IMPROVING YOUR COMPETENCE ONLINE

Much of our interpersonal interaction is online communication: connecting with others by means of new media, including social networking sites, e-mail, text- or instant-messaging, Snapchat, Skype, chatrooms, and even massively multiplayer video games like World of Warcraft (Walther & Parks, 2002). Online communication enables us to meet and form friendships and romances with people we wouldn’t encounter otherwise, and it helps us maintain established relationships (Howard, Rainie, & Jones, 2001). This is especially important for people who are geographically separated. For example, friends who are thousands of miles apart can routinely text each other and maintain a sense that they are actually proximic (Baym et al., 2012). In fact, we can predict quality and strength of interpersonal relationships by the frequency of technology use: relational partners who talk for longer periods of time on their cell phones and text each other more often typically have stronger, closer relationships (Licoppe, 2003).

Given how often we use technology to interpersonally communicate, building online competence becomes extremely important. A host of factors—including comfort with mobile devices and beliefs about their usefulness for achieving goals—impact whether or not someone will be a competent online communicator (Bakke, 2010). People who are confident learning new apps tend to be better online communicators because they use new media frequently and have fun doing it (Bakke, 2010). But beyond these factors, what can you do to improve your online competence? Based on years of research, scholar Malcolm Parks offers five suggestions (see Table 1.2 on p. 26).2

Credo of the National Communication Association

The National Communication Association (NCA) is the largest professional organization representing communication instructors, researchers, practitioners, and students in the United States. In 1999, the NCA Legislative Council adopted this “Credo for Ethical Communication” (National Communication Association, 1999).

  • We advocate truthfulness, accuracy, honesty, and reason as essential to the integrity of communication.

  • We endorse freedom of expression, diversity of perspective, and tolerance of dissent to achieve informed and responsible decision making.

  • We strive to understand and respect other communicators before evaluating and responding to their messages.

  • We promote communication climates of caring and mutual understanding that respect the unique needs and characteristics of individual communicators.

  • We condemn communication that degrades people through distortion, intimidation, coercion, and violence, or expression of intolerance and hatred.

  • We are committed to the courageous expression of personal convictions in pursuit of fairness and justice.

  • We advocate sharing information, opinions, and feelings when facing significant choices while also respecting privacy and confidentiality.

  • We accept responsibility for the short- and long-term consequences for our own communication and expect the same of others.

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Signs of the social natworking times.

Media Note: Understanding Competence

Show students the first few minutes of the popular MADtv skit “Can I Have Your Number?” (available online). Before playing the clip, advise students to analyze the character Darrell’s appropriateness, effectiveness, and ethics. After viewing the clip, have students discuss how the three components of competence were violated.

  1. Choose your medium wisely. An essential part of online competence is knowing when to communicate online versus offline. For many interpersonal goals, online communication is more effective. Text-messaging a friend to remind her of a coffee date makes more sense than dropping by her workplace, and it’s probably quicker and less disruptive than calling her. E-mail may be best when dealing with problematic people or certain types of conflicts. That’s because you can take time to think and carefully draft and revise responses before sending them—something that isn’t possible during face-to-face interactions.

    But online communication is not the best medium for giving in-depth, lengthy, and detailed explanations of professional or personal dilemmas, or for conveying weighty relationship decisions. Despite the ubiquity of online communication, many people still expect important news to be shared in person. Most of us would be surprised if a spouse revealed a long-awaited pregnancy through e-mail, or if a friend disclosed a cancer relapse through a text message.

  2. Don’t assume that online communication is always more efficient. Matters of relational significance or issues that evoke strong emotional overtones are more effectively and ethically handled in person or over the phone. But so, too, are many simple things—like deciding when to meet and where to go to lunch. Many times, a one-minute phone call or a quick, face-to-face exchange can save several minutes of texting.

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  3. Presume that your posts are public. You may be thinking of the laugh you’ll get from friends when you post the funny picture of you drunkenly hugging the houseplant on Instagram or Facebook. But what about family members, future in-laws, or potential employers who see the picture? That clever joke you made about friend A in an e-mail to friend B—what if B forwards it to C who then forwards it to A? Even if you have privacy settings on your personal page, what’s to stop authorized-access friends from downloading your photos and posts and distributing them to others? Keep this rule in mind: anything you’ve sent or posted online can potentially be seen by anyone.

  4. Remember that your posts are permanent. The things you say online are like old TV shows: they hang around as reruns forever. Old texts, tweets, e-mails, photographs, videos, and blogs—all of these may still be accessible years later. As just one example, everything you have ever posted on Facebook is stored on its server, whether you delete it from your profile or not. And Facebook legally reserves the right to sell your content, as long as it deletes personally identifying information (such as your name) from it. One of my students learned this the hard way when he saw a personal family photo he had uploaded to Facebook packaged as the sample photo in a gift frame at a local store. Think before you post.

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  5. Practice the art of creating drafts. Get into the habit of saving text and e-mail messages as “drafts,” then revisiting them later and editing them as needed for appropriateness, effectiveness, and ethics. Because online communication makes it easy to flame, many of us impetuously fire off messages that we later regret. Sometimes the most competent online communication is none at all—the result of a process in which you compose a text, save it as a draft, but delete it after reviewing it and realizing that it’s incompetent.

Media Note: Incompetent Online Communication

Lamebook.com compiles real, incompetent comments, statuses, and pictures that people have posted on Facebook. Before showing students, view the site and choose some specific examples to share with your class (note: because these are authentic, some are not suitable for in-class viewing). Have students consider the following questions: Do you see yourself as effective, appropriate, and ethical in your own online communication? What lessons about your own online communication can you learn from Lamebook?

Table 1.2: Online Communication Competence
Online Competence Suggestion Best Practices Suggestion
1. Choose your medium wisely. Online is best for quick reminders, linear messages, or messages that require time and thought to craft. Offline is best for important information: engagements, health issues, etc.
2. Don’t assume that online communication is always more efficient. If your message needs a quick decision or answer, a phone call or face-to-face conversation may be best. Use online communication if you want the person to have time to respond.
3. Presume that your posts are public. If you wouldn’t want a message published for public consumption, don’t post/send it online.
4. Remember that your posts are permanent. Even after you delete something, it still exists on servers and may be accessible.
5. Practice the art of creating drafts. Don’t succumb to the pressure to respond to e-mails immediately. Taking your time will result in a more competent message.

skills practice

Online Competence

Become a more competent online communicator.

  1. Before communicating online, ask yourself if the information is important or complicated, or if it requires a negotiated decision. If so, call or communicate face-to-face instead.

  2. Don’t share content you consider private. Anything you tweet, text, e-mail, or post can be exported elsewhere by anyone who has access to it.

  3. Save messages as drafts, then revisit them later, checking appropriateness, effectiveness, and ethics.

  4. When in doubt, delete—don’t send!