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Smartphones and Face‐to‐Face Interaction: Digital Cross‐Talk During Encounters in Everyday Life
Author(s) -
Ictech Brad
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1002/symb.406
Subject(s) - face to face , face (sociological concept) , face to face interaction , process (computing) , psychology , focus (optics) , computer science , everyday life , human–computer interaction , social psychology , sociology , communication , epistemology , social science , philosophy , physics , optics , operating system
Using data collected from focus groups and nonparticipant observations, this article explores how and why cross‐talk by way of smartphone affects face‐to‐face encounters. The findings show there are three types of digital cross‐talk: exclusive, semi‐exclusive, and collaborative. Furthermore, it was found that digital cross‐talk can either facilitate or disrupt the expressive order of an encounter. Semi‐exclusive and collaborative digital cross‐talk were found to facilitate encounters. Exclusive digital cross‐talk was found to disrupt or have little influence on encounters, depending on whether or not interlocutors successfully engaged in a corrective process, an avoidance process, or aggressive face‐work.