Tacit tango: The social framework of screen-focused silence in institutional telephone calls

This study examines the social framework of screen-focused silence in institutional calls. Calls to insurance companies, social care centres and other institutions which keep computerised documentation are likely to entail moments when the call-taker has to focus on the screen at the expense of interacting with the caller. This study examines how the transitions are organised between human-human-screen interaction and human-screen interaction. The analysis shows that both call-taker and caller indicate clear agreement on the period when the call-taker will be temporarily out of contact, and that the latter delivers contextualisation cues at the beginning and end of the period of this screen-focused silence which contribute to a new set of expectations.