I must confess I am super annoyed with other bloggers, theorist, professionals and academics claiming that nonverbal cues are absent in computer-mediated communication, such as social networking sites.
While this may have been true 20 plus years ago when we were first learning to use the internet, this is no longer true! Social networking is packed with nonverbal cues, we just have to stop and notice them. While traditionally nonverbal communication may not pop out at us when communicating via a computer, nonverbal cues are there. When I say this we are constantly sending some sort of nonverbal messages online. For instance the images we choose to send to our friends can be seen as a form of a nonverbal cue, meaning we select these images for a purpose full of intention behind them much of the time without even realizing it. Next, time you select a picture to post, stop and think what message am I actually sending? Do I want others to see me as outgoing? Fun? Energetic? It is true, we can not not communicate, simplistically meaning, like it or not we are always communicating something!
Categories