Verbal, visual and affective work when chairing digital meetings: a micro-ethnographic study

Purpose Given that digital meetings are common, it is concerning that we still largely lack knowledge of how digital meetings are sociomaterially performed in assemblages of humans and technologies. This article advances our understanding of how digital work meetings unfold in practice. In particular, we zoom in on the practice of chairing, which makes meetings different from other interactions at work. The study therefore more broadly contributes to advancing our understanding of what kind of sociomaterial work is done in digitalized workplaces. Design/methodology/approach To this end, we mobilize a sociomaterial practice lens to surface the ongoing accomplishment of work meetings. To come close to the enactment of the practice of chairing, we adopted a digital micro-ethnographic approach and focused on series of digital meetings in the support units of a global organization. Findings We show that verbal, visual and affective work is performed when chairing digital meetings. These three types of work are done simultaneously and constitute the premises for each other. We also identify six characteristics of chairing in digital meetings: sociomaterial stiffness, dilution, glitches, blindness, conformity and amplification. In addition, we show that observing the “micro” enables us to study the unfolding of practice and the doing of digital meetings in their own right, thereby producing a different kind of understanding of digitalized workplaces. Originality/value The approach mobilized enables us to go beyond understanding new digitalized work practices merely in light of traditional work practices and provides one way of instead understanding them on their own terms.