UNIVERSITY OF GÖTEBORG School of Economics and Commercial Law

Get your organisation together video-mediated communication in an informal se t ting. Abstract Videoconferencing is a way to make people meet regardless of the geographical distance between them. In recent years, it has become possible to use the Internet as a carrier for communication of this type. This has opened up new opportunities to use computers that already are connected to the Internet as vehicles for video-mediated communication. In this Master thesis , we have explored some possibilities to use video-mediated communication in an organisational setting – where the purpose was to support awareness and informal, social interaction between geographically dispersed locations. An ethnographical study was conducted at an IT-research institute, fo-cusing on the institute's member's behaviour around and assumptions of an implemented videoconference prototype. The users testified that, albeit they found it interesting, the prototype was too weak in mediating interaction in a completely natural way. Some issues of privacy and integrity matters were also hampering the user's will to accept the system. The result of this study points out some social and technological factors that are important to acknowledge when designing future video-mediated communication systems dedicated to support awareness and informal communication. 1 INTRODUCTION 4