Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A means of conveying information as an alternate to a regular avenue of communication, especially in government and diplomacy.
- noun A usually subconscious utterance or gesture made by a listener in a conversation indicating that the listener is paying attention or understands what is being said.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- verb To employ a
back channel . - verb linguistics To employ non-verbal (oral and visual) means to influence a speaker without interruption.
- noun computing A real-time online discussion that occurs simultaneously with a verbal presentation.
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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A backchannel is a line of communication created by people in an audience to connect with others inside or outside the room, with or without the knowledge of the speaker at the front of the room.
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If you are on a panel, one member of the panel should watch Twitter (or whatever backchannel is used by most) throughout the talk for questions and comments that the panelists should address immediately.
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The correct way to moderate a backchannel is not to moderate it but to let the community police it. aeschright
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Why the backchannel is bad for RSS « Scripting News Annex
Why the backchannel is bad for RSS « Scripting News Annex 2006
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Even when FP was smaller and we sat around a single table, we evaluated things like IRC for use as a company "backchannel" - somewhere you could put stuff without necessarily interrupting everyone.
Tom Hume 2009
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I personally believe that the backchannel is the greatest unharnessed resource that we as educators have available to us.
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I personally believe that the backchannel is the greatest unharnessed resource that we as educators have available to us.
Archive 2008-02-01 2008
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The backchannel is the twitter stream that audience members now rather routinely produce while a conference speaker or panel holds forth at the front of the room; it carries for the unwary, unprepared, or just plain unlikeable speaker.
ScienceBlogs Channel : Life Science David Dobbs none@example.com 2010
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A backchannel is a line of communication created by people in an audience to connect with others inside or outside of the room, with or without the knowledge of the speaker at the front of the room.
GigaOM Network 2010
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Another feature called the backchannel provides a rolling update of Twitter updates and photos related to a particular tag and can be used by companies or events to track mentions.
TechCrunch Europe Ciara Byrne 2009
Comments
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