Message Adaptations
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Your connection with your audience will be diminished when you are not speaking face-to-face, especially when you are not communicating in real time. If speaker and audience are in the same room, participants are more likely to experience “psychological closeness” and feel a sense of “similarity, solidarity, openness, and understanding.”25 Conversely, when you are distant, you will have a greater challenge establishing common ground and trust. It can also be more difficult to keep audience members engaged. Thus, you must plan your message carefully when your presentation is mediated.
Building Common Ground. To compensate for diminished presence, you need to emphasize common ground even more than you would in a classroom setting. If you are taking an online public speaking class, try to make brief references to other classmates’ speeches during your own presentation. If the class includes mandatory chat times, you can also note points that have been made during these sessions. For example, in a speech on nuclear energy, you might say, “Jesse showed us how to save money by cutting back on meat in our diet, and now I would like to show how we can all save money on our utility bills.” You might also be able to relate common experiences of online students to concepts in your speech. In an informative speech on the use of smoke signals, you might note how this ancient system of communication was used to warn soldiers up and down the Great Wall of China when the enemy was near.26 Thus, students can see how methods for communicating over great distances have evolved, with technology now enabling them to interact with one another online.
You also want to emphasize common ground during mediated workplace or community presentations. If you have interacted with audience members in the past, use relevant ideas from your previous discussions. If you do not know your audience, you might emphasize goals or principles that are familiar to everyone in the group. For example, you might refer to a company’s logo or the mission of a nonprofit organization.
Keeping Audience Members Engaged. Recall that remote listeners may feel more comfortable multitasking and that you will not be able to see nonverbal cues that may indicate disinterest. It is more difficult for receivers to remain attentive when staring at a screen than when watching a live human being.27 Thus, you will need to make it easier for them to focus on what you are saying. There are several strategies you can use to maintain audience interest when speaking in a mediated setting. Many of these approaches are helpful in a face-to-face context, but they are especially important when your speech is being recorded.
- Ask rhetorical questions. One strategy is to make greater use of rhetorical questions and other strategies that encourage active participation. In a speech on the need to get more sleep, a speaker might ask, “How many hours do you think the average college student sleeps?” Even if you are not physically present, this type of question invites the audience to think about the answer and wait with anticipation for you to explain the correct response.
- Increase the variety of supporting materials. Another way to maintain interest is to increase the variety of materials you present. A remote audience is more likely to lose interest if a speaker seems to be talking on and on. Conversely, a switch to another mode of presentation can recapture audience interest. For instance, a speaker who participates in rodeos might discuss rodeo equipment, focusing on the proper saddle in one of her main points. Her first subpoint might be an explanation of why a proper saddle is needed—and what went wrong the time she brought the wrong saddle to a barrel-racing event. Next, the speaker could display an actual saddle as a visual aid. Finally, the speaker might show a video clip of a rider in action while explaining how this rider used the saddle effectively.
- Keep it simple and relevant. A third strategy for maintaining engagement is to reduce complexity when explaining a main point or subpoint. Instead of discussing five ways for college students to decrease stress, pick the three that will be most relevant to the audience. If two credible research sources make the same basic point, choose the shorter quotation. Rather than presenting a long list of statistics, choose the most important one or two and invest more time in helping the audience understand and remember them. If you must go into more detail on a particular main point, use signposts along with an internal preview or summary to help the audience keep track of your train of thought (see chapter 9).
- Highlight takeaways. Finally, emphasize key takeaways for your audience to remember. A takeaway is a memorable phrase or sentence that captures the essence of your speech and can be repeated at key points in the speech. For example, in her speech on cardiovascular disease, Aubrey focused on three risk factors in her main points: stress, poor nutrition, and lack of exercise. Her subpoints explained the importance of minimizing these risks and the many feasible steps students could take. At the end of each main point, Aubrey used repetition, noting, “If you focus on this preventive measure now, your heart will thank you later.” She also closed with this key sentence in her clincher.
