Professor surveys communication landscape

Communications professor Dr. John Caputo recently conducted surveys on his students and how they communicate. The survey is based on his daily experiences with his students and family members, as well as a number of topics about media consumption.

Caputo administer this survey in a number of classes, but it is a part of his Seminar in Media Literacy Class.

Studies suggest that changes in society have been most impacted by revolutions in communication, Caputo said.

"We are now moving quickly into the digital age and like all of the other [ages], everything is changing with these changes in communication technologies."

Forms of modern communication have evolved from a rotary telephone to texting, e-mail, and social networking sites like Facebook.

"What it means for this generation … Stay aware, [keep your] eyes open, question the source, the message and value of the media," Wendy Tollefsen, a student in her fourth Masters in Communication and Leadership class, said.

Tollefsen spent most of her life in Europe. If Tollefsen hadn't learned to adapt to the new media in the world, she would have been a stranger in a new land, and unable to understand the language or culture, she said.

Technology is changing the world, and everyone needs to change along with it.

Communication is the key to relationships and the way we live. Caputo mentioned one of his teachers, Peter Drucker, who wrote a few years ago that "education as we know it will cease to exist in the next 30 years."

Caputo said that this is because "our communication technologies will provide us with significantly different ways to gather information and develop relationships."

Caputo says a good example of this is that anthropologists say we have about the same number of friends as our ancestors, around five to 14, but Facebook typically tells us we have far more. Facebook has already changed our culture as we know it.

"The effects [of the media] are numerous, but the one I notice the most is how detached I am from people I used to be close to," graduate student David Fairwell said.

Fairwell chooses to engage his family in face-to-face communication, because new media is distracting and demanding, taking up about 70 percent of his day.

"I think new media is a second generation of communication today," student Margaret Denninger said. "Before it was just e-mail and now there are choices. This makes communication so much more possible."

Denninger said there were some surprising facts from the survey. There was a large audience for religious listening of radio stations, which is usually done now through computers. There were also an equal number of students who downloaded music from iTunes as bought CDs. She was also impressed with the variety of movies, books and TV shows that the students like.

E-mail still seems to be in the lead of digital communication, though a little less than half the people involved in the survey use Facebook and MySpace as social networking sites.
"There are so many media choices out there and coupled with continuous introduction of new media gadgets, it looks like we'll have ‘mediagentics' for a long time," Denninger said.
"Reading the results of the other participants also surprised me by how pervasive the new media truly is in our culture," Tollefsen said.

Because of this pervasive nature, one should understand the power of the media, Fairwell said.

"This generation must become media literate and aware of the effects of media so that they can actually have a chance to choose what it is they believe and want to do," Fairwell said.
Caputo said that the challenge will be how to use the media for good.

Acceleration and isolation are results of the new media technology, Tollefsen said. The process of communication is sped up, but it leaves no time for reflection.

"I miss handwritten letters, and sitting in a film theater without blue screens flickering on all around me," she said.

Caputo gives the survey every semester, and the last survey was given about a month ago to his online class. He is considering making it available to the entire community, which would yield an even bigger variety of results.

Hopefully this generation can be in control of the new technology growing in the world.
"Using the new forms of media to advance knowledge, technology and creativity means responsibility and accountability," Tollefsen said.