ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how a new technology is used as a resource for communication, and how in the process of organizing its use, people alter the communication system itself. It illustrates an important process whereby social actors are not only shaped by cultural practices but reshape cultural practices through cooperative interaction, and the role of tools in motivating and mediating change. Humans use various multimodal semiotic systems to maintain as well as build new realities and meaningful relationships across interactions. The nature of the relationship between actions by individuals in specific settings and the constitution and reconstitution of social institutions is complicated because of a number of factors. Webcam-recorded, computer-mediated space is radically different from “real” space in terms of affordances for sign-language interaction. The field of vision of the webcam lens is restricted in size compared with human vision, for example, but less restrictive in terms of place.
