The Interpersonal Communication of People: Changes and Evolution

In the last decade, there is an evident change in the way people communicate with each other. Technological and social media developments have caused many changes, not only in the way people communicate with one another, but also in the fact that these developments provide people with simplified access to many tools, such as Virtual Reality (VR), GPS, Smart Speakers, as well as 3D Printing, needed in education, communication, emergency responses and, in work settings. The effects and outreach of social media continues to grow. Its by-product helps enhance user experience which can have a ripple effect of strengthening branding, extending communication, improving workflow, and keeping users connected. Through the use of technology and social media, interpersonal and mass communication are rapidly converging as people integrate the various resources of Internet-based tools into their communication skills. An effective communication synergy is developed through the quick transfer of short bits of information. Also, even though the length of conversation is slowly decreasing, communication itself is adapting as the society and technology changes. As a result, people should be more aware of these positive changes that are brought forth by technological and social media developments.

To begin, there are many articles that discuss communication and the fact that it has changed over the years, more specifically in the last decade. In his article, “The Impact of Social Media in Review,” Jamal Cromity, a former associate editor for the New Review of Information Networking, writes about how an effective communication synergy can be developed through the use of various social mediums for sustainable user engagement online and that people find innovative ways to integrate the social web applications in their everyday lives. Similarly, in their article, “Adaptation of Fictional and Online Conversations to Communication Media,” Christian M. Alis and May T. Lim, in conjunction with the National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines, show that the length of conversations is slowly shortening over time, however it strongly adapts to the constraints of the communication medium.

Additionally, Andrew J. Flanagin, in his article titled “Online Social Influence and the Convergence of Mass and Interpersonal Communication,” writes about how mass and interpersonal communication are rapidly converging as people routinely integrate an extensive and varied assortment of Internet-based tools into their communication repertoires. In contrast, Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as well as the director and founder of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self, in “How Computers Change the Way We Think” suggests that technology is changing how we understand and interact with the world—not necessarily for the better. All in all, these sources show that, although there are some negatives, the change in communication through the past decade brings forth more positive effects.

Secondly, mass and interpersonal communications are rapidly converging as people incorporate Internet-based tools into their everyday life and communication skills. Interpersonal communication, otherwise known as face-to-face communication, is the exchange of information between two or more people that have an influence on one another. Whereas, mass communication is the exchange of information to a large scale of people through print or electronic media which include newspapers, magazines, television, websites, blogs, and many others. Flanagin, in his article, writes, “Internet-based tools now routinely offer several capabilities and features that disrupt the core distinctions that initially distinguished mass from interpersonal communication” (Flanagin 451).

Technological developments bring about fundamental changes that demonstrate the conditions people once presumed to distinguish mass from interpersonal communication. More precisely, the differences in communication audience, and scale. In addition, the impact of social media in everyday use in increasing continuously, “...social network and blogging sites are currently the fourth most popular activity on the Internet...More than two-thirds of the global on-line population visit and participate in social networks and blogs” (Cromity 25). Social media has pulled ahead of other internet-based tools and “accounts for nearly 10% of all time spend on the Internet” (Cromity 25). Social media is a dominant part of the web, as well as the largest source of personal data online. Without a doubt, it can be said that social networks are filling a need for users by removing the barrier of connecting family, friends, and colleagues, thus giving these users a reason to continue using these services.

Continuing on, an effective communication synergy is developed through the quick transfer of short bits of information. As an outcome, it is reasonable to expect that changes in communication medium, such as social media, E-mail, magazines, and many similar others, affect how people converse. Alis and Lim inform the reader about how “Twitter, as a form of computer-mediated communication, is different from oral or written media...Twitter-based conversation differentiates it from the transcribed oral communication in books and movies” (Alis and Lim 1). Differences in a medium are due to a clearly stated quirk in the medium, for example: an utterance length limit, thus conversations in Twitter are different from conversations in books and movies, but the latter two are not that paticularly different from each other. Thus, a communication synergy is developed through online user engagement.

According to Cromity, “...the use of social network tools, such as twitter, in the academic environment can assist students in a timely manner, helping students write concisely, improve relations, connect with professional communities, and support informal learning” (Cromity 26). College students, other than talking with friends and family, use social networks for educational purposes. The utilization of technology between students and their professors fosters a professor-student relationship. Social networks and Web 2.0 technologies usages are needed so that students can, not only be digitally fluent, but also be ready to explore and challenge the gradually developing field of complex social learning. Moreover, even though the length of conversation is slowly decreasing, communication itself is adapting as the society and technology changes. There are many articles that research the length of communication, one of which is the article of Alis and Lim, in which they research the utterance length in four databases. The authors report that “Four datasets were used for our analysis: Project Gutenberg (PG), PG split into sentences (PGS), Twitter and movie subtitles (SUBS)” (Alis and Lim 2). The result of this research shows that the length of communication is slowly decreasing.

The median utterance length in both PG and PGS decreases with time but is not correlated with size. On the other hand, the median utterance length of SUBS remains almost in time except for a conspicuous rise and increased spread in the median utterance length at around 1920 that does not flatten out even if the window size is increased from 1 year to 5 years (Alis and Lim 6).

However, communication itself is adapting with the changes in technology and society. Evolving technologies lead to changes in communication media, which then lead people to adapt their conversations. A case in point is the short message service (SMS) or texting, which has become a popular form of communication with its own language. Therefore, it can be said that adaptation occurs with changing medium and sometimes with unexpected side-effects. Flanagin confirms that “Recent technological developments have prompted dramatic changes in message control, audience scale, source ambiguity, receiver ambiguity, and temporal ambiguity” (Flanagin 451). Changes in message control come with the rise of technologies that significantly enhance information sharing across space and time. As information is passed through complex online social networks and embellished along the way with individuals’ comments, assessments, and any secondary materials, the ability to control message placement, meaning, and reception is diminished.

Nevertheless, while there are many positive effects of the changes in communication in the last decade, there exist some negative effects that are brought forth. Little by little, technology has become an important piece in the way that people communicate with one another and has increasingly taken the place of face-to-face communication. Due to the rapid expansion of technology, many individuals fear that people are too immersed in the digital world and are not present enough in the real world. In her article, Turkle writes “...some people who gain fluency in expressing multiple aspects of self may find it harder to develop authentic selves. Some children who write narratives for their screen avatars may grow up with too little experience of how to share their real feelings with other people” (Turkle 106). The online world provides people with a valuable space for individual play; however, the use of technology has taken away the sense of individualism and many people struggle to define their own personality in real life. Many “middle-school and high-school students tend to be willing to provide personal information online with no safeguards, and college students seem uninterested in violations of privacy and in increased governmental and commercial surveillance” (Turkle 105). Teenagers, unlike the past generations, are used to having a daily life that is monitored electronically.