Watching Together: Integrating Conversation with Video

Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts, 2008

The focus of this article is the link between video sharing and interpersonal communication on the internet. Previous works on social television systems belong to two categories: 1) studies on how collocated groups of viewers socialize while watching TV, and 2) studies on novel Social TV applications (e.g. experimental setups) and devices (e.g. ambient displays) that provide technological support for TV sociability over a distance. The main shortcoming of those studies is that they have not considered the dominant contemporary method of Social TV. Early adopters of technology have been watching and sharing video online. We employed cultural probes in order to gain in-depth information about the social aspect of video sharing on the internet. Our sample consisted of six heavy users of internet video, watching an average of at least one hour of internet video a day. In particular, we explored how they are integrating video into their daily social communication practices. We found that internet video is shared and discussed with distant friends. Moreover, the results of the study indicate several opportunities and threats for the development of integrated mass and interpersonal communication applications and services.

Canadian Journal of Communication, 2012

Video communication conducted online — online videos, video calls, and videoconferencing — is quickly becoming a fixture in the everyday lives of many Canadians. We conducted a case study of residents of a small Canadian city, exploring their use of video communication to maintain social relationships. Our study indicates high levels of acceptance for communicating using video with others at a geographical distance, especially where there is a cost savings, a close personal relationship between participants, and a need to “show” objects or expressions. Concern about privacy restrains more frequent use. The discussion considers these findings in the context of public sphere theory and the potential for online video communications to be a special kind of place for people to meet and socialize with others.La communication vidéo en ligne – appels vidéo, visioconférences, vidéos affichés en ligne – est rapidement en train de devenir une habitude dans la vie quotidienne de nombreux Canadi...

Drawing on literature on interaction and participation in computer-mediated communication (CMC) and video-mediated communication (VMC), this study explores cross-modal exchanges with regards to participation in public video chats. By cross-modal, we wish to characterize interactions in which the production modality is different from the interlocutor's feedback modality, in the same communicative event and in synchronous fashion. Early research on recreational text-based CMC, especially Internet Relay Chat (IRC), has shown that initiating and maintaining interactions with strangers can be challenging. Our observations indicate that public video chats not only present these same challenges, but also that the availability of video and audio adds yet another level of complexity to issues of participation. Based on synchronous and naturally occurring interactions from public Google Hangouts, our analysis indicates that cross-modal exchanges are a means for participation mobility. Furthermore, this analysis brings attention to issues of visibility and noticeability in video chats.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014

Evaluating online discussions is a complex task for educators. Information systems may support instructors and course designers to assess the quality of an asynchronous online discussion tool. Interactivity on a human-tohuman, human-to-computer or human-to-content level are focal elements of such quality assessment. Nevertheless existing indicators used to measure interactivity oftentimes rely on manual data collection. One major contribution of this paper is an updated overview about indicators which are ready for automatic data collection and processing. Following a design science research approach we introduce measures for a consumer side of interactivity and contrast them with a producer's perspective. For this purpose we contrast two ratio measures 'viewed posts prior to a statement' and 'viewed posts after a statement' created by a student. In order to evaluate these indicators, we apply them to Pinio, an innovative asynchronous video discussion tool, used in a virtual seminar.

In this chapter, I analyze computer-mediated communication in the form of online, synchronous, professional discourse in the multimodal video conference environment with the aim of assessing social co-presence (Kang, Watt & Ala., 2008). I argue for the applicability of discourse analysis methodology by presenting extracts of video conference communication which illustrate how talk-in-interaction contributes to or threatens the three elements of social co-presence: co-presence, social richness of the medium, and interactant satisfaction. Examples of interaction illustrate how disruptions in mediation serve to threaten co-presence by isolating interlocutors, how multiple modes of communication are exploited to ground participants in a shared communicative environment thereby establishing social connectedness, and how multimodal communication allows for iconic or paralinguistic support of the discursive expression of emotional stance. The chapter concludes with feature recommendations for video conference software development from the perspective of social co-presence.

The Internet and Higher Education, 2012

Online learning has become a reality for many students in higher education. Unfortunately, something that has also become a reality is a sense of isolation in online courses, and Moore (1980) has warned that students' sense of distance can threaten their ability to learn. The community of inquiry framework (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) has provided insight into ways that online interactions can improve students' and instructors' social presence and learning. Emerging video technologies may be able to improve these interactions and thus more easily support the development of communities of inquiry. In this study we interviewed students in three distinct courses using different video-based instructional strategies. A large majority of students indicated feeling that the video-based communication made their instructors seem more real, present, and familiar, and that these relationships were similar to face-to-face instruction. Video communication impacted students' social presence in similar ways, although to a lesser degree than they believed it impacted instructor social presence. We conclude with discussion for future research and practice.

Proceeding of the 1st …, 2008

With the advent of video-on-demand services and digital video recorders, the way in which we consume media is undergoing a fundamental change. People today are less likely to watch shows at the same time, let alone the same place. As a result, television viewing, which was once a social activity, has been reduced to a passive and isolated experience. To study this issue, we developed a system called Collabo-raTV and demonstrated its ability to support the communal viewing experience through a month-long field study. Our study shows that users understand and appreciate the utility of asynchronous interaction, are enthusiastic about Collabo-raTV's engaging social communication primitives and value implicit show recommendations from friends. Our results both provide a compelling demonstration of a social television system and raise new challenges for social television communication modalities.

Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work - GROUP '01, 2001

We present two experimental studies examining the effects of videoconferencing and application sharing on task performance. We studied performance on a cognitive reasoning task while subjects were observed via two-way video, one-way video and application sharing. Results demonstrate that performance is impaired when subjects are observed via media compared to when they are not observed. Surprisingly, we found no significant difference in awareness of the observer's presence between the application sharing and the two-way video conditions. This is surprising because application sharing lacks visual feedback of the observer. This finding contradicts social presence theory which claims that media which provides visual feedback of others produce the greatest sense of social presence. Our data also show that media use heightens the perception of task difficulty. We extend social presence theory and argue that these social effects need to be considered in the design and deployment of video and application sharing technologies for use in the workplace.

Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international conference on Multimedia - MULTIMEDIA '05, 2005

Studies of video conferencing systems generally focus on scenarios where users communicate using an audio channel. However, text chat serves users in a wide variety of contexts, and is commonly included in multimedia conferencing systems as a complement to the audio channel. This paper introduces a prototype application which integrates video and text communication, and describes a formative evaluation of the prototype with 53 users in a social setting. We focus the evaluation on bandwidth and view navigation requirements in order to determine how to better serve users with video chat, and discuss how the findings from this evaluation can inform the design of future video chat applications. Bandwidth requirements are evaluated through user perceptions of video delivered using three different bandwidth schemes. For view navigation, we examine a system that automatically switches the video focus to the current "chatter", instead of requiring users to navigate manually to find the video steam they are interested in viewing.

2013

Teenagers are increasingly using video chat systems to communicate with others, however, little research has been conducted to explore how and why they use the technology. To better understand this design space, we present the results of a study of twenty teenagers and their use of video chat systems such as Skype, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts. Our results show that video chat plays an important role in helping teenagers socialize with their friends after school and on weekends where it allows them to see emotional reactions and participate in activities like shared homework sessions, show and tell, and performances over distance. Yet video chat is also used to engage in more private activities such as gossiping, flirting, and even the viewing of sexual acts. This presents an interesting design challenge of supporting teen use of video chat while mitigating privacy and parental concerns.