Digital Age Effect to Communication in Business Culture

The Digital Age Has Changed Everything

To understand the workings of media, as McLuhan advised, one must also understand that the format, the medium, and the shape of the way we project, communicate, or demonstrate our ideas shapes the message itself. Today’s digital devices demand our constant attention, completely changing the ways we interact, advertise, work, entertain, gain knowledge, conduct business, create, communicate and so much more.

Now, you can talk to anyone at any time. Ideas can flow quickly and are often quite explosive. Managers are finding they need to communicate with younger employees in a whole new manner. Businesses that do not understand the explosive nature of the digital communication network can often find themselves struggling to catch up with a negative storyline.

The digital revolution has given us the ability to easily copy and replicate things. While this may be helpful in championing a product on the digital highway, it also means managers will need to work harder to protect their original ideas, product innovations, and copyrighted insights.

Culturally, digital has changed the way we identify with one another and form communities..

Digital Has Changed the Way we Communicate

The dynamics of communication change in cyberspace; people are more open and do not use as many filters as they would in face-to-face communications. Sometimes people share very personal things about themselves. This feeling of over-familiarity confers undue credulity and equality on even the most pedestrian of bloggers. No one knows your credentials or lack thereof, so you are taken as seriously as everyone else.

How can businesses stand out in what is now considered to be an equal playing field where everyone and anyone can create a website or blog, and say what they want? Perhaps they can take a lesson from the way today’s celebrities, who are learning to interact with their fans in a whole new way. Prior to computers, magazines and cinema were the sole outlets influencing your perception of beauty. While stars and celebrity fan sites may be focused on perceptions of gossip, beauty and popularity, business managers can use these very same outlets to build similar, almost intimate relationships with the consuming public.

Our Sense of Self-Identity is Changing

Online capabilities allow people to take on virtually any personality or body form. There is blurring of the individual, cultural, and societal lines which makes managing and marketing even more challenging in the 21st century. McLuhan recognized how our society had changed radically with the introduction of the visual language of writing and the further widespread impact following the introduction of the printing press. Recently, we have faced another revolution of communication, the digital age.

Mwasandube Aden A.

BAPRM 42638