Immersive justice : the impact of face to face communication and video mediated communication in the quality of discussion and deliberation in the justice process

Abstract

In an increasingly digital world, video-mediated communication is becoming more prominent. Video technology is already being used in courtrooms, with a potential future for a distributed and remote courtroom. This thesis investigates how the quality of discussion is impacted across a video-conferencing system and face-to-face communication, with the aim of comparing the participant perspective with observations to create a well-rounded understanding of group dynamics. Participants watched a mock trial before deliberating the problem via both video-mediated and face-to-face communication in groups of three, with sessions recorded and transcribed for data analysis. The data was analysed from three different angles: Interaction Process Analysis, Interruption Occurrences and Observation; and was supplemented with participant surveys. The results showed that video-mediated communication had a higher occurrence of interruptions and lower levels of eye contact, while face-to-face communication had higher occurrences of back channel utterances to show active listening. Future research should look into using a more sophisticated video-conferencing system to combat the eye contact issue, but other than that the quality of discussion was not impacted by the medium of communication.

Date of Award	2018
Original language	English