Last weekend I was at Transmediale in Berlin, a pathetic spectacle of a crumbling media art/media critique/techno-political conference. Nonetheless, one of the talks by Silvio Lorusso was quite good and it was investigating, among other things, the hidden labor within video calls, the affective consequences of having to be on camera within your domestic space and other consequences of “zoom culture”.
This made me think that in some political spaces there’s a strong sentiment against using webcams, while in others, holding similar values, there’s a strong sentiment against keeping the webcam off.
I believe the first position is mainly stemming from the trauma and discomfort of remote work, where the context of the workplace and your employer extraction of labor make some demands around webcams illegitimate, or extractive. This might not apply to the political context, but the trauma or simply the habit of being hostile towards the webcam demands is still there.
Let me summarize briefly the arguments from both sides:
Against webcams:
- webcams demand you to be presentable and make your space presentable. It’s extra labor, especially for women.
- webcams highlight differences in lifestyle and privilege among the participants
- webcams have mild to serious impacts on people with different forms of body and gender dysphoria, alienating people even before they join the space. Also, they distract narcissists from the call.
- for specific activities, visual cues of the reactions of participants might impact the formulation of arguments by specific people, especially if insecure or shy. With the webcam off, you might not be able to read the room but sometimes it’s a good thing.
In favor of webcams:
- they create intimacy and a stronger sense of presence. We can debate if this is a good thing at work overall, but it’s obviously a good thing in political spaces. There’s no collective action without this. they help you read the room and enrich communication, at least for those who are good at doing it.
- they help us position and frame the other person. Probably this should be a “neutral” point, because it enables both positive and negative biases. It depends on your beliefs and if you think that “unbiased=good” or “unbiased=bad”.
I would like to hear from you how political organizations you’ve been have handled this discussion, if they did. How you feel about it. Also, I would like to hear if anybody experienced specific practices around turning the webcam on or off for specific activities, which to me seems an under-explored area, both for production purposes or political purposes.
My entire team and I work remotely (since before Covid), and it has never been an issue. Nobody puts any extra effort into their appearance, everybody wears sweats and loungewear and women don’t wear makeup. Most of us blur our backgrounds so nobody can see our spaces, but this does not imply anything about our homes other than the fact that we all like our privacy. I can even hear my manager’s breast pump going during meetings (it’s out of frame, obviously), and nobody cares, she’s got a baby to feed after all.
We’re all people with different lives, different homes, and different bodies. As long as we all get our work done, nobody cares what we look like, sound like, or how our homes are decorated. If you’re feeling undue pressure from your employer about what your personal appearance or spaces are like, I don’t think that company is a good fit. If there are genuine mental health issues at play, then a good company will make a reasonable accommodation to ensure your work doesn’t cause any undue harm.
I guess it’s part of my massive privilege, but I join all my work calls in my bath robe and don’t blur out the background. I don’t give a shit, and if you do you shouldn’t.
Facial expression and other body language sends a lot of information. It’s useful.
I work remote and my work has a pretty loose policy on webcams for meetings. If you don’t want it on, don’t turn it on. That said, when I am presenting or speaking, I like to have my webcam on. I personally find that the level of engagement is higher for speakers with their camera on, and so I try to extend that back to the people I am speaking to. I also find that the inclusion of visual cues helps with communications.
As for political spaces, my local congress person holds a regular townhall via telephone (not sure if she’ll keep this up if she wins the governorship this year) and I have never really felt the need to stare at her as she talks. I actually like the format as I can listen with my earbuds while doing something else. So, different situations can merit a different response.
Honestly, I think some folks make far more out of using or not using a webcam than it really merits. For those of us who are more introverted, having a camera on us can make us feel self-conscious. Though, I think using the word “trauma” to describe this is being overly bombastic. At the same time, I think there are some folks for whom the visual connection with a speaker or listener is also important and the lack visual of feedback from the other participants in the conversation makes the conversation more difficult. It’s just another of those areas where we are each going to need to make a decision based on the particular conversation and context. Interacting with other people is messy and is going to involve some level of discomfort from time to time.
I noticed that my colleagues that didn’t turn webcams on were all women, so I started turning mine off for anything I thought they might attend.
webcams demand you to be presentable
Ateast half of you, lol. Zoom has built in filters that help with this. Also sitting further away from the webcam, using a diffusion filter, and/or just using a really bad webcam can help.
and make your space presentable.
Background blur and virtual backgrounds help here.
virtual and blurred backgrounds still signal a lot. Not only they let the viewer know that your environment is not nice, but they also become aware you’re somewhat ashamed of it, enough to be willing to hide it.
When people blur the background my only thought is they simply want privacy. It’s their personal space so it doesn’t need to be presented to everyone. What people do with their home is not my concern.
I think that while there are some who make this assumption, I’m not sure that it’s the universal takeaway and it is certainly not a safe assumption at all. I work at a large organization in a department that is nearly 50/50 in person and work from home so most meetings take place online and are attended by people both at the office and in their homes. The work culture is such here that a virtual background is generally considered the professional approach to having your camera on even if you are at the office. The company has even issued several company branded backgrounds for this purpose. We know for a fact that many attendees have very presentable spaces but virtual backgrounds are the norm due to the amount of people attending from shared living spaces or drop-in offices.
Attending meetings with your camera off is also still very common. In fact, I have several co-workers who I didn’t recognize in person after working with them for over a year because their company picture was significantly out of date and their cameras were never on during meetings.
