Online Communication

As our society continues to shift into a new digital era, we will most assuredly see more and more ways to communicate with others through means of the internet.  And while we do this remains unknown, other than the fact that we as people, are lazy and demand to have everything as convienent to us as possible.  However in doing this, we completely cut out an important part of our lives.  Not only can we as individuals be misunderstood through online communication, we can also be limited by perceptions of others.  We limit ourselves by creating an online personna and letting people make their assumptions of who we actually are.  This completely ruins the idea of communication.  

Simply stated, online communication misses important parts of communication, including non verbals and also active listening.  This reduces our ability to become active and good communicators.  We believe that by making things more convienent for us, that we help us be better communicators, but really we are only hurting our abiility to understand how people operate through communication. 

Levels of Communication

There are certain levels of communication that identify what people are willing to communicate with others.  These levels essentially identify the level of trust someone has with another person.  Signified by a pyramid, the more comfortable/more trust they have in someone, the more willing they are to share more important things ( such as feelings).  The more unfamiliar, the more generic the information will be (facts or sarcasim).   These levels of communication are ( in order from most generic to least generic); Cliche' conversation, reporting facts, individual ideas, individual feelings, peak- open honesty.  

The levels of trust are directly related to how much a person is willing to open up, identify themselves to their peers.  As they open up more, the more quality communication will occur.  The levels of openness are also illistrated by a pyramid, they are (from least trust to most trust): basic data, preferences, beliefs and feelings.  You see, these pyramids are both related, and as a two people trust each other more, they will move up the pyramids and thus result in better communication.  These levels signify how our relationships work, and how they can be developed over time.

Active Listening

Hearing is not listening, and although some may agrue, there is quite a difference.  Many of us do not simply hear something and retain it automatically, unfortunately we don't operate like that.  In order for us to actually interpret and understand something it takes active listening.  Active listening can be carried out by several things, but simply stated and more obviously said, be active.  Taking notes, repeating what was said and process what was said can greatly improve how you listen.  Active listening takes work, and causes thought.

There are always going to be distractions, whether environmental or physiological and sometimes even physcological.  However,  good active listeners learn to use participation to help reduce distractions.  For example, if you are too busy responding to questions and using movement to participate in active listening, you won't remember that your desk is wobbling.  Overall, active listening isn't something that you do with ease, but you choose to do.  Active listening helps us understand and process the information which we hear.

Non-verbal Commnunication

I think of all the aspects of communication, non-verbal is the most understated, misunderstood so to speak.  At first, I thought that this portion of commnunication was just a small part of our everyday life, but as I considered it in more depth, I realized that it was more than that.  There are five parts that come together to make up non verbal communication; they are: physical appearance, facial expressions, eye contact, body language and proxemics.  All of these parts are simply generic catagories that help us identify the forms of non verbal communication.  For instance, body language can be further specified by stating that hand gestures are often used to help describe.  All of these aspects can be further expanded upon, not just body language, however because our body language is always changing, it is one of the key factors of non verbals.

When reflecting this chapter, I choose to specifically identify body language seperately because it can be used so much in communication.  Appearance can be misunderstood, facial expressions can be faked, eye contact and proxemics can only take communication so far.  How someone holds themself in a conversation can communicate everything you would need to know.  Emblems, regulators, adaptors and illistrators are all forms of body language that can substitute language.  I believe this is why body language is so important, it change a conversation.  Overall, it is more important than meets the eye; for the observant onlooker, non verbal communication can display more that our ears can interpret.