CHALLENGES OF MEDIATED PRESENTATIONS

Printed Page 446

Think of a political rally, a commencement speech, or a technology conference. Even with a large crowd, the speaker is able to connect personally to his or her audience. The main concern with mediated communication is that the in-person connection, or naturalness, is missing. This section considers the idea of naturalness and explores specific challenges that its loss creates (loss of immediacy, decreased nonverbal communication, diminished feedback, and difficulty managing distractions). We also discuss some of the unique technological difficulties that are not found in F2F communication. After discussing these challenges, we will explain how to overcome them in the next section of this chapter.

image