beginning of this extract and who stayed there until now, moves to the storeroom right above GUI’s avatar (11.3A #D). ANN who has moved her cursor away from the plan at the end of the previous extract brings her cursor back and moves it straight to the changing room, the room FEL proposed to bail (see fragments 1 and 2). By moving the cursor to the changing room during FEL’s turn, ANN shows her orientation to this room and thus displays that she can compare the water levels and potentially see that the changing room is the most submerged one. This understanding is then verbally expressed, initiated by a news receipt (Maynard 1997; l.26). During her turn, FEL also moves his cursor to the changing room and sways over it. He thereby displays that he follows ANN not only by orienting his attention to the changing room (moving his cursor at this place) but also to her new understanding (highlighting the importance of the room through swaying movements). From an organizational point of view, he aligns with the current speaker’s topical orientation (“we are talking now about the changing room”). From an argumentative point of view, he aligns, especially through the swaying gestures, with the development of his own argument (“we need to focus more urgently on the changing room, that’s what I wanted to say”).

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 219

Fragment 11.3B  – Multimodal transcript.

With ANN’s final agreement and FEL moving his cursor away, the argumentation sequence is collaboratively closed (l. 28). In contrast to the previous occurrences of moving the cursor out of the plan, FEL’s movement is not preceded by a series of different other cursor movements. It is produced

Fragment 11.4A  – “Two options” (00:04:20.557–00:04:24.756).

220  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard simultaneously to ANN’s final agreement, displaying that at this moment, nothing needs to be shown, pointed to or highlighted anymore. At this point, GUI reiterates his recruitment of assistance by designing his turn more explicitly as a request and by explaining why the previous exchange hasn’t been sufficiently helpful for him (l.27–31). His request is acknowledged by ANN and FEL differently. While FEL responds verbally, ANN moves her cursor to the storeroom, just above GUI’s avatar (l.33). Fragment 4 starts with ANN’s verbal acknowledgment of GUI’s problem. While FEL moves his cursor to the control center where GUI’s avatar is located, ANN, whose cursor has already been near GUI’s avatar, moves now to the canteen (11.4A #A). FEL then produces a directive (“go storeroom”) and moves his cursor to this room. ANN meanwhile starts a proposal and moves her cursor to the workshop (11.4A #B). She proposes two other places where GUI could go: the canteen or the workshop. She underlines her proposal by moving the cursor to these two rooms (11.4A #B, 11.4A #C and 11.4A #D), alternating twice between them.

Fragment 11.4B  – Multimodal transcript.

ANN and FEL acknowledge GUI’s problem verbally (l.33–34) and, before or simultaneously to the verbal turn, through the movements of their cursors. ANN moves her cursor to a room next to GUI’s avatar and then to rooms that his avatar can directly access (storeroom and canteen); FEL moves his cursor to the control center, to GUI’s avatar. After a short gap, FEL opens an instruction sequence. The directive and the new cursor movement to the storeroom where GUI should go are synchronized (l.36). Simultaneously, ANN starts a proposal sequence, indicating two other places where GUI could go. Her proposal is designed for FEL, talking about GUI in the third person (l.37). FEL is thus positioned as the one who explicitly instructs GUI. ANN has already moved her cursor to the canteen (l.33); she starts her turn and the formulation of her proposal while moving the cursor to the workshop. When verbally mentioning the canteen, she moves the cursor back to the canteen; when mentioning the workshop, the cursor moves to the workshop. The cursor movements therefore precede the verbal mentioning of the rooms for the first two movements and accompany it the second time.

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 221

Fragment 11.5A  – “Pre-closing” (00:04:24.756–00:04:31.896).

ANN closes her proposal and moves her cursor again to the canteen (11.5A #A). FEL takes up one of ANN’s suggestions and produces a new instruction for GUI. At the same time, he moves his cursor straight to the canteen and sways over it (11.5A #B). He then starts explaining why this is the best choice, moving his cursor to the cockpit, the room he is going to talk about. ANN, in overlap, confirms the instruction as good gaming strategy by repeating the room to go to (11.5A #C). She then closes the proposal sequence with an agreement token, while FEL pursues his explanation and moves his cursor away from the plan.

Fragment 11.5B  – Multimodal transcript.

222  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard ANN’s cursor movement in l.38–39 belongs to the proposal analyzed in fragment 4 where she moved the cursor twice from canteen to workshop. She ends this back-and-forth movement on the canteen where her cursor remains. After a gap, FEL reformulates and repairs his instruction, correcting the room where he sends GUI (l.40) by considering ANN’s proposal. In an account, he explains why this is the best strategy (l.40–43). He accompanies his turn with cursor movements to and over the two places he mentions. Both movements are composed of first a straight movement to the place and then, short, rapid swaying movements over it. The movements start with the verbal part of the action (i.e., the beginning of the instruction and the beginning of the explanation) and end with the mention of the room (canteen and cockpit). The combination of straightforward movement to a place and swaying over it in this fragment clearly shows their complementary use. Moving to the place occurs first and allows to draw the co-participants’ attention to it. But once the cursor is positioned at this place, there is no other possibility to continue the highlighting and thus to indicate that the co-participant needs to remain focused there. The swaying assures the continuity of joint attention (Kidwell and Zimmerman 2007). Once the room has been mentioned verbally, drawing the co-participant’s attention to it seems no longer necessary. FEL even leaves the plan during his turn (l.42), displaying that there is (for now) nothing else to show.

Fragment 11.6  – “Leaving place for action” (00:04:31.896–00:04:35.471).

The last fragment starts with ANN confirming again the room GUI should enter and thus confirming FEL’s instruction. Simultaneously, her cursor leaves the plan (11.6 #A). GUI acknowledges the instruction and accomplishes the instructed action by clicking on the respective field on his screen (11.6 #B).

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 223 A pop-up window opens on his screen, asking him to confirm his choice. GUI confirms by clicking on the respective button in the window and formulates his upcoming action in the game, repeating the room he is going to (11.6 #C). His avatar then moves to the canteen (11.6 #D). 11.5.  Discussion: three types of cursor movements In the analyzed extract we have described three different types of cursor movements: (1) a straight and direct movement to a particular place, (2) a more circular movement/a swaying movement over a particular place and (3) a “moving away” movement by which the cursor is directed out of the submarine plan, the current focus of attention or the mutual referential field on the screen (see Table 11.1). The first and the third ones have been accomplished by both, speakers and co-participants, whereas in our data, the second one is currently only attested as used by speakers. Straight and direct movements to a place can be used as turn-holding devices. They then occur during gaps or other displays of hesitation and the Table 11.1  Types of cursor movements and their functions Type of movement

Produced by

Sequential and turn environment

Function

Straight (pointing) movement

Current speaker

During a gap or other hesitation devices, the same speaker re-takes the turn Before or during the place/the referent is mentioned During the current speaker’s turn once the place/referent is established, followed by the co-participant’s (dis)alignment During or after the place/the referent is mentioned, can be preceded by pointing movement After a series of different cursor movements on the screen, no turntaking attempt End of sequence

Turn-holding device

Current speaker Co-participant

Swaying/ circling movement

Current speaker

Moving away

Co-participant

Current speaker or co-participant

Referent initiator and/or attentiongetting device Display of attentiveness (joint attention)

Attention-holding device

Leaving the floor to the current speaker and clearing the screen Closing device

224  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard same speaker continues their turn afterwards. However, these movements mostly make a place visible, with regard to the current speaker’s unfolding action or a co-participant’s (dis)affiliation. If they are produced by the current speaker, they occur shortly before or during the first verbal mention of the place to which they point. They function as pointing gestures (Kendon 2004) and are part of a gestalt contexture (Garfinkel 2002). If the movement is produced by a co-participant, it may occur at different moments of the current speaker’s turn. In this case, it does not point to a place but displays the co-participants’ attentiveness (and therefore enables the current speaker to monitor joint attention). The examples show that the same gesture is used differently according to its position in turn and sequence. Swaying or circling movements are used by the current speaker once the place has been identified. They do not draw the co-participants’ attention to this place in order to see it but to consider it as important with regard to the verbal turn. Swaying movements are preceded by straight and direct movements to a specific place (pointing) and occur once the place has been verbally introduced. The swaying gesture occurs in argumentative sequences and highlights specific arguments or, more precisely, places which are related to specific arguments. Pointing movements and swaying movements are complementary and frequently (but not exclusively) used together. Moving the cursor away, out of the mutual referential field, shows an opposite trajectory. In every case in our extract, the cursor is moved to a direction that is not made relevant in the interaction (upwards, downwards, to the right), and it occurs at a moment when either a decision is taken or multiple cursor movements occur on the screen. Moving the cursor away can be a possibility to “clear the screen,” to avoid too much visual information and therefore cognitive overload (Kirsh 2000) and/or to avoid activity “overlap,” just as for verbal turn-taking (Sacks et al. 1974). In contrast to a co-participant’s pointing movement as described before, moving away does not tell anything about the co-participant’s engagement in the interaction or their alignment with the current speaker. It only displays that the participant is not going to take the turn. Other occurrences of moving away seem to be more closely related to sequence closing where they allow to mark the sequence as closed and to place the cursor in a sort of home position (Sacks and Schegloff 2002), ready to start moving and pointing again. 11.6. Conclusion We presented a case study of a video game situation implying three participants interacting with each other at distance with webcam-equipped computers. The analysis focused on the cursor activity and the role of their movement in the organization of the interaction. In particular, we observe three types of movement (straight, swaying or circling, and “moving away”), which can be related to various interactional or configurational functions in relation to the sequential or turn environment. Cursor movements shall not only be interpreted as

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 225 operations of one participant upon some objects on the screen (actions in the gameplay). They indeed contribute, similarly to common gestures in face-toface interaction, to the organization of the turn, of the sequence and more generally of the collaboration itself. Our study has focused on cursor movements that are visible to a co-participant via a synchronized interface. It did not consider movements that are not visible to co-participants (like those of the player who does not share the same interface with the other two and which therefore cannot have a direct interactional impact but which can display collaborative behavior6). However, we expect them to play an important role in the embodied participation of players, which is probably related to non-interactive coverbal gestures, like those made by people gesturing on the phone (e.g., Bavelas et al. 2008). For future research, it will be interesting to further investigate the relation between cursor movements and gestures: can the former be used as substitutes or complements of the latter? Do they have a certain similarity in their movement organization (as for gesture phases)? And at what point are these User Representations too limited to fulfill some gesture’s interactional functions? In our study, we have focused on cursor movements and have not systematically analyzed other multimodal devices (like mimics, postures and other body movements visible through the webcam image). Thus, taking a closer look at the temporal interplay between all the (technological) affordances the players have at their disposal could reveal interesting correlations and a more finegrained typology as we have been able to present with our exploratory case study.

Appendix Transcription conventions

Turns-at-talk are transcribed according to the ICOR conventions, which were inspired by the Jeffersonian transcription system (Jefferson 2004) and are available at http://icar.cnrs.fr/projets/corinte/documents/2013_Conv_ICOR_ 250313.pdf [] pol.h NON (0.8)

Beginning and end of overlap Cut-off Inbreath Louder sounds Elapsed time by tenths of seconds

: j’ vois .kch (. . .) /

Prolongation of the immediately prior sound Non-standard elision Sharp inbreath Brief interval within or between turns (< 0.2 sec) Rising intonation of the immediately prior sound

As for the notation of multimodality, the transcription system designed by Lorenza Mondada (Mondada 2019b) has been adapted according to the needs of our analyses. ann cur_a %% ** $$ ---

Indicates the participant’s body movement, especially mimics Cursor movements are indicated with cur_NAME Description of embodied actions are delimited between two identical symbols (one symbol per participant and action type) that are synchronized with correspondent stretches of talk or time indications The movement/gaze/gesture continues across subsequent lines

Notes 1 We would like to thank Louise Lüchow and Natalia Ruiz-Junco for their very helpful and enriching comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. 2 There has been research on developing devices that overlay a webcam video and a shared screen for two participants for them to be able to have access to where their co-participant is pointing on the screen (Gyllstrom and Stotts 2005), but in our context, no such technique has been applied.

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 227 3 BODEGA project (http://icar.cnrs.fr/bodega/); the authors are grateful to the ASLAN project (ANR-10-LABX-0081) of the Université de Lyon, for its financial support within the French program "Investments for the Future" operated by the National Research Agency (ANR). 4 The participants accepted a webcam and screen share in their browser when the game interface asked them to. The game master’s (researcher’s) screen has been recorded with the free software OBS (https://obsproject.com). 5 In fact, every player has their own screen which is synchronized regularly. Nevertheless, the synchronicity can lag behind a little so that for example one player’s cursor movement is seen a second later by the other player. As this has been without impact in the present example (different from other groups where a significant asynchrony caused interactional difficulties and repairs) and to avoid too much complexity in this first case study, we will not show all the different screens in the transcripts. 6 Similarly to Olbertz-Siitonen and Piirainen-Marsh’s study (2021), we have observed cursor movements which project alignment, e.g., the active player moving the cursor on the button that will validate the discussed action, although in our case, they were not visible to the players seeing the submarine plan. But these have not been the focus of the present study.

References Andersen, Peter Bøgh. 1990. A Theory of Computer Semiotics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Arminen, Ilkka, Christian Licoppe, and Anna Spagnolli. 2016. “Respecifying mediated interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 290–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2016.1234614 Bavelas, Janet Beavin, Jennifer Gerwing, Chantelle Sutton, and Danielle Prevost. 2008. “Gesturing on the telephone: Independent effects of dialogue and visibility.” Journal of Memory and Language 58 (2): 495–520. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.02.00 Cienki, A. 2016. “Cognitive linguistics, gesture studies, and multimodal communication.” Cognitive Linguistics 27 (4): 603–618. https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2016-0063 Dahlbäck, Nils, Arne Jönsson, and Lars Ahrenberg. 1993. “Wizard of Oz Studies: Why and How.” In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces – IUI ‘93, 193–200. Orlando, FL: ACM Press. Day, Dennis, and Johannes Wagner. 2014. “Objects as tools for talk.” In Maurice Nevile, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, and Mirka Rauniomaa (eds.), Interacting with Objects, 101–124. John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi. org/10.1075/z.186.05day Due, Brian L., and Thomas Toft. 2021. “Phygital highlighting: Achieving joint visual attention when physically co-editing a digital text.” Journal of Pragmatics 77: 1–17. Enfield, N. J., Sotaro Kita, and J. P. de Ruiter. 2007. “Primary and secondary pragmatic functions of pointing gestures.” Journal of Pragmatics 9 (10): 1722–1741. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2007.03.001 Garfinkel, Harold. 2002. Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working out Durkheim’s Aphorism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Goodwin, Charles. 2003. “Pointing as situated practice.” Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet 41: 217–241. Gyllstrom, Karl and David Stotts. 2005. “Facetop: Integrated semi-transparent video for enhanced natural pointing in shared screen collaboration.” May  15. Technical Report TR05–010, 1‑10. https://doi.org/10.1.1.123.6685

228  Lydia Heiden, Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre, and Matthieu Quignard Heritage, John C., and D. Rod Watson. 1980. “Aspects of the properties of formulations in natural conversations: Some instances analysed.” Semiotica 30 (3–4): 245– 262. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1980.30.3-4.245 Hofstetter, Emily. 2020. “Thinking with the body: Embodying thinking as a practice in board games.” In Sally Wiggins and Karin Osvaldsson-Cromdal (eds.), Discursive Psychology and Embodiment, 247–273. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hutchby, Ian. 2001. Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone to the Internet. Cambridge: Polity Press. Jefferson, Gail. 2004. “Glossary of transcript symbols.” In Gene Lerner (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, 13–31. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kendrick, Kobin H., and Paul Drew. 2016. “Recruitment: Offers, requests, and the organization of assistance in interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (1): 1–19. Kidwell, Mardi, and Don H. Zimmerman. 2007. “Joint attention as action.” Journal of Pragmatics 39 (3): 592–611. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2006.07.012 Kirsh, David. 2000. “A few thoughts on cognitive overload.” Intellectica 1 (30): 19–51. Laurier, Eric. 2019. “The panel show: Further experiments with graphic transcripts and vignettes.” Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality 2 (1). doi: 10.7146/si.v2i1.113968 Laurier, Eric, Barry Brown, and Moira McGregor. 2016. “Mediated pedestrian mobility: Walking and the map app.” Mobilities 11 (1): 117–134. Licoppe, Christian. 2017. “Showing objects in Skype video-mediated conversations: From showing gestures to showing sequences.” Journal of Pragmatics 110: 63–82. Licoppe, Christian, and Sylvaine Tuncer. 2019. “The initiation of showing sequences in video-mediated communication.” Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur verbalen Interaktion 20: 545–571. Luff, Paul, Christian Heath, Hideaki Kuzuoka, Jon Hindmarsh, Keiichi Yamazaki, and Shinya Oyama. 2003. “Fractured ecologies: Creating environments for collaboration.” Human–Computer Interaction 8 (1–2): 51–84. https://doi.org/10.1207/ S15327051HCI1812_3 Maynard, Dough W. 1997. “The news delivery sequence: Bad news and good news in conversational interaction.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 30 (2): 93–130. McNeill, David. 2005. Gesture and Thought. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Mondada, Lorenza. 2007. “Multimodal resources for turn-taking: Pointing and the emergence of possible next speakers.” Discourse Studies 9 (2): 194–225. Mondada, Lorenza. 2019a. “Contemporary issues in conversation analysis: Embodiment and materiality, multimodality and multisensoriality in social interaction.” Journal of Pragmatics 145: 47–62. Mondada, Lorenza. 2019b. “Conventions for multimodal transcription (initial version: 2001; current version: 5.0.1, Nov. 2019).” https://www.lorenzamondada. net/multimodal-transcription

Cursor movements in a screen-based video game 229 Olbertz-Siitonen, Margarethe, and Arja Piirainen-Marsh. 2021. “Coordinating action in technology-supported shared tasks: Virtual pointing as a situated practice for mobilizing a response.” Language  & Communication 79: 1–21. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.langcom.2021.03.005 O’Neill, Shaleph. 2008. Interactive Media: The Semiotics of Embodied Interaction. London: Springer. Raclaw, Joshua, Jessica S. Robles, and Stephen M. DiDomenico. 2016. “Providing epistemic support for assessments through mobile-supported sharing activities.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 49 (4): 362–379. https://doi.org/10 .1080/08351813.2016.1199089 Rosenbaun, Laura, and Christian Licoppe. 2017. “Showing ‘digital’ objects in webbased video chats as a collaborative achievement.” Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA): 419–446. https://doi. org/10.1075/prag.27.3.05ros Sacks, Harvey, and Emmanuel A. Schegloff. 2002. “Home position.” Gesture 2 (2): 133–146. Sacks, Harvey, Emmanuel A. Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. 1974. “A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation.” Language 50: 696–735. Seinfeld, Sofia, Tiare Feuchtner, Antonella Maselli, and Jörg Müller. 2021. “User representations in human-computer interaction.” Human–Computer Interaction 36 (5–6): 400–438. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2020.1724790 Selting, Margret. 2000. “The construction of units in conversational talk.” Language in Society 29 (4): 477–517. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500004012 Spagnolli, Anna, and Luciano Gamberini. 2005. “A place for presence. Understanding the human involvement in mediated interactive environments.” Psychology Journal 3 (1): 6–15. Stach, Tadeusz, Carl Gutwin, David Pinelle, and Pourang Irani. 2007. “Improving recognition and characterization in groupware with rich embodiments.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 11–20. Streeck, Jürgen, Charles Goodwin, and Curtis LeBaron (eds.). 2011. Embodied Interaction: Language and Body in the Material World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stukenbrock, Anja. 2020. “Deixis, Meta-Perceptive Gaze Practices, and the Interactional Achievement of Joint Attention.” Frontiers in Psychology 11(Article 1779): 1–11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01779. Tuncer, Sylvaine, Oskar Lindwall, and Barry Brown. 2021. “Making time: Pausing to coordinate video instructions and practical tasks.” Symbolic Interaction 44 (3): 603–631. Ursi, Biagio, and Heike Baldauf-Quilliatre. 2021. “Toucher les écrans ça s’ apprend! L’étude multimodale des gestes réalisés par des enfants au cours de sessions de jeu sur grande tablette.” Bulletin suisse de Linguistique appliquée spécial: 35–56. Wasson, Christina. 2006. “Being in two spaces at once.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 16 (1): 103–130. Weilenmann, Alexandra, and Caterine Larsson. 2001. “Sharing the mobile: Mobile phones in local interactions.” Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of Wireless Technology: 92–106.

12 Problems with the digital public encounter Daniela Boehringer

Many years of research on encounters and interactions in the welfare state have given us insights into face-to-face encounters between bureaucrats and citizens, the things happening there, and how legal framings are applied and transformed by the so-called street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky 1980). These public encounters (Goodsell 1981) between the state’s official representatives and the citizens are considered places where politics is shaped and becomes concrete. Through Lipsky’s (1980) and Hasenfeld’s (1972, 2010) work, street-level bureaucrats and their face-to-face encounters with citizens have been brought into focus. Street-level bureaucrats (SLB) are professionals as diverse as teachers, police officers, and other professionals in welfare state agencies, such as social workers. They have an essential function in the performance of public tasks, especially in the area of welfare state benefits: they mediate these benefits (such as unemployment benefits), perform monitoring tasks (can these parents care for their child, or is the child at risk?), provide assistance, give information, process people to other institutions, and often form an interface between potential claimants and state benefits. All of these professionals have a certain amount of maneuvering room (“discretion”) within the scope of their work. As Lipsky (1980) argues, this discretion cannot be entirely eliminated for various reasons, which I will discuss. SLBs usually work in social situations that are so complex that predefined action formats or instructions cannot fully anticipate them. Moreover, streetlevel bureaucrats need room to maneuver when interacting with citizens because they operate on the fine line between limited resources and the high workload caused by many potential cases. In this situation, they must constantly decide who to give to, what to give them, and how much. Lipsky gives the example of the police: policemen are expected to invoke the law selectively. They could not possibly make arrests for all infractions they observe during their working day. (p. 15) Overall, Lipsky deserves credit for bringing into focus the central role of the SLB and the opaque zone between formal policy and the results of that policy. DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-15

Problems with the digital public encounter 231 According to research (cf. Hand and Catlaw 2019, p. 126), the work of streetlevel bureaucrats incorporates the situation, the concrete interaction with citizens, their unquestioned lay and expert knowledge in their decisions, and act within a given organizational framework. The fact that the interaction between public representatives and citizens is somehow essential and represents its own level of policymaking has been known for a long time. However, it is the research from an ethnomethodological-conversation analytic tradition that focuses on the interaction in the offices of significant social administrations and appreciates face-to-face interaction as a social fact of its own kind: as an infrastructure for social institutions (Schegloff 2006, p. 70), and as a method and a tool to produce social facts. In the case of social, constitutional, and medical institutions, the relevance of concrete interactions is particularly tangible because the conversation between official representatives and citizens forms in many areas the central instrument of action (Wolff 1986) and the eye of the needle for state-organized aid. Thus, Goffman (1983) has stated that: there is the obvious fact that a great deal of the work of organizations – decision-making, the transmission of information, the closed coordination of physical tasks – is done face-to-face, requires being done in this way, and is vulnerable to face-to-face effects. (p. 8) Numerous conversation-analytic studies have shown how clients and their problems are constituted and formed in interaction, how a need for help is determined (or not), and how the actions of public representatives and citizens intertwine in the process. It is through such intersections that institutions ‘come to life’ (Böhringer and Karl 2015; Messmer and Hitzler 2011; Toerien et al. 2013; Seltzer et al. 2001; Sacks 1967). However, what if the arrangement changes and the counterpart the citizen is interacting with is not human, and the public encounter is not simply mediated but is actually constituted in interaction with a digital application? These days, citizens often meet or interact with their ‘government’ digitally (Bovens and Zouridis 2002; Lindgren et al. 2019): On websites, they fill in forms, search for information, or check their files. Research on the workings of significant public administrations (Buffat 2015; Zouridis et al. 2020) show how citizens perceive the so-called self-service offerings of public administration and how to improve their user-friendliness so as not to exclude certain groups (Hansen et  al. 2018; Park et  al. 2018; Hetling et  al. 2014). Topics of study have included the ethical issues involved in such interactions, the reskilling of citizens or public officials in the use of digital self-service applications and question of access to public services. But still the research landscape is patchy (Lindgren et al. 2019). Especially the question how citizens use those applications and how they are “made at home” in their daily lives (Sacks 1992) needs to be uncovered. In this chapter, I will examine a single

232  Daniela Boehringer case of such encounters in some detail: the online job portal of the German Public Employment Service (PES). After describing the website and its characteristics, the paper analyzes real-time video data of members searching for a job on that site. 12.1.  Preliminary assumptions and research questions The subject of my analysis are the moments when disturbances and irritations occur when engaging with the online job portal of the German PES. The central questions concern the methodology that users follow when registering and processing such irritations. What constitutes a ‘problem’ for users in these contexts, and how can it be dealt with so that it no longer plays a role – for the further procedure – and therefore becomes unproblematic? It is about technology in action (and its problems). Ultimately, such an approach produces evidence about the uniqueness of face-to-screen encounters. The starting point is the assumption that the technical system that becomes visible to users at an interface is a cultural object that acquires its social meaning and functionality only in the process of its use (Böhringer and Wolff 2010). This change of perspective towards the situational embedding of technology can be found, on the one hand, in the various research works under the umbrella term “workplace studies” (Luff et al. 2000), but ultimately goes back to the position of Garfinkel et al. (1981). Harvey Sacks has also stressed this in a particularly pointed way. Sacks (1992, p. 548) emphasizes that objects, including communication technologies such as the telephone, which he uses as an example, are made at home in the social world. Objects are mediated into a world that is already organized. Symbolic interactionism gives another model of thinking about the relationship of the social and the technical. In this perspective, what shapes the deployment and the use of technology is not the technology in itself but people’s interpretation of that technology (vom Lehn 2020). Only in this connection between use and interpretation do technical objects gain meaning and, in the long run, potentially lead to social change. The ethnomethodological and SI perspectives have proliferated in research on human–computer interaction in recent decades (Arminen and Poikus 2009; Fisher and Sanderson 1996; Heath et al. 2000; Moore et al. 2011; Sharrock and Button 2009; Suchman 1985). Accordingly, this chapter is concerned with the real-time use of technology and the meaning that technology acquires in this interaction with human users. For this purpose, video recordings of situations in which people work at a digital interface of public administration are analyzed. The users are searching for jobs in the online search engine of the German Federal Employment Agency. Of particular interest are those sequences in which problems and irritations arise for the job seekers.

Problems with the digital public encounter 233 12.2.  Working on and with computer applications Concerning screen- and desktop-based work on and with computer applications and the interaction between humans and computers (HCI), it has been quite common to look at this exchange relationship also from the perspective of ethnomethodological conversation analysis. The work of Suchman (1985), Frohlich and Luff (1990), and a few others (cf. the contributions in Luff et  al. (1990)) have been groundbreaking in this regard. Geser (1989, p. 241) argued for the use of genuine sociological terms such as “communication” and “interaction” to describe the “interrelationship between humans and computers.” Among other reasons, this is because “communicative and interactive processes are carried out with electronic partners in a completely identical way as with human partners” (Geser 1989, p. 242). Of course, this is in no way true. It is not the case that human actors communicate with technical counterparts in the same way that they do with human attendants. Human actors incorporate devices into ongoing interactions (Böhringer and Wolff 2010), use them in everyday courses of action, and make them “native” to their world (Sacks 1992, p. 548). People enter into sequential exchanges with such devices, but the “richness of information flow and facilitation of feedback” (Goffman 1963, p. 17) given in direct conversation among attendants cannot be transferred to their exchanges with devices. The interaction between humans and the interface of a system deviates in many ways from the typical interaction (Ayaß 2005). Given all of this, we cannot seriously assume that there is a real conversation between a human and a computer. Yet, treating these interactions as conversational can be helpful for research because it sensitizes the research to the sequential organization of action. Digital interfaces are designed to enable such sequential exchanges: users enter some data, see on the interface that the system indicates a change, and use this as the context for a subsequent entry. The respective display on the screen forms the central context for the users’ further turns. These exchange procedures are, of course, minimal compared to an interaction between the people present (e.g., there is no parallel observation of each other) and only work because human users can adapt to the limited possibilities of digital systems (Krummheuer 2010). Nevertheless, ethnomethodological conversation-analytic research ultimately assumes, in terms of research pragmatics, that interaction with computers can be studied much like the interaction in the conversation between humans. For example, Moore et al. (2011) coined the term “computer interaction analysis.” Lucy Suchman (1985) pioneered this way of studying humancomputer interaction. In her seminal study, she shows that sequencing is used by users primarily as a resource to check whether they are still “right” in the system and to feel their way through the system turn-by-turn (Suchman 1985, p. 97). New instructions given by the system are interpreted as a confirmation of previous actions – for example, if after entering a search term, the system

234  Daniela Boehringer allows users to enter further terms, this is interpreted as an indication that the first term was correct (the analysis presented here will discuss this point in more detail). The so-called workplace studies (Luff et al. 2000) transferred this approach to more extensive, cooperative, and highly technical work contexts. Other studies focus more on whether there are “typical” sequences (comparable in form and function to human interactions) in human-computer interaction (HCI) (Arminen 2005) or identify, for example, the so-called “request-fetch sequences” in the operation of Internet search engines (Moore et al. 2011). This sequence is very often followed by “repair sequences,” in which the users inspect these results, then accept or reject them, followed by a new search entry (Moore et al. 2011). In these cases, the search engine user treats the non-matching hit list as an indication of not having been understood correctly and repairs his/her original input. Moore et al. (2011, p. 517) suggest that certain forms of search system programming lead to certain types of repair sequences by users when their search is unsuccessful. Further work, such as that of Frohlich and Luff (1990) or Wooffitt (1994), attempted to use insights from conversation analysis as a basis for the development of dialog systems (via text or voice input on the screen). Today, central insights from conversation analysis are taken into account in system development, for example, for conversational digital agents for people with disabilities (currently: Amrhein et  al. 2016; Cyra and Pitsch 2017) or to improve the interaction of avatars in virtual game worlds (Moore et al. 2007). In contrast, the present text is about a different use case: the predominant plain text-based online search options and forms offered by social administrations (in this case, the job board of the Federal Employment Agency). 12.3. Some features of the “job board” of the federal employment agency The Public Employment Service in Germany is available to all citizens free of charge. In addition to personal counseling at local employment agencies and job centers, the “job board” Internet platform is an essential component of this service as a publicly accessible self-service option for searching for jobs or applicants. The job board can be used via the Internet without personal contact with an employment agent from the Federal Employment Agency or a job center. It is also not necessary to register as a job seeker. The job exchange of the Federal Employment Agency is a website that, on the one hand, contains ready-made information on questions of job and training or about the labor market in general. On the other hand, the website also provides search forms (“form-fill interface”), which the users can and in some places must fill out to be able to use the functions that the database makes available (searching for jobs/posting job offers) to the fullest extent. This Internet-based database with integrated search options is primarily text-based, and its aim is to match suitable applicants with job offers. In this study, the focus is on this usage situation.

Problems with the digital public encounter 235

Figure 12.1  “Job Board/Jobbörse” on the Internet. Federal Employment Agency. (Note: In mid-November  2021, the Federal Employment Agency changed the job exchange ­website so that the layout shown here is no longer visible).

The simplest way to search for a job is to enter a search term in at least one of the three lines in the box shown in Figure 12.1 under the heading “Find a suitable job” or to select one of the terms suggested by the system. In the first line, one can only choose between different employment formats, for example, whether one is simply looking for “work” or a “training position.” The second line, generally titled “Search term,” allows entering content information concerning the desired job. However, right from the start of the entry process, one realizes that one cannot do so freely. After only entering a few letters, the system suggests the term possibly being searched for, which becomes a job title and must be adopted by the user. At this point, it becomes clear for a person looking for a job that this is a system that “knows its way around” and uses its scheme of job titles. The user must then sort themselves into the displayed system of job, training, or activity descriptions and from this point on no longer searches with their own terms but with those of the system. The simple search can also be extended to include very different criteria (such as working hours, fixed term, management responsibility, or search radius). These specifications cannot be entered freely either but have to be selected from long lists of suggestions. The selected or deselected criteria are binding in different ways for the search that is then carried out. Some criteria are so-called ‘knock-out’ criteria and lead the system to present results that correspond precisely to the request provided, while other data are treated as not obligatory. Results that do not correspond exactly to the search settings are also displayed. This variability in the system specifications is not visible to job seekers who do not know that they unintentionally limit or expand the search with certain search settings. As a result, users eventually receive a list of job offers but may not know that they cannot see additional offers because of their chosen search settings. Sometimes the user receives a message that the system is working according to “default settings.” However, precisely this transparency of the system (explaining background processes of the search process) causes problems in use, as will be shown here.

236  Daniela Boehringer 12.4.  Data basis and methodological approach The present study was based on video-recorded situations in which the four research subjects searched for job offers on the Federal Employment Agency’s job board. What kind of job this was and how they undertook the search was left up to the participants in the study. The job seekers were individuals with academic educations who were not really looking for jobs. However, this specificity did not pose a problem for the data collection because one can also use this online tool to look at what jobs are available and to get informed about the job market in general. This procedure is supported by the system and it is a use that is common for people with a fixed-term employment contract (like the participants in the study). Some of the research participants were already aware of the opportunity to look for a new position via the job board; that is, they had already searched for jobs beforehand. This became evident in the preliminary discussions, but it is also obvious from the video data available. The videos on which the study is based show both the users (they are filmed from the front by the laptop camera) and their screens. In total, four hours of recordings are available. By recording the usage situation the interplay of inputs on the device and parallel processes of sense-making by the users became partially visible. The participants made the recordings autonomously. An ethnographic accompaniment,1 which is relatively common in HCI research (cf. Sharrock and Button 2009; Tolmie et al. 2002; Arminen and Poikus 2009), was not possible at the time of the study due to Covid-19 contact restrictions. Video recordings preserved the engagement with the interface in its real-world temporal progression (Bergmann 1981). The data was transcribed in detail and was neither cleaned nor coded. Instead, the analysis was undertaken on the raw data. Similar to Suchman’s (1985) approach, the analysis undertaken here focused on those moments in the website’s operation in which things clearly diverge from what the user expects (i.e., crises or irritations). This could be connoted both positively (“Ah, great, it works after all.”) and negatively (“What’s that all about?”). Thus, it was not a matter of checking whether the page was being used “correctly” or whether, for example, links worked and the corresponding page opened. The object of the analysis in the present study was rather moments in which the user recognizes that something is going in a different direction than expected. The identification of such moments was made possible by “trouble marking” (Bergmann et  al. 2008), these sequences were highlighted by the users from the otherwise smooth flow of the website’s operation. Loud exclamations, flinching and jerking back from the screen, or similar verbal or nonverbal markers, can be read as indications that the users’ attitudes towards the event have changed and that they are surprised that “something” has happened (Heritage 1984). However, they did not only mark that something noteworthy happened in this particular case but also that

Problems with the digital public encounter 237 Table 12.1  Structure of transcripts Time

The user’s actions

Changes on the screen

Not available to Available to the Available to the user Explanation the machine machine #00:09:52–3# Author’s own presentation based on Suchman (1985).

the process that preceded was unproblematic (cf. Bjelic 2019, p. 706; Garfinkel and Wieder 1992). Once these sequences were identified within the material, a collection of such sequences was created and they were first transcribed, taking into account not only the users’ input via keyboard or mouse but also the visible displays of the system on the screen and the users’ soliloquies and response calls (Goffman 1981). The presentation in the transcript follows Suchman’s suggestion (1985) and shows the systematics as exemplified in Table 12.1. In the first column, the time in the recording is noted. The following two columns show the user’s actions, differentiated according to whether they are perceptible to the machine or not. The fourth column describes the change on the screen visible to the user. Sometimes this change only occurs because the system shows another window. Sometimes – depending on the input – it is also visible that the user has changed the search settings. The last column contains explanations which serve to better understand the respective action or display on the screen. Suchman’s method of presentation was adopted because it already represents an essential feature of this atypical interaction situation: namely, the human user can disengage from the interaction situation and do a great deal without being noticed by the machine. 12.5. The limited controllability of the system leads to irritations In analyzing the material it became apparent that irritations occur primarily when the system’s default settings described above become visible on the surface, at the interface, or when the system appears to act autonomously. This reveals the working consensus that evidently underlies the users’ interaction with the system: until proven otherwise, users initially assume that only their action moves cause a change (or reaction, if you will) in the system. The excellent reactivity of the system supports this perception; a move by the user is promptly followed by a change on the screen (e.g., a checkmark becomes visible in a drop-down menu, and another window opens). This creates the illusion that one can control the search and tell the system what to do. Therefore, the users in the explorative study presented here do not initially treat the system as something that actively pursues its own agenda or into

238  Daniela Boehringer which an agenda is inscribed. But sometimes this taken-for-granted expectation is breached, especially if: • Inputs appear without having been made by the user. • There are more or sometimes less job offers listed than expected. • Completely different entries than the expected results or only a general error page are displayed, leading to a dead end. Whenever the system steps out of the stimulus-response scheme (Ayaß 2005) and shows no change at all, no suitable change, or even “is on strike” (Johnson 1988, p. 298), it becomes difficult for the human persons dealing with it. Based on such sequences from the usage situations, it will be shown how the users then continue to work in and with the system. 12.6.  Working through crises: allowing ambiguities to persist Such noticed difficulties should be understood not only as technical problems but much more broadly as an agitation of the situation and its small, local order. Restoring this order through sense-making (“What happened?”) is the task of the human person interacting with the device. Inputs to the interface designed for change, such as correction sequences (cf. Moore et  al. 2011), on which previous research has focused heavily, constitute only one facet of this. When problems occur, a critical approach for users is to first explore what might have gone wrong (“diagnostic reasoning,” Arminen and Poikus 2009, p. 271). In doing so, they take advantage of the fact that it is not a “real” encounter, not an interaction. The encounter is put on hold, and the self-commitment to reciprocity (Rawls 2015, p. 230), which usually characterizes interaction among those present, is, for the moment, canceled. The system is transformed from an interaction partner (Geser 1989, Böhringer and Wolff 2010) that seems to respond to input into a kind of information board where one can look things up and move autonomously, and where one can control things without further ado, jumping back and forth between separate windows, opening help texts, or checking one’s search settings. This is all done behind the system’s back. Let us look at what Anja does when she discovers a specific entry on the “Advanced Search” page. The screen she can see is shown in Figure 12.2. The screen shows that there is no checkmark for any working time model. Anja has therefore not communicated any preferences to the system. However, the arrangement of the fields is also such that she does not have to decide. She can set one, several, or no selection hooks. With the criterion “fixed-term job,” it is different. Here she has to decide, and one can see that she has selected “no fixed-term offers”. She has also indicated that she does not want “marginal employment/mini-jobs” in the following field. Then, in the “branch” section, the system indicates that the search has been limited to specific branches. She noticeably remarks on this entry, as is evident in the transcript of this sequence (Table 12.2).

Problems with the digital public encounter 239

Figure 12.2  Screenshot “Restriction has been imposed according to branches.” Source: Job board of the German Federal Employment Agency.

Table 12.2  Transcript “Restriction has been imposed according to branch sectors” Time

The user’s actions Not available to the machine

#00:09:52–3# um, a restriction has been imposed according to BRANCHES? branches a restriction HAS BEEN imposed according to branches °(unv.)° select industry branch

um (2) pff (2) o:ke: öhm (1) °that does not really help me now.°

Changes on the screen Available to the Available to the Explanation machine user Anja is in the2 “advanced search” field, reads aloud clicks on the “select industry branch” field

reads aloud a new page opens with different industry branches to choose from

scrolls from top to bottom over the page

With the marker “um” (column 2, see the marked section in the table), she expresses that something has happened and her “inner state” has changed (Heritage 1984). She then reads the entry loudly and interrogatively from the screen: “There has been a restriction according to BRANCHES?”, strongly

240  Daniela Boehringer

Figure 12.3  Screenshot “Select Branch/Branchengruppe auswählen.” Source: German Federal Employment Agency.

emphasizing the term branch. Moreover, she repeats it with even more emphasis (“There has been”) while she clicks on the “select branch group” search box. By repeating this twice, she makes it apparent that there is something in need of clarification here (Jefferson 1972) that warrants pausing. The display indicates that someone (Who or what? Not her.) changed something. What bothers her is not the restriction itself, that is, which branches have been taken out of the search, but the fact that a setting has been changed in the first place. Accordingly, it is precisely a moment of transparency (the system shows a background activity) that makes Anja think. But this is not perceptible to the machine. After clicking on the field “Select branch group” (column 2), she is shown a selection menu with branch groups, as Figure 12.3 illustrates. She scrolls through the selection menu (the displayed groups of branches all have an activating checkmark except for “private providers of employment services”), accompanied by non-verbal signals (“mmmm” and “pffff”). She indicates that she is sufficiently attentive, but what she sees there does not seem to bring about any clarification, so she expresses it verbally: “That doesn’t really help me now?” and closes the selection menu again. However, she does not make any changes, although she recognizably notices the system’s preselection. She does not comment on the fact that all branches except one (private providers of employment services) are already selected, nor does she change this branch selection. Anja very clearly marks a “not-yet-understanding” here (“That does not really help me now”). She does not make any changes, nor does she restart her search. She does not make any entries that would have consequences for the system, but just puts it “on hold” and treats it as a bulletin board. Therefore, it is not apparent to the system that there is any ambiguity on the user’s part. She does not do nothing but (actively) waits for further developments. Petra takes a similar leap of faith with the system (Table 12.3). We enter the scene when she takes a closer look at the list of results that her search has yielded and clicks on the particular job offers to see the details. Already at the first offer, she has doubts about whether it is permanent (she had selected “permanent” as a search criterion): “This is not fixed-term?” she

Problems with the digital public encounter 241 Table 12.3  Transcript “Fixed-term job” Time

User Actions Not available to the machine

Changes on the Screen Available to the machine

Available to the Explanation user

they are looking for a unicorn (6). This is not a fixed-term job?

#00:08:44–3# (8). (leans back and towards the screen again) hhh. (7) three months?

Didn’t I specify not not-fixed term, really (3)

Moves the cursor to the first offer in the list and clicks on it

scrolls through the text move by move

new window opens with only this job offer

scrolls

She now can see whether the selected job offer is fixedterm or not.

Scrolls up jerkily crosses the screen with the cursor

clicks the back button in the browser

scrolls down again in this window and moves to “change search”

reads?

the results page is displayed to her again

the advanced search is displayed to her (Continued)

242  Daniela Boehringer Table 12.3 (Continued) Time

User Actions Not available to the machine

okay?

Changes on the Screen Available to the machine

Available to the Explanation user

she scrolls all the way down again on this page and obviously checks her details on this page – not fixed-term is set Clicks on “search job offers”

the page with the results is displayed to her again

says aloud. She opens the offer on a separate page and slowly scrolls through the displayed text (for a total of eight seconds) to where she can see the information about the time limit of the offered job. She reads aloud there, “Three months?” (column 2). She goes back through various intermediate stops to her search settings and can see there that she had indeed set “not fixed-term.” Subsequently (not shown in the transcript), she turns back to the list of results without further verbal comment. There are more entries (including permanent job offers), which she then looks at more closely. Petra thus finds a discrepancy between her search specifications and what the system shows her. The results are different, even opposite (fixed-term offers), from what she expected based on her settings. In her case, too, it becomes clear that in the background, the system is, so to speak, arbitrarily influencing the search. She literally proves this to the system and to herself by moving backward through selected settings and checking what she initially specified for the corresponding button. It is now evident to her that her input was not accurately considered. Having established this, she turns back to the list of results. All of this action is irrelevant for the system because it is not involved. Petra gives no input that would trigger a change in the system. She puts it “on hold” while she is checking her entries and the job offers made to her. The fact that the system works in the background is noticed by Anja and Petra. But as long as they can continue on their path of job searching, they

Problems with the digital public encounter 243 (temporarily) accept many ambiguities or take a leap of faith into the system and wait for things to come. This methodological approach is very similar to that described by Harold Garfinkel (1959, p.  40) for understanding everyday conversation processes characterized by a “retrospective-prospective” sense. Retrospective-prospective sense. The sense of propositions that make up the corpus is commonly arrived at through a retrospective-prospective appreciation of their meanings. This means that as of any present moment of an exchange, the sense of the matter being referred to is decided by an auditor by assuming not only what has been said so far but what will have been said in the future course of the utterances. Such sets of propositions require of the auditor that he [sic!] assume, as of any present accomplished point in the interaction, that by waiting for what the other person says at a later time the present significances of what has already been said or done will have been clarified. Such propositions have the property of being progressively realized through the further course of the interaction. (Garfinkel 1959, p. 40) This sense orientation towards the future development of the conversation or interaction, in which something else will happen or be said later that will contribute to clarification, is apparently also found in dealing with machines. It provides a way out in situations where the system remains initially incomprehensible. It would be wrong to call this sense orientation passive. The participants actively let the machine get away with something because there is no possibility of asking for it in the concrete system. However, this approach is not visible and not relevant for the system. No input is made, which, for example, is associated with a new search request for the system. However, all this presupposes that further progress of the encounter is expectable. 12.7. Discussion This chapter aimed to take a more in-depth look at the “face-to-screen” encounter, the interaction between citizens and a digital representation of information, which is an arrangement that is becoming increasingly common in the welfare state. What problems arise in this process? What actually happens there? How do users cope with it? Considering how vehemently the digitization of public (employment) service is currently being demanded and how strongly the development toward “self-service” is being pushed, it is astonishing how little is known about what happens at the digital interface where the encounter between citizen and state (in this case) takes place. It is true that some studies survey and observe citizens’ perceptions of digital welfare state application or information processes (Hetling et al. 2014; Hansen et al. 2018). Nevertheless, the question of how citizens ultimately treat such offers, how

244  Daniela Boehringer they interact with them, and how they make digital offers part of their social world is still a somewhat opaque zone in the welfare state. This chapter sheds light on this issue by discussing an example of these types of virtual encounters: I will highlight several points from the analysis presented earlier: In their movement through the search options offered by the job board, users are initially oriented to the fact that their specific entries create their own little world – their specific search – which is organized sequentially, and that events they can observe on the user interface – such as a search that did not yield any job offers – are based on their previously made entries. The system’s affordance and its excellent responsiveness support in some respects the perception by job seekers that they are (solely) responsible for and can control the search. (This is not the case, as explained earlier.) When users see on the display that the system has restricted the search parameters without prior prompting, this leads to irritation. Sequences of this type were examined as examples in which I showed that these irritations in the interaction with systems like the “job board” are not a problem in themselves. The problem is instead that there is an interactive imbalance in the processing of these irritations, an interactive bias. Because it is primarily the responsibility of the job-seeking citizens to handle them, make sense of them, and sometimes also fix them. This work is on their side3 because the system cannot even perceive such irritations. The analysis also showed that users of the job board system look backward (“What have I actually entered so far?”) and oriented to the fact that ambiguities will be clarified in the future, namely by the future “findings” (Garfinkel 1967, p. 89) to be expected on the part of the system. In this way, users are taking sequentiality into account. In addition to this basic everyday sense orientation, there is also a specific practice designed to deal with digital systems. On the one hand, there are sequences in which inputs to search settings are made and designed to “tell” the system what to do and search for. This has been a subject of study in HCI research for some time. On the other hand, my analysis has also focused on sequences in which the system is not treated as a relevant counterpart but rather as a non-reactive bulletin board on which one can find and look up all sorts of information. This practice of treating the system not as a relevant counterpart becomes visible when users look backward and check their own entries. During such sequences, the system is “put on hold,” so to speak (Böhringer and Wolff 2010). Changing the system with new input is avoided. This represents a kind of “time-out” in human-computer interaction. Job seekers use this atypical interaction situation as a resource and put the system on hold to make up its mind in time. The encounter with an interface is indeed a truncated and rump version of a prototypical encounter between alter and ego. However, users exploit the inadequate mutual accessibility for extensive time-out periods. In face-to-face encounters in which the parties share a focus of attention and mutual attention is difficult to put on hold. Such phases have to be initiated through specific interactional work (“I have to

Problems with the digital public encounter 245 answer the phone, excuse me for a moment”). In contrast, pausing interaction with a digital system is possible at any time. At one moment, the system can be tasked with search queries, and, in the next moment, it is just an information board. As was shown in the data analysis (excerpt shown in Table 12.3), this practice comes into play, for example, when job seekers are surprised by certain ads on the screen. It is evident that users expect to find helpful information on the system’s interface. Comparing the results with face-to-face encounters between public representatives and citizens (Hitzler 2012; Böhringer and Wolff 2010; Seltzer et al. 2001), it becomes apparent that the job board users have to provide for a comparatively high share of the interaction: they direct requests to the system and check the changes on the screen that are displayed to them. Moreover, even when they are not noticeably active in the system, they may seek information or try to clarify ambiguities. In essence, the burden of keeping the interaction going – and thus coming up with sensible results (job offers) – is distributed differently and now rests primarily with the job seekers. This forms a fundamental difference from institutional face-to-face encounters and might be seen as another dimension of activating job seekers (Scholz and Ingold 2021) and the antipode of personalized services for claimants in public employment services (Toerien et al. 2013). The example of the job board shows a fundamental change in practice, with the digital self-service interfaces establishing a different relationship between citizens and the welfare state. With a few exceptions (e.g., psychoanalysis), it is normally the responsibility of the public representative to direct an institutional encounter toward the institutional goal. As users of digital interfaces, citizens must treat and construct themselves as a “case” for the institution (e.g., as job seekers) (Wallinder and Seing 2022). However, irritations that arise in the process (“Why are fixed-term job offers suggested to me?!”) cannot always be resolved with the limited means of this atypical interaction situation. On the other hand, we could also see that this arrangement also offers new opportunities for citizens. Users could digress without the (time) pressure that exists in face-to-face encounters, search for information, clarify questions inherent to the system, and even consult other people – this option wasn’t realized in the presented data. The control of possible topics by the official agent, which is a feature of institutional talk in interaction (Bergmann 1990), is much more relaxed in face-to-screen-encounters. It also becomes clear that interacting only with an interface relieves citizens from the complications that smartphones or other digital devices bring into face-to-face interaction (Benediktsson et al. 2015; Ictech 2019), because it is not necessary to take into account that the official agent is present and needs attention (Schröder 2010). This of course works the other way round, which this paper has tried to show. I suggest that there is an urgent need to include the face-to-screen encounter more strongly in debates about the opaque zones of policy implementation, as such interactions are a central part in the context of research on street-level bureaucracy.

246  Daniela Boehringer Notes 1 The assumption behind this is that not only the site’s programming or the citizens’ knowledge of how such search offers on the Internet function is decisive for the use but, above all, the situational context of the use itself (Suchman 1985). 2 The original data have been in German. 3 Other studies, such as Krummheuer’s (2010), have also shown that it is mainly due to the “tolerance” and adaptability of human users that interaction with, for example, artificial agents is successful. They accept oblique thematic connections and break down their system concerns into simple stimulus-response chains.

References Amrhein, Antje, Cyra, Katharina, and Karola Pitsch. 2016. Processes of Reminding and Requesting in Supporting People with Special Needs: Human Practices as Basis for Modeling a Virtual Assistant? in ECAI 2016, Workshop “Ethics in the Design of Intelligent Agents” EDIA, edited by Grégory Bonnet et al., 14–23, Den Haag. https:// ceur-ws.org/Vol-1668/paper3.pdf Arminen, Ilkka. 2005. Institutional Interaction. Studies of Talk at Work, Aldershot: Burlington. Arminen, Ilkka, and Piia Poikus. 2009. Diagnostic Reasoning in the Use of Travel Management System, Computer Supported Cooperative Work 18: 251–276. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10606-008-9086-3 Ayaß, Ruth. 2005. Interaktion ohne Gegenüber? in Online-Vergesellschaftung? Mediensoziologische Perspektiven auf neue Kommunikationstechnologien, edited by Michael Jäcke and Manfred Mai, 33–49, Wiesbaden: Springer. Benediktsson, Mike O., Alexander, Daniel, Bermeo, Jhanidya., Contreras, Joseph, Kingston, Bradley, Harper, Wendy, Henkin, Jonathan, Lopez, Fausto, Wagenheim, Randy and Aaron Williams. 2015. Hybrid Strategies: Allocating Involvement in the Digital Age, Symbolic Interaction 38 (3): 331–351. https://www.jstor.org/stable/ symbinte.38.3.331 Bergmann, Jörg R. 1981. Ethnomethodologische Konversationsanalyse, in Dialogforschung. Jahrbuch 1980 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache, edited by Peter Schröder and Hugo Steger, 9–51, Düsseldorf: Schwann. Bergmann, Jörg R. 1990. On the Local Sensitivity of Conversation, in The Dynamics of Dialogue, edited by Ivana Markovà and Klaus Foppa, 201–226, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Bergmann, Jörg R., Nazarkiewic, Kirsten, Finke, Holger, and Detlef Dolscius. 2008. “Das gefällt mir goar nicht” – Trouble Marking als professionelle Kommunikationsleistung im Cockpit beim Auftreten technischer Zwischenfälle, in Luft-Schichten. Arbeit, Organisation und Technik im Luftverkehr, edited by Ingo Matuschek, 93–117, Berlin: Sigma. Bjelic, Dušan. 2019. „Hearability “versus „Hearership“: Comparing Garfinkel’s and Schegloff’s Accounts of Summoning Phone, Human Studies 42: 696–716. Böhringer, Daniela, and Stefan Wolff. 2010. Der PC als “Partner” im institutionellen Gespräch. The Computer as a “Partner” in Institutional Talk, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 39 (3): 233–251. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2010-0305 Böhringer, Daniela, and Ute Karl. 2015. ‘Do You Want to Negotiate with Me?’- Avoiding and Dealing with Conflicts Arising in Conversations with the Young Unemployed, Social Work & Society 13 (1): 1–17.

Problems with the digital public encounter 247 Bovens, Mark, and Stavros Zouridis. 2002. From Street-Level to System-Level Bureaucracies: How Information and Communication Technology Is Transforming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control, Public Administration Review 62 (2): 174–184. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3109901. Buffat, Aurélien. 2015. Street-Level Bureaucracy and E-Government. Public Management Review 17 (1): 149–161 doi:10.1080/14719037.2013.771699 Cyra, Katharina, and Karola Pitsch. 2017. Dealing with ‘Long Turns’ Produced by Users of an Assistive System: How Missing Uptake and Recipiency Lead to Turn Increments, in 2017 26th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), edited by Urbano J. Nunes and Eugenio Guglielmelli, 329–334, Lisbon. doi: 10.1109/ROMAN.2017.8172322. Fisher, Carolanne, and Penelope Sanderson. 1996. Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis: Exploring Continuous Observational Data, Interactions 3 (2): 25–34. https:// doi.org/10.1145/227181.227185 Frohlich, David, and Paul Luff. 1990. Applying the Technology of Conversation to the Technology for Conversation, in Computers and Conversation, edited by Paul Luff, David Frohlich, and Nigel Gilbert, 187–220, London and San Diego: Academic Press. Garfinkel, Harold. 1959. Common Sense Knowledge of Social Structures (1959). A Paper distributed at the Session on the Sociology of Knowledge, Fourth World Congress of Sociology, Stresa, Italy, September 12, 1959. Universität Siegen: SFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation 2019 (SFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation – Working Paper Series 11). https://doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/685 Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Common Sense Knowledge of Social Structures: The Documentary Method of Interpretation in Lay and Professional Fact Finding, in Studies in Ethnomethodology, 76–103, Cambridge: Polity Press. Garfinkel, Harold, and D. Lawrence Wieder. 1992. Two Incommensurable, Asymmetrically Alternate Technologies of Social Analysis, in Text in Context: Contributions to Ethnomethodology, edited by G. Watson and R. M. Seiler, 175–206, Newbury Park, CA: SAGE. Garfinkel, Harold, Lynch, Michael, and Eric Livingston. 1981. The Work of a Discovering Science Construed with Materials from the Optically Discovered Pulsar, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 11 (2): 131–158. Geser, Hans. 1989. Der PC als Interaktionspartner, Zeitschrift für Soziologie 18 (3): 230–243. http://zfs-online.org/index.php/zfs/article/viewFile/2695/2232 Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behavior in Public Places. Notes on the Organization of Gatherings, New York: The Free Press. Goffman, Erving. 1981. Forms of Talk, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Goffman, Erving. 1983. The Interaction Order: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address, American Sociological Review 48 (1): 1–17. https://doi. org/10.2307/2095141 Goodsell, Charles T. 1981. The Public Encounter: Where State and Citizen Meet, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hand, Laura C., and Thomas J. Catlaw. 2019. Accomplishing the Public Encounter: A  Case for Ethnomethodology in Public Administration Research, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance 2 (2): 125–137. https://doi.org/10.1093/ ppmgov/gvz004 Hansen, Hans-Tore, Lundberg, Kjetil, T., and Liv Johanne Syltevik. 2018. Digitalization, Street-Level Bureaucracy and Welfare Users’ Experiences, Social Policy  & Administration 52 (1): 67–90.

248  Daniela Boehringer Hasenfeld, Yeheskel. 1972. People Processing Organizations. An Exchange Approach, American Sociological Review 37 (3): 256–263. Hasenfeld, Yeheskel. 2010. Organizational Responses to Social Policy. The Case of Welfare Reform, Administration in Social Work 34 (2): 148–167. Heath, Christian, Knoblauch, Hubert, and Luff, Paul. 2000. Technology and Social Interaction: the Emergence of ‘workplace studies’, The British Journal of Sociology 51 (2): 299–320. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2000.00299.x Hetling Andrea, Watson, Stevie, and Meghan Horgan. 2014. “We Live in a Technological Era, Whether You Like It or Not”: Client Perspectives and Online Welfare Applications, Administration & Society 46 (5): 519–547. http://doi.org/10.1177/ 0095399712465596 Heritage, John. 1984. A  Change-of-State Token and Aspects of Its Sequential Placement, in Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 299–345, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hitzler, Sarah. 2012. Aushandlung ohne Dissens? Praktische Dilemmata der Gesprächsführung im Hilfeplangespräch, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Ictech, Brad. 2019. Smartphones and Face-to-Face Interaction: Digital Cross-Talk During Encounters in Everyday Life, Symbolic Interaction 42 (1): 27–45. Jefferson, Gail. 1972. Side Sequences, in Studies in Social Interaction, edited by David N. Sudnow, 294–333, New York, NY: Free Press. Johnson, Jim. 1988. Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer, Social Problems 35 (3): 298–310. https://doi.org/10.2307/800624 Krummheuer, Antonia. 2010. Interaktion mit virtuellen Agenten? Realitäten zur Ansicht. Zur Aneignung eines ungewohnten Artefakts, München: De Gruyter. https:// doi.org/10.1515/9783110510461 Lindgren, Ida, Østergaard Madsen, Christian, Hofmann, Sara, and Melin, Ulf. 2019. Close Encounters of the Digital Kind: A Research Agenda for the Digitalization of Public Services, Government Information Quarterly 36 (3): 427–436. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.03.002 Lipsky, Michael. 1980. Street Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation. Luff, Pal, Gilbert, Nigel, and David Frohlich (eds.) 1990. Computers and Conversation, London: Elsevier. Luff, Paul, Hindmarsh, Jon, and Christian Heath. 2000. Workplace Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Messmer, Heinz, and Sarah Hitzler. 2011. Declientification. Undoing Client Identities in Care Planning Conferences on the Termination of Residential Care, British Journal of Social Work 41 (4): 778–798. Moore, Robert J., Churchill, Elizabeth F., and Raj G. P. Kantamneni. 2011. Three Sequential Positions of Query Repair in Interactions with Internet Search Engines, in CSCW’11: Proceedings of the ACM 2011 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 415– 424, New York: ACM Press. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 1958824.1958889 Moore, Robert J., Ducheneaut, Nicolas, and Eric Nickell. 2007. Doing Virtually Nothing: Awareness and Accountability in Massively Multiplayer Online Worlds, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 16: 265–305. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10606-006-9021-4 Park, Mina, Aiken, Milam, and Laura Salvador. 2018. How Do Humans Interact with Chatbots? An Analysis of Transcripts, International Journal of Management & Information Technology, 14: 3338–3350. https://doi.org/10.24297/ijmit.v14i0.7921

Problems with the digital public encounter 249 Rawls, Anne W. 2015. Interaction Order: The Making of Social Facts, in Order on the Edge of Chaos: Social Psychology and the Problem of Social Order, edited by E. J. Lawler, S. R. Thye, and J. Yoon, 227–247, Cambridge. https://doi.org/10.1017/ CBO9781139924627.013 Sacks, Harvey. 1967. The Search for Help: No One to Turn to, in Essays in Self-Destruction, edited by E. S. Schneidman, 203–223, New York: Science House. Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation, Volumes I and II, Oxford: Blackwell. Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2006. Interaction: The Infrastructure for Social Institutions, the Natural Ecological Niche for Language, and the Arena in which Culture is Enacted, in Roots of Human Sociality, edited by Nick J. Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson, 70–96, London: Berg. Scholz, Frederike, and Jo Ingold. 2021. Activating the ‘Ideal Jobseeker’: Experiences of Individuals with Mental Health Conditions on the UK Work Programme, Human Relations 74 (10): 1604–1627. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726720934848 Schröder, Julia. 2010. “Es klingelt” – Institutionelle Kommunikation in sozialen Diensten, Neue Praxis 5: 493–512. Seltzer, Michael, Kullberg, Christian, and Ilmari Rostila. 2001. Listening to the Welfare State, London and New York: Routledge. Sharrock, Wes, and Graham Button. 2009. Studies of Work and the Workplace, HCI: Concepts and Techniques, Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics 2 (1): 1–96. https://doi.org/10.2200/S00177ED1V01Y200903HCI003 Suchman, Lucy. 1985. Plans and Situated Actions. The Problem of Human-Machine Communication, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tolmie, Peter, Pycock, James, Diggins, Tim, MacLean, Allan, and Alain Karsenty. 2002. Unremarkable Computing, in CHI ’02: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York, NY, 399–406. https://doi. org/10.1145/503376.503448 Toerien, Merran G., Sainsbury, Roy D., Drew, Paul, and Annie L. Irvine. 2013. Putting Personalisation into Practice: Work-Focused Interviews in Jobcentre Plus, Journal of Social Policy 42 (2): 309–327. vom Lehn, Dirk. 2020. Digitalization as “an Agent of Social Change” in a Supermarket Chain: Applying Blumer’s Theory of Industrialization in Contemporary Society, Symbolic Interaction 43 (4): 637–656. Wallinder, Ylva, and Ida Seing. 2022. When the Client Becomes Her Own Caseworker: Dislocation of Responsibility through Digital Self-Support in the Swedish Public Employment, Sozialer Fortschritt 71 (6/7): 405–423. Wolff, Stephan. 1986. Das Gespräch als Handlungsinstrument. Konversationsanalytische Aspekte sozialer Arbeit, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 38 (1): 55–84. Wooffitt, Robin. 1994. Applying Sociology: Conversation Analysis in the Study of Human-(Simulated) Computer Interaction1, Bulletin of Sociological Methodology/ Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique 43 (1): 7–33. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 075910639404300103 Zouridis Stavros, Marlies, van Eck, and Mark Bovens. 2020. Automated Discretion, in Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom edited by Tony Evans and Peter Hupe, 313–329, London: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19566-3_20

13 Smartphone tooling Achieving perception by positioning a smartphone for object scanning Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen It is an ordinary, recognizable practice to use the smartphone camera and additional software to scan physical objects, for example, barcodes or QRcodes, or to use apps to scan various types of documents, such as receipts for bookkeeping, or to have various texts translated into other languages. Whereas scanning used to be done with a large, fixed printer (Suchman [1987] 2007), using the smartphone as a tool produces new forms of embodied and spatial organization. We suggest calling this kind of scanning “smartphone tooling”. Smartphone tooling is observable in mobile settings because the user is not tied to a particular fixed position in space, i.e., in the printer room. At the same time, “smartphone tooling” also produces the need for a new embodied practice because not just the body but also the objects and the scanning smartphone tool are spatially untied and, therefore, need to be assembled in a particular way in order to facilitate the practice of “positioning for scanning”. When there is no fixed or static relation between the tool, the body and the perceivable object, this relation must instead be configured in situ. We will show the minute details of how such a configuration gets accomplished. The bodily practices used to scan an object require at least the positioning of the body (and all its parts in an egocentric frame), the positioning of the object (in relation to all other objects in an allocentric frame) and the positioning of the smartphone (in relation to its camera lens and place in the hand). These body-object-phone relations are by seeing participants ordinarily achieved through a plethora of micro-adjustments that require a high degree of specificity of the spatial relations with regard to placement, orientation and geometric alignment of the tool, body parts and the object (Fragaszy and Mangalam 2018). Misplacement of more than a few degrees or millimetres will prevent a successful scan. How amazing, then, that these kinds of actions are ordinarily unaccounted for and simply taken for granted. People regularly pick up a phone, launch an app and scan an object. However, there is an observable order in the type of actions required for even the seemingly simplest task – for example, what is involved in the fleetingly observable successful positioning required for a scan. In this context, scan refers to the scrutinizing of an object with a mobile device that has the technical affordances for DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-16

Smartphone tooling 251 doing digital scanning and then computer processing the information. Without exact positioning actions, a scan cannot be accomplished. This argument is unpacked and demonstrated in this chapter based on the “perspicuous case” (Garfinkel 1996) of visually impaired people’s non-visual practices of positioning objects for scanning, which stresses the otherwise taken-for-granted bodily and multisensorial aspects of this practice. The argument in this chapter, based on EM/CA methodology (Goodwin 2017; Mondada 2019b), is that although object recognition is based on computer-vision technological affordances and advances in this area, doing the scanning is not a technological achievement, but a complex embodied practice consisting of several specific actions. In that respect, the relation between the tool (the phone/camera) and the object of attention is not completely different from the basic embodied organization of other handheld tools for situated practices. For instance, holding an axe in the hand and measuring the distance to a piece of wood before swinging the tool and chopping the wood, or holding a hammer in the hand and adjusting the swing to the nail. These basic human forms of actions for tool-use (or tooling (Fragaszy and Mangalam 2018)) are well accounted for in anthropology (Ingold 2013) or ethology (Tomasello and Call 1997), for example, but have predominantly been described as relying on visual sensation for perception (Due 2021; Gibson 1979). Without visual sensation, spatial relations are much harder to establish. Other sensory practices are brought to the forefront instead, especially touching and hearing (Due and Lange 2018). In this chapter, we focus, therefore, specifically on the research question: How are spatial relations between bodyobject-phone (tool) achieved without using visual sensation? We show in this chapter how one aspect of smartphone tooling can be recognized as the practice of “positioning for object scanning”, configured by three actions: (1) aligning: initial alignment of the smartphone and object, with the camera directed towards the object; (2) adjusting the distance and angle between the smartphone and object by moving or tactilely manipulating (a) the smartphone and/or (b) the object; and (3) searching for detectable text by “inspecting”, moving the smartphone from side to side. It is important to note that these actions do not necessarily occur in a specific order nor that they are always clearly distinct but may overlap and change rapidly. These three actions that configure the practice of “positioning for object scanning” will be described in detail in the analytical section. 13.1. Object-centred sequences, tooling and perception as practical action Material objects in interaction have been widely researched within the field of EM/CA as ubiquitous resources for action construction (e.g., Day and Wagner 2019; Nevile et al. 2014; Streeck 1996). We build on, and contribute specifically to, the line of research on objects in interaction that has dealt with such objects as situated resources for interaction – what Tuncer et al. (2019)

252  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen have called “object-centred sequences”. They show how these are recognizable sequences on their own, composed of (1) an initial orientation to the object, (2) some kind of manipulation of the object and then (3) closing, thereby exhibiting a (successful) grasp of the object. Locating and figuring out what an object is has also been called “inspection sequences” (Mortensen and Wagner 2019). We contribute new insights to this line of research on the specificities involved in using the smartphone as a situated tooling resource within a sequential organization aimed at grasping objects. In this chapter, we, therefore, suggest including and establishing a praxeological approach to tooling as a vital means of understanding object-centred sequences. In their theory of tooling, Fragaszy and Mangalam (2018) distinguish tool use from seeing objects as resources for action. They define “tooling” as deliberately producing a mechanical effect upon a target object/surface by first grasping an object, thus transforming the body into the bodyplus-object system, and then using the body-plus-object system to manage (at least one) spatial relation(s) between a grasped object and a target object/surface, creating a mechanical interface between the two. (2018: 194) While chopping wood using an axe is a concrete example of such tooling, since the “mechanical effect” on an object is obvious, we suggest a further contribution to the theory of tooling by the following three additions: (1) tooling does not need to have a “mechanical effect”, but there can be an “informational effect”; (2) tooling is embedded in sequences and sensitive to the affordances of the object; and (3) smartphone tooling is a particular concept that relates to using the smartphone as a scanning tool, and this cannot be separated from perception as practical action. Understanding where and what an object is, is a matter of perception. Perception is often tacitly described within EM/CA literature, being seen primarily as a visual phenomenon (e.g., Sharrock and Coulter 1998; Goodwin 2007; Rossano 2012; Stukenbrock 2020). Contrary to the traditional psychological understanding of perception being an inner experience of the outer world, an EM/CA approach towards perception treats it as an observable phenomenon, one not only interrelated with (Schellenberg 2007) but also achieved through observable practical actions (Due 2021). The study of perception from an EM/CA perspective has been conducted through various forms of object-centred sequences. Perception is perception towards something, and this ‘something’ has typically been an object, and the perceptual resource that research has focused on has predominantly been vision. Examples include Goodwin’s investigation of archaeologists excavating and categorizing dirt in order to outline a mutual visual field (Goodwin 1994, 2000); the co-constructed perception of colour (Goodwin 1993), and how utilizing different tools in a task-solving activity, results in different forms of perception according to the specific tool used for addressing the task (Goodwin 1995). Goodwin’s work shows how the co-construction of perception in these cases

Smartphone tooling 253 is subjected to a situated activity system and an associated professional discourse. In 2007, Goodwin introduced the term “positioning for perception”, demonstrating how participants need to arrange their bodies towards each other and the materials in the shared physical environment in order to accomplish “work-relevant perception” (Goodwin 2007). With the aforementioned studies, Goodwin contributes to the notion of perception as a set of multimodal organized social practices embedded in situated settings, constituted by ­contextual discourse, physical environment and tools. However, in Goodwin’s interactional approach towards perception as a resource to accomplish situated discourses through establishing “perceptual fields” (Goodwin 1994; Merleau-Ponty 2013 [1945]), as well as his notion of “positioning for perception” (2007), the visual sense is the main focus in the multimodal structuring of perception. There are, however, a few exceptions dealing with perception as a “multi-sensorial” phenomenon within EM/CA, such as in Mondada’s (2019a) work on perception of taste, or Nishizaka’s work on tactile and visual perception being integrated during an abdominal palpation in a Japanese obstetrician (Nishizaka 2014, 2020). In this chapter, we build specifically on the work of Due (2021), who introduced the idea of “distributed perception” between agents. Due shows how visually impaired people (VIPs) can make use of the ability of non-human “semiotic agents” ’ to perceive their surroundings and communicate multisensorial information back to the VIP. This chapter builds further on the notion of distributed perception, making use especially of “digital agents” and the understanding of perception as a series of practical observable actions (Due 2021; Due et al. in review). While computer vision and object recognition have improved rapidly, leading to a high degree of accuracy in object identification in experimental settings, very few studies within EM/CA deal with the scanning of objects in natural settings. An exception is Reyes-Cruz et al.’s investigation (2020) of VIP’s overall practices when using assistive applications for smartphones. Focusing on settings where technology is embedded within practice (during social activities, textual reading, and mobility activities), they uncover practical resources that enable VIPs to accomplish these everyday activities. In their analyses of the scanning of objects using the app Seeing AI, Reyes-Cruz et al. stress the difficulties in achieving the right range for scanning when holding the smartphone in a free hand (2020: 7). We develop this line of research by showing in detail the embodied actions required for achieving a “positioning for object scanning” (our rewriting of Goodwin’s (2007) concept). The VIP’s limited or lacking visual perception not only stresses the complex nature of the positioning practice but also highlights perception as multisensorial (Mondada 2019a). Thus, the VIP’s handling of objects while positioning not only the smartphone for scanning but also their own body – without the ability to visually perceive the body, objects or the surrounding environment – can be considered what Garfinkel refers to as “a perspicuous case”. As such, it illuminates some of the taken-for-granted bodily aspects and knowledge ordinarily involved in a practice, such as “positioning for object scanning”.

254  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen 13.2.  Method and data This chapter is based on ethnomethodology and multimodal conversation analysis (EM/CA), paying particular attention to the sequential organization of the practice of “positioning for object scanning” and focusing on the participants’ actions in situ, rather than the technology itself. Data is derived from the project BlindTech, which investigates VIP’s use of new technologies based on computer vision and/or natural language processing in mainly accessible mainstream products, such as digital home assistants, digital glasses and object recognition in applications for smartphones. Data consists of approximately 50 hours of video ethnographic recordings (Heath et al. 2010) of seven technologically skilled participants throughout their daily lives, using technology in their homes, at work and during various social activities. All the data presented in this chapter originates from shopping in Danish grocery stores. Accompanied by the researcher, the VIP selected a desired item by themselves from the store and tried to scan information (such as barcodes, text and dates written on the item) with the SeeingAI smartphone application,1 all the while verbally accounting to, and interacting with, the researcher. The interactional ecology we explore is, therefore, a triadic configuration between the VIP, the technological agent and the researcher as interactional participants (cf. Krummheuer et al. 2020). SeeingAI uses the device’s camera to identify people, text and objects, and then audibly recites text or describes the object, depending upon the app settings. The app can scan codes, like barcodes and QR, and it recognizes and reads out text. It can also describe scenes and people, but these functions are not the focus of this chapter. Multimodal and multisensorial conversation analyses of present data show how the spatial relation required for scanning is sequentially organized, being accomplished by employing non-visual sensations and by utilizing the perception coming from the digital device as well as the visual perception of the researcher. The selection of examples for this chapter was based on the criterion that a scanable object has been picked up by the VIP and is held in one hand, while the other hand is holding and handling the smartphone. In the following analyses, we will focus on three distinct cases representing the most prominent phenomena identified in our corpus of VIPs scanning handheld objects: participants born with blindness and participants with late blindness scanning hard and soft objects. There are observable differences in orientation towards the surrounding environment according to whether the participant is born with blindness or has lost sight later in life. This relates to whether the said participant has the experience and understanding of visuality as a concept or not. This will be discussed throughout the following analyses. However, the actions involved in the overall practice of object scanning are (as the analysis will show) the same. The second distinction mainly relates to the ability of the technology to recognize and decipher text. Whereas text on plain, matt surfaces is easily recognized, Optical Character Recognition,

Smartphone tooling 255 Table 13.1  Transcription symbols used in this chapter VIP SAI RES + % Δ € -

Participant SeeingAI on smartphone Researcher delimits embodied left-hand actions by VIP (Participant) delimits embodied right-hand actions by VIP delimits embodied head/upper body actions by VIP delimits embodied actions by RES (Researcher) marks syllables in unclear talk

OCR, is often unable to, or has difficulties with, detecting text on soft, bending and glossy surfaces – for example, the plastic bag in case 2. Uneven and light-reflecting surfaces require additional tactile manipulation to achieve an applicable position for scanning, which prolongs the overall practice. Even though they are carried out with variated temporality, the continuity of the three actions described as being involved in the organization of the practice of scanning objects remains as a recognizable orderly organization throughout the excerpts. Our transcripts follow Jeffersonian conventions (Jefferson 2004) combined with a variation derived from Mondada’s multimodal features (Mondada 2018). All participants have been anonymized according to the agreement with them. 13.3. Case 1 – Chicken cold cuts. Knowing the intrinsic nature of design The VIP in this first case is one of few participants doing his grocery shopping by himself. Although legally blind and with only a small peripheral remnant of sight, this VIP regularly shops in local grocery stores. These are ones in which he knows his way around the aisles. It is, however, the first time he has used SeeingAI when shopping. This first case investigates the VIP making use of the smartphone SeeingAI application to scan an object for visual information. He has picked up a package of cold cuts wrapped in a generic, square, hard plastic cover and is now scanning the product using the application function “short text” in pursuit of information on its type and, most importantly, the expiry date. The expiry date is a generally sought-after piece of information and often challenging to obtain as its position varies, and the font is often not recognized by OCR. During this excerpt, the VIP observably employs the three sequentially organized embodied actions to accomplish the scan. 1

+%Δ(0.2)# (0.8)#+%Δ vip +raise Lh with pack + vip %Rh pos mob over pack% vip Δ bends head tw mob Δ fig: fig#1 fig#2

256  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen 2

+ (0.1)# (0.6) (0.3)# + +Lh turn pack front tw mob+ fig: fig#3 fig#4







Figure 1 Figure 2    Figure 3 Figure 4 3 VIP: prøver [at læse+ hvad der står kom↑] trying [to read+ what it says come↑] 4 SAI:  [((inaudible))] kogt kylli:ngebry:st(.)  [((inaudible))] boiled chicken breast(.) 5 sammensat af st – med kø:d tilsat vand composed of st – with meat added water 6 ethundredeti  g (.) sidste (--) onehundredten g (.) last (--) 7 (1.1)+#   (0.2) +#(3.5) vip +Lh lifts pack+ fig: fig#5   fig#6 8 SAI: %#kogt kylli:nge   #bry:st(.)#% boiled chicken breast vip % twist mob up, right, back % fig: fig#7   fig#8 fig#9









Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8    Figure 9 9 SAI: (--[--) kogt kylli:nge] (--[--)boiled chicken] 10 VIP: [den- den nok der ik ] [it – it likely there right] 11 SAI: kogt kylli:nge bry:st boiled chicken breast 12 >sammensat af stykker af kø:d< (.) tilsat vand↓   >composed of pieces of meat< (.) added water↓ 13 ↑pakket skråstreg verband↓ ↑packed slash verband↓ 14 (1.4)+ #(0.5) #+(1.6) vip +lifts pack slightly+ fig: fig#10 fig#11 15 SAI: kogt kylli:ngebry:st sammensat af boiled chicken breast composed of 16  s t kylli:nge bry:st (--)af kø:d tilsat vand↓  s t chicken breast (--)of meat added water↓

Smartphone tooling 257 17 ethundredeti g onehundredten g 18 (1.0)%# (0.4) -ry%#st (.)   -reast vip %Rh moves mob right% fig:   fig#12 fig#13

 

 

 

Figure 10 Figure 11   Figure 12 Figure 13 19 SAI: kogt kylli:nge bry:st boiled chicken breast 20 (--)til af stykker af kø:d tilsat vand (--)to of peaces of meat added water 21 d (.) vis (.) (---- --) d (.)show (.) (---- --) 22 (3.1) 23 VIP: mts den kan ik rigtig finde ud af det mts it can’t really figure out that 24 [med datoerne] [with the dates] 25 SAI: [kogt kylli:nge][bry:st] [boiled chicken][breast] 26 RES: [nej] [no]

The initial “alignment” of the smartphone and package is completed in a smooth, coherent movement – simultaneously lifting and turning the package, positioning the smartphone at an approximate 25 cm distance from the package, while bending the head towards the smartphone. This creates an aligned face-phone-package assemblage (line 1), demonstrating an egocentric and visual orientation towards spatial relations. The change in VIP’s left-hand grip on the package (fig. 2) is noticeable. This involves moving the left-hand thumb from the centre-front of the package (lines 1–2, fig. 3) to the side of the package, creating a free view between the smartphone camera and the package front (line 2, fig. 4). Immediately after the aligning action, the SAI responds by reciting the text on the package (line 4), in concert with VIP’s verbal preface for action (line 3), ending with the command “come” directed towards the SAI. The SAI recites, unaffected by the upside-down position (lines 4–7). Even though this information is audibly intelligible, the VIP is also searching for an expiry date. In the belief that the expiry date has been placed on the front (line 10 “its likely there”), the VIP initiates a rescanning by adjusting the package, moving it closer to the smartphone (line 7,

258  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen figs. 5–6). This is followed by an inspecting action, moving the smartphone from left to right and back, while angling it upwards (line 8, figs. 7–9) in what approximates how reading is done. The SAI instantly responds to the repositioning by repeating the recitation of text (line 8) and again to the adjustment of the smartphone (lines 11–14). A repositioning is achieved by adjusting first the package and then the smartphone is repeated by the VIP (lines 14 + 18). Each repositioning is responded to by the SAI repeating the recitation of the same text (lines 15 + 19 + 25) until the VIP addresses a verbal assessment to the RES that the SAI “can’t really figure out that with the date” (lines 23–24). Even though the VIP’s search for an expiry date fails during this excerpt, the SAI scanning and recitation of the text is easily accomplished, coming immediately after the initial positioning of the package and smartphone. As the text on the hard, plane object is easily interpreted and read out by SAI, it is also observable that when the positioning has been achieved once, “adjusting” causes a repetition of the text, and the “inspecting” (moving the smartphone from left to right) serves no significant purpose. Positioning for scanning is accomplished by the participant employing three actions: (1) aligning: initial alignment of the smartphone and object, with the camera directed towards the object; (2) adjusting the distance and angle between the smartphone and object by moving or tactilely manipulating (a) the smartphone and/or (b) the object; and (3) searching for detectable text by “inspecting”, moving the smartphone from side to side. The seemingly effortless positioning indicates a prior visual understanding of not only the nature of spatial relations between body, smartphone and package but also the relevant actions involved in scanning. Knowledge of design, such as where the text or barcodes might be placed on the package; the aligning of face, smartphone and package; the fine adjustments, angling the smartphone camera, keeping the alignment intact, positioning of fingers away from the camera view and even ensuring that the grip on the smartphone does not cover the display – all this indicates a visually oriented perception of the outer world, and an orientation towards visual norms, even though the participant cannot see. Notwithstanding the participant’s past visual competencies, this analysis shows that he also relies fully on his non-visual senses, along with the device’s audible interpretation of its visual perception. One of the main findings is, therefore, that the auditory feedback from the device is a sensory resource used by the VIP to adjust momentarily and realign the object and the phone. As such, auditory responsiveness has an “informational effect” that constitute smartphone tooling. That is, using the smartphone as a tool for scanning objects produces information about the scanned object. This tooling does not change the nature of the object (like an axe splitting firewood), but there is a surplus of the body-object-phone(tool) in space relation, which is the information.

Smartphone tooling 259 13.4. Case 2 – Mozzarella. Accounting for the abstract non-visual concept of scanning The following case deals with a participant who was born with blindness and does not usually spend time doing grocery shopping unaccompanied. This is because he simply considers it to be too demanding and time-consuming. However, as a lead-user and IT professional with technical skills, this participant does, in fact, frequently use both a smartphone and computer visionbased applications in other contexts. This excerpt records his first time using the app while shopping. It begins after the VIP has localized and picked up a soft bag of shredded mozzarella cheese and adjusted the settings in the app to “short text” as in the previous case. The “short text” function allows the user to read smaller paragraphs, which are not delimited by a document frame. Now he is ready to start scanning. It is worth noticing that the smartphone voiceover is set to a very high pace, making a large part of the SAI recitation unintelligible for the analyst. However, we cannot rule out that this VIP does indeed understand the voiceover, even where it has not been possible to transcribe it from the recordings. 1 SAI: %Δ[((inaud))] (.) #%Δ vip %Rh finger swipe mob% Δ bends head tw mob Δ fig: fig#1 2 VIP: [men så] er vi igen tilbage ved at so now we are again back to that 3 (2.0)#% du skal holde kameraet over (.) you must hold the camera over %Rh pos mob over bag--> fig:  fig#2 4 noget tekst%#%(.)# some text %moves mob left--> fig: fig#3,4

 

 

 

Figure 1    Figure 2    Figure 3 Figure 4 5 VIP: +så% vi igen ramt af+ so again we are affected by +circulates Lh w bag + 6 VIP: %det skal være den# her %halve meter (.) i:sh↓ it having to be this half meter ish %moves mob up--> fig:   fig#5

260  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen 7

VIP: o g så skal der være noget#% tekst %et eller andet sted% then there should be some text somewhere %moves mob right----% fig: fig#6 8 RES: det ↑tror jeg ikke %det skal være↓#% i do not think it needs to be vip %moves mob left % fig: fig#7 9 RES: en halv meter det% ↑tror jeg da ik#% half a meter I don’t think so vip % mob down tw bag % fig:    fig#8

 

 

 

Figure 5   Figure 6    Figure 7     Figure 8 10 (1.0)% (1.8)# (0.5)% %Rh tilts mob up and down % fig: fig#9 11 VIP: så %er vi ramt af at#% then we are affected by % moves mob left % fig: fig#10 12 VIP: jeg +#faktisk ik syns der er + i actually don’t think there is +moves Lh’s thumb to center of bag+ fig: fig#11

 

 

Figure 9 Figure 10 Figure 11 13 +%(1.0)#+%+(2.5)+%+(3.0)#%+ +moves bag down+ %moves mob fw% +turns bag front up+ %moves mob tw bag% +lifts bag tw mob+ fig: fig#12 fig#13 14 VIP: %se (0.2)% look %mob left then right%

Smartphone tooling 261 15 VIP: %om der +ikke skulle være noget+ på den her+% if there shouldn’t be something on this one %Rh tilts mob up and down-------------------% +pos pack front of mob-------------+ 16 SAI: (---)%(---------)% vip %mob tw head% 17 VIP: Δder var lidt der Δ%#hvad sagde du% there was some there what did you say Δbend head tw mob Δ %indexF tap mob% fig: fig#14

Figure 12

 

Figure 13

 

   Figure 14

With a light upper-hand grip, and with fingers placed at the side of the phone’s lower half, enabling the right index finger to swipe and scroll on the touchscreen, the VIP bends his head slightly forward, turning his left ear towards the smartphone (line 1, fig. 1) and then listening, before, in response to the voiceover, positioning the phone at chest height to initiate alignment of the soft plastic bag through the phone’s camera lens (line 2). The bag is resting backside-up in the VIP’s left hand, held out at approximately a 15cm distance from the body, a little above the left-side hip (fig. 2). Prior to this initial aligning action, the VIP offers a verbal account to the researcher: “so now we are again back to that (2.0) you must hold the camera over some text” (lines 2–4). This prefaces the aligning action as troublesome. As observable in figure 2, the phone and bag are already correctly aligned after the first aligning action (line 3). However, as the SAI does not recite any text, rather than holding the position, the VIP responds to the lack of audible feedback by adjusting, moving the smartphone left (line 4, figs. 3–4), followed by circling the bag while producing a second account: “so again we are affected by” (line 5). While explaining the distance needed for scanning, “it having to be this half a meter-ish”, the VIP continues adjusting, increasing the distance by moving the smartphone upwards (line 6, fig. 5), before stating that “then there should be some text somewhere” (line 7). This is followed by inspecting the bag for text with a steady movement of the smartphone from left to right and vice versa (line 6, fig. 6). This inspection movement/action is continuously repeated throughout the excerpt (lines 8; 11; 14), as the SAI does not respond with any audible output. When the distance required between the phone and object, as explained by the VIP, is questioned by the RES (lines 8–9), the

262  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen VIP responds by adjusting the distance, moving the phone closer towards the bag (line 9, fig. 8), before fixing the alignment, and tilting the camera (line 10, fig. 9). However, he does not verbally align with RES but rather claims epistemic status by prefacing a third verbal account “then we are affected by” (line 11) and resuming the inspecting action (fig. 10). Manipulating the bag with his left-hand thumb, the VIP states, “i don’t really think there is” (line 12, fig. 11), implying that there is no text on the bag. Turning the bag frontside-up and realigning, as well as adjusting the distance between smartphone and bag (line 13, figs. 12 and 13), the VIP reiterates the positioning for his scanning practice. With his remark “look” (line 14), the VIP once again resumes inspecting, moving the phone from side to side before finetuning the alignment by tilting the camera angle and moving the bag closer to the phone. As the SAI finally detects some text in line 16, the VIP ceases his positioning practice, moving the smartphone towards his ear (line 16). This is followed by a verbal request for repetition directed to the SAI: “what did you say” (line 17). The abrupt disconnection of the alignment, the prerequisite for the device to actually provide any information, stresses the VIP’s non-visual orientation and their prioritization of, and reliance on, the audible sense. In contrast to the first case, this participant shows no orientation of gaze or face towards either objects or his own body during the “positioning for scanning” practice. The spatial relation is therefore achieved without any prior visual competencies. The second distinction from the previous excerpt concerns the characteristics of the object. The soft, plastic material bends and reflects light, making it very difficult for the device to recognize and decipher text. It does not, therefore, produce any auditory feedback, enabling the participant quickly to orient and adjust his actions towards it. This lack of auditory responsiveness, and the additional tactile manipulation required because of the object’s nature, prolongs the overall practice. This analysis has shown how the participants observably seek to gain perception of aspects of the object in hand through the practice of “positioning for object scanning” by carrying out the three previously mentioned actions: aligning, adjusting and inspecting. It also shows that these actions can occur, as a sequential structure, in that order, but that the participant can also be seen to go back and forth between the different types of actions. When doing so, additional accounts were offered. The participant’s verbal accounts contribute further to the embodied findings since they explain how the VIP behaves to achieve the scanning position (lines 3; 6). The actions are therefore employed accordingly – one embodied action at a time. As the verbal accounts make the VIP’s assumptions about relevant knowledge here and now clear, they give an insight into how the VIP plans to accomplish the ongoing activity of scanning. The continuous explaining of “how to” not only reveals the VIP’s orientation towards scanning as a troublesome practice but also helps make the embodied order of the actions observable.

Smartphone tooling 263 13.4.  Case 3 – Milk. The distributed perception of others In the following excerpt, the VIP (who is the same participant as in case 2) has completed the scanning of a barcode on a milk carton and is now going to search for the expiry date using the same “short text” function in the SeeingAI application as in the previous cases. A noticeable obstacle to achieving this is that the dotted font used to mark the expiry dates on cartons is not recognizable to the SeeingAI app. This necessitates many repetitions of the positioning practice before giving up on the search, with the VIP not realizing that this scanning is not technically possible. However, there is plenty of other easily recognizable text all over the hard, plain surface of the milk carton. This causes the app to recite continuously throughout most of the excerpt. As in the previous case, the voiceover function is set to a very high pace, making the majority of the SAI’s recitation unintelligible to the analyst. The case demonstrates a prolonged practice that involves extensive interaction and the utilization of the researcher’s visual perception. Eleven lines have been omitted from the transcript concerning a preference for a different operating system. 1 SAI: +%Δ(---)#short text vip +Lh holding milk carton-->> %mobile on Lshoulder, scrolling w indexF-->2 Δhead turned tw Rshoulder-->3 fig: fig#1 2 VIP: jeg skal først%% og fremmest i must first and foremost  %moves mob right pos tw milk-->4 3 VIP: finde holdbarheds#ΔΔ datoen ved # Δ find the expiration date by Δturns head leftΔ fig: fig#2 fig#3 4 %Δ (1.4) # Δ Δturns head rightΔ fig: fig#4

 

 

 

Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 5 VIP: %at sh- sho:rt Δte:xte den#Δ (.) sh- short texting it %repos mob back and forth-->9 Δ head left Δ fig: fig#5 6 SAI: >((--0.7--Δ--------0.6-------))] 9 RES: [i %top%pen #af kartonen↓] the top of the carton %moves mob upwards over milk-->11 fig: fig#7 10 SAI: [=---------------------->] 11 VIP: [stå op i toppen]#% at the top fig: fig#8

 

 

 

Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7       Figure 8 12 SAI: [=------------->] 13 %=-(2.5)-))%#%(0.7)# %holds pos % vip %downwards side to side-->15 fig: fig#9 fig#10 14 VIP: det var faktisk lidt der hvor that was actually kind of where 15 der står rigtig meget% tekst there is really a lot of text 16 %men ned ad mæ:lkens% but down the milks vip % mob towards carton% 17 ↑%s:i:de# Δpå% kar↑to:nen# her↓Δ side on the carton here %mov mob up % Δturns slightly leftΔ fig:    fig#11 fig#12

Figure 9

 

 

 

Figure 10 Figure 11 Figure 12 ((11 lines omitted from transcript)) 28 VIP: #%årh [nu havde vi den#] arh now we had it %mov mob up, tilts fw-->30

Smartphone tooling 265

fig: fig#13 fig#14

  Figure 13    Figure 14 29 SAI: [((------------>] 30 VIP: [>nå ja%Δ#det er ↑rigtigt32 fig: fig#15 31 SAI: [=----------------------->] 32 VIP: [det er %det ka:mera# i:ge:n]#%Δ it is that camera again %mov mob toward carton% fig: fig#16 fig#17 33 SAI: [=------------------------->] 34 %=---------(2.0)---#[--->]% vip % tilting mob slight outw % fig: fig#18

 

 

 

Figure 15    Figure 16 Figure 17 Figure 18 35 RES:    [°ja:°] yes 36 SAI: =---------(1.5)----------> 37 VIP: +%[så vi har alt mu:ligt o:m]# then we have all sorts about +twist carton slowly inwards--> %mov mob from left to right-->38 fig: fig#19 38 SAI: [=------------------------]-(0.4)-->% 39 RES: %[det står faktisk#% på den:] it is actually on the vip %upw, twists inward% fig: fig#20 40 SAI: [=------------------------>] 41 RES: [anden# side af proppen] other side of the cap fig: fig#21

266  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen 42 SAI: [=-------------------->] 43 RES: [altså% op på [toppen#%]] well at the top vip %midF touch carton% fig: fig#22 44 SAI: [=------------[----))]] 45 VIP: [ja] yes 46 %(1.3)#% vip %three RhF on carton% fig: fig#23

 

 

 

 

Figure 19   Figure 20   Figure 21 Figure 22   Figure 23 47 VIP: %så står%#[det %he:roppe] then it is up here %two RhF circles carton top% %repos mob over top-->49 fig: fig#24 48 RES: [sådan he:lt op] i #toppen        like all the way at the top fig: fig#25 49 VIP: %%sådan [hero:ppe]% as in up here %tilts mob fw over top% 50 RES: [=i kanten]a::f# at the edge of fig: fig#26 51 %(1.6) vip %slight mov side to side-->52 52 VIP: #så ska:l det stå%%heromkring% then it must be around here %mov mob up% fig: fig#27

 

 

 

Figure 24   Figure 25     Figure 26 Figure 27 53 %hvis du# kan%% se den# if you can see it %tilts mob bw%%turns mob to upright pos-->>

Smartphone tooling 267

fig: fig#28 fig#29

Figure 28

  Figure 29

The initial alignment, aligning body, smartphone and milk carton, becomes observable as a non-visual accomplishment (lines 2–5, figs. 2–4) from the beginning of this excerpt, as the VIP’s head turns (line 4), showing an audible positioning for perception in the direction of the smartphone. Having accomplished the initial alignment, and as an embodied response to the SAI lacking recitation, the VIP adjusts the distance between the smartphone and milk carton by moving the phone back and forth, keeping the initial alignment intact (lines 5–9). The SAI starts reciting (line 6), and the VIP moves his ear closer, although there is no expiry date within the camera range. In response to the VIP’s embodied positioning for perception, the RES self-initiates assistance with information about the usual placement of an expiry date (lines 7–8). The VIP then repositions the smartphone, aligning it by moving it up and tilting it over the carton (figs. 7+8), verbally repeating the placement of the date (line 11). As the SAI continuously recites, the VIP shows no indication of recognizing any of the information as relevant (line 13) and resumes the inspecting action (lines 13–15). During the inspection, moving the phone downwards from side to side of the carton, the VIP verbally alerts the RES, implying that the amount of text makes finding the expiry date difficult. The VIP then realigns, moving the smartphone upwards (line 17, fig. 11) to repeat the scanning practice. After fig. 11 omitted lines of talk concerning a different operational system, while completing the inspection, the SAI detects something that the VIP verbally responds to as relevant, with a change of state token “arh” (line 28) and progresses to adjust, moving the smartphone upwards, before tilting it forward, finetuning the alignment of phone and carton (figs. 13 + 14). As the SAI still does not recite any date, the VIP continues repositioning the next 11 lines, iterating the adjustment of distance (line 32), adjusting the camera angle by tilting the phone (lines 34; 39) and object (line 37), as well as inspecting (line 37) in response. Finally, the verbal account of what is being read (line 37) is oriented towards the RES as a request, and she responds by providing information about the placement (lines 39–41 “the cap”), followed by an elaborating repair (line 43 “the top”). The VIP accepts the guidance provided and responds by briefly touching the carton with his right middle finger (line 43), performing a tactile spatial alignment, locating the object while verbally

268  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen confirming to the RES with “yes” (line 45). The aligning is followed by the VIP tactilely adjusting, placing all three middle fingers onto the carton (line 46, fig. 23), after which his grip on the phone is changed, and a single circular movement on the top of the carton is performed with two fingers (line 47, fig. 24) while claiming, “then it is up here” in concert with the researcher’s second elaborating repair, “like all the way” (line 48). Depending on the tactile allocentric placement of the carton’s spatial dimensions, the VIP resumes positioning for scanning, starting again by aligning the phone and object (lines 47–49). This new attempt at scanning is modified according to the new tactile information, as well as the information provided by the researcher. However, the SAI stops reciting at line 45, which is why the VIP asks the RES for further assistance with placement, while continuously adjusting the camera angle (line 49). The researcher responds by explaining “the edge of” (line 50), upon which the VIP resumes his inspection action. As the SAI does not, and cannot, detect the dot font used for the expiry date, there is no audible recitation towards which the VIP can orient. With the epistemic claim “then it must be around here” (line 52), the VIP makes one final attempt, adjusting the distance before directly requesting the researcher’s assistance (line 53) and disengaging from the positioning practice. To sum up, this analysis has shown how the participant makes use of the distributed visual perception of the researcher, as the auditory information provided by the device is not relevant to the situational activity – that is, searching for the expiry date. In contrast to the previous case, where the assistance offered by the researcher is only non-verbally accepted, the prolonged and repeated actions, plus the amount of irrelevant information from the SAI, leads the VIP to accept and orient towards assistance offered by the RES, adjusting his actions accordingly. Although the object’s hard, even surface makes scanning easy for the SAI, the irrelevant nature and quantity of recited text make the search for specific information unmanageable. This analysis also stresses the application’s limited interactional resources, based on it lacking the ability to distinguish relevant information. This causes the participant to rely on the available resources of the researcher instead. 13.5. Discussion: on smartphone tooling and perception as practical action Tooling can be an aspect of many types of practices and can be accomplished using many kinds of action formation. For example, chopping wood with an axe involves coordination of both egocentric (body + axe + wood) and allocentric (axe + wood + surrounding objects) and spatial relations and actions (gripping, aiming and swinging the axe). The ordinary, mundane forms of wood-chopping rely on a complex coordination of body parts, but the tool is rather simple, and perception is heavily based on the vision to achieve an accurate aim. In this chapter, we have explored how tooling as a practice exists in object-centred sequences where the tool is more complex and the participant’s perception is non-visual.

Smartphone tooling 269 We have proposed a specific variant of “smartphone tooling” and shown how it can be accomplished as a practice of “positioning for object scanning”, which in turn is composed of three distinct types of action. We suggest that “smartphone tooling” is a particular kind of activity recognizable in all situations where the smartphone is used as a tool held in the hand for doing something in relation to an object – for example, using it as a flashlight, using it as a payment method and so on. Future research on “smartphone tooling” as embedded in object-centred sequences could explore further the practices that make up these activities in order to see if there is a more profound order of practices and actions that constitute this kind of tooling. This involves the establishment of spatial relations employing specific situated actions, as well as orienting towards the audible output from the device. In that sense, the smartphone tool differs from the axe because it provides information that the user orients towards and by which he or she adjusts actions accordingly. Whereas “dead objects” like the axe produce “mechanical effects”, we have introduced and demonstrated the notion that smartphone tooling enables “informational effects” because the VIP orients towards the technology as something with situated agency (Due 2021) – that is, by being a semiotic agent capable of producing sense information in sequential environments which are distributed through another sense system (auditive) to the participant. Using handheld tools for getting an informational effect is predominantly for society’s ordinary members related to using the smartphone. But obviously, other type of handheld or wearable digital devices that require body-object-tool relations in space for informational effects, like tilting smart glasses or inspecting with professional equipment in surgery or industrial production, would also expectedly be performed in and through bodily actions of aligning, adjusting and inspecting. Our analyses have shown that VIPs employ a specific set of sequential, organized, embodied actions when positioning to scan an object. These actions are carried out by relying on audible and tactile sensorial perception, as well as the distributed visual perception of the device and the researcher. The embodied actions are categorized as: (1) aligning: initial alignment of the smartphone and object, with the camera directed towards the object; (2) adjusting the distance and angle between the smartphone and object by moving or tactilely manipulating (a) the smartphone and/or (b) the object; and (3) searching for detectable text by “inspecting”, moving the smartphone from side to side. Although these three categorized actions persist throughout our data on scanning objects, they do vary in temporality, as well as in the embodied orientation of the body + tool + object assemblage in the course of the action. These variations primarily depend upon factors related, in particular, to “visual competencies” and technological limitations. “Visual competencies” is a particular aspect of the taken-for-granted nature of being and living as a competent member of society. As Garfinkel showed in his study on inverting lenses, the mundane tasks we carry out in society are based on the habits of normal eyesight (Garfinkel 2002; Have 2002;

270  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen Robillard 1999: 155). In line with this, we have shown in this chapter not only the orderly production of a specific set of actions for achieving positioning for object scanning but also how this is accomplished differently – whether the visually impaired person is born blind or late blind. In the first case featuring the participant with late blindness, the VIP orientates his face and “gaze” towards the smartphone’s visual display, lining up his face, the front of the phone and the object, all as part of the aligning action. The VIP maintains his facial orientation throughout the scanning process, indicating an understanding of the face as an embodied presence in the egocentric spatial relation between body, tool and object. However, this facial orientation towards the phone has no immediate benefits for the user in this case, as he is legally blind and can rely only on audible and tactile perception. Managing the phone as a phone exhibits beforehand knowledge of – and practices for handling – the intrinsic nature of not only the phone but also the grocery object. The participant has prior knowledge and, as a previously visually competent member of society, know where object features like text, barcode and other relevant information are likely to be placed. Visual competencies also entail a basic understanding of what a camera does and what the concept of taking a picture means. When the VIP in case 1 can easily achieve the alignment of the phone and the object, and when he removes his fingers from camera view, this clearly indicates the presence of such competencies. The other main factor that causes variation, and most notably the prolongation of positioning for scanning an object in practice, is the technical limitations of the smartphone or the app. In cases 2 and 3, the recitation is affected by the inability of OCR to interpret text on glossy surfaces (2) and on dotted fonts (3). It can, however, be argued that technical limitations are also related to visual competencies, since the cause of such limitations can often be traced back to not knowing, for instance, the nature of the object’s design – that, for instance, the expiry date on cold cuts will not necessarily be placed on the front (1) or that expiry dates on milk are not detectable by the device (3). There are, then, concomitant factors, along with terminology we have employed to highlight the three recurrent actions, which affect the progression of positioning practice and which depend upon the extent of the visual and technological competencies of the user. In the three cases we have presented, how the VIP establishes the relevant spatial relations for scanning an object through non-visual, multisensorial perception becomes particularly salient. They also illustrate how the smartphone, as an advanced interactional tool, contributes to distributed perception by audibly translating detectable signs within its camera range. Orienting towards the smartphone’s audible output, the VIP first navigates towards it when recitation begins and then towards the relevant recitation, adjusting the smartphone position accordingly. This audible perception is accompanied by information perceived tactilely. Through touch, the VIP determines the object’s shape and structure, as well as its spatial location in the situated environment (e.g., case 3

Smartphone tooling 271 lines 43–47). As such, the VIP audibly and tactilely establishes the embodied frame and the egocentric (body + object) and allocentric (tool + object) spatial relation. As a tool, the smartphone also seems to work as a situated sense-able and actionable semiotic agent (cf. Due 2021), which distributes information through an auditory natural language mode. However, our analysis showed how the perception of sound is not comparable with vision. Even though the VIP performed positioning for scanning with ease in case 1, and the application immediately recited correctly, observably and audibly for the analyst, the VIP did not orient towards the recitation as meaningful until several reiterations of the positioning practice. This suggests that audible output is volatile, easily obstructed and less credible than the sense of sight. Vision enables a fixed perception of something, whereas sound has a fleeting nature. In that sense, repetition by rescanning can be seen as a member’s method for accomplishing trustworthy perception of what has been heard. These findings contribute to the notion of perception as being more than a merely visual sensorial and inner experience of the outer world. Perception, as we discover it, is interrelated with, and achieved through, observable practical actions which reach beyond visual sensations. Note 1 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai, last visited June 1, 22.

References Day, Dennis, & Johannes Wagner. 2019. Objects, Bodies and Work Practice. Berlin & New York: DeGruyter. Due, Brian L. 2021. Distributed Perception: Co-Operation between Sense-Able, Actionable, and Accountable Semiotic Agents. Symbolic Interaction 44 (1): 134– 162. https://doi.org/10.1002/symb.538 Due, Brian L., A. M. R. Nielsen, & L. Lüchow. in review. The Eye at Hand: When Visually Impaired People Distribute ‘Seeing’ with Sensing AI. Visual Studies. Due, Brian L., & Simon B. Lange. 2018. Semiotic Resources for Navigation: A Video Ethnographic Study of Blind People’s Uses of the White Cane and a Guide Dog for Navigating in Urban Areas. Semiotica 222: 287–312. https://doi.org/10.1515/ sem-2016-0196 Fragaszy, Dorothy M., & Madhur Mangalam. 2018. Tooling. In Advances in the Study of Behavior edited by M. Naguib, L. Barrett, S. D. Healy, J. Podos, L. W. Simmons, and M. Zuk, vol. 50, 177–241, Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/ bs.asb.2018.01.001 Garfinkel, Harold. 1996. Ethnomethodology’s Program. Social Psychology Quarterly 59 (1): 5–21. https://doi.org/10.2307/2787116 Garfinkel, Harold. 2002. Ethnomethodology’s Program: Working Out Durkeim’s Aphorism. Landham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Gibson, James J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

272  Louise Lüchow, Brian L. Due, and Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen Goodwin, Charles. 1993. The Blackness of Black. Color Categories as Situated Practice. In Discourse, Tools and Reasoning: Essays on Situated Cognition, edited by L. B. Resnick, R. Säljö, C. Pontecorvo, & B. Burge, 111–140. Berlin: Springer. Goodwin, Charles. 1994. Professional Vision. American Anthropologist 96 (3): 606– 633. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1994.96.3.02a00100 Goodwin, Charles. 1995. Seeing in Depth. Social Studies of Science 25 (2): 237–274. Goodwin, Charles. 2000. Pointing as Situated Practice. In Pointing: Where Language, Culture and Cognition Meet, edited by Sotaro Kita, 217–241. Mahwah, NJ: LEA. Goodwin, Charles. 2007. Participation, Stance and Affect in the Organization of Activities. Discourse and Society 18 (1): 53–74. Goodwin, Charles. 2017. Co-Operative Action. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Have, Paul Ten. 2002. The Notion of Member is the Heart of the Matter: On the Role of Membership Knowledge in Ethnomethodological Inquiry. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 3 (3). http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/834 Heath, Christian, Jon Hindmarsh, & Paul Luff. 2010. Analysing Video: Developing Preliminary Observations. In Video in Qualitative Research: Analysing Social Interaction in Everyday Life, 61–86. Los Angeles: Sage. Ingold, Tim. 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Jefferson, Gail. 2004. Glossary of Transcript Symbols with an Introduction. In Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation, edited by Gene H. Lerner, 13–31. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Krummheuer, Antonia L., Matthias Rehm,  & Kasper Rodil. 2020. Triadic HumanRobot Interaction. Distributed Agency and Memory in Robot Assisted Interactions. In Companion of the 2020 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 317–319. https://doi.org/10.1145/3371382.3378269 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2013. Phenomenology of Perception. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Mondada, Lorenza. 2018. Multiple Temporalities of Language and Body in Interaction. Challenges for Transcribing Multimodality. Research in Language and Social Interaction 51(1): 85–106. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2018.1413878 Mondada, Lorenza. 2019a. Rethinking Bodies and Objects in Social Interaction: A  Multimodal and Multisensorial Approach to Tasting. In Discussing New Materialism, edited by U. T. Kissmann & J. van Loon, 109–134. Wiesbaden: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22300-7_6 Mondada, Lorenza. 2019b. Contemporary Issues in Conversation Analysis: Embodiment and Materiality, Multimodality and Multisensoriality in Social Interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 145: 47–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.01.016 Mortensen, Kristian, & Johannes Wagner. 2019. Inspection Sequences – Multisensorial Inspections of Unfamiliar Objects. Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift Zur Verbalen Interaktion 20: 399–343. Nevile, Maurice, Pentti Haddington, Trine Heinemann, & Mirka Rauniomaa. 2014. Interacting with Objects: Language, Materiality, and Social Activity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Nishizaka, Aug. 2014. Instructed Perception in Prenatal Ultrasound Examinations. Discourse Studies 16 (2): 217–246. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445613515354

Smartphone tooling 273 Nishizaka, Aug. 2020. Multi-Sensory Perception during Palpation in Japanese Midwifery Practice. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality 3 (1). Reyes-Cruz, Gisela, Joel E. Fischer, & Stuart Reeves. 2020. Reframing Disability as Competency: Unpacking Everyday Technology Practices of People with Visual Impairments. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376767 Robillard, A. B. 1999. Meaning of a Disability: The Lived Experience of Paralysis. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rossano, Federico. 2012. Gaze in Conversation. In The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by Jack Sidnell and Tanya Stivers, 308–329. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118325001.ch15 Schellenberg, Susanna. 2007. Action and Self-Location in Perception. Mind 116 (463): 603–631. Sharrock, Wes, & Jeff Coulter. 1998. On What We Can See. Theory & Psychology 8 (2): 147–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354398082001 Streeck, Jürgen. 1996. How to Do Things with Things. Human Studies 19 (4): 365– 384. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00188849 Stukenbrock, Anja. 2020. Deixis, Meta-Perceptive Gaze Practices, and the Interactional Achievement of Joint Attention. Frontiers in Psychology 11. https://doi. org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01779 Suchman, Lucy. 2007. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomasello, Michael, & Josep Call. 1997. Primate Cognition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Tuncer, Sylvaine, Christian Licoppe, & Pentti Haddington. 2019. When Objects Become the Focus of Human Action and Activity: Object-Centred Sequences in Social Interaction. Gesprächsforschung – Online-Zeitschrift zur Verbalen Interaktion 20.

Part 4

Reflections on interactionist studies of technologies The book is brought to a close by the editors’ reflections on the book’s contributions to the study of technology in everyday life within the fields of interactionism and more broadly. The discussion focusses on the central contributions of the studies, their implications for future directions of research, as well as on the ways that technology itself might be employed for research practice.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-17

14 Where next for interactionist studies of technology? Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco

In the introduction to this volume, we identified interactionism’s conceptual foundations for the study of technology, such as Mead’s (1932) examination of the constitution of objects through action and Blumer’s ([1956] 1990) analysis of social change during industrialization. These classic (symbolic) interactionist studies have provided scholars with a starting point for theorizing how technology is embedded within “joint action” (Blumer 1969). For example, objects and technologies as well as infrastructures, can work as “boundary objects” (Star and Griesemer 1989) that facilitate and underpin the emergence of “universes of discourse” (Mead [1932] 1977; cf. Strübing 1997), “arenas,” or “social worlds” (Clarke 1991). Without the technological systems, tools, and networks, these opportunities for joint action would not arise. The development and deployment of technology, therefore, influence action and interaction and, through this, everyday relationships, both in faceto-face and mediated contexts. In what follows, we reflect on how the studies presented here help us to move on from these contexts, both theoretically and methodologically. 14.1. Theory The studies presented here help to re-emphasise the argument that technology does not determine how social relationships are organized and transformed. Through their analysis of how people practically orient to technology and other people in their ongoing social lives, the authors have variously demonstrated how the deployment of technology becomes implicated in power relationships (Part 1), processes of identity construction (Part 2), and the (re)organization and accomplishment of institutional interaction (Part 3). The contributors in this volume continue interactionists’ strong repudiation of technological determinism, which is still embedded in everyday accounts of technology, and often in quite subtle ways. For example, the emergence of new digital technology in all parts of social life is often accompanied by descriptions of societal transformation using terms such as “digitization” or “digital revolution” (Brennen and Kreiss 2016; Sidhu 2015; Toffler 1981), DOI: 10.4324/9781003277750-18

278  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco which imply that it is the technology that “causes” grand social changes. In our view, scholars using these terms and descriptions to depict technology-induced social changes focus on generic, macro-level developments, leaving no space for actors’ practical contributions to the development and deployment of technology in everyday life. As with Blumer’s ([1956] 1990) critique of the term “industrialization,” we view “digitization” resulting not from technological features but from the practical interpretation of the material and technological conditions in which people act and interact. Drawing on Blumer’s (1969) foundational principles of symbolic interaction, we can say that we are socialized into these interpretations, and we negotiate their meaning and material implications through complex social processes. As we saw, interactionist perspectives had a strong influence on social studies of science, including the influential field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). This tradition emerged in the 1970s and helped to reveal the epistemic and socio-political context in which particular technologies were developed, such as bicycles with pneumatic tires (Bijker 1995) or electricity networks (T. P. Hughes 1993). This broadly “social constructivist” perspective was often political in nature, highlighting the negotiations that informed the emergence of particular technologies and the ways that they can empower some people while disempowering others (Winner 1986). Since the 1990s STS has lost its influence (Lynch 2019), with other perspectives such as Actor Network Theory (ANT) gaining prominence. ANT was critical of STS, and regarded the strong differentiation between people and things as problematic as a mistake, emphasizing instead the affordances of technology as “actors” in the networks of technological development (Latour 2007). In turn, interactionists have been critical of how ANT treats technology as if it were itself meaning-producing, rather than constituted in the life worlds of distinctive communities. Ethnomethodologically influenced perspectives have emphasized how technology is constituted in and through the embodied skills of socialized members who demonstrate and negotiate social practices such as “competence,” “appropriate application,” and “adequate use” (Button 1993; Button and Sharrock 2002). The studies included in this volume continue these traditions of enquiry and critique, showing how meanings and practices of use emerge through action. They reveal how features of technology (such as “uses,” “constraints,” “possibilities of action,” and so on) arise through people’s interactions with them (Part 3). Through these studies we see that although technology might entail affordances (Gibson 1986), these features of systems, devices, and infrastructures enter social life through the contingent and sometimes creative ways in which “[t]he technical apparatus is . . . being made at home with the rest of our world” (Sacks 1992: 548). These arguments also feed into debates about changes in power relationships and social structure in a technologized world. It has often been argued that such changes are caused and underpinned by the deployment of new technologies (Toffler 1991). While in the past some scholars argued that interactionists have little to add to sociological debates about power and social

Where next for interactionist studies of technology? 279 structure (Gouldner 1970; Huber 1973), the studies in this volume continue to show the important contributions interactionism can make to such discussions (see, e.g., Hannem 2021; McGinty 2016; Ruiz-Junco 2016; Schwalbe and Mischke 2022). For example, the chapters in Part 1 reveal that using technology can enhance people’s social networks and influence while, at the same time, creating the possibility of them losing control over who can access them for personal reasons or with malign intentions (Åkerström and Boethius, Chapter 2). They also point to the ongoing conflict over the ways in which online sites and resources are being used, and how moral panics are created to shape ideas about who can and cannot participate in the online world (Dellwing, Chapter 3). A common thread of the chapters in Part 1 is that people can resist, or at least become critically aware of the inhumane features of technology – or of “the terminal,” as Gottschalk calls it (Chapter 3) – that infringe on their sense of self and belonging in the social world (cf. Sandstrom et  al. 2021). The contributions in Part 2, however, suggest that despite the affordances of technology, people can use systems and devices as well as online services to create, manage, and project their identity (Williams and Judah, Chapter  6; Conner and Sullivan, Chapter 7). Technology is a means for people to exhibit “who they are” and what community or subculture they belong to. People use technology to display their alignment with community values and in turn enable the “universe of discourse” (Mead [1932] 1977) of the community to continue. And as Colyer, Stein, and Corcoran’s study of the Amish community shows (Chapter  8), members’ decisions about embracing, rejecting, or adapting technology can establish symbolic boundaries and help maintain a community identity. “Technology” has been at the heart of all the chapters in this volume. The authors have investigated the different ways in which it enters social life and impacts social structure, individual and community identity, and/or the organization of action and interaction in various institutional and everyday settings. Following on from these studies, we are now in a position to conceptualize more clearly an interactionist perspective on “technology.” In the past, technology has often been described in terms of the actions it affords, with the prospect to improve social action (Norman 1988). Coming originally from the visual and cognitive sciences, the concept of “affordances” (Gibson 1986) has been central to the study of technology and social action. For a number of years now, interactionists have pushed for an interpretation of this concept that foregrounds a view of technology and action as reflexively related (Heath and Luff 2000). Hutchby (2001, 2014) explored the notion of affordances in action and suggested that they are functional and relational at the same time: functional, in that they “enable (and also constrain) the engagement in some activity; they shape the conditions of possibility associated with an action. Relational, in that they may differ for one object in different contexts, or between different species” (Hutchby 2014). The chapters in Part 2 of this volume suggest that the affordances of technology are a resource people

280  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco exploit, for example, to make subcultural identities recognizable and intelligible by others (Williams and Judah, Chapter 6), engage in stigma management techniques in online environments (Conner and Sullivan, Chapter 7), or to use technology in a community that conventionally refrains from technology diffusion into its everyday (Colyer, Stein, and Corcoran, Chapter 8). Together, these chapters demonstrate the importance of the argument that the deployment of technology in everyday and institutional settings is achieved by the creative accommodation/adaptation of technology. These practices are critical to making technology work for the particular concrete circumstances that people find themselves in. The authors discussing interaction in institutional settings, such as health (Shirokov, Avgustis, and Korbut, Chapter 9), education (Hochuli and Jud, Chapter 10), law (Wästerfors, Chapter 5), public administration (Böhringer, Chapter 12), and markets (Due, Lüchow and Nielsen, Chapter  13), as well as leisure (Heiden, Baldauf-Quilliatre and Quignard, Chapter 11), highlight people’s ability to respond creatively to the opportunities and challenges entailed in the deployment of technology. In this way, the chapters help to further reinforce Blumer’s ([1956] 1990) argument that social agency produces a variety of adoption modes for the deployment of emerging technologies. 14.2. Method The chapters in this volume exhibit the breadth of research methods that interactionists can deploy in the study of technology in everyday life, which includes ethnography, auto-ethnography, online ethnography, qualitative interviews, textual analysis, and ethnomethodological interaction analysis (vom Lehn 2018, 2019). The analysis of images is an important feature of some of the chapters here, and one that mirrors developments in sociology more broadly. In the 1990s, Douglas Harper (1996) suggested that digital technology has been very important for the emergence of visual sociology as a sub-area within sociology (Harper 2012; Prosser 1998). Over the years, visual sociology has emerged as a distinct strand of research, and, aided by further advances in photography and printing technology, the use of images in publications has become increasingly common not only in specialist journals, such as Visual Sociology and Visual Communication, but also in generalist journals like The British Journal of Sociology and Symbolic Interaction. These developments have been supported by advances in image-processing and desktop-publishing software allowing sociologists to more easily embed photographs in their publications. These technological advancements also have contributed to the dissipating of publishers’ resistance against the inclusion of images in sociological books and journal articles.1 In this volume, the chapters by Williams and Judah (Chapter 6) as well as by Conner and Sullivan (Chapter 7) show how interactionist scholars examine people’s publication of images on social media and dating sites to create, manage,

Where next for interactionist studies of technology? 281 and project a particular identity, and to show their affiliation with a community identity they help to advance through their publication of images. Many of the authors use audio-/video-recording technologies with the aim of capturing the nuances of action that constitute the in-situ organization of technologically mediated action. Interactionist scholars drawing on ethnomethodology and conversation analysis have been using audio-/visualrecordings as principal data for more than 40 years (Goodwin 1981; Heath 1986). Their research examines how participants embed technology within their action and interaction, for example, in institutional settings like general practice (Greatbatch et al. 1995, 2005) or in highly technologized work settings such as control rooms of rapid transport systems or in news-production studios in the broadcasting industry (Heath and Luff 2000). Over the years, ethnomethodological interaction analysis has benefited from the development of advanced audio-/video-technology that allows for the gathering of higherquality audio and video data. This strand of interactionist research is continued by the contributions to Part 3 of this volume. The authors of Chapters 9 to 13 examine audio-/video-recordings to reveal the organization of action and interaction within which technology, be it telephones, smartphones, or desktop computers, is systematically embedded. There has been considerable debate both in ethnomethodology and ethnography about the former’s focus on minute moments of interaction and the latter’s seeming ambivalence towards the details of action and interaction (Atkinson 2014; ­Nelson 1994). The chapters in this volume reflect this continued division, with some studies adopting firmly ethnographic approaches, and others aligning much more closely with ethnomethodology. We hope that in the coming years there will be many more studies that combine the opportunities offered by these interactionist approaches (cf. Atkinson 2014). Because both approaches often rely on recorded data, ethnographers can exploit the detailed analysis of actions offered by ethnomethodology to unpack some of the concepts and glosses that sometimes obfuscate more than they reveal in ethnographic writings. Similarly, ethnomethodologists undertaking conversation analytic or video-based research can miss the cultural complexities of social contexts, which is an analytic focus that ethnographic work offers. Studies that exemplify the benefits of this type of combined approach include Heath’s (2013) examination of auctions, which uses audio-/video-recordings as principal data for the analysis of, for instance, the moment-by-moment organization of bids for works of art. This analysis is situated in a broader understanding of auction work developed through longterm ethnographic fieldwork. Through studies such as this, as well as through ethnographic research itself, ethnomethodologists have begun to specify the features of an ethnomethodological ethnography (Meier zu Verl and Meyer 2022; Schindler 2018; Schindler and Schäfer 2020). We can see exciting opportunities for the use of technologies in ethnographic work. Eye-tracking technologies have been shown to be useful for the study of gaze movement in interaction (Brône and Oben 2018; Kristiansen

282  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco and Rasmussen 2021). Researchers have also used mobile camera equipment that allows for the gathering of mobile and 360-degree video data as well as spatial video and audio (LaBonte et al. 2021; McIlvenny 2018). Such developments facilitate novel co-operations of interactionists with scholars from disciplines such as the computer sciences, art history, the cognitive sciences, optometry, and many others (Button and Sharrock 2009; Luff et  al. 2000; Engeström and Middleton 1998; vom Lehn and Heath 2022). Another emerging development is the increasing use of naturalistic experiments (Heath and Luff 2018). Drawing on Harold Garfinkel’s (1967) socalled “breaching experiments,” interactionists have started to study situations where the expected trajectory of actions and events is disturbed or where the deployment of novel technology challenges participants’ expectations about social situations. Examples include studies of the impact of the sudden emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic on the organization of social situations (Mondada and Svensson 2023) and the deployment of social robots in shops (Yamazaki and Arano 2023).2 Apart from its clear connection to Garfinkel’s studies, this experimental research also dovetails with earlier research undertaken by members of the New Iowa School of Sociology, a group of scholars who used experimental research methods to reveal the elements underpinning social interaction (Katovich and Chen 2014, 2021). Audio-/video-recordings also offer novel opportunities to disseminate findings from interactionist research to a wider audience. An example in this area is the pioneering work by Phillip and April Vannini, who, alongside their academic articles and books, produce ethnographic films3 that provide detailed visual and audio accounts of the situations and environments that they and their “research subjects” inhabited, dealing with topics such as living in “wilderness” (Vannini and Vannini 2016, 2021) and “off the grid” (Vannini and Taggart 2014). Their work contributes to interactionists’ interest in issues around nature, alternative ways of living, and climate change (cf. Heimann et al. 2022). We see this mode of collaborative dissemination of research findings in alternate forms as being an important and exciting opportunity for interactionists to show the contribution that their work offers to the study of society as a localized practice. 14.3.  The future In recent years, in the UK and elsewhere, there have been increasing calls to demonstrate that publicly funded research not only contributes to academic debate but also has an impact on policy and practice. Interdisciplinary collaboration and public involvement are important ways for interactionists to respond to these ideas. We have already pointed to some important examples of these practices, and we can cite numerous other instances too, such as experiments with the deployment of mobile robots in the home (Boudouraki et al. 2022) or in elderly care (Yamazaki et al. 2016); communication training for police officers (Stokoe 2013) and optometrists (vom Lehn et al. 2023; vom

Where next for interactionist studies of technology? 283 Lehn and Heath 2022); as well as the improvement of communication in telephone interviews (Maynard et al. 2011) and on telephone helplines (Wilkinson 2011), in psychoanalysis (Peräkylä 2011), psychotherapy (Peräkylä et al. 2008), and in other medical and health service settings (Antaki 2011). These examples demonstrate the relevance of interactionist research for practice and offer models for research partnerships with a diversity of non-academic actors. Through our focus on technology, this volume has shown why interactionists’ continual study of technology and society remains critical. In particular, we have shown that the repudiation of a dualistic view of technology and that paying close empirical attention to people’s uses of technology in everyday practice bring important conceptual benefits: these studies help us to understand in detail the ways in which the uses of technology impact on issues such as power and social hierarchies or the formation and negotiation of identity. Similarly, the type of close conceptual analysis displayed by this book helps us to understand in detail the ever-changing nature of contemporary social practices and their everyday impact on communities around the world. As the Covid-19 pandemic dramatically showed, technology is increasingly necessary to conduct basic social activities for different social groups, such as working, studying, and accessing health care. This book is our attempt to show why interactionism remains a critical set of approaches for its study. Notes 1 It is worthwhile mentioning that articles published in early volumes of the American Journal of Sociology regularly featured photographs (cf. American 1898; Blackmar 1897; Zueblin 1898). Maybe this suggests that apart from technological and cost constraints, there might be other reasons for the long refusal of sociology journals to publish articles featuring photographs. 2 For further examples, please see Sormani and vom Lehn’s (2023) edited collection The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel. 3 Phillip Vannini, for example, collaborated with Jonathan Taggart on Off the Grid (2014) and with April Vannini on Inhabited (2021). Both films are available via Prime Video.

References American, Sadie. 1898. ‘The Movement for Small Playgrounds’. American Journal of Sociology Vol.4 (2): 159–170. Antaki, Charles. 2011. Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Atkinson, Paul Anthony. 2014. For Ethnography. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications Ltd. Bijker, Wiebe E. 1995. Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Blackmar, Frank W. 1897. ‘The Smoky Pilgrims’. American Journal of Sociology Vol.2 (4): 485–500. Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. New York: Prentice Hall.

284  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco ———. [1956] 1990. Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change: A Critical Analysis. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Boudouraki, Andriana, Stuart Reeves, Joel E Fischer, and Sean Rintel. 2022. ‘Mediated Visits: Longitudinal Domestic Dwelling with Mobile Robotic Telepresence’. In Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–16. CHI ’22. New York, NY: Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi. org/10.1145/3491102.3517640. Brennen, J. Scott, and Daniel Kreiss. 2016. ‘Digitalization’. In The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy, edited by Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Robert T. Craig, Jefferson D. Pooley, and Eric W. Rothenbuhler, 1–11. Oxford: John Wiley and Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118766804.wbiect111. Brône, Geert, and Bert Oben. 2018. Eye-Tracking in Interaction: Studies on the Role of Eye Gaze in Dialogue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Button, Graham. 1993. Technology in Working Order: Studies of Work, Interaction, and Technology. New York: Routledge. Button, Graham, and Wes Sharrock. 2002. ‘Operating the Production Calculus: Ordering a Production System in the Print Industry’. British Journal of Sociology Vol.53 (2): 275–289. ———. 2009. Studies of Work and the Workplace in HCI: Concepts and Techniques. Williston, VT and London: Morgan and Claypool Publishers. Clarke, Adele E. 1991. ‘Social Worlds/Social Arenas Theory as Organization Theory’. In Social Organization and Social Process. Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss, edited by David R. Maines, 119–158. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Engeström, Yirjö, and David Middleton, eds. 1998. Cognition and Communication at Work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gibson, James J. 1986. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Goodwin, Charles. 1981. Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York and London: Academic Press. Gouldner, Alvin W. 1970. The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books. Greatbatch, David, Gerard Hanlon, Jackie Goode, Alicia O’Cathain, Tim Strangleman, and Donna Luff. 2005. ‘Telephone Triage, Expert Systems and Clinical Expertise’. Sociology of Health  & Illness Vol.27 (6): 802–830. https://doi.org/ 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2005.00475.x. Greatbatch, David, Christian Heath, Peter Campion, and Paul Luff. 1995. ‘How Do Desktop Computers Affect the Doctor-Patient Interaction’. Family Practice Vol.12 (1): 32–36. Hannem, Stacey. 2021. ‘Symbolic Interactionism, Social Structure, and Social Change: Historical Debates and Contemporary Challenges’. In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, edited by Dirk vom Lehn, Natalia Ruiz-Junco, and Will Gibson, 194–204. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Harper, Douglas. 1996. ‘Seeing Sociology’. The American Sociologist Vol.27 (3): 69–78. ———. 2012. Visual Sociology. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge. Heath, Christian. 1986. Body Movement and Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. The Dynamics of Auction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, Christian, and Paul Luff. 2000. Technology in Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Where next for interactionist studies of technology? 285 ———. 2018. ‘The Naturalistic Experiment: Video and Organizational Interaction’. Organizational Research Methods Vol.21 (2): 466–488. https://doi. org/10.1177/1094428117747688. Heimann, Thorsten, Jamie Sommer, Margarethe Kusenbach, and Gabriela Christmann, eds. 2022. Climate Cultures in Europe and North America: New Formations of Environmental Knowledge and Action. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Huber, Joan. 1973. ‘Symbolic Interaction as a Pragmatic Perspective: The Bias of Emergent Theory’. American Sociological Review Vol.38 (2): 274–284. Hughes, Thomas Parke. 1993. Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hutchby, Ian. 2001. Conversation and Technology: From the Telephone Internet. Cambridge: Polity. ———. 2014. ‘Communicative Affordances and Participation Frameworks in Mediated Interaction’. Journal of Pragmatics Vol.72 (October): 86–89. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.pragma.2014.08.012. Katovich, Michael A., and Shing-Ling S. Chen. 2014. ‘New Iowa School Redux: Second Life as Laboratory’. In Symbolic Interaction and New Social Media, edited by Mark D. Johns, Shing-Ling S. Chen, and Laura A. Terlip, 63–84, Studies in Symbolic Interaction. Bingley, UK: Emerald. ———. 2021. ‘Recent Developments in the New Iowa School of Symbolic Interactionism’. In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, edited by Dirk vom Lehn, Natalia Ruiz-Junco, and Will Gibson, 59–69. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Kristiansen, Elisabeth Dalby, and Gitte Rasmussen. 2021. ‘Eye-Tracking Recordings as Data in EMCA Studies: Exploring Possibilities and Limitations’. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality Vol.4 (4). https://doi.org/10.7146/ si.v4i4.121776. LaBonte, Andrew, Jon Hindmarsh, and Dirk vom Lehn. 2021. ‘Data Collection at Height: Embodied Competence, Multisensoriality and Video-Based Research in an Extreme Context of Work’. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality Vol.4 (3). https://doi.org/10.7146/si.v4i3.128155. Latour, Bruno. 2007. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Luff, Paul, Jon Hindmarsh, and Christian Heath, eds. 2000. Workplace Studies: Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Lynch, Michael E. 2019. ‘The Sociology of Science and Social Constructivism’. In The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, edited by Miranda Fricker, 220–229. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Maynard, Douglas W., Nora Cate Schaeffer, and Jeremy Freese. 2011. ‘Improving Response Rates in Telephone Interviews’. In Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk, edited by Charles Antaki, 54–74. Palgrave Advances in Linguistics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230316874_4. McGinty, Patrick J. W. 2016. ‘Ruinous Reification: The Astructural Bias in Symbolic Interactionism’. In The Astructural Bias Charge: Myth or Reality? Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 46, 19–56. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-2396201600000 46022. McIlvenny, Paul. 2018. ‘Inhabiting Spatial Video and Audio Data: Towards a Scenographic Turn in the Analysis of Social Interaction’. Social Interaction. Video-Based

286  Dirk vom Lehn, Will Gibson, and Natalia Ruiz-Junco Studies of Human Sociality Vol.2(1). https://tidsskrift.dk/socialinteraction/article/ view/110409 Mead, George Herbert. [1932] 1977. ‘The Objective Reality of Perspectives’. In George Herbert Mead: On Social Psychology, edited by Anselm Strauss, 342–354. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1932. ‘The Physical Thing’. In The Philosophy of the Present, 119–139. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meier zu Verl, Christian, and Christian Meyer. 2022. ‘Ethnomethodological Ethnography: Historical, Conceptual, and Methodological Foundations’. Qualitative Research, (Online First, September). https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941221129798. Mondada, Lorenza, and Hanna Svensson. 2023. ‘A Natural Breaching Experiment? Interactional Troubles during the Covid19 Pandemic’. In The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel, edited by Philippe Sormani and Dirk vom Lehn. London: Anthem Press. Nelson, Christian Kjaer. 1994. ‘Ethnomethodological Positions on the Use of Ethnographic Data in Conversation Analytic Research’. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography Vol.23 (3): 307–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124194023003003. Norman, Donald A. 1988. The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books. Peräkylä, Anssi. 2011. ‘A Psychoanalyst’s Reflection on Conversation Analysis’s Contribution to His Own Therapeutic Talk’. In Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk, edited by Charles Antaki, 222–242. Palgrave Advances in Linguistics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230316874_12. Peräkylä, Anssi, Charles Antaki, Sanna Vehviläinen, and Ivan Leudar. 2008. Conversation Analysis and Psychotherapy: Psychotherapy in Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prosser, Jon D. 1998. Image-Based Research. A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers. London: Farmer Press. Ruiz-Junco, Natalia. 2016. ‘The Persistence of the Power Deficit? Advancing Power Premises in Contemporary Interactionist Theory’. Studies in Symbolic Interaction Vol.46: 145–165. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620160000046027. Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Edited by Gail Jefferson and Emanuel A. Schegloff. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Sandstrom, Kent L., Lisa-Jo K. van den Scott, and Gary Alan Fine. 2021. ‘The New Horizons of Symbolic Interactionism’. In The Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism, edited by Dirk vom Lehn, Natalia Ruiz-Junco, and Will Gibson, 435–446. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Schindler, Larissa. 2018. ‘The Ethnomethods of Ethnography: A  Trans-Situational Approach to the Epistemology of Qualitative Research’. Human Studies Vol.41 (1): 103–120. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-017-9449-1. Schindler, Larissa, and Hilmar Schäfer. 2020. ‘Practices of Writing in Ethnographic Work’. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol.50 (1): 3–10. https://doi. org/10.1177/0891241620923396. Schwalbe, Michael L., and Kelsey Mischke. 2022. ‘Power and Interaction’. In The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism, edited by Wayne H. Brekhus, Thomas DeGloma, and William Ryan Force. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190082161.013.18. Sidhu, Inder. 2015. The Digital Revolution: How Connected Digital Innovations Are Transforming Your Industry, Company & Career. London: FT Press.

Where next for interactionist studies of technology? 287 Sormani, Philippe, and Dirk vom Lehn. 2023. The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel. London: Anthem Press. Star, Susan Leigh, and James R. Griesemer. 1989. ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations” and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology 1907–39’. Social Studies of Science Vol.19 (3): 387–420. Stokoe, Elizabeth. 2013. ‘The (In)Authenticity of Simulated Talk: Comparing RolePlayed and Actual Interaction and the Implications for Communication Training’. Research on Language and Social Interaction Vol.46 (2): 165–185. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/08351813.2013.780341. Strübing, Jörg. 1997. ‘Symbolischer Interaktionismus revisited: Konzepte für die Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung’. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, Vol.26 (5): 368–386. Toffler, Alvin. 1981. The Third Wave. New York: Pan Books. ———. 1991. Power Shift – Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. New York: Bantam Books. Vannini, Phillip, and Jonathan Taggart. 2014. Off the Grid: Re-Assembling Domestic Life. 1st edition. New York, NY: Routledge. Vannini, Phillip, and April Vannini. 2016. Wilderness. 1st edition. London and New York, NY: Routledge. ———. 2021. Inhabited: Wildness and the Vitality of the Land. Montreal and Chicago: McGill-Queen’s University Press. vom Lehn, Dirk. 2018. Ethnomethodologische Interaktionsanalyse. Videodaten Analysieren und die Organisation von Handlungen Darstellen. Weinheim and Basel: Belz-Juventa. ———. 2019. ‘From Garfinkel’s “Experiments in Miniature” to the Ethnomethodological Analysis of Interaction’. Human Studies Vol.42 (2): 305–326. vom Lehn, Dirk, Peter Allen, Helena Webb, Bruce J. W. Evans, Michael Bowen, and Holly Dobryzycki. 2023. ‘Impacting Communication in Optometry: Enhancing Health-Service Experiences’. European Journal of Marketing Vol.56 (9): 2546–2557. vom Lehn, Dirk, and Christian Heath. 2022. ‘Embedding Impact in Research: Addressing the Interactional Production of Workplace Activities’. British Journal of Management Vol.33 (2): 539–552. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12468. Wilkinson, Sue. 2011. ‘Improving Ethnic Monitoring on a Telephone Helpline’. In Applied Conversation Analysis: Intervention and Change in Institutional Talk, edited by Charles Antaki, 75–97. Palgrave Advances in Linguistics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230316874_5. Winner, Langdon. 1986. ‘Do Artifacts Have Politics?’ In The Whale and the Reactor: A  Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, 19–39. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Yamazaki, Keiichi, and Yusuke Arano. 2023. ‘Breaching and Robot Experiments: The Spirit of Experimentation of Harold Garfinkel’. In The Anthem Companion to Harold Garfinkel. London: Anthem Press. Yamazaki, Keiichi, Akiko Yamazaki, Keiko Ikeda, Chen Liu, Mihoko Fukushima, Yoshinori Kobayashi, and Yoshinori Kuno. 2016. ‘ “I’ll Be There Next” A Multiplex Care Robot System That Conveys Service Order Using Gaze Gestures’. ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems (TiiS) Vol.5 (4): 1–20. Zueblin, Charles. 1898. ‘Municipal Playgrounds in Chicago’. American Journal of Sociology Vol.4 (2): 145–158.

Names Index

Aboujaoude, Elias 66 Acquisiti, Alessandro 75 Ahlm, Jody 127 Albrechtslund, Anne-Mette 111 Anders, Gunther 59, 61, 64

Giles, David 107 Goffman, Erving 9, 29, 112, 119 – 121, 125, 131 – 134, 231 Goodwin, Charles 252 – 253 Gottschalk, Simon 120

Baker, Stephanie Alice 112, 113 – 114 Blommaert, Jan 106 – 107 Blumer, Herbert 202, 278, 280 Bronstein, Carolyn 54 Burke, Kenneth 91, 93, 94 – 95

Harper, Douglas 280 Harris, Bridget 26 Hasenfeld, Yeheskel 230 Haslam, Nick 60 Hausendorf, Heiko 186 Heath, Christian 281 Herman, Edward 46 – 47 Highfield, Tim 105 Hitler, Adolf 4 Hogan, Bernie 9 Holstein, James A. 25 Hostetler, John 143, 149 – 150 Housley, William 101, 112 Hughes, Everett C. 3, 6 Hughes, Thomas P. 8 Humphreys, Cathy 26 Humphreys, Lee 11 Husserl, Edmund 4 Hutchby, Ian 86, 279

Chomsky, Noam 46 – 47 Clark, Shannon Jay 11 Clarke, Adele E. 7 Couch, Carl J. 3 – 4 Dator, James A. 61 Deppermann, Arnulf 96 Ditchfield, Hannah 9 Doring, Nicola 54n3 Drouin, Michelle 47 Dubey, Gérard 75 Due, Brian L. 185, 208, 253 Ems, Lindsay 146, 149 Finke, Roger 151 Fourcade, Marion 1 Fragaszy, Dorothy M. 252 Frohlich, David 233, 234 Gammelby, Ane K. 104, 105 Garfinkel, Harold 6, 84 – 85, 232, 243, 253, 269 – 270, 282 Gasser, Urs 8 Geser, Hans 233

Iannacone, Laurence R. 151 Ictech, Brad 11 Innis, Harold A. 4 Jaureguiberry, Francis 66 Katz, Jack 89 – 90 Kesselheim, Wolfgang 186 Khomeni, Ruhollah 4 Kirschner, David 10 Kraybill, Donald B. 144, 149, 150

Names Index  289 Laidi, Zaki 68 Lanier, Jaron 60 Leaver, Tama 105 Levine, Martin P. 129 Licoppe, Christian 120, 132, 185 Lipsky, Michael 230 Lobinger, Katharina 104 Loughnan, Steve 60 Luff, Paul 207, 233, 234 Lunt, Peter 101 Maines, David R. 142 Mangalam, Madhur 252 Manovich, Lev 107 Markham, Annette N. 104, 105 McCarthy, Doyle 3 McLuhan, Marshall 4 Mead, George Herbert 3, 11 Meisenhelder, Thomas 96 Mellor, David 64 Meredith, Joanne 86 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 4 Miller, Gale 25 Moore, Robert J. 233, 234 Müller, Christopher John 64 Nolt, Steven M. 144 Oittinen, Tuire 187, 195 Olbertz-Siitonen, Margarethe 207 – 208 Palfrey, John 8 Persson, Anders 29 Piirainen-Marsh, Arja 207 – 208

Reeves, Stuart 10 Reyes-Cruz, Gisela 253 Rosa, Hartmut 64 Sacks, Harvey 94 Schmitt, Reinhold 186 Schneider, Christopher J. 9 Seinfeld, Sofia 209 Simmel, Georg 197 Skatvedt, Astrid 184 Smith, Robin James 101, 112 Stone, A. R. 8 Strauss, Anselm 141, 145 – 146 Suchman, Lucy 185, 233 – 234, 237, 237 Sudnow, David 5 Sweeney, John A. 61 Thiara, Ravi K. 26 Toft, Thomas 208 Tuncer, Sylvaine 251 – 252 Turkle, Sherry 75, 135 Vannini, Phillip 6 Virilio, Paul 59 vom Lehn, Dirk 7, 202 Waldron, Janice 9 Walsh, Michael James 112, 113 – 114 Waskul, Dennis 47 Wasson, Christina 195 Williams, Patrick J. 10, 102 Woodlock, Delanie 26 Wooffitt, Robin 234 Yee, Aubrey M. 61

Subject Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. absent presence 26, 39n1 Actor Network Theory (ANT) 278 Adobe Connect 187 – 188, 188, 189 – 194, 197, 200, 201 – 202 affordances 86, 278; of bodies 186; of face walls 194 – 196; of Instagram 101, 103, 106, 107, 108, 111; of job boards 244; of smart devices 250 – 251 alerts 66, 67, 67 algorithmic censorship 49 Amish: boundaries 151 – 152; cultural values 142 – 144; interpretations of technology 144 – 145; negotiations of technology 145 – 147, 149 – 151; rejection of technology 147 – 148; technological innovation 148; use of electricity 140, 150 – 151 Anabaptists 141, 142 – 143, 144, 151, 152 Apple 8, 45 architecture-for-interaction 186 – 187, 192, 193 astructural bias debate 23 asymmetry: in negotiations 145; in video-mediated communication 207, 208, 212 asynchronous messaging 86 attention: to cursor movements 209, 217, 218, 222 – 224; management of 208; and terminals 60, 63, 65; on Zoom 200 – 201; see also joint attention audiences 9, 49, 64, 69, 112, 114 authority: Amish 144; in crime case discussions 82; medical 176; over information 46; of terminals 73, 75

backstage 9, 74 – 75 beauty, standards of 122, 130, 131 – 132, 134 biomedicalization 5 Bitcoin 52, 56n14 bodies: stigmatized 4 – 5, 131; nude 48, 49 bodily actions 6 – 7, 269 boundary objects 7, 277 capitalism 1, 42, 43 – 44, 49, 53 cell phones see phones censorship 45, 49, 50, 52 centralization and decentralization, of content 42 – 46, 49 – 52 chat 9, 187, 188, 189, 189 – 194 China 4, 54n2 church-sect distinction 152 Citizens as Crime Investigators 83 coercive control 26 – 27, 28 collaboration: in Amish culture 144; in crime case communities 85; and digital cross-talk 11; in identity formation 9; with objects 3 commercialization 49, 50, 51 commodification 42, 43 – 44, 48 – 49, 51 communication: on Adobe Connect 187 – 194; decentralized 42; digital 1, 135; mediated 10 – 11; monitored 25 – 26; peer-to-peer 44, 47, 52, 53; on Zoom 194 – 200 communities: Amish 143 – 144, 151; crime case 85, 97; hobbyist 51; online 9 – 10; straightedge 111 – 112; and technology 279

Subject Index  291 Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) 10 computers: in Amish communities 148; logic of 59; see also human-computer interaction (HCI) conspiracy theories 43, 44, 46 construction: of identity 3, 114; of perception 252; of reality 3 construction (business), Amish participation in 147 – 148 constructivism 8, 278 context collapse 9, 114 control see coercive control; corporate control; information control conversation 84, 96, 243 Conversation Analysis (CA) 10, 176, 184, 231, 234; see also Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA) corporate control 42 – 43, 44 – 46, 49 – 51, 52 – 54 creativity, human 12, 149, 278 crime case communities 85, 97 cross-talk 11 cursor movements: as gestures 209 – 210; multimodal analysis of 212 – 222; types of 223 – 224 decentralization see centralization and decentralization deep acting 73 – 74 defensive structuring 151 dehumanization 59 – 60 democracy 4, 43, 45 desirability, of Grindr users 123, 132, 134 determinism 3, 185, 277 – 278 digital coercive control 26 – 27 digital media technologies, used in intimate partner violence 25 – 27, 28 – 37 digitization, of society 1, 243, 277 – 278 doctor-patient interaction 159 – 162, 175 – 177; see also landline calls domestic violence see intimate partner violence “do NOT reply” 77, 77 dramaturgy 9 economic exchange, Amish rules regarding 143 electricity: Amish use of 140, 150 – 151; as socio-technical network 8

electronic media 4 email, as form of terminal violence 63 – 64, 65, 65, 66, 67, 72 – 73 embodiment 4 – 5, 250, 253, 255, 262, 267, 269 emotional violence 69 emotions 4, 64, 66, 68 – 69, 72 – 74 environments see material environments; online environments; virtual environments ethnography 9, 89 – 90, 106, 281 – 282 ethnomethodological interaction analysis 6, 281 ethnomethodology 4 – 5, 84 – 85, 96, 159 – 160, 281 Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA) 159 – 160, 233 – 234 everyday life 1 – 2, 36, 59, 101, 184, 202, 277 – 278 Facebook 45, 49, 62 – 63 face-to-face interaction 4, 61, 143, 159, 231, 245 face-to-screen encounters 245 face walls 194 – 195, 195, 196, 196 – 197, 200, 201 facework 9 fake news 43 – 44, 45, 46 filter bubbles 43 – 44 Flashback 82, 83, 86, 89, 90 – 91 fractured ecologies 186, 207 frontstage 9 gaming see multiplayer online video games gay culture 123 – 124 gay spaces 119 – 121 gentrification 119 geo-location-based dating apps 119, 134; see also Grindr Geser, Hans 233 Giles, David 107 Goffman, Erving: on face-to-face interaction 231; on frames 112; on identity 9; on lecturing 185; on self/other boundaries 29; on situational boundaries 186; on stigma 119 – 120, 121, 125, 131, 132 – 134 Grindr 119, 133 – 135; as gay space 120 – 121; and normative erotic social order 121 – 125; and stigma management 125 – 133

292  Subject Index hardcore (music) 102, 109, 109, 111, 112, 113 hashtags 104 – 106, 108, 108, 109, 111 – 113, 113, 114 – 115 HIV status, stigmatization based on 129 hobbyism, online 42, 46, 48, 49 – 50, 51 – 52 Horse Progress Days 149 human-computer interaction (HCI) 232 – 234, 244 human nature 60, 61, 64, 68, 69 human uniqueness 60, 64 hypermodernity 63, 68 – 69 identity: community 279; online 8 – 9; sexual 120, 132; subcultural 102, 106 – 114; “victim” 30, 38 – 39 identity presentation, on Instagram 106 – 107, 109, 110, 110 – 111, 112, 113, 113 – 114 impression management   122 – 123, 129, 132 – 133 industrialization 3, 149 – 150, 278 Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change (Blumer) 3 inequality (socio-economic) 1 information control 9, 23, 42, 45, 47, 120, 125 – 129 information technologies 3 – 4 infra-humanization 59 – 61, 62, 63, 66, 68, 75, 77 – 78 infrastructures 107 – 109 Instagram 49, 55n13, 101 – 102, 103 – 106, 107 – 109, 110, 110 – 115 IntAkt (Interaction and Architecture) 181 interaction: asymmetrical 207; asynchronous 86; classroom 184 – 185; doctor-patient 159 – 162; face-to-face 4, 61, 143, 159, 231, 245; humancomputer 232 – 234, 244; non-institutional 42; social 2 – 5; video-mediated 191, 208; see also architecture-for-interaction interactionist scholarship 2 – 11, 277 – 283; on community and identity 99; on medical encounters 59; on negotiated order 141 – 142; on power and control 23; on practices and technology 157; on social media 101 – 102 interaction orders 101

internet 8 – 11, 42 – 43, 49 interoperability 8, 52 interpretation, of technology 3, 61, 144 – 145, 232, 278 intersubjectivity 7, 91, 111 intertwining, of material world and social selves 3 – 4 intimate partner violence, use of digital media technology in 25 – 27, 28 – 37 involvement magnets, phones as 33, 38 involvement shields, phones as 29, 33, 38 job boards 234, 235, 235 – 236, 244, 245 joint action 7, 142, 277 joint attention 207, 209, 222, 223 landline calls 160, 162; received while a doctor listens 167 – 175; received while a doctor speaks 162 – 167 legacy media 44, 52 – 53 marginalized groups 52, 119, 123, 134, 135 marketization 42, 48, 49, 53 masculinity 129 material environments 4 – 5 materiality 2, 186 meaning making 3, 6, 115, 141, 159, 232, 278 media see electronic media; legacy media; social media mediated communication 10 – 11 medical authority 176 medical encounters 159; see also doctor-patient interaction Membership Category Analysis (MCA) 11 metapictures, in Instagram 105, 105, 109, 109 misinformation 43, 46, 53 mobile phones see phones moderation, of online content 49, 51, 54, 83 monetization, of online content 46, 49, 51, 54 moralizations, of social media users 107 moral panics 42 – 49, 52 – 53 multiactivity 160 multimodality 115, 176, 187, 210, 212, 253 multiplayer online video games: ethnographic research on 10;

Subject Index  293 virtual environments in 207, 209; see also cursor movements multisensorial perception 253, 270 mutual visibility, in video-mediated environments 201, 209 narrative captioning 111 negotiated order 141 – 142, 143, 144, 145 – 147, 149 – 150, 151 – 152 New Iowa School of Sociology 4, 282 news 44, 45, 46 – 47, 53 nude culture 48, 50 – 52 nude photos 45, 47 – 48, 51, 54n3, 123, 126 object-centred sequences 251 – 252 object engagement 2 – 3, 5; see also positioning for object scanning Obsolescence of Human Beings (Anders) 59 Old Order Amish Church 140, 147 online chat 9, 187, 188, 188, 189, 189 – 194 online communities 9 – 10 online environments 9, 133 – 134 online gaming see multiplayer online video games ordinal citizenship 1 Ordnung 143 – 144, 146, 147 – 148, 149 patients (medical) 72; see also doctor-patient interaction peer-to-peer communication 44, 47, 52, 53 phenomenology 4 – 5 phones: Amish use of 147 – 148; and copresence 11, 160 – 161; as involvement magnets 33, 38; as involvement shields 29, 33, 38; as tools for abuse perpetrators 30, 32, 36; as tools for abuse vicitms 31, 32 – 33, 35 – 36; see also landline calls; smartphone tooling photographic evidence of abuse 32 – 33, 35 photo-sharing: on Grindr 125 – 127, 127, 127 – 129, 130 – 132; on Instagram 104, 105, 107 – 108, 110 – 111; see also metapictures; nude photos phygital highlighting 208 polyexponation 196 – 197 positioning for object scanning 250 – 251, 253 – 254; see also scanning power relations 3, 23 – 24, 278 – 279

power structures 46, 47, 53 preferred responses 183 – 184 privacy 75 Promethean shame 64 public administration, studies of 231 Public Employment Service (Germany) 234 Queen of the North 6 queer culture 120, 123 question-answer sequences 183 – 184; on Adobe Connect 192 – 194; in lecture halls 184 – 185; on Zoom 198 – 200 racism, in queer culture 123 Reddit 51 scanning 250 – 251, 254 – 255, 268 – 271; chicken cold cuts 255 – 258; milk 263 – 268; mozzarella 259 – 262 science and technology studies (STS) 278 search engines 234 sectarianism 151 – 152 Seeing AI 254, 255, 263 self: exaggerated online performances of 113 – 114; hypermodern 63; interactionist ideas about 8 – 9 selfies 11, 110 – 111 self-monitoring, on Zoom 200 self-presentation, on Grindr 121, 124, 132 self-service public administration 231, 234, 243 – 244, 245 sex panics 45 – 46, 47, 48 – 49 sexting 44 – 45, 47 sex trafficking 45, 48 sexual capital, on Grindr 122 – 123, 127, 128 – 129, 132, 133, 134 sexual content 44 – 46, 47 – 49, 49 – 52, 54n3, 55n6 sex work 49, 51, 55n10 silence during question-answer sequences: on Adobe Connect 192 – 194; in lecture halls 185; on Zoom 200 smartphones see phones smartphone tooling 250, 251, 269 social agency 202, 280 social arenas 7, 277 social constructivism 7 – 8, 278 social media 9, 30 – 31, 101 – 102, 107; see also Facebook; Grindr; Instagram; Reddit; Twitter; “Web 2.0”

294  Subject Index social order 96 – 97, 141 – 142; see also negotiated order social structures 3 – 4, 23, 141 social worlds 7 sociation 101 society, impact of technologies on 1 – 5 sociocultural tension 151 – 152 socio-technical networks 8 solicitations overload 62 – 64 stigma management techniques: information control 125 – 129; passing and covering 129 – 132 straightedge subculture: history of 102 – 103; Instagram captioning 111; Instagram hashtags 108, 108, 108 – 109, 111 – 112, 113, 113 – 114; visual presentations 110, 110 – 111 street-level bureaucrats (SLB) 230 summarising posts: ethnomethodology of 83 – 86, 94 – 97; payoffs of 93 – 94; purposes of 87 – 89; requests for 86 – 87; vulnerabilities of 91 – 93 surgeons 2 surveillance 1 – 2, 74 – 75 symbolic interactionism (SI) 3 – 4, 83, 141 – 142, 232, 277, 278 technological systems, social construction of 7 – 8 technologies: digital 1 – 2, 39, 277 – 278; information 3 – 4; interpretation of 3, 61, 144 – 145, 232, 278; lived experience of 2; makeshift 2; non-dualistic view of 6; panics over 46, 53; and social action 1 – 8, 279; and social change 3 – 4, 277 – 278 technology-facilitated coercive control 27 telephones see phones terminals 59; digital labor exploitation 69 – 75; infra-humanizing violence of 59 – 62, 77 – 78; ontological

disruption 75 – 76; silencing 77; solicitations overload 62 – 64; urgency enforcement 65 – 68; visibility enforcement 68 – 69 text messages: and coercive control 36; and exclusive digital cross-talk 11; as unwanted solicitation 65, 65 tooling 251, 252, 268; see also smartphone tooling trouble marking 236 Twitter 49, 107, 111 – 112 urgency, tyranny of 67 – 68 User Representation 209 verbal turn-taking, studies on 187 “victim” identity 30, 38 – 39 videoconferencing platforms see Adobe Connect; Zoom video games see multiplayer online video games video-mediated interaction 191, 208 viral content 9, 62 virtual environments, in video games 207, 209 visibility, tyranny of 68 – 69 visual competencies 269 – 270 visual culture, Instagram as 101 visually impaired people (VIPs), embodied actions of 269 – 271 visual sociology 280 “Web 2.0” 49, 101, 115 webcams: for videoconferencing 194 – 195, 195, 195 – 196; for video games 208, 210 “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up” (Stone) 8 workplaces, enforced visibility in 68 – 69 workplace studies 6 – 7, 232, 233 – 234 Zoom 13, 183, 187, 194 – 195, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202