Introduction
Electronic communication is gradually gaining popularity at the expense of verbal face-to-face communication in social and organizational institutions. Social media has created an extensive network that allows people from different walks of life to exchange information and ideas. Social networking sites have been used as communication media for close to two decades now since classmates.com was started in 1995 with the aim of encouraging former colleagues in high school and colleges to reunite. Several other social networking sites were later started. SixDegrees.com (1997), Swedish community-Lunar Storm (2000), Ryze.com (2001), was targeted to help the San Francisco business community network (Marlin-Bennett 129). Many other social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Friendster, MySpace.com and twitter were started in the throughout the 2000s. Facebook, started in 2004 as originally exclusive to Harvard university students is perhaps the most popular social networking site (Otterbacher 424).
Communication in social networking sites
Communication in social networking sites is instant and may make the response more immediate and even permanent. Social networking increases the comfort and efficiency of communication as opposed to traditional communication. However, messages sent through social networking sites could be misinterpreted thereby bringing about conflicts (Haberstroh 455).
Face-to-face communication is seemingly the most authentic form of communication because it has the ability to convey both spoken and unspoken meanings (Riordan 34). According to Kirwan, the tone and the body language of people talking face-to-face may carry a bigger meaning as opposed to the tone as may be adduced from a facebook message, update or a tweet (69).
Knowledge Claim
Communication through social networks and blogs does not affect verbal communication. This may be achieved through establishing whether communication via social networks and blogs may affect verbal communication skills in any way. Since the study is aimed at offering a sound advisory on the effects of social media on verbal communication skills it would enhance the understanding of electronic communication. Some of the techniques that may be used to adequately respond to the objective of this research include interviews and questionnaires to respondents from schools, companies, non-governmental organizations and individuals in family settings (Haberstroh 459). The sample respondents will be selected in a completely randomized design and shall reflect diversity in age, gender and occupation among other relevant factors.
Works Cited
Marlin-Bennett, Renée. “I Hear America Tweeting and Other Themes for a Virtual Polis: Rethinking Democracy in the Global InfoTech Age”. Journal of Information Technology & Politics. (2011), 8, 129-145. I shall use this source to question the role of upcoming technology in advancing democracy and in particular the effects of technology on verbal communication.
Otterbacher Jahna. “Being Heard in Review Communities: Communication Tactics and Review Prominence”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. ( 2011), 3: 424-444. I shall use this source to examine communication tactics and prominence in review communities of which social networking sites feature prominently.
Kirwan Gráinne.“Cyberpsychology”. The Irish Journal of Psychology. (2010), 1-2: 69-84. I shall use this article to discuss the effects that communicating via social networks has on verbal communication.
Riordan Monica. “Cues in computer-mediated communication: A corpus analysis Computers in Human Behavior.” (2010), 6: 1806-1817. I shall use this source to discuss the human behavior and the substitution of human reactions when people communicate via computer-aided means, as opposed to face-to-face communication.
Haberstroh Shane. “College Counselors' Use of Informal Language Online: Student Perceptions of Expertness, Trustworthiness, and Attractiveness”. Behavior, and Social Networking. (2010), 4: 455-459. I shall use this source to individually evaluate the integrity (trustworthiness, expertness and attractiveness) of information exchanges via each type of communication.
