Open Access

Florence Oloff, Katharina König

• In this contribution we analyse how mobile device users in face-to-face communication jointly negotiate the boundaries and action spaces between digital and non-digital, shared and individual, public and private. Instead of conceptualising digital and face-to-face, i. e., non-digital, communication as separate, more recent research emphasises that social practices relying on mobile devices increasingly connect physical and virtual communicative spaces. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we investigate the situated use of mobile devices and media in social interaction. Excerpts from videotaped everyday conversations illustrate how participants frame their smartphone use in the presence of others, such as when looking at digital pictures, or when recording voice messages. A detailed analysis of verbal and embodied conduct shows how participants negotiate and interpret the connection or separation of digital and non-digital activities and possible forms of participation within these. (Digital) publicness or privacy are therefore to be understood as an interactive accomplishment.