Case study: Ethnography of video calls, through video calls
A Snapshot of the Case Study
Video calls- probably the space where we spend most of our time meeting, chatting and interacting with folks these days. A rather paradigm shift from the physical to the virtual is interesting. The folks on the video calls do not just bring themselves, but their homes and surroundings as well.
When your family walks by during a video call, do you panic? Have you seen someone suddenly turning off their videos? Have you experienced someone muting themselves because their surroundings are too noisy? After observing these patterns for months, I decided to investigate ethnographically.
Video calls have brought together multiple “physical spaces” of the participants of the call to a common “virtual space”. My question?
How have social interactions changed in this virtual space? What are these new interactions? What are the adaptations? What’s its impact on people?
Scope of the Ethnographic Behavioural Investigation
Why Ethnography?
Ethnography is an excellent research method to deploy in a behavioural study where the people are already acquainted with the product to identify patterns of use and associated behaviours. At the onset of my research, the entire globe had shifted major operations to the virtual spaces and locked up the physical ones.
What about the Field?
Ah yes. The field here is a tricky one. The virtual space is a rather peculiar one because the ideas of physical spaces do not hold completely true.
- The field space of VCs is not something that exists permanently or is public. It is not someplace that I can shadow people in, and it is not someplace where people live.
- Rather, this space is set up on mutual agreement between the participants and is temporary. It does not exist before the interaction, and it does not exist after unless recorded.
Thus, I take up the peculiarity of the virtual field as a challenge. With remote user research becoming more prominent, I feel it is a great opportunity to tailor and deploy my research methods in a completely new context.
Who am I here?
I’m a student researcher, and I have been immersed in this shift for the past 9 months. During this time, I have adopted multiple roles, roles that I employ ahead in my methods. Academic roles include an active student, a passive student, a Teaching Assistant, a project lead, a co-worker. Social roles include a friend, a family member, a mediator for arguments and conflicts, an organiser of events and a friend of a friend in the video calls.
Who am I studying?
I recruit undergraduate students at a technical institute in Delhi.
- As an undergraduate student at the same institute, I have inhabited the same physical spaces for the past 3 years. I am undergoing similar institutional processes in the shift to virtual, thus having a deep understanding of the shift’s contexts.
- I have built a strong rapport with many informants here and have built strong and weak ties. I am an active participant in many social circles- circles that interact primarily through text, and on occasion, will set up video calls.
- To study private spaces in video calls, I feel that being a part of a close-knit community is essential to understanding their dynamics and thought processes and ensuring that my presence as a “stranger” is minimised.
Thus, as an ethnographer, I can have access and participate without causing discomfort in these student communities.
Who are the Participants?
My inquiry focuses on the virtual spaces manifested on laptop screens through software like Meet and Zoom. All the participants across calls were undergraduate students at a technical institute and came from similar socio-cultural backgrounds; lived in North India for the past 5 years or more and coming from upwardly mobile middle-class students families.
- Most of them have mid to upper range laptops and smartphones, which are powerful enough to support video calling applications, and have good cameras.
- They have access to largely uninterrupted and unrestricted high-speed internet.
- The participants are pursuing a technical education in computer science and related fields and thus have an active working knowledge and familiarity with technology.
- These participants now lived with their families and, in most cases, had a room for themselves or shared one with a sibling.
What Methods do I employ?
I employ the methods of observation, semi-structured interviews and participant observation for this study. Video calls are an opportunity where one can be an observer, as well as an active participant. Thus, I leverage this virtual space to enable a plurality of methods.
- For the calls where I had an intent to observe and participate for research, I let the participants on the Video Call (VC) know about this intention and report the observations after their verbal consent.
- Four interviews were taken one-on-one on a call with participants (M=3, F=1) who consented to grant me around 40 minutes of their time. The interviews were semi-structured, based on the themes of space, background, sounds, noise and family presence in VCs.
- For the conversations with groups of people of at least four, I adopt the method of observation and participatory observation. The former allows me to be a fly on the wall, and the latter allows me immersion in the classical ethnographic flavour.
During the interviews, I adopt the role of the interviewer and consciously try my best to diffuse the feelings of interrogation and intrusion by building rapport.
For this project, I write about my observations and participation for one week. However, I take the liberty of writing about my experiences before that period reflexively.
Find the full research methodology here!
Research Outcomes
Capturing a snapshot of lives through narratives
With the richness (and messiness) of information gathered through the multiple research methods, I stitched and triangulated insights as mini-stories of people interacting over video calls.
- The observations allow me to build the larger picture and form the framework for the narratives.
- The interviews allow me to draft content and character to the narratives.
- The participatory observation allows me to reflexively fill the finer gaps and details of the story using the insight and knowledge gained in the process.
Find the ethnographic narratives here!
Analysis of the Narratives
Thematic
The first step is to analyse the data thematically. While the interviews may have been semi-structured, the observations aren’t. Thematic analysis is my first step towards making sense of data.
Some Themes: Your Self, Your Physical Setting, Your Devices, Backgrounds, Sounds, Noise, Speech, Movement and Proximity
Behavioural Insights
Following the thematic analysis, I derive insights into people’s changed/new social behaviours over interactions. These provide me with some answers to my Research Question!
Going Beyond the Research Question
The stories of people’s virtual interactions aren’t limited to themes. I charted out more connections and folded the insights using anthropological ideas. Here, I try to go beyond the immediate findings to construct real in-depth themes that arc over people’s lives.
Some Themes: Disclosure, Anxiety, Materiality of Digital World, Silencing Effect, Stresses in virtual interactions
And it is here that I find the purpose in my ethnography. Find the thematic analysis here and larger implications here!
Impact
Informing the design of Video Call Technologies
I envision this work provoking insightful user research- around the ideas of presentation of self, power, attention, inequality, materiality, privacy and disclosure. These are real problems that people are experiencing, and this research work provides insight into them. This has implications for the design of video call tech because changes to these platforms will impact millions of users. It can make interaction happy or silence people to just a name on the screen.
How can we transform this into design inputs? Well, that I something I look forward to, through collaboration! One excellent strategy was the design of Virtual Backgrounds- so that participants no longer have to care how their backgrounds look like.
Coming Forth with Stories
After I posted these stories, 5 folks reached out to me to share their experiences over video calls and shared their resonance with the stories. This is now an attempt to make video calls more humane!
Reflective Learning
For me, this study was a transformative learning experience. Consciously studying the ideas of stresses, anxiety and disclosure over video calls has made me a much kinder, patient and generous person over video calls. I turn on my videos first, encourage participants to not fret over families walking in on them, and help folks recover their train of thought in case of network disconnects.
Find the Reflection and the Impact here!
Interesting?
This piece summarizes an extensive ethnographic behavioural research work.
Here’s the link to the first one. I promise it is a great read.
Hello, I’m a final year undergraduate student at IIITD, and I really hope this work piqued your curiosity as well. I hope this encourages you to make the virtual spaces around you heartwarming. Drop me your stories on LinkedIn!
