Importance Of Digital Technology

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Digital Technology and Social Media’s Necessity in Communication Theory Courses
Communication is a social process in which individuals imply symbols or behaviors to create meaning in their surroundings (West & Turner, 2018). Communication plays a vital role in society, especially in the present, digital mass media. While communication is often presumed to be face-to-face interaction, due to digital technology social media has altered that assumption. Social networking has a variety of discrete characteristics and trending effects. The use of social media is necessary to study to enhance better communication skills and is important to study in a communication theory course.
Social media’s extraordinary prevalence will continue to grow within …show more content…

The process of electronically delivering messages is the basis of social media communication. Senders can create messages and send on multiple channels, including platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Contrarily to face-to-face communication, social media has the power to reach billions of individuals to decode whatever message it sends (Gordon, 2017). User-generated content on blog sites or platforms that allow individuals to like, comment, and share can also reach multiple mass audience. Content is not only written, but is captured through images. Communication is now becoming highly visualized, especially in platforms such as Instagram. These photographs are able to encode messages and tell narratives, providing insight on who, what, why, when, where, and how (Fortner & Fackler, …show more content…

Unlike face-to-face communication, digital technologies not only eliminate the acknowledgement of a body language, but a tone of voice. Individuals must understand that a message can be decoded incorrectly due to a lack of personal tone and the way it is written (Adler, Elmhorst, & Lucas, 2013). For example, a friend could post on another friend’s Facebook wall questioning each person’s task in their group project. While the sender could have intended the post to be simply questioning the context of each group member’s task, the receiver could decode the message as their friend being nasty due to the way the sender typed the message and a lack of nonverbal observation. Properly being aware of the inconsistencies of social media and being able to alternatively analyze digital messages compared to face-to-face communication is an essential communication skill

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