Thursday, April 26, 2012

Week 2 - Media Ideologies


Dear Ilana Gershon,

“Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” completely resonated with my ideals on relationship maintenance and digital media. The concept of media ideologies, and different mediums having specific uses and values is intriguing. The story that the undergraduate Halle gave, about using text for joking with her boyfriend, leading to his text message break-up as perceived completely inappropriate is totally proves the concept.  The fact that Doug had said that he felt bad because he was not kidding when they would joke about the other girl, shows that he has difficulty communicating “serious” messages.  The fact that he chose to use text message to finally come clean and end the relationship was unfortunate for Halle, since it was so unexpected and the conversation was awkwardly drawn out because of the misunderstanding.

Imagine if text messaging did not exist, especially in situations like this.  The people who have the most trouble with confrontation face-to-face would probably never be moved to action.  In a way, you could almost say it is a good thing that it does exist, or else how many people would just be stuck in a relationship they do not want to be in because of fearing conflict?  I think that this shows people need to realize the importance of learning effective communication skills with and without technology in order to maintain our interpersonal relationships.  Mediated communication has become an easy way out, but in the end it leaves one person defeated and the other feeling like they had saved face, when in fact they just appear worse.


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