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1.1: Mediated Oral Communication Basics

  • Page ID
    113630
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    Learning Outcomes

    1. Define and explain mediated communication.

     

    Mediated Communication

    One type of communication is mediated communication, or the use of some form of technology to facilitate information between two or more people. This can include many things: phone calls, emails, text messaging, etc. In each of these cases, mediated technology is utilized to facilitate the share of information between two or more people.

    Most mediated communication occurs because technology functions as the link between someone sending information and someone receiving information. For example, you go online and look up the statistics from last night’s baseball game. The website you choose is the link between you and the reporter who authored the information. In the same way, if you looked up these same results in a newspaper, the newspaper would be the link between you and the reporter who wrote the article. The technology may have changed from print to electronic journalism, but the basic concept is still very much alive.

    Today we are surrounded by a ton of different media options. Some common examples include cable, satellite television, the World Wide Web, content streaming services (i.e., Netflix, Hulu, etc.), social media, magazines, voice over internet protocol (VoIP – Skype, Google Hangouts, etc.), and many others. We have more forms of mediated communication today than we have ever had before in history. Most of us will only experience and use a fraction of the mediated communication technologies that are available for us today.

    Mediated Oral Communication is mediated communication that happens out loud. Oral communication just means communication that is vocal, so when we study mediated oral communication we are studying communication that happens out loud through technology. In some instances this includes studying the context of the communication, which may also include non-vocal communication, but our primary focus will be on Oral communication.

    Key Takeaways

    • Mediated communication involves messages sent through a medium to aid the message.

    Exercises

    • What are some benefits to mediated communication? What are some drawbacks? How does it impact the message?

    This page titled 1.1: Mediated Oral Communication Basics is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Jason S. Wrench, Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter & Katherine S. Thweatt (OpenSUNY) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.