Meta Communication in Virtual Social Work

In video mediated (as well as face-to-face) encounters between citizens and social workers the participants frequently put an ongoing activity on hold to make the communication itself the object of conversation. Such meta-communication may be used to clarify how the talk is to be understood and what is going on (Watzlawick et al., 1967: 42). In social work this practice has been used to evaluate the client’s contributions to the conversation, structure the talk, and select issues that need be given extra attention in the conversation (van Nijnatten, 2006). In this paper we aim to further this work by exploring how professionals use meta-communication in video mediated encounters with people in vulnerable positions.

Our theoretical foundation is ethnomethodology (EM) and our analytical approach conversation analysis (CA), particularly the recent developments in the application of CA to professionals' video mediated interaction (Nielsen et al., forth). CA has been shown to be a useful approach for exploring the details of social work practice and the communicative challenges professionals deal with in encounters with clients (Flinkfeldt et al., 2022). Our data have been collected in close collaboration with users and practitioners and include video recordings of social psychiatric recovery-orientated virtual meetings between citizens and professionals in a mental health service center. In this paper we present an excerpt from a video meeting between a social worker who participates from the center and a mentally vulnerable citizen participating via her iPad in her kitchen.

In our data we see meta-communication that deal with matters with respect to emotions, facts, and procedures relevant for the interaction. Specifically, we show how meta communication work to expose or thematize matters that might otherwise be hidden or tacit, but which are important for the participants' experience of presence and rapport in the video mediation. With respect to meta communication on emotion, we see the professionals use a certain type of meta communication, that we term “side sequences” (Jefferson, 1972) or “sidebars” to deal with the situation in an affiliating way.

In our work we show one of the strategies professionals use to deal with communicative challenges that arise during video mediated encounters in social work settings. In this paper we demonstrate how meta communication seem to be a crucial tool for practitioners empowering citizens to take control of their lives and navigate encounters with representatives for welfare institutions



References

Flinkfeldt, M., Iversen, C., Jørgensen, S. E., Monteiro, D., & Wilkins, D. (2022). Conversation analysis in social work research: a scoping review. Qualitative Social Work, 21(6), 1011-1042.

Jefferson, G. (1972). Side Sequences. In: D. Sudnow (ed). Studies in Social Interaction. New York: Free Press.

Nielsen, M.F., Due, B.L., Moberg, B.R., Landgrebe, J., Toft, T.L.W., & Nielsen, A.M.R. (forth). Revisiting presence as a situated space-place based practice in professionals' video-mediated encounters.

van Nijnatten, C. (2006). Meta-communication in institutional talks. Qualitative Social Work, 5(3): 333-349.

Watzlawik, P., Bavelas, J. B, Jackson, D. D. (1968). Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies and Paradoxes. London: Faber and Faber.