Ethnography of Video Calls, Through Video Calls (4/n)
Because the shift from Physical to Virtual has had a larger impact than just through new behaviours and interactions.
Let’s call this Part 4, where I talk about some of the larger impacts of the shift from Physical to Virtual, where multiple private physical spaces of participants in a video call co-exist virtually.
Lets’ do a quick recap, shall we?
My objective is to study the coexistence of private physical spaces in the shared virtual space of Video Calls. I write about my motivation and objective in detail in Part 1 of the series.
For this remote ethnographic study, I deploy the methods of Participant Observation, Observation and Interviews. I am a part of the field I want to research, and thus I adopt a reflexive view of ethnography. I talk about my positionality, methods and peculiarity of this fieldwork in Part 2 of the series .
Meet Vibhor, Ria and their friends in the ethnographic narratives I write based my fieldwork. I use these narratives to stage my thematic insights in Part 3 of the series, where also I talk about the new behaviours they have adopted.
Phew. Let’s start this one then, with a story about Rohan to talk about the disproportionate ideas of disclosure in these virtual spaces.
Rohan, and his idea of “disclosure.”
Rohan is also a final year student at a Technical Institute in Delhi, and he likes to be with himself. His friends refer to him as introverted- friends who are not few in number, and friends who are not close to him either. While in college, Rohan tried to minimize social interactions when not having the energy to interact with people by adopting routes that did not involve passing by the canteen and other hotspots of interactions. With the shift to virtual, he no longer needs to do this and relies solely on short exchanges of texts to talk with people. He does not attend most of the video calls that are planned.
In the few ones that he joins, he only opens his camera after everyone else has opened it, and that too on rare occasions. Rohan recalls that the first person to turn their video on has their face all over people’s screen, and he does not want that kind of attention. Aditya, the common friend between Rohan and Ria, knows this, and thus opens his video first on every call, knowing that it will encourage others to do it as well. His gesture is reciprocated frequently, but not always. Rohan usually attends only the video calls with the larger number of members, so that he can get away with not turning on his audio and video. He does not join calls for leisure and limits himself to calls with a purpose.
Rohan is very conscious of the sounds that can go in the shared virtual space- he says that he feels uncomfortable when the sounds of his chair and phone vibrations enter the shared space. He attributes this to feeling more conscious of sounds and sights at his end. He mutes his mic as an act of politeness and mutual respect for the others in the space. He feels that he gets too much attention in this virtual space, an attention that he feels is unwarranted.
He says that everyone is visible and audible equally, and thus when anyone speaks, the attention of the entire group falls on them. He finds it difficult to interrupt people in these virtual spaces, as he feels he ends up talking over them due to technical delays. He cannot modulate his volume down on other people’s devices and feels his volume may come off as rude.
In the in-person conversation, Rohan says it was easier to get involved; in the virtual spaces, he often goes silent and says no one notices it. He also locks his door while in calls saying that he does not want his family to listen. Rohan is particular about turning his video on; he does not want people who are not his friends to know what his room looks like. He says that people don’t normally walk into his room, and he does not want that virtually as well.
Rohan talks about the idea of self-disclosure and social anxiety in these shared virtual spaces. He does not like to be one disclosing his private physical space first and remains guarded about it. Only after the majority in the call have disclosed the same amount of information about their spaces will he start to disclose.
This behaviour is not unique to Rohan; all participants joined the calls with zero disclosure, and one person had to take the initiative to disclose first. This was also true for the one-to-one interviews, where I had informed the participant prior that the videos would be turned on. This first disclosure happens in a spotlight and is brought into everyone’s attention, inducing a reciprocative response.
With an elevated sense of consciousness about the sights and sounds of his room, Rohan experiences more stress than he would in an in-person conversation, he is anxious at the prospect of the mic picking the sounds of his phone and taps. Thus, with this increased anxiety, the amount and frequency of control that Rohan undertakes are much more than his other friends.
An already introverted Rohan gets lost in these shared spaces, a loss he says that he does not mind, but a loss that excludes him from the conversation nevertheless.
This social exclusion is not just limited to people like Rohan, who feel anxious. This exclusion also happens as a result of the “materiality” of these virtual spaces.
The Materiality of the Virtual Spaces
What is “materiality”?
Physical properties of an artifact that have a consequence on how it is used. For physical objects, this is easy to imagine: pots, pans, tables, coffins, phones; they all have physical properties- shapes, sizes, weights. We can also think of them in terms of the materials they are built with- wood, steel, metal, plastic etc. etc. These dictate how they are used.
But what about the “virtual” or the “digital”?
Well, the virtual and the digital seem intangible. You cannot touch them, see them, feel them. It seems that they do not exist through materials. However, virtual and digital are also material. It is certainly not the most intuitive deduction. But I will try to briefly explain one aspect of this this.
The virtual exists on physical infrastructure. Your devices, your internet routers, servers, wires- things which are all material. Thus, the virtual gets the material properties of this infrastructure. It can break, if this infrastructure breaks. It can only occupy as much “space” as the devices allow. Your cloud storage can break if this infrastructure breaks. People lose access to virtual spaces if their internet collapses.
In video calls, these shared virtual spaces exist on technological artefacts and have been made possible through infrastructure. The participants try to make the coexistence in the shared virtual space harmonious, through extra steps in interacting and through controls. Controls on the device are done by restricting the camera and the microphone. Controls off the device are done in their physical space.
However, the materiality of their video streams is a factor beyond their control. When the internet connection breaks, so do the videos and audios of the participants. An interviewee said that it could become difficult to talk in video calls because the other person's audio often fades away, is accompanied by noise, sounds jittery, or breaks away- for both short and long periods. The person's video also freezes, often in the middle of the speech, leaving a hazy, blurry portrait. The sender does not realise this early, and parts of the conversations are lost in this breaking of video calls.
During this time, the sender often continues speaking, not knowing they are not getting heard, and the receivers try to make sense of the speech. If this fails, they try to alert the speaker, through verbal interjections- which often result in confusing cross talk, or through text- on the software application chat, or a private WhatsApp message.
For introverts like Rohan, this materiality can act as a silencer; if the audio breaks, he becomes too anxious, dismisses his words and reduces his participation in the shared virtual space.
People thus lose out on time, harmony, their thoughts and continuity. Some exit and rejoin, and some change their internet connection from Wifi to Mobile Data. Once this is fixed, there is a cycle of restarting the conversation- negotiating what was the point in contention, what was missed and what needs to be repeated.
These connection issues resulting from the materiality of this virtual space result in a significant conflict that happens in the virtual space, a conflict that no one is happy about, and that no one can control as well.
As we move start using the virtual spaces more and more, we experience an increased stress and need to be tolerant to the materiality of the virtual. This is an issue, that unlike most other conflicts, cannot be harmonised on the end of the participants, and still has the potential to stress and on occasion, silence them.
The privileged would have uninterrupted internet connections, faster processing devices, physical spaces free of noise and possibly, separate workspaces. For them, their socio-economic positions work out. But what about the ones who are left out? It is through discourse and consciousness we can mitigate the effects of the materiality for them. I think sometime in the future with more research, I’ll write more about this.
I hope this part of my work provoked you to think about your experience and that of your peers. This is a step to be more empathetic to the fellow participants in the video call, and provide for more inclusive virtual spaces through individual action.
All illustrations are from unDraw, a great open-source illustration initiative!
In the next (and the final) piece of this work, I will reflect on my work and process, in the spirit of reflective ethnography. I’ll also shift some my focus to the academic front, where I’ll try to discuss the ideas of “constructing knowledge”. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it!
This series(!) is an adaptation of my mini-rapid-ethnography project for a course on Advanced Ethnographic Research Methods, Monsoon 2020. I’m a final year undergraduate student at IIITD, trying to make my video calls more inclusive, where everyone gets to be heard. Say hello to me on LinkedIn!
