Hanging Out on Xbox Live: How Teens Enter and Open Conversations in Party Chats

Abstract

This study investigates a group of teenage boys who spend most of their evenings in Xbox Live parties, which are audio-only multi-participant chat rooms in which interactants can talk to one another while engaged in different activities. This study uses conversation analysis to examine how the participants organize conversations, with focus on four kinds of interactional work: 1) the initiation of the interaction via the party chat invitation, 2) the opening sequence, during which the newcomer may be ratified into the party's participation framework; 3) indications of the newcomer's readiness to interact; and 4) the need to accurately identify speakers in the party. It also draws on ethnomethodology’s notion of accountability as a way of investigating how the participants establish mutual orientation and hold one another accountable to tacit social norms. The findings show how both the social context and the technological medium are intricate parts of the interaction. Although hardware and software can sometimes disrupt or reconfigure the way the participants expect to interact, they are able to adapt to the environment by doing accountability work, such as explaining, apologizing, clarifying, and questioning.