YuTadic2020
| YuTadic2020 | |
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| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | YuTadic2020 |
| Author(s) | Di Yu, Nadja Tadic |
| Title | Narrating the visual: Projecting and accounting for actions in webinar Q&As |
| Editor(s) | Hansun Zhang Waring & Elizabeth Reddington |
| Tag(s) | EMCA |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury |
| Year | 2020 |
| Language | English |
| City | London, UK |
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| Book title | Communicating with the public: Conversation analytic studies. London |
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Abstract
Visual phenomena have long been a topic of interest in EMCA (ethnomethodology and conversation analysis) research (Goodwin, 2000; Nishizaka, 2011). The role of visual conduct as an interactional resource is particularly salient in technology-mediated contexts, where the “delicacy” of recognizing and coordinating gaze and gestures is often distorted and lost (Heath & Luff, 1993). In webinars in particular, participants not only lack visual access to each other but also, given their different participation roles (e.g., presenter, participant), are privileged with different levels of visual access to how the activities in the webinar are displayed on their computer screens. In this chapter, we examine how such asymmetrical visual access is consequential for organizing webinar talk and how participants use what is visible on their computer screens to manage Q&As. Based on 6 audio-recordings of informational webinars organized by a philanthropic foundation in the U.S., we show that the moderators or presenters narrate the visual as a type of verbal ‘pointing’ that orients the audience in various ways, such as accounting for transitioning to another task, projecting nomination, selecting the next speaker, foreshadowing closing, and highlighting potential technical difficulties in launching or implementing a question-answer sequence. The findings contribute to our understanding of the complexities entailed in managing multiparty question-answer sequences in technology-mediated contexts.
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