EZ Communications

Reddit is a breeding ground for poorly formulated arguments and pointless "trolling". People get a kick out of having an argument that will clearly never end in consensus but rather just to argue for arguments sake. https://www.redditinc.com/assets/images/blog/reddit_header_2023-11-28-222257_hthh.png I chose to look a NBA Reddit, a notoriously controversial space with no real rules or etiquette. This argument  asks the question, " If a team of the 5 best college players at every position went against a team of the 5 worst NBA players who would win?". This topic is inherently sent up for failure as it's a hypothetical with no firm variables and no right answers. One of the first comments concludes with the statement, "People in this thread are insanely stupid.", this is a problematic way to finish what might have been a coherent argument as they finish with an unnecessary inflammatory comment. Later in the thread someone comments, "dumb post lol re...

This week I looked into podcasts around Communicating in general and then narrowed it down to find episodes that focused in on online communication. The podcast that I kept coming across was "Think Fast, Talk Smart: Communication Techniques" . It's a podcast produced by Stanford's Graduate School of Business and seems like a very reliable source.  https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/business-podcasts/think-fast-talk-smart-podcast I actually started by scanning through their most recent episodes to see if they cover anything directly on online communication techniques, and while a lot of it could have been applied to online techniques, not much of it was focusing on the online platform. I had to go back to an episode from 2021 (I would imagine around the height of the pandemic) to find this episode . Titled, "Quick Thinks: How to Shine Online and Excel at Virtual Communication", this episode highlights best practices when communicating online while still maintaining...

Social Media has been shown to have immense power and influence over the general public. It has literally swayed elections all over the world, notably it was revealed that Russia used Facebook to influence the 2016 presidential election.  https://www.npr.org/2019/04/24/716374421/fact-check-russian-interference-went-far-beyond-facebook-ads-kushner-described The significant change in how public opinion is garnered is our digital world has changed everything about how politicians and corporations communicate with the rest of society. The ability to remain at least somewhat anonymous in the public sphere has also shifted the battle for public opinion -- notable people can now use proxies and ghost accounts to contribute to a public debate on their behalf. The nature of how social media works allows for increased use of propaganda and heavily filtered information to be touted and spread as the truth when frequently it could not be further from that. Social media has fundamentally change...

 Owala I chose to analyze the online presence of a relatively new insulated water bottle brand called Owala.  The company has a really modern and distinct online presence -- they focus on highlighting their social media platforms while providing a succinct and no-nonsense communication ideology on their homepage.  The top of their page features a carousel of featured product pictures and a select few pages to navigate to if you want to shop on their site. It's clean, minimalistic, and extremely simple and I think this aesthetic and straightforward communication serves their brand image really well. The middle and bottom of their homepage features their mission statement and their social media presence -- two key pillars of their online communication presence. This is really the only extended writing on their homepage that isn't a link to another page on their website. They identify their target consumer in a really positive manner, allowing any possible online consumers t...

According to Prensky, what category do you fall into, and how has this affected your learning? I'm a Digital Native. I enjoy being a Digital Native, and think it has served me well up to this point. I think there's probably levels to being a Digital Native -- Prensky wrote about this subject ~20 years ago now and the digital age has only continued to catapult itself into the future. I think that I'm probably one of the first generations of Digital Natives, born in 1997, right at the beginning of the .com boom and just as home PC's were about to enter the market is around the time that I was old enough to be capable of using them. I find myself today being shocked at what kids in elementary school can do with technology. So, while I'm certainly a Native and a lot of this digital era has come naturally to me and is still intuitive, I think there will be another shift. It won't just be Natives and Immigrants, technology is changing so much that kids today will now ...

 Knapp's Relational Model For the purpose of this post I decided to analyze my relationship with one of my oldest friends. We grew up together, so the initiating phase of our relationship is something that I don't even remember -- our parents were friends so we were friends, basically since before I could talk. Most of my childhood we grew up in the same city and saw each other on a regular basis. My family ended up moving away right before I started high school and we were forced into the stagnation phase of Knapp's model. Source:  https://www.communicationtheory.org/knapps-relationship-model/ Since then we've fluctuated around the middle, re-integrating at points, bonding over new things, but never really differentiating. I think that this will be a lifelong friendship and I can't imagine a day where I don't feel comfortable picking up the phone and text or calling him. Online communication has allowed our relationship to remain healthy and active. We share a ...