The Arts of Interaction at the Emotional Labor through ICT
Since the beginning of the theory of emotional labor proposed by Hochschild, emotional labor using voice and text data via ICT tools has attracted attention, but its characteristics have not received much attention until now. This is also true for the study of emotional labor in call centers using the telephone as a tool. The research has mainly focused on quantitative investigations of the negative psychological effects of emotional labor, and has not discussed the techniques of emotional labor in interactive situations.
In contrast, this presentation, based on a qualitative study of call center operations at Company X, clarified the characteristics of emotional labor mediated only by voice and text data via ICT tools as having a circular structure in which the weight of information in terms of emotion is increasing, while it is uncertain and therefore cannot be verified. He also pointed out that ICT-mediated communication brings about the opposite side of emotion management techniques by bringing about the localization setting described by Goffman.
Then, this presentation also scrutinizes the concept of collective emotion management as a technique for resisting the negative effects of emotional labor without thereby engaging in unconventional emotion management.