we can all benefit from getting better at communicating. When we add to our knowledge and make a commitment to develop the skills to apply that knowledge across an array of communication situations or contexts, we gain communication competence. For example, included among the skills necessary for effective communication is the ability to think critically. When we think critically, we have the ability to examine ideas reflectively and to decide what we should and should not believe, think, or do, given a specific set of circumstances.10
Digital and Social Media are Transforming Communication
Decades ago, media critic Marshall McLuhan cautioned, “The medium is the message.”11 In McLuhan’s view, different channels of communication affected both how a sender encoded a message and how a receiver responded to it. This means that the same words delivered face-to-face, on paper, via text, or with a tweet do not constitute the same message. The channel of communication changes things. What channel would you use to say good-bye to someone who was moving away? Which channel would you use to tell someone “I’m sorry?” What about “I love you?”
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New communication forms—new channels—alter our communication experiences. Technology and social media are game changers. Using them speeds up communication. Instead of valuing sequential understanding and careful logic, we seek immediate gratification and emotional involvement with people near and distant, close to home and around the world. As our real and virtual communication repertoires expand, we exist simultaneously both in the physical world and online.
Living Brands
Do you know anyone whose life has become a brand? A 2017 film, Ingrid Goes West, satirized the sometimes very painful ways in which social media impact lives.12 In the film Ingrid goes into a rage after seeing photos online of a wedding to which she wasn’t invited. A loner, she turns her life on its head by traveling to Los Angeles and reinventing herself into the image of her Instagram obsession, Taylor, a person who posts perfectly posed photos of herself along with inspirational quotes and has gazillions of followers.
Now, who would you rather be: Ingrid or Taylor? The devoted follower or the influencer? Has a filtered life that you have observed ever made you green with envy?
Changes Have Upsides and Downsides
The changes in how we communicate affect our social, emotional, and professional lives. On the upside, they influence our cultural sensibilities, making it easier for many among us to identify like-minded people who share our interests. On the downside, they make it less likely that we will expose ourselves to different points of view. Also on the downside, they make it possible for us to remain anonymous or to disguise ourselves. But on the upside, if we do remain anonymous, our online communication will be evaluated more for what we write than for how we look. On the downside, again, social media allow us to present our lives through filters—delivering a carefully curated image of ourselves to the world—but then again, those filters can be humorous too.13
Social media reshape human consciousness and relationships. Because there are only so many hours in a day, the time we spend using social media takes time away from other activities. Social media impede our living “in the moment.” Rather than enjoying the company of others or an event or celebration, we tweet, use Snapchat, or check Facebook. They also foster our dependency on others—we wait anxiously to see if our post will receive approval and affirmation.14 On the other hand, they do make it more possible for marginalized groups to find support. They have upsides and downsides, downsides and upsides.
Being a communicator in a digital age adds multiple layers to our communication experiences. For one thing, our messages become more permanent. For another, ethically challenged individuals can troll our pages, hack into our files, make our private messages public, and forward to other people something that we had no intention of communicating to them. What happens online influences offline realities.
Why Do We Communicate?
Every communication experience serves one or more functions. For example, communication can help us discover who we are, help us establish more meaningful personal and professional relationships, or prompt us to examine and try to change either our own attitudes and behaviors or the attitudes and behaviors of others.
To Gain Self-Understanding and Insight into Others
One key function of communication is self–other understanding: insight into ourselves and others. When we get to know another person, we also get to know ourselves and when we get to know ourselves, we learn how others affect us. We depend on communication to develop self-awareness.
We need feedback from others all the time, and others are constantly in need of feedback from us. Interpersonal, small-group, public, and mediated and digital communication offer us numerous opportunities for self–other discovery. Through communication encounters we are able to learn why we are trusting or untrusting, whether we can make our thoughts and feelings clear, under what conditions we have the power to influence others, and whether we can effectively make decisions and resolve conflicts and problems.
Modern communicators need to be able to interact with people culturally different from themselves. Although it might be feasible in the virtual world to seek comfort in similarity, insulating ourselves from intercultural contact in our social networks, communities, and workplaces is neither possible nor desirable. It is through communication that we reveal to others what is important to us and what we stand for.
To Form Meaningful Relationships
In building relationships, we cannot be overly concerned with ourselves but must consider the needs and wants of others. It is through effective communication that our basic physical and social needs are met.
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Psychologists tell us that we need other people just as we need water, food, and shelter. When we are cut off from human contact, we become disoriented and maladjusted, and our life itself may be placed in jeopardy. People who are isolated from others—people who lack satisfying social relationships—are more likely to experience health problems and to die earlier than those who have an abundance of satisfying relationships.
Communication offers each of us the chance to satisfy what psychologist William Schutz calls our “needs for inclusion, control, and affection.”15 The need for inclusion is our need to be with others, our need for social contact. We like to feel that others accept and value us, and we want to feel like a full partner in a relationship. The need for control is our need to feel that we are capable and responsible, that we are able to deal with and manage our environment. We also like to feel that we can influence others. The need for affection is our need to express and receive love. Because communication allows each of these needs to be met, we are less likely to feel unwanted, unloved, or incapable if we are able to communicate meaningfully with others.
Communication also gives us the chance to share our personal reality with people from our own and different cultures. Whether we live in an East Coast urban area, a southern city, a desert community, a home in sunny California, a village in Asia, a plain in Africa, or a town in the Middle East, we
