Tan is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about virtual communication.
With the development of technology,
communicating with other becomes much easier than before. Virtual communication
has been seen in business frequently nowadays, such as emails, video
conferences and etc. Most big companies rely more on the Internet and global
technologies. As a result, how to make effective virtual communication plays a
vital role in business.
Definition
Virtual communication is defined by
Umea University as, “the information, communication, and action, mediated by
new information technologies, where contents, intentions, or actors may be
nonexistent, distorted, replaced, or created – intentionally or
unintentionally.”[1]
Virtual communication also means that people work in a team without actually
seeing others. In 21st century, it is a common way for completing
projects in large companies with departments spread all over the world.
Purpose
The intention of virtual communication
is to send the ideas and thoughts clearly without meeting one another. It is
only considered to be successful that people send the message and the recipients
receive the message correctly and timely.
Types
Virtual communication has different
types. The internet is the most common medium in virtual communication. It
could be used for emails, video conferences, social networking, online chatting
room and instant messenger. On the other hand, mobile phone is another powerful
tool for virtual communication. Text messages are considered effective in business,
even though they are used more for interpersonal relationships. It is very
important to know the appropriate type of virtual communication to use. For
instance, if there is something important to announce, I will prefer to use
emails or telephone calls rather than text messages.
Worries
Even though there are so many benefits
brought by effective virtual communication, we still need to consider some
issues that could lead to bad communication.
The first thing we should think about
is the time zone. If the company has branches all over the word, the time zone
will be a major consideration. For example, in United States, people in the
east should make the contact after 12pm because it is just 9am in the west. If
someone in United States wants to communicate with others in China, they had
better choose to write an email rather than make a phone call.
Another worry about virtual
communication is the dependence on technology. For a company that relies
greatly on technology, once the network fails or the database breaks down or
even a slight outage for several hours, people will have nothing to do but wait
for the engineer to fix it and the company may lose millions of dollars. So
these companies should keep monitoring their network status and back up their
databases frequently.
The last thing people should worry
about is miscommunication in virtual communication. Email is frequently used
these days and it has been proved to be efficient. However, something emotional
like tone is lost when we type the words in the email. Communicating in a
virtual world, people are not able to read your minds as easily as talking face
to face. Some useful signs like facial expressions and body languages will not
be seen. As a result, it will increase the potential for miscommunications. All
in all, in order to make effective virtual communication, we should consider
the difference in time zone, the dependency on technology and the potential for
miscommunication.
[1] Papa,
Nicole. "Effective Virtual Communication" eHow | How to Videos,
Articles & More - Discover the expert in you. | eHow.com. Web. 19 Feb.
2012. <http://www.ehow.com/about_6756180_effective-virtual-communication.html>.
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