Phantasms collide: Navigating video-mediated communication in the Swedish workplace.

Overview

This case study examines the social construction and organizational embedding of video-mediated communication meanings within a Swedish telecommunications company. The research documents how corporate messaging through advertisements, slogans, incentive programs, and policies deliberately associates video meetings with workplace efficiency, environmental responsibility, corporate social responsibility, and economic value. The study identifies a disjuncture between institutionally promoted meanings and the multiplicity of competing, coexisting interpretations of video-mediated communication among employees, characterizing this phenomenon as a complex 'phantasm'—a system of shared yet contested imaginings.

Methods and approach

The investigation employs a qualitative case study methodology focused on a single Swedish telecommunications organization. Data collection involved examination of corporate communications materials, policy documents, advertising content, and in-house incentive programs. Analysis traces how institutional discourse constructs particular meanings around video-mediated communication while simultaneously identifying alternative, implicit, and deliberately obscured understandings held by organizational members. The approach emphasizes discourse analysis and the mapping of intra-organizational semantic tensions surrounding video meeting technologies.

Results

Empirical findings reveal that the organization successfully promoted a dominant interpretive frame linking video-mediated communication to efficiency and sustainability objectives. However, this institutionally constructed narrative coexists with multiple competing meanings held by employees, encompassing both explicit alternative understandings and tacitly acknowledged but unspoken interpretations. The analysis demonstrates that video-mediated communication functions as a phantasm in the organizational context—a shared imagining that remains internally contradictory and contested. Different employee groups maintain divergent framings of video meetings that reflect partial acceptance, resistance, or indifference to corporate messaging.

Implications

The study contributes to understanding how organizations mobilize communication technologies through strategic meaning-construction rather than through technological affordances alone. It demonstrates that organizational adoption of communication technologies cannot be understood as simply functional or neutral processes, but rather as sites where multiple stakeholders negotiate contested meanings. The research suggests that gaps between institutionally promoted and lived understandings of workplace technologies warrant organizational attention, particularly when corporate objectives depend on employee adoption and behavioral change.