Communications of the ACM
Sending Emails During Zoom Meetings? There's an Upside, Research Shows
There is a lack of understanding regarding the temporal nature of multicommunicating in dyads, groups, and networks.
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Is the middle of a Zoom meeting the right time to open up another window on your computer and respond to a few emails? New research published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports examines how multicommunicating could benefit the workplace or classroom as long as it's used properly.
Multicommunicating can be most beneficial when people are able to balance their divided attention and effectively manage the expectations of whoever they are communicating with, says Jinglu Jiang, assistant professor in the School of Management at Binghamton University, and a co-author of the study.
"On the surface, it's easy to place a negative connotation on multicommunicating. But we need to focus on how people manage their multicommunicating rather than the behavior itself," Jiang says. "If you're messaging with a colleague to get some information that could be useful while you're in the middle of a meeting, that could make your contribution to the meeting more effective."
The study proposes a multilevel framework to address research gaps and provides insights into the dynamics of multicommunicating at different levels.
From Binghamton University
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