Principles of Public Speaking Week 12 Mediated Public

Principles of Public Speaking Week 12: Mediated Public Speaking

Mediated Communication Often Used for • Public • One or more people speak, while others listen • Mass Communication • Messages that are spread to large audiences • via electronic or print media

Understanding Social Media • The study of Communication has changed with the times. • Social Media • Variable size of target audience • Interactive • User-generated content

Social Media • How face-to-face differs from Mediated Communication • Message richness • Synchronicity • Permanence • How social media is used • Information • Personal relationships • Personal identity • Entertainment

A Little History… • On one hand, researchers say we’ve always had access to more information than we felt we could handle • Yet on the other hand, the speed at which we can communicate and manipulate information through converged media devices IS faster than ever.

A Little History… Cont. • For the majority of human history, face-to-face oral communication was primary. • For over the past 5, 000 years, the technology of writing dominated, allowing for beginnings of mass communication • Though most people were illiterate until a few centuries ago • Only small, elite class produced, bought, circulated reading and writing. • Who?

19 th Century Mass Media • Photography (1826) • Telegraphy (1830 s) • Telephone (1876) • Phonograph (1877) • Motion Pictures (1888) • Radio (1888)

A Starting Point for Perspectives on Social Media Usage • For a generation over a certain age, social media is at best one tool among many for facilitating communication. At worst, it is a superfluous entertainment channel. • For a generation under a certain age, social media is the primary communication channel because they were born within it and their most meaningful interactions occur within it.

One Term Before We Discuss “Social Media” • Medium: the intervening substance through which impressions are conveyed to the senses or a force acts on objects at a distance • Terrestrial radio is a medium for conveying a human voice or sound recording to a mass audience • The plural form of medium is media • Mass Media: communication technology designed to reach a multitude of audiences from a single broadcasting origin

Social Media Complicates Our Previous Formation of Mass Media • Social Media makes things REALLY interesting • It potentially reaches a mass audience • AT THE SAME TIME • It is simultaneously a curated, private comm. channel • Where private information is constantly shared and utilized in known and unknown ways

Key Differences • Variable size of the target audience • Interactive • User-generated content

Medium, Mediated • So, if we’re not communicating face-toface, then it means there is a medium through which the message is conveyed. There could also be a multitude (media). So, we’ll refer to this type of communication – mediated communication.

Differences in Mediated Communication • Richness of the message is relatively lacking • Mostly comprised of asynchronous communication • There is a lag between receiving and responding to messages • Message permanence