Communication in the Internet era: Social media above all?

A ‘picture’ which is worth a thousand words

The nearly unlimited possibilities on the Internet have transformed the way of we communicate, and the rise of new vocabularies, genres, and styles has also reshaped literacy practices. By overwriting the foundations of communication, the digital revolution also fostered the creation of new identities (Darvin, 2016) – the form we represent and express ourselves. As we will see latter on, three drivers are fuelling the rapid development of our communication style: (1) time / efficiency, (2) freedom to create / self-expression / creativity and lastly (3) amusement / fun.

“So, has social media changed the way we speak and write English? Yes, undeniably.”

Englishlive.ef.com (n.d.)

First, as we can see that longer phrases were shortened by omitting a few letters e.g. the vowels but still pronounceable words and with quite clear meaning. Then, in the case of longer expressions only the first (few) letters were used from each word which sometimes still had a clear reading, but in some cases those who weren’t participating from the start in this ‘language game’ could have hard times to decode the originally intended messages. These new (online) acronyms/abbreviations usually originated from the youth whose chatting and/or gaming habits were mirrored in these texts, but in a new form in a short of time, for instance, during a class or a game. Within no time, some of these became so popular that they were included in nearly all sentences (or even making up whole ‘quality’ conversions on their own)– sometimes even conquering the formal office culture as well.

Still, the absence of other clues (e.g. body language, voice tone) was recognised to be a problem, so smileys arrived soon afterwards . Finally, people were able to add some emoticons next to the dull lines so others could better imagine their emotions when chatting quickly without writing down those feelings. However, we finally got smileys to express our feelings in an improved way, still relying only on our eyes while reading the messages was often deceiving. Also, at the beginning, only a limited set of smileys were available, which could not really mimic how we would look like during a discussion held in public, not to forget for example, that to some smileys were given different meanings depending on who used them:

– is it truly happy? is it a forced smile? or an evil one?

So newer and newer smileys are arriving from time to time to be able to keep up with the needs of humanity (I am myself unsure that I have ever used or will use a third of the emoticons available just now). These new sets offered some extent of joy though, but still, people could feel that something is missing; to fully customise each one and yet they still will not represent real people in real-time as they don’t move and have no voice…

Among others, one of the most prominent features of digitalisation is that text, audio, video, graphics, photos, and animation can be added simultaneously and used together. Simple media suddenly became multimedia, and multimedia is a brand-new language we just getting to know (Orihuela, 2004). Interestingly music (sound) and pictures then moving pictures (GIFs) made a long journey till they united into the long-desired formats, the point where technology was finally able to mirror the most realistic pictures of us – the videos. With most of the smart gadgets having cameras, a new era started which encourages people to use images rather than written self-descriptions to express themselves, becoming closer to lifelike content than ever (using 3 filters in a picture/video are they really ourselves, though?). Moreover, new features were becoming available with better and better (front) cameras, boomerang Apps, and millions of creative filters and background music, so everyone had a good chance to find their taste.

Beyond doubt, we are recently experiencing a change in focus from interpersonal to digital communication. The Internet has become not only a medium for getting information, but an important tool of socialising. Its popularity is growing each year, especially among youth (preadolescents and adolescents) as they enjoy the easy, comfortable, and fast way of reaching nearly anything (and anyone) via Internet, not to forget the wide range of new possibilities of creation and expressing themselves (Candrasari, 2020; Wood et al., 2015). Moreover, we should not overlook the fact that social media also provides an excellent platform to develop crucial social (soft) and technology-based (hard) skills in addition to the new identity and self-expression part, so we cannnot ignore the importance of digital literacy anymore. However, these new ways of communication might seem new for first sight, if we look at them carefully we can see that they are not entirely new; we always liked to reach for the past when looking for good/new ideas just as happened in case of e-mails (old version: mails) or using special abbreviations and signs in chatting (old version: military codes, morse) or even memes (old version: funny stories or myths spread from mouth to mouth by villagers for example). It is true that since digitalisation the world is smaller and faster than ever, impacting nearly all parts of our life, but then again, our parents and even their parents may had already pretty similar communication styles and platforms in many respects before the Internet was even invented – shocking, right?

Sources:

– Baym, N. K. (2015). Personal Connections in the Digital Age (2nd ed.). Polity Press.

– Candrasari, Y. (2020). Mediated Interpersonal Communication: A New Way of Social Interaction in the Digital Age. Proceedings of the 2nd International Media Conference. Atlantis Press.

– Darvin, R. (2016). Language and identity in the digital age. In R. Darvin (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Identity (pp. 523-540). Routledge.

– Englishlive.ef.com (n.d.). Has social media changed the way we speak and write English?. EF English Live. Retrieved 28 February 2022, from https://englishlive.ef.com/blog/english-in-the-real-world/has-social-media-changed-the-way-we-speak-and-write-english/.

– Fuller, J. R. (n.d.). The Impact of Social Media Use on Social Skills. New York Behavioral Health. Retrieved 28 February 2022, from https://www.newyorkbehavioralhealth.com/the-impact-of-social-media-use-on-social-skills/.

– Merchant, G. (2007). Writing the future in the digital age. Literacy, 41(3), 118-128. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9345.2007.00469.x

– Onyeator, I., & Okpara, N. (2019). Human Communication in a Digital Age: Perspectives on Interpersonal Communication in the Family. New Media and Mass Communication, 78, 35-45. https://doi.org/10.7176/NMMC/78-06

– Orihuela, J. L. (2004). eCommunication: the 10 paradigms of media in the digital age. In R., Salaverría, & Ch. Sádaba (Eds.), Towards New Media Paradigms. Content, Producers, Organisations and Audiences (pp. 129-135). IICOST A20 International Conference, Ediciones EUNATE, Pamplona.

– Wood, M. A., Bukowski, W. M., & Lis, E. (2016). The Digital Self: How Social Media Serves as a Setting that Shapes Youth’s Emotional Experiences. Adolescent Res Rev, 1, 163–173. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40894-015-0014-8