Communication Today
Write a reflection report discussing and analysing any two topics explored in this course 1) communication today and 2) social media.
Communication is a one way or two-way process that acts as the channel for connecting people physically or digitally. This communication can be associated with sharing of thoughts, ideas, information in form of message from one person to another. To me, communication is process coding decoding where the sender sends a message to the receiver who decode the message then encode the sender a feedback (Ruesch et al. 2017). Communication effectively helps the people to make friends in one hand and connects people with one another. We communicate to make the things happen which we often try to have in our lives. Unlike all other things it is something which we humans do each and every day. To me, the communication system has been quite changed from the past. Today’s communication is somehow related with the desire of various people who try to indulge in serving their own necessities through their communication. For instance, we can talk about the necessity of communication process by various people attached with carious occupations like effective leaders, managers, legal practitioners, medical professionals, social workers, accountants, human resource managers or people working in any other profession (Hovland and Lumsdaine 2017). The communication process of these people are directly related to their work hence their communication has a supportive, purposeful and flexible manner.
To me communication is the chief element of building relationship for which we need to be competent communicators. There are six chief elements of communication that has shaped the style, process and structure of todays’ communication. each of these elements are somehow related with the Lasswell’s Models of communication. In today’s world, the interactive quality of communication has been designed by the presence of the communicators. For example, I have seen people talking with each other in a most involved way and building relation or maintaining them but when the same people communicate via electronic communication methods, do not show same eagerness and involvement with each other (Ling 2017). In addition to this, according to Shannon and Weaver there are some barriers of communication which are called noise which affect both the the verbal as well as nonverbal communication among the people. I today’s world the communication style has faced major change due to advent of instant messaging. This have in one hand reduced the notice of the message transmitted to the receiver yet has reduced the effect of communication that the people used to enjoy which communicating in the past. Through various channels the messages reach to the audience however, different contexts have differently affected the communication method (Moray 2017). I think as communication can directly affect relationship so also, relationships effectively affect communication of the people. Moreover, there are influence of cultural factors as well as time that regulate the effect and approach of the communication of the people.
Changes in Communication
The influence of communication has a far reaching effect on the business now a day (Kim and Song 2016). Despite the fact this type of communication mainly focusses on the knowledge sharing process and can be done through online, face to face and engagements. These business communication may have horizontal as well as vertical characteristics based on which the employees communicate with their managers and the vice versa. Through this I have learnt that the business communication is closely related to the fields of professional communication and technical communication based on which there are conflicts among eth organisations as well as various departments of one organisation (ariello, Gallo and Orange 2017). To me communication is the chief factor which gives birth to the argument among people. Either they do not listen to what is being told or they do not understand the meaning or essence of the communication. therefore, some questions have come in my mind. These are- has communication really been changed from the past era? What are the essential factors than can reduce the noise in a conversation? Why is it mandatory to maintain good communication relationship among the rival companies in a competitive market?
As the Oxford dictionary states, social media is a network of social interactions along with personal relationship. These are the dedicated websites or applications that enable the users to communicate with one another. However, this matter is nothing new to the human beings. We have been sharing our ideas and exchange information through direct communication or any medium since a very early age. However, social networking in 21st century has changed its meaning as well as contexts (Paniagua and Sapena 2014). It reflects on the new ways of thinking, experiencing and connecting through internet where I see multitude of sharing, publishing as well as editing contents like texts, videos and images both personally and commercially. Online social networking has led to the rise of a variation of social networking, technology as well as media sites some of which I use myself in my everyday life. some of the most popularly and widely used are Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
To me, the use of social media is completely the sharing of knowledge and socialising with people on my part as social media, in this context, can provide the opportunities to communicate as well as socialise virtually without any physical proximity to people and share information somehow (Gil de Zúñiga, Molyneux and Zheng 2014). However, I feel social media has completely changed the way people used to communicate, think and share ideas in different contexts. As a citizen of 21st century, I think that the vast pool of knowledge would have been remained untouched if there was no social media. Moreover, various social media has different objectives and they are all unique in their own ways. To me the value of social media is unlimited as these can easily reach various psychology, ineptest and ages of people in different ways (Zhang et al. 2015).
Importance of Competent Communication
As I have noticed before, the main objective of my use of social media is knowledge sharing and the subject can be anything. In this context I get help from different blogs, Wikipedia and YouTube. However, I also feel comfortable socialising with people over Twitter and Facebook where I follow the politicians and the important persons and view their thoughts to get inspired. in Facebook I get opportunities to communicate with known or unknown friends (Allcott and Gentzkow 2017). However, I have identified a vital difference in the social media choices and their operations. I have found out that the younger people like me mostly use social media as the medium of social exposure which they get via likes in Facebook, views in YouTube and followers in Instagram or Twitter whereas the choice of social media changes with age. The people grow interest in gaining knowledge and use blogs, podcasts and RSS and Wikis for that matter.
In this era when each people is connected via social media, the businesses are also taking advantages of social media in spreading their business online. To me social media provides the scope to communicate their brand messages through direct access to the broader network of people. For example, the employees of an organisation located in London, working in the overseas city suppose Tokyo can easily communicate their issues to the head office via social media. The headquarters get immediate complaints about the customers’ problems and take steps to rectify them fast. Via social media, the business has changed the traditional strategies of advertising in the print or digital media rather prefer to give ads on YouTube and Facebook there they will get more customer pool to communicate (Scott 2015).
However, by seeing and understanding all the varieties of social media usage by various people I think there are some drawbacks which need to be overcome. First of this is the security issues. In Facebook, Instagram and other attractive social media platforms we share all the personal details which often create exasperating issues in our lives. Moreover, the issues like hacking, cyber bullying and phishing have become the by-product of social media usage. In addition to these, the issues like haemophilia and narcissism has been promoted that will engulf our future. Over dependence on the shared knowledge have limited our personal talent of studying from books and get information. Based on these I often question myself, is social media limiting out knowledge? Are they harmful for our appropriate psychological development? Do they really help the business to flourish or swallowing small firms to bring big brands in limelight? Will this usefulness of social media perfectly be utilised by all their users
References:
Allcott, H. and Gentzkow, M., 2017. Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31(2), pp.211-36.
Gil de Zúñiga, H., Molyneux, L. and Zheng, P., 2014. Social media, political expression, and political participation: Panel analysis of lagged and concurrent relationships. Journal of Communication, 64(4), pp.612-634.
Hovland, C.I. and Lumsdaine, A.A., 2017. Experiments on mass communication. Princeton University Press.
Kim, J. and Song, H., 2016. Celebrity’s self-disclosure on Twitter and parasocial relationships: A mediating role of social presence. Computers in Human Behavior, 62, pp.570-577.
Ling, R., 2017. The reconstruction of space and time: Mobile communication practices. Routledge.
Moray, N., 2017. Attention: Selective processes in vision and hearing. Routledge.
Muscariello, L. and Gallo, M., Orange SA, 2017. Technique for communication in a communications network with routing by name. U.S. Patent 9,712,602.
Paniagua, J. and Sapena, J., 2014. Business performance and social media: Love or hate?. Business horizons, 57(6), pp.719-728.
Ruesch, J., Bateson, G., Pinsker, E.C. and Combs, G., 2017. Communication: The social matrix of psychiatry. Routledge.
Scott, D.M., 2015. The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, online video, mobile applications, blogs, news releases, and viral marketing to reach buyers directly. John Wiley & Sons.
Zhang, J., Brackbill, D., Yang, S. and Centola, D., 2015. Efficacy and causal mechanism of an online social media intervention to increase physical activity: results of a randomized controlled trial. Preventive medicine reports, 2, pp.651-657
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