This article focuses on the merits and demerits arising from the use of electronic mediated communication. Electronic or communication through the internet is more popular with business relationships. It also greatly saves on costs encountered in organizing a face to face communication like company meetings and interview process. A perfect example would be how recruitment and talent search are done online by companies’ human resource departments. Applicants submit credentials online and also conduct video interviews.
Furthermore, the emergence of communication platforms like whatsApp, Facebook and twitter has created advantage in customer relations between businesses and their prospective and current clients. Complaints can be posted in the respective companies Facebook page or Twitter handle and an immediate feedback is given as opposed to calling the company phone call center and having a long wait to be forwarded to the right person eventually. This enables the communication path remains credible and trustworthy. This has greatly helped in affordable mass communication and advertising for large institutions.
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On the hand, in most cases the social and soft skills of a person involved in an electronic communication platform is degraded. This because the meaningful face to face conversation is lost with inadequate emotional context brought about by verbal and non-verbal cues. Interpersonal communication involves mutual understanding and influence between partners involved in a specific transaction, immediate feedback is usually exhibited as opposed to electronic communication such as email where a recipient may take a little while to respond.
This provides room for the feedback to be well thought out but in some cases on does not get a genuine opinion or response as compared to interpersonal communication that show emotion.
In conclusion, online communication has more merits and has made life easier since the even face to face communication can be done through Skype which is closely interpersonal. My rating would be 4. All the demerits and insecurities that come about with the internet use can only be managed by human discipline in using technology which is obviously simple to adhere to.
- Green, L. (2002). Communication, technology and society. London: SAGE.
- Bourke, J. (2004). Communication & technology. Greenwood, WA: Ready-Ed Publications.
