Is internet changing inerpersonal communication?

As professor Catherine Steele spoke of her research and the switch from "virtual barber shops" to the internet bloggs and other blogging websites in order to keep communities togeher, I have started to think to how the internet communications affect us. Which is  what brought me to thinking about how the Internet is changing social lives as

 we know it today. I am not questioning the easy availability of the internet and how it has  improved connections with different people all over the planet, but I am questioning to how Internet have and still is slowly changing nature of interpersonal communications.

According to Tom R. Tyler’s article about Social issues the primary use of the internet is communications, and we might even thing that internet will have positive outcomes in lives of individuals, for the simple fact that it increases the frequency as well as quality of interpersonal communications. On the other side, because electronic communication is so easy and in the close proximity for most of us, it may possibly cause weaker social connections. In today’s society internet has become a tool to connect with other people, meet new friends, and even possibly develop romantic relationships. It appears that in the near future the internet will erase communications that are face-to-face.

It is so much easier to speak to someone over text message, google messenger, email, than to actually take the time and meet the person in a physical setting where two of you can speak face-to-face and catch up. I  often instead of calling my friends I text them, because in my head it seems faster and easier to do, or even send them an email since I am always surfing the internet. I can possible use one of the Aristotle’s ethical principles to guide me. The Golden Mean principle states that morality can be found between two extremes. Of course, “mean” does not apply when it comes to murder and adultery, but pretty much anything else. Everything can be managed as long as it is done in moderation.

At the end, I cannot blame internet or technology in general for my lack of interpersonal communication between my friends and myself, but I can blame myself for not balancing the two. I can use internet and current technology to keep contact with friends that are in a different country as well as for work and school purposes, but the friends that are in my near proximity, those relationships I need to nurture and devote more face-to-face interactions if I want to save my interpersonal communications with my friends.

           

Human communication - Prof Barnhurst

Prof. Barnhurst

He started the lecture with an exercise of human story telling. The exercise was for student to turn towards another student and tell a story that needs to be recent and it needs to matter to the individual that is telling it. Then they need to get into the groups of four and tell their stories to the group.

The point of the exercise was to find a pattern within the stories and some commonalities. Some commonalities within different stories were location, note taking pattern, short sentences (so it could be easily remembered). When it came to similarities in content that they were similar it was found that topics about school or family is the content similarity.

We always use abstracts in order to tell a story for example, “this is what happened to me the other day….. ”. The reason we start this way is because we need to announce the start of the story so the listener know what is coming next. Right after abstract comes the setting which is often used to describe who, what, and when, which helps the listener picture themselves in the story. Then there is response or resolution which represents the ending.  At the end comes interpretation. Interpretation on the other hand is the product of the story. It represents how listeners perceived the story. Interpretation is used in order for us to organize, identify and interpret the information we have received from an individual.

To me this lecture is based on the first chapter and how we communicate with one another. The term communication comes to mind which means the way “we share experiences”. He also covers how we perceive other people in the terms of 3 elements. Those elements are the perceiver, the object of perception and in this context the object is a human being “and the context within which the object is viewed”. Since we are all different and come from different backgrounds and cultures, it is very easy to have predispositions to make negative or positive evaluations of others. We also need to remember that perception is always in transition and it changes over time and they never remain constant.

In order to for us to improve our perception we need to understand that our own perception can be inaccurate. In order to improve perception and communicational skills we need to accept the fact that our perception can be subjective. And the last requirement in order for us to improve our perception is empathy. It is often said “if you out yourself in my shoes, you would understand” which means that empathy involves experiencing the other’s perception, “that is seeing and feeling things as other does”. Perception will be always used but at least we can improve it.

             

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Gendering on the Internet

Gendering of the internet

Professor Merez opens up her lecture with the term incredible shrinking pipeline. It means that there is decreasing percentage of women in computer science fields. She presents the statement with the graph that states that from 1970s till 1986 women slowly were applying themselves more and more in the field of computer sciences and then, from the year of 1986 the interest of women in the computer science field starts to decrease. Professor Merez raises the question to “why is this happening?” The reasoning behind these statistics can be endless.

One of the reasons behind this statistics can be because the way we are raised in

today’s society. From the day that we are born, our parents start to slowly teach us gender specific roles. Also, according to our gender, we are given gender appropriate clothing (often colors that are associated to represent masculinity or femininity. As a boy you are most likely given soldier toys, little toy cars; and as girl, you are given cloths (that are often colors that are socially accepted as feminine colors), as well as gender appropriate toys like; barbie dolls, baking ovens, tea cups etc.

It appears that at very young age we are being steered towards what is socially

expected for a boy to be doing and playing with, and the same thing goes for girls. So at

the very young age we are thought to understand gender roles (which is culturally developed over time and it is something that we accept as being valid. At the young age

we are thought to understand to what biological sex is (male or female), as well as what are psychological characteristics (femininity, masculinity) means. And often times we create attitudes about the sexes according to how we were raised to understand gender roles and we accept them as societal norms.

Proffesor Merez then moves into speaking about presentation of gender in computer games today. The example she gave us is the game called “Dinner dash” . The main character in the game is a girl, and her responsibility is to seat customers, serve customers, and by passing each level, she accumulates money which the character can use to upgrade the restaurant with numerous amenities that would contribute to running a successful restaurant. It appears to be very discriminatory towards women because the game only offers female characters and their job is to cook, clean, serve and tend to customers. It represents women as if they are only capable of doing house work and nothing else.

 According to professor Merez, boy oriented games include shooting, fighting, running which is often associated by society to what boys should do as well as what boys should aspire to be. But, I would like to take this to different direction and present the proof that the society as we know it is changing in the way they genders are presented in today’s computer games.

There are also games that are slowly changing perspectives and views on women. Samus Aran game is presented to be a positive role model for women in a video game. She is a bounty hunter working for the Galactic Federation presented in the game wearing a mechanical armor and having plenty of weapons (beams and missiles). Her job in the game is to hunt down the space pirates and their leader. The game represents women as leaders and fighters which gives a completely different outlook on women in today’s society.

The other example of a game that empowers women is called Lara Croft. In this game the character is presented to be beautiful, intelligent, and athletic. She explores ancient tombs and ruins all over the world (inspired by the movie Tomb rider).So we can see the gender roles in today’s society are slowly changing in how women and men are presented. There is still a lot of room for improvements but there is a positive future on the horizon.

           

So we can see that the gender roles in today’s society are slowly changing in how are presented. There is still a lot of room for improvements but there is a positive future on the horizon.

           

Prof. Bui

Professor Bui opens her lecture with the question “To how we know what we know about people as well as  how do we value people? She believes that some individuals or groups of people are valued more and others less. Her lecture focuses in the on the representation of Vietnamese women and how they have been presented in the Hollywood movies to the American society. Often in Hollywood movies Vietnamese women are presented as objects, prostitutes, “dead bodies”; women that do not possess any other values. There are only objects for men to use and take advantage of. By presenting these women as objects to men to our society, we automatically have a picture created in minds that this is how Vietnamese women are. As we have previously learned in class, we as humans do  not spend much time on thinking (as we are lazy. We often use our past memories to what we have seen to associate an individual or a group of people and often attach those attributes to that individual or a group of people without even taking the time to know them before placing a judgment on them. As we have covered in Chapter 2 in our text book is states that our perception is directly connected to the influence of a culture we have been brought up in. It is often understood as stereotyping which means that we “generalize about a class of people, objects, or events that is widely held by a given culture”. Stereotyping is mostly inaccurate and false when it is used on a particular individual. It is unfortunate how easy stereotypes are created today throughout media and how easy we have accepted those stereotypes as the truth.  In most Hollywood movies women are often judged according to how they present themselves with the cloths the wear. Often times if a woman wears tighter and shorter skirt to what is socially accepted as appropriate for a women; this individual is often perceived as so called “slut”. But we can only blame our movies, advertising campaigns, magazines, build boards, where women are often presented as sexual objects and no other qualities to them. We cannot only blame media for stereotyping women, but we as individuals need to realize the mistakes we are making by placing judgments on others. We, as individuals can change the stereotypes in 3 easy steps as has been mentioned in the book, which is intention, attention and time. In the future, we as individuals have to make the first step towards change if we want anything to be changed. We cannot wait on the media to make the first step when we use media as representation of others and accept them as valid.