Nonverbal Communication & Misinterpretations

Non-verbal communication is the process by which we communicate by sending and receiving wordless, visual messages.  In lecture we have discussed multiple ways of communicating non-verbally. For example we spoke of how simply looking at someone’s Facebook page can give us numerous assumptions, conclusions, judgements, and opinions about someone we hardly know, without that person uttering a word. Speaking from experience, as a high school student, to me it didn’t matter what appeared on my Facebook page. The tables quickly turned when I learned as a college student that what appeared on my social network could make or break my career before it even began.

While we know that looking at someone’s social network such as Facebook could leave an accurate or false perception of who someone is or how they act, after meeting them the final judgement comes from our experience and perception. However, what if we were in the shoes of a potential employer and the ‘bad taste’ left in our mouths was enough to not pursue an interview with a potential employee because of it?

In the article, “Beyond Intractability; Misunderstandings” by Heidi Burgess of “The Beyond Intractability Knowledge Base Project” (2003) conducted at the University of Colorado Boulder, Burgess discusses how a number of different things can influence a message and prevent it from being perceived accurately.

Most people like to joke with friends and family including the infamous explanation “its an inside joke” or “its an inside joke, you wouldn’t understand” but when putting those jokes out on social networks, and no one is there to regulate/clarify if you were joking, what tone was used, what context you meant it in, what you really meant, regardless if others understand them or not, you’re being judged for the non-verbal communications the receiver perceives them to be.

Factors the perceiver may encounter are how the message is sent, affirming something we already know, raising question from contradiction, can the person be taken seriously due to how they are being perceived in their photos, would this person be an accurate depiction of how we want our employees to represent our company, and so forth?   

While our generation has been growing up on technology, I can say with confidence that if not all, most of us have witnessed or have been the victim of what I like to refer to as a cyber fight. Now not only can these potential employers see what we do, who we are friends with, how we want others to see us, and what we like but now they also get a glimpse into our not so personal lives. This is why I will never argue over a social network. When you put your personal problems out there for the world to see, they aren’t exactly personal anymore.

In short, misinterpretations let along misinterpretations on social networks where tone and context are ambiguous reaffirms my belief of how non-verbal communication can be dangerous for our futures.

http://cas283-sp15-002.blogspot.com/2015/01/nonverbal-communication.html

Are Digital Cameras Becoming Obsolete?

From a young age I was constantly running around with a camera or video camera taking pictures or making videos.  In middle school, my friends and I always carried a small digital camera with us in our purses and would take 100s of pictures just for fun.  In high school, I began to rely more on my phone to take pictures.  Although the quality was not as good, it was convenient.  Soon, I only ever used my digital camera for special occasions.  Even my freshmen year at Penn State my friends and I would use our digital cameras to document our nights.  However, I found that when I finally got a smart phone sophomore year of college I rarely used my digital camera.  When my digital camera broke I decided it was not necessary to get a new one and now rely solely on my iPhone to take pictures and video.

So are digital cameras becoming obsolete?

Obsolete technology refers to technology that is old and no longer in use.  Technology may become obsolete for various reasons.  In some cases, the device only served one purpose and could not be used in conjunction with other technology.  Sometimes it is due to convenience of size or capability.  While often people move on to more advanced technology due to social pressure and as a result the older technology is no longer used at all.  If we look at the evolution of the computer it is obvious that the older and much larger computers with basic features have become completely obsolete.  For example, the ENIAC at the University of Pennsylvania from 1944 filled 1,800 square feet of floor space.  Although at the time this was a huge advancement in technology, overtime advances led to smaller and more convenient computers which eventually made their way into the average household.  Some more recent examples of obsolete technology are VHS tapes and players, CDs and CD players, and certain game systems.

In the article "Smartphones Are Making Digital Cameras Obsolete," John Consoli discusses whether or not digital cameras are becoming obsolete.  He cites statistics that 55% of photos and videos are taken with smartphones.  In 2012, when this article was written I still used by digital camera.  I can only imagine that percentage is higher now considering the quality of cameras in smartphones has improved and the amount of people using smartphones has increased from my observations, as well as, the convenience of instantly posting pictures to the internet and social media.  Consoli’s article suggest that digital cameras may soon become obsolete for these very reasons.  However, another article by Nasim Mansurov, "The Future of Digital Cameras," has a slightly different and more in depth look on the future of digital cameras.  He argues that smartphones will replace digital point and shoot cameras.  These are the types of cameras the average person may use and was the kind I use to carry around in my purse.  Mansurov goes further to indicate that mirrorless cameras are beginning to take away from the popularity of digital SLR cameras.  Though the DSLR cameras are here to stay for serious and professional photographers because the capabilities of smartphone cameras are not advanced enough for these purposes.  Furthermore, Mansurov states mirrorless and DSLR cameras will eventually have the ability to instantly upload to the internet, with Nikon's D3200 already having this capability.

So maybe digital cameras will never become completely obsolete…

Although, the majority of the population relies on smartphones to shoot pictures and videos, it seems that there will always be a population in demand for digital cameras.  I agree that digital point and shoot cameras will eventually become obsolete, though, professional and amateur photographers will continue to rely on advanced digital cameras, such as DSLRs.  Maybe one day digital cameras tailored to professional photographers will take on a new form, however, I do not think smartphones will be suitable substitutes for DSLR cameras in the near future.  In my experience, I did not replace my broken point and shoot camera because I felt the quality of my smartphone camera was good enough and it was also more convenient not to carry a digital camera around.  Another factor for myself and many others is the ability to quickly share pictures and videos over the internet and social media with smartphones, as well as, social pressure not to be seen taking pictures with a basic digital camera.  So although the digital point and shoot is obsolete to me, it will be interesting to see what the future of digital cameras becomes for others.

Smartphones Are Making Digital Cameras Obsolete

The Future Of Digital Cameras

Communication Today

      These days we are able to communicate more efficiently and effectively then ever. With new technologies such as cell phones, computers, pagers, etc. we are now able to communicate our thoughts, ideas, opinions at any time in almost no time. Before it was a continuous struggle to get in touch with people whom were needed.



Lets make a comparison, in the old days letters were one of the only means of communicating with someone who is distant. Now as we all know there many flaws with writing letters. For an example, the only means of transporting was by horse. This could take weeks, months or years depending on a few variables to reach the recipient and it is impossible to say how long it would take to get a response. Not a very efficient way to get your words to someone I think we can agree. Soon came along during the 1840's the telegraph. Which allowed sending messages to a distant place at a very short time. However only a minute number of people could actually own one. Then came along the telephone during the 1870's. The telephone was the first way to verbally communicate from a far distance. Just like the telegraph however, you could only speak with someone who also had a telephone. This was rare because of the cost and low amount of actual devices.



Communication today anyone can own a cell phone, and instantly contact virtually anybody who also has a cellphone with distance not being a considered factor. Also we could use our computers to find or locate anyone via social media or other locating applications. This creates endless possibilities. Meeting new people to solve any problem is now a click of a mouse or a tap of a phone screen away. Now that we can communicate with anyone in such a short this has changed our relationships strongly. The way maintain contact with people is now possible and easier then ever before. An example would be a social media cite such as Facebook. Where we can simply add co-workers, friends and family and literally be able to know what is going on at all times in that persons life. We can also contact them at any moment to check on whomever. According to Nayab in the article How Communication Has Evolved With New Technologies, another view is that communicating cost much less then ever before. This article also covers a few other point of views that are very interesting.



Technology has come a long way in many forms but in communicating it with out a doubt changed the way we live. From writing letters and waiting for a response to our cellphone notifications going off before we have time to put them back into our pockets. With online applications available we can see and hear anyone who is potentially on the other side of the world. Communication today has endless opportunities that were never possible before.


http://www.brighthubpm.com/methods-strategies/79052-exploring-how-technology-has-changed-communication/

Being separated from iPhones make people stupid and anxious

Computer mediated communication is any human communication achieved through, or with the help of, computer technology. Computer provides applications and databases as a medium or channel for humans to communicate. As we have gone through in class, CMC has many advantages and disadvantages. CMC allows humans to communicate without worrying about the time and distance. Also through CMC humans are available 24/7. Since humans don’t need to physically meet each other, time and distance are obsolete. Before CMC was developed and used widely, humans had limitation when working with one another. Humans could not have collaborated if they were physically apart. However, nowadays people in same interest collaborate to achieve a goal through CMC. On the other hand, CMC have many downsides as well. One of the major disadvantages of CMC is the amount of information that hasn’t been censored. We do not know which information is accurate and has enough credibility. Also, sometimes it lacks concentration. A person could be talking about a subject 1 while others talk about subject 2. If open forum for discussion is the advantage of CMC, the endless discussion could be the downside of CMC.

I guess advantages of CMC outweigh the disadvantages. So many people rely on CMC nowadays that it seems almost unnatural to not utilize CMC.

I want to stress one major disadvantage of CMC that have been recently studied. “Being separated from iPhones make people stupid and anxious,” an article from The Independent have revealed the big disadvantage of utilizing CMC. People who were incapable of answering their smart phones while solving cognitive tasks had a worse outcome than others, an experiment has found. While the participants’ smart phones were ringing and they were unable to answer it, their heart rate and blood pressure increased, as well as feelings of anxiety and unpleasantness.

Two groups tasks were to do word-search puzzles, with one group doing so while they could hear their phone ringing, write Russell B Clayton, Glenn Leshner and Anthony Almond in the paper., ‘The extended iSelf,’ published in the journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. The group that was sundered from their iPhones did worse in task. At the first class of our lab section, more than 70% of students have announced they could not live without their smart phones. Many of them said it had everything they needed and that smart phones enable them to get instant access to whatever they were searching for. I knew that nowadays people don’t like to be away from their smart phones but I did not realize the negative effects of not being able to respond to their phones. Of course, there are still plenty of people who do not need smart phones to carry on with their lives however, it seems like the number is likely decrease soon or later. Many people will suffer from nomophobia. The term, nomophobia, an abbreviation for “no-mobile phone phobia” is the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Like it was stated in the article, I guess people feel anxious without their smart phones because they have a fear of missing out. Smart phones help people feel a sense of ‘extended self’ – the idea that people’s possessions can become an extension of themselves (Andrew Griffin, 2014). The researchers from the study have addressed that the outcomes provide insight into attention and how distractions can lead us astray. Not being able to answer the phone might make us worse at our job, interacting with people and engaging with media.

Communication model and misunderstandings

          In week one we discussed the concept of communication model in depth and the definition given by the lecture changed my views on the traditional term “communication” that we are familiar with in everyday life. Communication is defined as “a continuous process through which speaker and listener create shared meaning and understanding”, but communication itself as a complex, multi-staged process incorporates various elements that do not only limited to simple faultless information exchange. The basic elements in communication model include sender, receiver, message, context, encoding, signs, symbol, decoding, feedback, channel, and noise. Most of these concepts are self-explanatory but if we considered them more closely we will see how misunderstanding can occur across these stages. If the message is being improperly encode or decode at any point, the receiver might fail to identify the original meaning that the sender attempted to convey. For example, when people engaged in non-verbal communication such as texting with smartphones, they would use many visual cues like emoji or stickers to express their feelings. However, explanations of these non-verbal cues are not consistent for all individuals. Different people might perceive the identical emoji icon as carrying completely different meanings. One simple example that I experienced is that the smiley face icon means sneer of sarcasm to my friends and me (particularly in Chinese teenager community) but to older generations of my parents it means nothing more than just a friendly smile. Thus, when I decode my emotions (sarcasm) into the icon (smiley face) and transfer it to my parents, they will misinterpret it as friendly smile not necessarily in a wrong way but in a way that departs from my original intention. This is just one way that misunderstanding can occur in communication. Aside from discrepancy in encoding and decoding methods, noise in channel can also contribute to communication issue. Overall, the communication model suggests that the process of information exchange is more complex than we think it is, and we should not take for granted that receiver could always understand sender’s message in a flawless way.

          The article “Do Emoji Help Or Impair Digital Communication?” by T. Gorrindo and A. Fishel discussed how images like emoji play a vital and irreplaceable role in our communication today. The authors believed that emoji could improve our online communication experience in many ways with more vivid visual presentations, but it can also be difficult to interpret under certain circumstances. I wholeheartedly agreed with the authors’ view because according to the communication model, emoji as part of the symbol that carries indefinite meaning can sometimes be extremely ambiguous and foster misunderstanding (like what I stated in the last paragraph). Moreover, the authors believe emoji interpretation is also a cultural product (the “praying hands” icon is often regarded as “two hands having five”). For some of the emojis that carry universal meaning (such as “heart” means only love and care), the alternative explanations are very unlikely and thus leads to less ambiguity. The real meaning behind emojis as part of the non-verbal communication is granted by people (the process of encoding) and interpreted with individual preferences (the process of decoding). Acknowledging that even verbal communication can take along subtle and unclear meanings, expecting receiver to understand a “emoji only communication” can be very unrealistic. The communication model allows us to understand that meaning can only be approximated, but never determined.

Reference:

http://www.mghclaycenter.org/parenting-concerns/emoji-help-impair-digital-communication/

Revolutionizing Anxiety - One Text at a Time

"Is she mad at me or is that a joke? I can't tell if he is being sarcastic or if that was a real insult... I sent that text 4 hours ago with no response, is she busy or is she ignoring me?" 

These are not uncommon thoughts that go through someone's head when communicating with another person nonverbally.  In an age where communication is constantly at our fingertips and has revolutionized the way we do things on a day to day basis, it seems to cause it's fair share of problems as well.  As we discussed in class, we miss out on so much when we choose to communicate with someone nonverbally as opposed to speaking to them face-to-face.  How are we to know if the person we are texting is being genuine if we can't see the look on their face or hear the tone of their voice? How can we judge if the person we just emailed likes or dislikes us if we can't see the immense or minimal space between us? The thing is -- we can't.  And that's the thing with nonverbal communication, there is no way to decipher these things and there is nothing we can do to change that.  

It doesn’t stop there.  Not being able to decipher how someone is feeling is not the only problem with the “revolutionary” way we use to communicate today; texting is actually causing people physical anxiety. 

One of the ways Apple has enhanced texting is allowing us to see when the other person is typing and when they have read a message we sent.  This seems like a pretty cool feature until you look at it the way Maryam Abolfazli, a writing in Washington, did when she described the gray bubble with the ellipses that indicates the other person is typing as, “quite possibly the most important source of eternal hope and ultimate letdown in our daily lives”.  In an article I found, Jessica Bennett describes that her therapist told her to turn off these settings because the time between texts has been causing her physical anxiety.  Personally, I find that to be totally ridiculous but also totally understandable, because I get it.  If you really think about it the time after you send a text that is “risky” or “high-stakes” feels like an eternity no matter how long it is in reality, but why? Why do we work ourselves up over things that are 100% avoidable if we had just had that “risky conversation” face to face, like it was meant to be had in the first place? The only answer I can think of is it’s just how our generation is, we rely on nonverbal communication because it’s “safer” when we can hide behind our phone and not have to deal with the confrontation, even if it causes us physical problems. 

The accessibility and ease of the methods of communication we have available to us today are definitely revolutionary. However, the amount of overthinking we put into deciphering messages and the pressure we hold on the features that are supposed to make our lives easier will not revolutionize anything but the stress levels of generations to come.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/fashion/texting-anxiety-caused-by-little-bubbles.html