The popularity of video conferencing during a pandemic, has made one such product name, “Zoom,” synonymous with using online video of people’s faces while talking in groups. The ubiquity of Zoom in everyday life now opens up a whole new social platform within which we can socially navigate. Zoom may be new, but a large body of sociological work can help us better understand what we are currently seeing and experiencing in our online communications. That work includes small groups research, symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, and research on computer-mediated-communications. Observations from these diverse perspectives apply not only to Zoom but other Zoom-like video conferencing systems such as Google Duo, GoToMeeting, Netmeeting, Skype, WebEx and the new Facebook Video Chat.
Recently on The Society Pages, Erika Sanborne listed reasons why our lives as teachers of Zoom-based classes have become much more stressful during the pandemic. She notes that the research on perception suggests that teaching a Zoom-based class produces a huge amount of sensory overload, a high level of interpersonal intensity, and personal vulnerability. She convinced me, but I also wonder if looking at Zoom-based groups more sociologically as a system of interactions might find many more tensions.
One thing that comes to mind is non-verbal communication. What if a loss of visual cues in Zoom meetings makes running a class more challenging? I have not tried Zoom teaching, but from personal experience I know that Zoom in other contexts, e.g., work group and friendship meetings, suffers from loss of nonverbal cues like posture and subtle facial cues that require high resolution images.
The “looking-glass self,” a concept and phrase invented by the American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley, reflects how I feel when I see myself on my computer screen during a Zoom meeting. Embedded in the phrase “looking-glass self” is the bit of truth that our sense of self grows from seeing ourselves from others’ viewpoints. When we are sitting in a Zoom meeting with a small group, not only do we stare at the images of others, but we see ourselves in a “looking-glass” on a glass screen as well. The metaphor is even more real now then it was 120 years ago for Professor Cooley. No wonder this looking-glass metaphor went on to help create the symbolic interactionism movement within sociology.
About 50 years later, Erving Goffman introduced dramaturgical analysis, saying sociologists should view social situations as a stage where we play out our lives. In his first book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he shows how people need, like in theater, a “back stage” to rest up after being on the main “front stage,” of many everyday “performances.” The default Zoom screen places the speaker’s image in a huge frame on the screen, making the “stage” seem even scarier than the role of speaker in noncomputer, in-person interactions would suggest. No wonder some teachers find Zoom classes scary.
Erving Goffman also noted the importance of turn-taking in understanding conversations. He and many sociologists following him tried to map the complex conversational rules used in different types of small group settings. Effective group interaction depends heavily upon one’s ability to sense the best time to enter a conversation without disrupting the speaker but before another speaker takes away your chance to speak. This is hard for in-person groups, but it can be infinitely harder to do in Zoom groups.
Not only do Internet and phone lines cause video and audio to get jerky or sluggish, but slight delays in these messages make it harder to catch subtle vocal changes as well as a variety of other nonverbal cues in body language. From personal experience I find it much harder to break into the flow of Zoom-based friendship groups than naturally occurring in-person groups.
Although it is too early to find research on Zoom-based social interaction, over the past twenty-five years many studies have been done under the banner of computer-mediated-communication (CMC), which includes videoconferencing. Most CMC is not very relevant to all Zoom-based interaction because most of the studies only used problem-solving groups. I won’t recite all of the findings, but one finding that is intriguing in the context of Zoom is that individuals are less persuadable in CMC than in-person groups. That’s a two-edged sword. We don’t want to be gullible. On the other hand, we want to change our views in the face of well- grounded new information. This definitely is one of those MRN (more research needed) situations. We need to know if Zoom-based group interaction helps or hinders careful evaluation of new information.
If you are using Zoom to maintain social relations, e.g., friends and family, or to run meetings, e.g., work groups, board meetings or club meetings, keep in mind that Zoom makes it hard to have “side conversations.” Zoom does not allow for more than one person to speak at a time, which is not always bad. However, Zoom does let anyone to send a private text message to one or two others during the small group discussion. Often large in-person social gatherings have several conversations going at the same time, adding a lot to the variety and life to the event. The absence of vocal side conversations is one reason why you almost certainly will not use Zoom to throw a party.
The absence of normal side conversations makes compromise much more difficult in Zoom-based diplomatic meetings. Traditionally, inter-nation negotiations normally allow time between high level diplomatic meetings for individuals to informally explore options and try out hypothetical retreats from formal positions. According to an April 11, 2020 Economist article, “Zoom diplomacy” during the pandemic has slowed down decision making at the European Union, because face-to-face side meetings are no longer possible. Ironically, a pandemic creates an urgency for more and quicker decisions, but the reality of physical-distancing, and the inability to have normal side-meetings apart from the main Zoom meeting may lead to a major loss in group function.
Zoom, and video conferencing generally, in the early months of the pandemic has become an indispensable tool for collaboration of all types. While it seems like a whole new world, the deep thinking of sociological pioneers can help us understand our social interactions that occur in new technological settings. As this essay has suggested, sociologists will be among those studying the limitations, potential and impact of this new social vehicle for social interaction and group life.