Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) Throughout the Years,

Computer mediated Communication (CMC)

Throughout the years, people used different means of communication to pass information from one source to another. The type of communication involved face-to-face, writing letters then sending to people, using telegrams which was the quickest means of communication, and use of telephones, although telephones were invented some years back. Today, the world has become computerized and there are new technologies that most firms have acquired to ease communication as well as replace labor. The computer mediated communications (CMC) that emerged involved the use of e-mail, chat rooms, and Usenet groups. In summary, this paper gives a narrative regarding the issue of Computer Mediated Communication as well as, analyzing the linguistic and visual features of my topic while explaining how they affect communication.

Issue of Privacy and social networking and effect on communication

The use of modern technology has contributed to a strong impact on the lives of many people. Most researches carried out shows that Computer Mediated Communication is one of the enormously spreading popularity of the social network sites. A diverse and large amount of the CMC usually takes place on the online social networks where various users use different communications and at the end, they are faced with challenges in terms of online privacy. Users should therefore develop certain language behavior and communication to make sure that they balance between when they exchange some private information with the other people as well as, maintaining certain degree of privacy within themselves.

One of the issues in regards to Computer Mediated Communication on the internet is the issue of privacy and social networking. Computer Mediated communication is alleged to be strongly challenging its online users by exposing the users' identities and creativity through the available options (Eecke, P., & Truyens, M, 2002). All those activities involved tend to have a strong effect on the issue of communication and privacy. The mostly affected people in this situation are the people who use multiple e-mail addresses; however those who use instant messaging tend to have an option of adjusting or switching their online chatting off as long as they want to end the chat. On the other hand, instant messaging is not one hundred percent safe given that, the relative choice of ending the chat might coincide with other risks brought by anonymity and identity fraud.

Today, most organizations communicate through a networked channel, and privacy in networked environments is usually a dynamic process conditioned by an individuals' own experience and expectation with others they interact with. People should therefore limit what they say or information they share for the privacy purposes. Technologies such as, search engines and mass storage generally enables the misuse of personal information, therefore, people should also limit themselves in using them.

Social network is also another issue brought up by CMC. Social networks have created a great revolution in the way people today share information of themselves or posting information of others. At present, people use mobile devices that have different applications which can distort the information reported by another person. The information can be publicly published on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace Tagged and all the social networks which are open, not knowing that, the information can be there for unknown periods of time. However, there are tools offered by social networks that enables one to customize his/her account in terms of privacy, but some internet users do not sufficiently understand how those tools should be used, allowing everyone to get access to all their private details as indicated by Levy, M., & Stockwell, G. (2006).

Linguistic and visual features and how they affect communication

Instant Messaging (IM) is one of the linguistic forms of Computer Mediated communication which is common among teenagers and college students. The research carried out shows that, those people who usually use this form of communication are often multitasking while they converse with their friends online. The use of IM such as, Facebook chat, MSN has contributed to unique structures of different languages communication in CMC. Today, many people spend too much of their time chatting with friends, and this behavior has brought a great significant impact in the way they tend to communicate with other people through face-to-face interaction.

Instant messaging has had a great effect on communication. This type of communication is the same just like when one uses e-mail; however, this seems to be more faster as well as, convenient way of passing information as one does not need to sit back waiting for the reply, but he/she can get a notice to signifies that the other person you are chatting with is typing the message or he/she has gone offline. IM has further effects on communication in that, one can multitask; users are able to chat with different people simultaneously through using different open windows on the same computer.

Instant messages can improve the means of communication; it can also threaten communication in some situations by diminishing the language or communication skills. When people send IM, they normally abbreviate some words such as "there4" for the word therefore, which becomes a bad habit for language writing. Today, the issues of face-to-face have become less common, this has been brought up by the threat of IM, since it does not allow the non-verbal communication cues, which sometimes help one to emphasize on the message one sends (Werry, C, 1996).