What’s Not Being Said When Communications are Virtual?

The use of virtual interactions, characterized by geographic dispersion, electronic dependence, dynamic structural arrangements, and national diversity, has exploded in recent years. Communication media vary in the amount of information they are able to transmit, the depth of detail articulated and the richness of messages conveyed to facilitate clear understanding. The more information-rich the communication medium, the more easily context will be recognized and understood and the more fluently nonverbal messages will be encoded and decoded. Because of this, certain media – synchronous face-to-face video platforms such as Zoom or Teams meetings, etc. – better provide for the transmission and receipt of nonverbal information that media such as e-mail or text cannot convey. In this chapter we discuss nonverbal communications in virtual interactions in each contextual domain of message, relationship, time, and space. The challenges of encoding and decoding nonverbal communication in each domain through a virtual medium are presented and possible ways to overcome the challenges.