Meeting with Media: Comparing Synchronous Media Sharing and Icebreaker Questions in Initial Interactions via Video Chat

Video chat continues to play an increasing role in the personal and professional lives of many people. When meeting someone for the first time via video chat, traditional icebreakers such as discussion questions may be used to ease conversation and facilitate disclosure; however, icebreaker questions have been shown to be less effective at facilitating relationships for some people than others. In this paper, we propose synchronously sharing online media as a more flexible, robust, and effective method of facilitating initial interactions in video chat. Our comparative study of icebreaker questions and media sharing reveals that shared media supports a different style of conversation than icebreakers, but results in equal levels of self-disclosure and trust along with higher levels of warranting and relatedness. Further, while the effectiveness of icebreakers in building trust is lower for individuals low in agreeableness, media sharing results in similar trust formation at all levels of agreeableness. Synchronous media sharing is a promising way of leveraging the digital context of video chat to better support early stages of relationships.