Teaching Media Fluency.
What and who is responsible for teaching media fluency? These are great questions to have answered before stepping into the professional realm when communicating with media. The responsibilities of whom and what to teach regarding media fluency fall on the organization's leadership in which a standard of conduct is implemented; this can be the educational institution, the corporation of employment, the government agency, etc.
A specialized business maintains a certain standard of media fluency when conducting business within the organization and its customers. Suppose the communication is unclear, whether verbal or via social media, there is a hindrance to productivity and profit margin. The worst-case scenario is failing to use proper and professional media fluency can cost a person their job (Glaser & Reisinger, 2021).
One of the main concerns with teaching media fluency and developing a professional persona is the influence of technology emoticons on younger generations. However, there are mixed results in the data. Some indicate they afford a more descriptive understanding of what is being expressed, while others see them as distracting and adolescent. Using such items in communications at the collegiate level and beyond is unacceptable. However, there is still an influx of younger classmates that still fall into bad form by using them and having more expectations of them from their instructors with feedback (Marder et al., 2020).
As mentors, it is our responsibility to educate our learners on the different stages of communication media fluency and how to grow in proper use.
References
Glaser, M. & Reisinger, H., (2021). Don't lose your product in story translation: How product-story link in narrative advertisements increase persuasion. Journal of Advertising, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/00913367.2021.1973623
Marder, B., Houghton, D., Erz, A., Harris, L., & Javornik, A., (2020). Smile(y) – and your students will smile with you? The effects of emoticons on impressions, evaluations, behavior in staff-to-student communications. Studies in Higher Education, 45(11) 2274-2287. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2019.1602760
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