In this presentation, I focus on WhatsApp interactions in a specific institutional but hybrid setting, namely family-style group care, to showcase what microanalysis of digital interaction has to offer. In family-style group care, young people temporarily live in the family of professional fosterparents (PFP), while they regularly visit their birth parents (BPs). The data consist of instant messaging conversations between 11 pairs of PFPs and BPs during two months. Using Conversation Analysis (CA), we focused on the social interaction between BPs and PFPs, achieved in and through multimodally constructed sequences of updates-responses. Updates are used by BPs in the context of the transfer from the youngster from/to the PFP to display responsibility towards the PFP and for the youngster. Also, PFPs use updates to provide BPs quasi-primary access to the experiences of the youngster, centrally by sending images. Across these functions, we observe specific social actions of BPs and PFPs; while BPs work to display responsibility, PFPs subtly empower BPs as parents.
Wyke Stommel is an associate professor for Language and Communication at the Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University. Her research concerns spoken and (written/video) mediated communication using conversation analysis. Varying from video consultations in the medical domain to instant messaging in social care, remote video-based paramedical care for infants and interaction with robots my interest lies with how interactants achieve goals, construct identities and build relationships in unfolding interaction verbally and non-verbally. Regardless of the type of mediation, I am interested in how the technology is exploited by participants in the interaction. Together with others I developed the idea of “digital conversation analysis”, which sprang from the Microanalysis Of Online Data (MOOD) network. I have also written about methodological aspects of research, such as the ethics of research on digital/online data. I am an affiliate of Radboud iHub for Digitalisation and Society.
DiLCo Lecture Series 2022 aims to showcase cutting edge international research on digitally language and communication by both senior and younger researchers from across the world. We wish to present research that explores digital language and communication by drawing on key concepts and topics in socio-cultural linguistics, such as community, context, identity, mediated interaction, multimodality, and linguistic change. We particularly welcome presentations of innovative methods that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries.
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