Negotiating the meeting space through laughter: the case of hybrid audio-only versus video-mediated meetings
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Elina Salomaa
,
Julie Janssens
Abstract
This article explores how laughter is used in hybrid meetings to negotiate the shared meeting space between local and remote participants. We compare two datasets from organizations that use Microsoft Teams for either video-mediated interaction or audio-only interaction. By drawing on multimodal conversation analysis, we show how meeting participants initiate laughter either at or with the remote participant, thus subtly moving between multiple interactional spaces and shaping the participation framework of the meeting. By making the remote participant’s behavior or lack thereof (i.e. silence) noticeable and laughable, the participants collectively work to re-establish the shared meeting space. The study thus contributes to the discussion of the implications of visibility (or lack thereof) in hybrid audio-only and video-mediated meetings.
Funding source: Research Council of Finland
Award Identifier / Grant number: 322733
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Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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Research funding: This work was supported by the Research Council of Finland (project number 322733).
Conventions for transcribing talk, based on Jefferson (2004).
| Convention | Explanation |
|---|---|
| (.), (1.0) | A dot between brackets indicates just a noticeable pause, while a number reflects the duration of a longer pause in seconds. |
| ↑ | An upwards arrow indicates a noticeable pitch rise. |
| , ? . | General punctuation markers indicate ‘the usual’ intonation of a declarative sentence or a question. |
| word, WORD | Underlined sounds are emphasized, capitalized sounds are even louder. |
| °word° | Sounds between “degree signs” are quiet. |
| (---), (word) | Unclear talk is put between round brackets, with horizontal lines indicating the length of the stretch of unclear talk. Words between round brackets indicate a guess at what might have been said. |
| w(h)ord | An h between round brackets indicates laughter within words. |
| £word£ | Words between pound signs are entirely pronounced with a “laughing” voice. |
| he, heh, ha, hah, eh, hu | Laughter, approximating the specific way the laughter sounds. |
| .hh, h. | Audible in-breath or out-breath, with the number of h’s depicting the length of the breathing sound. |
|
A: word=
B: =word |
Latching, indicating that there is no discernible pause between two subsequent turns. |
| wor- | A dash indicates that a word is cut off. |
| wo::rd | Colons indicate a lenghtening of the preceding sound, with the number of colons representing the length of the sound. |
|
A: word [word
B: [word |
Square brackets aligned across subsequent lines indicate the start of an overlap. |
Conventions for transcribing multimodality, based on Mondada (2018).
| Convention | Explanation |
|---|---|
|
+word word word+
+pointing------+ |
Descriptions of embodied actions are delimited between two identical symbols (if possible, one symbol per participant) and are synchronized with corresponding stretches of talk. Multimodal transcription lines are displayed below the corresponding verbal transcription lines. |
| --- | Actions’s apex is reached and maintained. |
|
*->
->* |
The action described continues across subsequent lines until the same symbol is reached. |
| >> | The action described begins before the excerpt’s beginning. |
| ->> | The action described continues after the excerpt’s end. |
| j | The participant doing the embodied action is identified via their initial in lower case. |
|
#
#fig |
The exact moment at which a screenshot has been taken is indicated with a sign (#) showing its position within the turn. |
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