Two-dimensional Communication

Early work in communication studies found that the medium of communication had large effects on different types of messaging. Actors in communication through written form had difficulties negotiating shared meaning. Actors in a dialogue in a face-to-face setting were able to read anger, happiness, frustration, and other attitudinal states. They knew when each other were finishing their speech acts and awaiting a response. Actors in audio-only mediated channels felt the need to repeat speech acts in order to assure understanding of the other part; one effect was the tendency for speakers to talk over one another, because they were stripped of visual cues about whether one speaker was ready to relinquish the floor. Actors in video and audio communication feel in-between the face-to-face and audio-only channel.

This literature comes to mind in these days filled with teleconferencing calls, remote learning, and large meetings of staff on video conferencing systems. We’re all struggling with new types of etiquette required in a setting when everyone in the meeting sees a head shot of each other. The medium requires more structure – it’s good to have a designated leader. It’s wise to ask people to raise their hand when they want to speak. In a large group, the chat space function is useful to keep track of desires to contribute to the discussion, but it requires discipline to recognize those contributions.

Two dimensional visual images of actors lose information as they become smaller in meetings with many participants. (Small laptop screens don’t help this problem.) It’s harder to read emotional states. It’s more difficult to know whether someone wants to speak. Disagreements can’t be visualized as easily. It’s more work to communicate. (Some people report that these communication acts are more fatiguing.)

Many at Georgetown have spent scores of hours on Zoom over the past two weeks. Classes are using the technology for lectures in larger and discussions in small seminars. Administrators are in meetings nonstop attempting to support faculty and staff in their mutual work.

With many organizations strongly encouraging or demanding that staff telework, however, there is a more positive way to view our lives on Zoom. It can be a tool to replace the casual conversations that occur over the coffee pot or the water cooler. Those are the conversations about family and social activities and news worthy events. They don’t directly increase productivity, but they clearly do so indirectly. With many people working by themselves at home, we’re missing those encounters. Workers at home alone can be enriched with some functional equivalent of the water cooler chat.

It’s good to see the image, albeit two-dimensional, of a co-worker on a Zoom call. It’s good to spend just a moment, before jumping into the business at hand, to simulate the water cooler conversation. It’s good to make jokes about the unusual moments we are jointly experiencing in this pandemic. It’s good to make jokes about anything.

The research literature is clear that communication about attitudinal states is weak outside the face-to-face mode. It follows that emotional support is weakened. To counteract that, we need to bring it explicitly into the conversation within our teleconferencing. Working alone can be lonely. We need to renew our bonds explicitly in these videoconferencing sessions. It’s fun and it makes us better teams.