Sam Schirm & Verónica González Temer
“So I started to play around with tape recorded conversations, for the single virtue that I could replay them; that I could type them out somewhat, and study them extendedly, who knew how long it might take. And that was a good enough record of what happened, to some extent. Other things, to be sure, happened. But at least that happened. It wasn’t from any large interest in language, or from some theoretical formulation of what should be studied, but simply by virtue of that; I could get my hands on it, and I could study it again and again. And also, consequentially, others could look at what I had studied, and make of it what they could, if they wanted to be able to disagree with me.” (Sacks, 1992, p. 622)
Technology has always played an integral part in CA’s research programme. At the start, the tape recorder (and later the camera) allowed for conversation to be captured in vivo as it unfolded for the participants, thereby making possible not only the repeated listenings and viewings necessary for transcription and sequential analysis, but also the sharing of conversations with other analysts. The shrinking of recording equipment size and cost conversely increased the amount and diversity of data that conversation analysts could collect. The advent of the internet greatly simplified sharing and collaboration in CA. Online data corpora not only increased the pool of conversation that analysts could use for their investigations, it also (depending on the data) gave readers direct access to the interactions authors analyze in their publications. And video-calling services such as Zoom made collaboration between institutions and across borders a regular occurrence; co-authoring papers, participating in data sessions and even attending entire conferences and workshops can now be done live without leaving the office. Video-calling also represents a new kind of interaction – video-mediated interaction – giving rise to a new source of data for CA research and, with it, a new set of research questions to pursue.
This special issue of the ISCA Newsletter explores how CA continues to be shaped on several levels by advances in technology. The contributions to this special issue show how conversation analysts are adapting their investigations to new and emerging technologies, and how technology is not only a tool for analysis and interaction, but more and more a co-interactant worthy of our analytical attention.
First Damien Rudaz (University of Copenhagen) reports on the workshop “Embodied Interaction & Embodied Intelligence”, which took place in August 2025. The workshop tackled questions about human-robot interaction, namely how to investigate human-robot interactions using CA and the role of embodiment in those interactions.
In his second piece, Damien Rudaz reports on the workshop “Transforming interaction: A workshop on AAC, social robotics, and conversational AI” which took place in April 2025. This cross-disciplinary workshop explored how robots, voice-based conversation agents and large language models can all be integrated into interactions (particularly into interactions with users of augmentative and alternative communication, or AAC), and what that integration means for our understanding of temporality and authorship in interaction. Read both reports here.
Guillaume Gauthier (University of Basel) then gives a report on the Interdisciplinary colloquium “Conversational AI: Advances and Challenges” at the University of Basel in April 2025. The interdisciplinary group of participants addressed to issues central to the intersection of conversational AI and EMCA: “how the EMCA program fundamentally addresses the challenges of conversational AI, and how applied CA can not only inform the development of agents but also analyze how users locally engage with conversational AI, making sense of the practical problems they encounter.” Read Guillaume’s report here.
In his report from the first EMCA “Promptathon” at Cardiff University, Saul Albert (Loughborough University) reports on how a group of conversation analysts met with an expert on conversational AI to put conversational AIs to the test. This Promptathon, following the tradition of “Hackathons”, had participants in smaller groups working with various technologies claiming to be AIs to investigate how these technological agents interact with users. Read about the Promptathon here.
In a reflective piece, Malebogo Moji (University of York) discusses their journey learning to use the Distributed Open Transcription Environment (DOTE) as a PhD student. Malebogo describes the process deciding which software to use for transcription, the advantages and challenges of DOTE compared to ELAN, and DOTE’s learning curve. This piece ends with helpful tips and tricks for first-time users of DOTE. Read about Malebogo’s journey here.
And finally, in the ISCA State of Talk podcast, Sophia Fiedler reflects with Saul Albert (Loughborough) and Hannah Pelikan (Linköping) about the evolving role of technology, robots and AI in CA and interaction more broadly. Have a listen here.
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