After the pandemic, many people relied on digital technologies to communicate. Because we had to distance ourselves from others, we had to take classes online, work from home, and solely communicate with our friends and family through our devices. During this time period, I identified many key opportunities and challenges people face when communicating digitally. The opportunities include talking to people regardless of the distance, working from home even if you are ill, taking classes from your house, and connecting with people and building relationships. Digital technologies eliminate the challenges of time and distance. The article, Virtually Working: Communicative and Structural Predictors of Media Use and Key Outcomes in Virtual Work Teams, discusses how many big companies have teams increasingly “composed of members who are dispersed in time and space”. It also states that the amount of media usage is determined by the locations where the team members are based and team size decides whether or not a traditional office setting or digital media communication is used. An opportunity to communicate digitally can be recruiting employees from across the globe. You can hire people based on their expertise, not location. You can also create recordings of presentations in case you are not in the same time zone. In addition, if you are home sick, you can still login to work and listen to an important meeting. Media can also strengthen relationships by helping you connect with old friends or meet new people with dating applications.
Some of the challenges of communicating digitally include the lack of human connection, communication difficulties, and poor communication. Even though we are able to talk with someone over the phone, we miss face-to-face contact. We can’t examine eye contact or body motions. In addition, sometimes there is poor communication. Maybe someone didn’t understand something clearly or misheard something and did an assignment wrong. It can be difficult to get back in contact with them if you are socially distant. And with technology comes some problems. Maybe your computer is malfunctioning or your camera works so you can’t sign into your important meeting or class. In the article, Virtually There: Distant Freshmen Blended in Classes through Synchronous Online Education, Olt conducted a survey to see what the academic life was like for freshmen doing their first year of college through synchronous online education. In this article, the author said that "all the participants described feeling like an outsider at times" and that technological difficulties "created a barrier to learning because time was taken away from the class and her focus was broken". Overall, communicating digitally can present opportunities but can also present a variety of challenges.
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