ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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Media Literacy

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The Internet

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a la Shmoop

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Okay, moving to the next lesson. Medium/well-done.

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The topic is the Internet.

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So, Deb, the Internet's all about communication.

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Talk to us about the different types of communication

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that it engenders.

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Okay, cool, we're gonna get a lot of five-dollar words up here.

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So, yeah, the Internet is 100% about communication.

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Think about everything you do on the Internet.

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All you're doing, really, is communicating.

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So first we can talk about

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timeliness of communication.

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And the two big words here are "synchronous" and "asynchronous" communication.

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Synchronous communication means it's happening at the same time; it's in sync.

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Asynchronous communication is when it's not happening at the same time.

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So what we're doing right now is synchronous communication.

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We're talking to each other.

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I'm saying something; you're responding. And vice-versa.

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That is the same for usually Google chats.

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- You say something; someone usually responds right back. - Sure. Skype.

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Skype. Anything where you're saying something

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and the person is responding in the exact same time.

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That's synchronous.

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[ uh-oh ]

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Asynchronous is stuff like e-mail.

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I send an e-mail. I wait anywhere between

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four seconds if it's you

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or hours or days for most people.

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And that means I'm sending something,

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then there's a time that passes,

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and then something else happens.

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So snail mail -

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that's asynchronous.

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E-mail.

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Text messages are often asynchronous.

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Depends on who you're texting with.

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And this changes how you're going to react.

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This is why people always say,

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"Oh, it's easier to e-mail someone

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than talk to them in person."

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Because that's why you would text someone

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to ask them out on a date instead of

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saying it in person. Because if you're in person,

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they're right there.

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- They're gonna respond yes or no. Exactly. - Rejection's all the more painful.

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Okay so we have next five-dollar words.

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What are unilateral and bilateral communication?

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So unilateral

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means that it is going in one direction, the communication.

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Bilateral means it's going in two directions.

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So what we're doing now, bilateral communication.

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I'm communicating with you; you're communicating back.

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Same with text messages,

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e-mails, et cetera.

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If I were to e-mail someone and they never wrote me back,

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then we have unilateral.

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The famous unilateral communications are

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- TV, radio, movies, yeah. - Yeah, radio stations, television, newspapers.

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Yeah. As much as I can scream at the judges

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on So You Think You Can Dance,

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- they're not talking back to me. - Right.

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So that is unilateral communication.

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And then it comes in various forms:

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one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many.

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We have one-to-one communication.

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That's what we're doing.

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I'm talking to one person; one person is responding.

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We have one-to-many.

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That would be if I

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wrote a blog post and many people read it.

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I'm one person writing it, but lots of people are consuming it.

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And then many-to-many would be

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Google Hangouts or any sort of chat room

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or anything where there's a lot of people

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- talking to each other all at once. - The Facebook's kind of that.

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- LinkedIn. Yeah. Okay, fair enough. - Yeah.

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[ whoop ]

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What are the different types of communication we can do

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over the Internet?

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What are unilateral and bilateral communication?

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What are the three different types of communication?

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