PhD Courses in Denmark

Technology and Social Interaction

PhD School at the Faculty of Humanities at University of Copenhagen

Date and time: 17-20 June 2025 from 9:00 to 16:00

People use technology in everyday life and on work for all sorts of purposes. And while technology gets smaller, easier to use, more convenient, etc. new forms of social interactions emerge. Technology is a vital part of most people’s lives. People use computers, smartphones, video-mediated formats, chats, etc. as key elements in their lives and in intertwined forms. In this PhD course, we do not put emphasis on any specific type of technology, and we do not go into depth with the technology itself. We focus on the methods for analysing human interaction as it naturally occurs in a context of technology by looking at people’s practices for using technology and interacting in a context of technology.   

This course focus on how to analyse video data collected through video ethnographic methods. The overall methodology is based on video ethnography (e.g. Heath, Hindmarsh, & Luff, 2010; Due, 2017) and multimodal conversation analysis (e.g. Goodwin, 2000; Streeck, Goodwin, & LeBaron, 2011; Mondada, 2014) in the ethnomethodological tradition (Rawls, 2008; Suchman, 2007) – often termed EM/CA. We briefly discuss this approach against related fields like Science and Technology Studies (STS), Actor-Network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) / Human Robot Interaction (HRI). However, the course will not be particularly theoretical, but very practical in relation to issues of doing analysis of video material and establishing novel findings.

The course focus on methodological issues concerning 1) Applying video ethnography and collecting video material in the field, 2) organizing and transcribing data and 3) analysing and discussing findings from the material. Thus, the course will be very hands on.        

It will lead up to the annual conference Multimodality Day. Students are encouraged to participate in this conference.

Academic Aim
On this course you will learn to:

•                  do a video ethnographic study and reflect on the methodological issues;

•                  analyse details of social interaction and meaning-making processes from a multimodal, embodied perspective;

•                  critically discuss the nature and role of technology in social interaction  

Target group
This course is for every PhD student who is interested in peoples use of technology, technology affordances, objects in interaction and social interaction, and who is using or want to use video ethnographic methodologies and employ detailed multimodal analysis of this material. Both Danish and foreign students are welcome. 

Course teachers
Brian Due, PhD, Associate Professor at Nordic Studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, is organizing and teaching on the course. Other guests will be invited for shorter presentations.

Programme
Day 1

  • Overview of the course and the theoretical landscape (part 1)
  • Student presentations
  • Issues of collecting video-data of technology-in-use 
  • Open Q&A session.

Day 2

  • Theoretical landscape (part 2)
  • Student papers
  • Issues of transcribing and analyzing
  • Issues of establishing findings and constructing arguments 

Day 3

  • Dive into particular themes of embodiment, epistemics, identity and technology
  • Lectures by invited professors
  • Data sessions

Day 4

Workshop and data sessions focusing on analysing own video data.

Registration
Please register via the link in the box no later than 10 June 2025.

Language: English

Teaching format and ECTS
The course is a 4-day workshop format. This provides for ECTS depending on paper presentation. The course is organized as short presentations from the teachers, workshops around video data (data sessions) and presentations from students. Students are expected to have some minimum level of understanding of ethnomethodology, interaction / conversation analysis and video ethnography. This can be achieved through the reading material as provided below.

All students are expected to do a presentation of their research project in the beginning of the course. If students aim for the 4,5 ECTS, a full paper must be provided as a presentation on the course. The full paper shall have the form of a coherent conference presentation and be delivered as a 10 min. verbal presentation with clear arguments and empirical examples and findings.

If students have already collected video material, they should bring it and show excerpts during the workshops. Students can work on their own video material during the course. If students have not yet collected video data, they can work on video material provided by the teacher or other students. All students will therefore be able to get enhanced skills in video analysis.    

Students who already have collected video-data and made transcriptions are invited to provide that data for a shared analysis in the class (data session), which is very helpful for gaining insights about one’s material. Students should write directly to course leader Brian Due if they would take that offer.

ECTS: 3.5 /4.5 with paper 

Course fee: DKK 2,500 per ECTS for PhD student from CBS.

Preparation
The type of data we will be focusing on is primarily video recordings. We will focus on how to collect and transcribe that kind of data, and how to make analysis of it and construct novel claims. You should prepare following:

•                  Email Brian Due (bdue@hum.ku.dk) 100-200 words describing 1) your focus, 2) your theoretical standpoint and 3) your data and 4) experience with EMCA video ethnography.

•                  Everyone must present their work. You should state your type of presentation in the abovementioned document.

o                 3 ECTS: 4 min. overall presentation

o                 4,5 ECTS: The presentation/paper must have a specific format:

•                  Be a PowerPoint (or similar) kind of presentation (like conference presentations)

•                  Last for 9 min. (Followed by 6 min. discussion).

•                  Not focus on “everything” in your PhD, but have a narrow focus on one particular claim/argument you want to make about technology-in-use.

•                  Must contain a theoretical position – this have to include a stance towards something from the reading list.
                   (This will be a crucial way to include the obligatory +500 pages of readings and make it relevant for each project and discussions).

•                  Must be based on showing and analyzing data and reflections on how you (plan to) contribute with new knowledge.

Further information
For more information about the PhD course, please contact course organiser, Associate Professor Brian Lystgaard Due (bdue@hum.ku.dk) or the PhD Administration (phd@hrsc.ku.dk).

Literature

  1. Arminen, I., Licoppe, C., & Spagnolli, A. (2016). Respecifying Mediated Interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 49(4), 290–309. https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2016.1234614
  2. Arminen, I., & Weilenmann, A. (2009). Mobile presence and intimacy—Reshaping social actions in mobile contextual configuration. Journal of Pragmatics, 41(10), 1905–1923. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2008.09.016
  3. Bornakke, T., & Due, B. L. (2018). Big–Thick Blending: A method for mixing analytical insights from big and thick data sources. Big Data & Society, 5(1), 2053951718765026. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951718765026
  4. Brown, B., McGregor, M., & Laurier, E. (2013). iPhone in vivo: Video analysis of mobile device use. (pp. 1–10). Presented at the CHI’13, Paris, France: ACM.
  5. Due, B. L. (2015). The social construction of a Glasshole: Google Glass and multiactivity in social interaction. PsychNology, 13(2–3), 149–178.
  6. Due, B. L. (2021). RoboDoc: Semiotic resources for achieving face-to-screenface formation with a telepresence robot. Semiotica. 238.
  7. Due, B. L. and T. Toft. (2021). Phygital highlighting: Achieving joint visual attention when physically co-editing a digital text. Journal of Pragmatics. 177.
  8. Due, B. L. (2023). Situated socio-material assemblages: Assemmethodology in the making. Human Communication Research, https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqad031
  9. Depperman, Arnulf (2013). Introduction. Multimodal interaction from a conversation analytic perspective. Journal of pragmatics 46, p 1-7
  10. Goodwin, C. (2013). The co-operative, transformative organization of human action and knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics, 46(1), 8–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2012.09.003
  11. Haddington, Pentti and Rauniomaa, M. (2013). Interaction between road users: offering space in traffic. Space and Culture Vol 17 (2).
  12. Heath, Christian, Knoblauch, Hubert and Luff, Paul (2000): Technology and social interaction: the emergence of ‘workplace studies’. British Journal of Sociology, vol. 51 (2), pp. 299–320.
  13. Maynard, D. W. (2006). Cognition on the ground. Discourse Studies, 8(1), 105–115. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445606059560
  14. Mondada, L. (2016). Challenges of multimodality: Language and the body in social interaction. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 20(3), 336–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.1_12177
  15. Reeves, S., & Brown, B. (2016). Embeddedness and sequentiality in social media. In 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 27 Feb – 2 Mar 2016, San Francisco, USA.
  16. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E, and Jefferson, G. (1974). A Simplest Systematics for the Organization of Turn-Taking for Conversation. Language 50 (4) p. 696-735 
  17. Streeck, Jurgen (2013). Interaction and the living body. Journal of pragmatics (46), p. 69-90
  18. Suchman, L. A. (2005). Affiliative Objects. Organization, 12(3), 379–399.
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