Online Communication

Online Communication

Abstract

Online media are many and varied. They can be defined as those media that are networked (for example, via the Internet, an intranet, or SMS, a short message service that supports text messaging). In simple technical terms, networking requires interconnectedness and interoperability between computing devices, and it also involves digital information that can be efficiently stored, searched for, and then retrieved and shared (either simultaneously or asynchronously). Where required, this takes place from multiple locations and different time zones.

Developments with online media have had profound implications for the accessibility of all areas of knowledge, not least the sciences. For example, online digital information (such as the home page of a scientific institution) can now be retrieved from a number of geographically distributed locations via a uniform resource identifier (URI) or uniform resource locator (URL), a codified address that points to a resource on the World Wide Web. This information is sent to the user via a network. Applications (such as Web browsers) hosted on compatible devices (including personal computers, personal digital assistants or PDAs, and mobile phones) then read and reformat this digital content (for example, the title of the home page always goes at the top, left aligned; the search function at the bottom, left-aligned; and so on) (Sonnenwald, 2003, 150-176).

Such is the ubiquity of online media for the sciences that these forms of communication are now routinely used. Users of online media, such as scientists, media professionals, other stakeholders (patent lawyers, journal editors, and so on), and individual citizens, have adapted (and are continuing to adapt) their social practices in how they communicate science via online media. To study contemporary science communication therefore requires some understanding of online media.

Introduction

The possibility of establishing communication through the computer has changed the concepts and models of science communication. So we introduce the concept "computer mediated communication", defined as the transmission and reception of messages where the computer acts as liaison to provide input and output to different interactions, besides having the ability to store communications with the supported by different tools.

Mass culture is also discussed otherwise with the introduction of Internet, because the latter, though considerably massive, longer half predominantly unilateral communication (as is attributed to the radio, television, film), but we allows for dialogue with other personally, it is not an indirect means, but that goes to our person. In this way you can get to create more inclusive experiences that allow "jump" of mass communication at the interpersonal or virtual.

Consequently, the vertical transmitter-message-receiver does not work for computer-mediated communication, because the process is not linear but flows in different directions (from sender to recipient and vice versa, means the sender and the receiver and from these to the media), plus each one has specific features and aspects to consider. (Huang, 2008, 496-499)

The media features make the difference from one generation to another (as seen in the history of distance education), but are also important features of the transmitter and receiver, as its ideology, history, emotion, intention, capacity mental ...