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Effective mediated public speaking offers a new world of challenges and opportunities.

In this chapter, we examined mediated public speaking, in which a message is transmitted through an electronic or a mechanical medium. We contrasted mediated communication with F2F, or face-to-face, communication. Although mediated communications can never have the immediacy of F2F communications, they do offer several advantages and are becoming more widely used all the time. Mediated presentations fall into one of two categories: prerecorded and real time.

Some of the advantages of all mediated presentations are flexibility, savings, and audience size. Prerecorded advantages include do-overs, pause and rewind buttons, and the ability to save. Real-time advantages include audience feedback, audience interaction, and the potential option to save. Due to the loss of naturalness in mediated presentations, there are also some challenges to meet: loss of immediacy, decreased nonverbal communication, diminished feedback, and difficulty managing distractions. Still, there are ways to combat these challenges—specifically, by optimizing delivery methods (voice, eye contact, and movement/gestures) and adapting your message appropriately (focusing on building common ground and keeping audience members engaged). It’s also important to practice a mediated speech beforehand.

When recording a presentation, one should consider choice of camera, setting/background, attire, and camera positioning. For real-time presentations, the following suggestions are important to keep in mind: practice with your equipment to make sure it works, select a robust Internet connection, use group chat/video and screen share, create opportunities for audience interaction, and solicit feedback through an alternative medium.