Business Communication Assignment: Modes of Communication Exchange

Question

Task: Report
The purpose of this business communication assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to apply communication theory to your everyday experiences of communication practices.

Choose an example of a ‘communication exchange’ (that is, a situation where two or more people are communicating) from any of the following sources:

- Social media (eg Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, WeChat, etc) - Youtube video on any topic - Current affairs (eg print news, television, radio, online news)
- Segment of a television program (eg reality show, documentary, drama, comedy, etc)
- Novel or other creative work

Please complete the following tasks for this assignment:
1. Provide a title which reflects the content of your report.
2. Provide a link to the source (or append a scanned copy of the printed document to your assignment).
3. Introduce the main ideas to be covered in the report.
4. Write a 250-500 word summary of the communication exchange.
5. Use any three topics as the framework to analyse the communication exchange. These include:

a. Gender and communication
b. Intercultural communication
c. Intergenerational communication
d. The diversity and complexity of disability
e. Online communication: Balancing the personal and professional
f. Self-disclosure and trust
g. Negotiation and conflict management
h. Persuasion, power and communication

Answer

Introduction:
The topic examined herein business communication assignment is about communication exchange showing insights on the process of communication that takes place using a variety of medium on diverse issues. The 1st topic is concerned about gender communication and its alma mater using the social media platform to understand the preference of discussion for the men and women. Then the 2nd topic would explore the intricacies of intercultural communication through films like ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ giving a brief of the cultural tensions therein. The 3rd topic is concerned about the online communication and how the same is affecting the work-life balance of the individuals. In this case, both the personal and professional aspects has been highlighted to have a critical analysis on the exchange of the communication aspect.

Communication exchange:
Communication exchange is a vital part of daily lives to carry on business as usual. In the globalised era of the 21st century, the importance of communication has grown immensely. The communication is not worthy if it does not gets the right platform for its exchange and rightly in the social media era, there are plethora of communication exchange platforms(Beebe, et al., 2016). For instance, social media in a short time has evolved as the mouthpiece for organisations or a state, say Twittermessages are no more informal modes of communication exchanges. E-mails has become the most trusted aspect of communication exchanges, gone are those days where communication exchange were limited to verbal communication only(Dwyer, 2020). So with time, communication processes has evolved and so does its exchange modes. Accordingly, communication exchanges has various phases which would be discussed in the upcoming sections along with its features and characteristics to fulfil the communication goal.

The report shows various modes of communication exchange, be it gender communication, intercultural communication or online communication. Each of the system has its own way and virtue to be appealing to its targeted audience(Westerman, et al., 2016). For instance, the men and women differs in interacting while sharing their thoughts and views on the social media wherein each of them become expressive in their individual way. Again, intercultural communication has its own mechanism wherein the non-verbal communication takes a role in establishing a communication bridge between the two persons(Penrod, et al., 2017). The online communication is the modern day phenomenon which needs due attention by both the employer and employees to attain their organisational goals. This is to stay in touch through online communication, whether the concerned individual is physically present in office or not.

Gender and Communication:
Social networking sites have become part of one’s daily life. There are various distinctions of communication happening over social media. One of the most relevant and predictive is that social media is gendered. There are multiple options of social media nowadays and that the respective genders engage in their type of social media (Leonardi, 2017). There are many platforms which are majorly used by males, like Reddit; whereas on Instagram females are mostly active.Coming to the next level in bifurcating gender wise activity. For example, the female users of Facebook like to share their personal issues, like relationships,andfamily matters.

Contrarily, the discussion areas for males are pretty abstract, like politics, sports, and so on. It is also found that certain topics receive more hits for females, like Birthday, Family outing; whereas Sports, Mythology, Action movies are more in case of males(Adler, et al., 2015).

Taking example of an experiment done in Facebook by an abstract writer. He created a spoof on politics for others to comment. He also changed his comments and tweeted differently as males and females. The outcome was that when he tweeted as a woman, the account received more offensive comments, deliberatelythose comments were misogynist in nature. A research from leading journal also confirms that 80% of the female journalists are abused more on abstract topics compared to their male counterparts(Meredith, 2012).The information that we share on social networking sites are majorly to make a good impact of ours on others.Themen and women significantly diverge in their self-presentation on the social media platform. For example, the women has the tendency to post profile images with direct eye contact, while men prefer more full body images including others as well(Collins, et al., 2016).They also post outdoor images.

The differences expand when they are at adolescent staged. They use social networking sites to portray their social media personality. For example, the teenage girls post visibly sensuous photographs, while boys share imagesof their adventurousbehaviours, such as alcohol or other vices. There were certain instances of vulgarity by a group of boys in Instagram that created ‘Bois Locker Room’ discussing on obscenity. Again, the #MeToo movement can also be related where large number of females came out and shared their horrifying tales.As per Westermanet al.,(2016), the men and women also speak contrarily on social media. Men use more commanding tone; women are mostly formal and warm. Women folks are more emotions oriented while their male counterparts had topics on fact-oriented issues and on politics, tax, sports, action movies and economics.

The social media users could be differentiated by their writing style. Harvard University research team analysed the language of Facebook female users and found more use of punctuation and emotions(Dwyer, 2020).In Twitter it is found that men mostly likely engage in trolling or use of aggressive language, unlike women.Women use social media largely from an interpersonal standpoint. Social networking activity of women are different than men, as they are more communicative whereas mean are more information seekers. From an argument perspective, mean take the lead to the extent that those arguments reach such a stage that they drive women away(Leonardi, 2017).

The women getsvalued on their looks also has a downside. Women compare themselves to other women, even though they don’t realize those other women are spending an exorbitant amount of time taking these pictures(Roth, et al., 2016). A step taken back and look at social media, it doesn’t matter what the platform is(Meredith, 2012). What matters is that there are actually fewer women in technical roles today, so the technologies that are being made today are based on men’s expectations. One solution could be creating a space for more diversity in technology – something that could level out genderism.

Intercultural communication:
Communication is a significant part of the human daily life and in a cosmopolitan world, it happens that people need to communicate people belonging to an alien culture for work or any other purpose. So in the current scenario, intercultural communication is worthy to study owing to its importance in the globalised world. In certain scenarios, intercultural communication tends to be complicated not only due to language barriers but owing to differing customs and rituals(Adler, et al., 2015). For instance, shaking hands indicate generosity and greetings for the Americans while the Japanese prefer to bow down their head. Therefore, intercultural communication is the verbal and non-verbal communication taking place between peoples belonging to different cultures. This sort of communication is well explored through various creative works, say films depicting the essence of intercultural communication. To an extent, a comical treatment is adopted to showcase the confusions owing to interaction in a foreign environment.

Films are creative wonders to showcase the various facets of intercultural communication. The medium takes help of learnings and pleasure simultaneously to make relevant points through an excellent story-telling process to get due attention of the audience.For instance, ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ is an incredible film based on the love story of a woman of a Greek decent in love with an American man. It is one of the best film of the millennium showcasing the intercultural aspect like the way of living of the common Greek Americans(Jacobsson, 2017).It depicts a conflict among the Greek heritage and the American culture on a comic tone. In this context, the Hofstede’s cultural dimension could be used showcasing the Greek and American way of managing the cultural conflicts. The bride has her father as the central figure having authority in every matters of the household placing him at the top of the hierarchy. It could be stated as the long power distance as everyone in the household accepts the authority of the father even in negligible matters like the protagonist want to take permission from her father as she wants to learn computer. But for the groom’s side of story, he belongs to a completely different set-up whereas making decisions for himself, an ideal example of short power distance as per Hofstede. The different background of the protagonists are shown through their difference in attitude as the woman was shy in nature but the man was very flexible and open-minded in expressing his feelings for her. So the film was typical in showing the sorts of non-verbal communication between them. It has the elements of proxemics,a short and sweet distance between the speakers(Beebe, et al., 2016). In a way while their relationship was growing there were more of non-verbal communication than the verbal mode.

The real crux of the film lies when the man visits the house of the woman and seeks permission from her father to marry her. The film shows how they interact with each other and breaks the ice having mutual respect of each other’s custom and rituals that binds the human communities into the common bond of love(Urios-Aparisi, 2013). So the film successfully addresses the sorts of senses and cognitive channels visually though non-verbally to make it understandable to a wider segment of audience.Therefore, this particular film, ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ is an ode to the diversity of intercultural

communicationthatonecomesacrossinthesociety. This creative piece is very much suitable for students, say those of film studies and business communication to understand the diversities that are to be faced in the contemporary scenario(Hooker, 2012). It also tends to give respect to different cultural aspects to win over hearts and strengthen human relationships.

Online communication: Balancing the personal and professional front
In simplistic terms, online communication is the method in which the individuals and the computers interact with each other using the computer network of internet through e-mails, online chats and social media among others. In the contemporary scenario, online communication has become a way of life not only to communicate in the workplace but it has influence over the personal life of the individuals as well(Meredith, 2012). The human beings are living a rat race to survive the cruel world of competition to ensure their livelihood and sustenance. There are certain workplace that gives due respect to the personal space of the employees while some does not spare the employees to lead a proper social life(Penrod, et al., 2017). On such an occasion, it is suitable to bring up the relevance of work-life balance as lately, the employers are realising its worth to provide the staff with their freedom to have a proper social life.

The United States holds the 30thposition in terms of work-life balance and that has been plausible owing to the modes of online communication available(Dwyer, 2020). The stressful situation at the workplace like working for long hours need to be addressed at once and so the employers facilitated its staff to have a flexibility in their work schedule by providing the work-life balance strategy. It gives employees the option to work from the comfort of their home and simultaneously stay connected through sorts of online tools like Skype, e-mails, Zoom, WhatsApp and call conferencing. The work-life balance tends to ease the stress level; of the employees as they could attain their families and other social commitments without hampering their work(Adler, et al., 2015). So the online phenomenon has direct connotations with the satisfaction level of the employees who are working from their home and tend to meet the parameters of attending the perfect work-life balance equation. Indeed, a happy employee is a key to success and the happiness quotient varies from person to person. But on a general context, if the employees are provided with their requisite space or liberty, it would yield effective outcome for the organisation. This aspect could be rightly attained through online communication as the employees carries his work to home or a place of his convenience(Collins, et al., 2016). There are ample scope of online communication nowadays, say personalisedgroup chats facilitated by the organisation to keep in touch with the stakeholders to contemplate the task. It might happen that a project manager takes a break and leaves for a vacation but that does not mean he becomes inaccessible(Hooker, 2012). He could be in touch with his office and vice versa as the requirement occurs, so it is the boon of online communication that he is able to enjoy his leisure while attending his professional commitments simultaneously.

Online communication is undoubtedly a boon in terms of work-life balance but simultaneously, it is a bane as well. It is because the employee carries the work to his home and attains to his task for a substantial time while at home(Leonardi, 2017). It affects his social life as he had to attend the tasks while his family awaits him but at the same time, he gets the opportunity to be under the same roof or physically present with them whereas many employees does not have that luxury. So in the busy lifestyle, this aspect of online communication has to be accepted as humans tend to stay connected round the clock(Künecke, et al., 2017). So in a way, work-life balance is quite effective for the employees but it takes care of the employee’s interest as well.

Conclusion:
The report concludes the fact that communication exchanges has changed its process and manners vigorously and the social media communications are its prime instance. It isundoubtedly a mouthpiece for both men and women to express their forms of emotions and set forth a series of communication as per their taste and preference.So it is indeed a fact that gender communication has the potentiality to prosper using the social networking sites. The aspect of intercultural communicationdepicted through the film ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’ is an epitome of the divergence that the society goes through while communicating with an alien culture. The films are certainly an effective medium to convey the matters in a creative way and so does its intercultural communication theme got well with its audience. Lastly, the corporate world has realised the importance of work-life balance, courtesy the online communication phenomenon. It has definitely changed the way work was being done, a virtual presence loomed over the physical presence.

References
Adler, R. B., Rosenfeld, L. B. & Proctor, R. F., 2015. Interplay: the process of interpersonal Communication. 13th ed. Perth: Oxford University Press.

Beebe, B. et al., 2016. A systems view of mother–infant face-to-face communication. Developmental psychology, 52(4), p. 556.
Collins, K., Shiffman, D. & Rock, J., 2016. How are scientists using social media in the workplace. PloS one, 11(10), pp. 162-180. Dwyer, J., 2020. Communication for Business and the Professions: Strategies and Skills. AU ed. Sydney: Pearson Higher Education.
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Künecke, J., Wilhelm, O. & Sommer, W., 2017. Emotion recognition in nonverbal face-to-face communication. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 41(3), pp. 221-238.

Leonardi, P., 2017. The social media revolution: Sharing and learning in the age of leaky knowledge. Business communication assignmentInformation and Organization, 27(1), pp. 47-59.

Meredith, M., 2012. Strategic communication and social media: An MBA course from a business communication perspective. Business Communication Quarterly, 75(1), pp. 89-95.

Penrod, C., Tucker, M. & Hartman, K., 2017. Models for Delivering Written Business Communication Skills: Improving the Process. Journal of Instructional Pedagogies, 2(14), pp. 19-25.

Roth, P., Bobko, P., Van Iddekinge, C. & Thatcher, J., 2016. Social media in employee-selection-related decisions: A research agenda for uncharted territory. Journal of Management, 42(1), pp. 269-298.

Urios-Aparisi, E., 2013. Dramatizing intercultural communication: Metaphors of city and identity in film. Intercultural Communication Studies, 22(3), pp. 80-94.

Westerman, D., Daniel, E. & Bowman, N., 2016. Learned risks and experienced rewards: Exploring the potential sources of students' attitudes toward social media and face-to-face communication. The Internet and Higher Education, Volume 31, pp. 52-57.