How the Digital Age Has Shaped Communication Management

The digital age is rapidly changing communications management in astronomical ways. Everything is digitized now. All businesses are online, and each of them uses social media for all kinds of communication. Come to think of it, the latest statistics show 87% increase in the use of social media platforms. It is believed that this number will increase in the next 5 years.

I was awed with another number. The huge figure representing that many adults went online. Furthermore, 52% of companies use social media to connect and communicate with customers. This only means one thing the way business communicates with the customer has changed forever. When a company needs to engage its market, it sends tweets, or creates eye catching statuses on face book. If it needs to expound on matters i.e. updates, important developments, or new product launches, and social media limits the execution, then they can blog about them on their sites.

How well are you keeping up with the changes in the digital communication landscape? It's one of the unique challenges presented to businesses today understanding and incorporating the various developments and changes in digital communication. Blogs, Social Media, and Micro Blogs it can be extremely overwhelming. According to the info graph below, 87% of businesses are using social media, but only 58% have adopted blogging, which suggests that many business owners still haven't come to grips with the nature of digital marketing today.

What's more telling is that only 58% of businesses are using social media to provide ways for customers to interact with a company. Yet a growing number of customers expect to be able to hop on a Face book Page or send a Tweet  and get an answer. Businesses who aren't paying attention to customers on social networks (social listening) are missing key conversations and opportunities.

Take a look at how the digital landscape is changing and being used, throughout the world, and think about how your own business fits in. Effective communication lies at the heart of a successful business. Without being able to communicate, a team will have more difficulty accomplishing goals and interacting with customers. For this and many other reasons, communication management is an important area of study and mastery.

The digital age has brought real-time, 24-hour communication between businesses, employees and customers to the forefront. What is the result of this digital shift? Maintaining positive relationships with both employees and customer’s means keeping up with an ever evolving digital world.

Each year, the world becomes increasingly digitized, and anyone in the business of communications which is to say, most everyone who touches social media must stay aware of the landscape.

MARKETING INFORMATION SYSTEM

KIDENDEI SEGERETI S

The internal records system supplies results data, but the marketing intelligence system supplies happenings data. A marketing intelligence system is a set of procedures and sources managers use to obtain everyday information about developments in the marketing environment. Marketing managers collect marketing intelligence by reading books, newspapers, and trade publications; talking to customers, suppliers, and distributors; and meeting with other company managers. A company can take several steps to improve the quality of its marketing intelligence.

 A company can train and motivate the sales force to spot and report new developments. Sales representatives are positioned to pick up information missed by other means, yet they often fail to pass on that information. The company must sell its sales force on their importance as intelligence gatherers. Sales reps should know which types of information to send to which managers. Grace Performance Chemicals, a division of W. R. Grace, supplies materials and chemicals to the construction and packaging industries. Grace sales reps were instructed to observe the innovative ways customers used its products to suggest possible new products. For example, some customers were using Grace waterproofing materials to soundproof their cars and patch boots and tents. Seven new-product ideas emerged in total, worth millions in sales to the company.

                        

 A company can motivate distributors, retailers, and other intermediaries to pass along important intelligence. Many companies hire specialists to gather marketing intelligence. Service providers often send mystery shoppers to their stores to assess how employees treat customers. Mystery shoppers for McDonald's discovered that only 46 percent of its restaurants nationwide met internal speed-of-service standards, forcing the company to rethink processes and training.⁹ Retailers also use mystery shoppers. Neiman Marcus employs a professional shopper agency to shop at its stores nationwide. It finds stores that consistently score high on the service have the best sales. Typical questions their mystery shoppers report on are: How long before a sales associate greeted you? Did the sales associate act as if he or she wanted your business? Was the sales associate knowledgeable about products in stock?.

 A company can network externally. It can purchase competitors' products; attend open houses and trade shows; read competitors' published reports; attend stockholders' meetings; talk to employees, dealers, distributors, suppliers, and freight agents; collect competitors' ads; and look up news stories about competitors. Software developer Cognos created an internal Web site called Street Fighter where any of the firm's 3,000 workers can submit scoops about competitors and win prizes. Competitive intelligence must be done legally and ethically, though. Procter & Gamble reportedly paid a multimillion-dollar settlement to Unilever when some external operatives hired as part of a P&G corporate intelligence program to learn about Unilever's hair care products were found to have engaged in such unethical behavior as dumpster diving.

 A company can set up a customer advisory panel. Members might include representative customers or the company's largest customers or its most outspoken or sophisticated customers. Many business schools have advisory panels made up of alumni and recruiters who provide valuable feedback on the curriculum.

SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIO OF KNOWLEDGE

Legacy of the Strong Programme in the sociology of science[edit]

At the point of its conception, the SCOT approach was partly motivated by the ideas of the Strong Programme in the Sociology of Science (Bloor 1973). In their seminal article, Pinch and Bijker refer to the Principle of Symmetry as the most influential tenet of the Sociology of Science, which should be applied in historical and sociological investigations of technology as well. It is strongly connected to Bloor's theory of social causation.

Symmetry[edit]

The Principle of Symmetry holds that in explaining the origins of scientific beliefs, that is, assessing the success and failure of models, theories, or experiments, the historian/sociologist should deploy the same kind of explanation in the cases of success as in cases of failure. When investigating beliefs, researchers should be impartial to the (a posteriori attributed) truth or falsehood of those beliefs, and the explanations should be unbiased. The strong programme adopts a position of relativism or neutralism regarding the arguments that social actors put forward for the acceptance/rejection of any technology. All arguments (social, cultural, political, economic, as well as technical) are to be treated equally.

The symmetry principle addresses the problem that the historian is tempted to explain the success of successful theories by referring to their "objective truth", or inherent "technical superiority", whereas s/he is more likely to put forward sociological explanations (citing political influence or economic reasons) only in the case of failures. For example, having experienced the obvious success of the chain-driven bicycle for decades, it is tempting to attribute its success to its "advanced technology" compared to the "primitiveness" of the Penny Farthing, but if we look closely and symmetrically at their history (as Pinch and Bijker do), we can see that at the beginning bicycles were valued according to quite different standards than nowadays. The early adopters (predominantly young, well-to-do gentlemen) valued the speed, the thrill, and the spectacularity of thePenny Farthing - in contrast to the security and stability of the chain-driven Safety Bicycle. Many other social factors (e.g., the contemporary state of urbanism and transport, women's clothing habits and feminism) have influenced and changed the relative valuations of bicycle models.

A weak reading of the Principle of Symmetry points out that there often are many competing theories or technologies, which all have the potential to provide slightly different solutions to similar problems. In these cases, sociological factors tip the balance between them: that's why we should pay equal attention to them.

A strong, social constructivist reading would add that even the emergence of the questions or problems to be solved are governed by social determinations, so the Principle of Symmetry is applicable even to the apparently purely technical issues.

BY KIDENDEI CEGERETI

Innovate and Disrupt: new challenges and opportunities in the Creative Industries — by Robert DeFillippi

The explosion of technology in the last few decades has caused fundamental disruptions within the creative industries, leading to both excitement and fear for their future. Professor Robert DeFillippi argues that it is vitally important that creative organizations understand the drivers of disruption and devise strategies for coping with these so that threats may be turned into opportunities.

No set of industries has experienced more disruptive change than the so-called creative industries (e.g. publishing, television, film making, design, video games) whose basic technologies and methods of creating and distributing their products and services and monetizing their investments have been disrupted by the revolution in digital technology and the rise of a net savvy generation of culture consumers who demand more choice, more access and a lower price (free is preferable) than any previous generation.

Disruption as commonly understood refers to a transformation in an industry or sector often linked to technology-based innovation in products, services and/or business models. These disruptive innovations typically create business threats and opportunities not nominally predictable from past historical experience and thus require incumbent participants to engage in strategic behavior and organizational practices that represent a departure from past successful and familiar strategies and practices. The academic study of disruption has roots in the academic research and theory of disruption promulgated by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen. The notion of disruption, however, has attracted a wider community of both scholars and practitioners who have recognized the emergence of disruptive phenomena in a widening range of industries and institutional sectors.

A number of factors are driving disruption in industries. These pose both great challenges and potential opportunities for organizations seeking to thrive in this age of disruption.

Hardware and software for digital content creation and editing

During the past thirty years digital content hardware have evolved from analog (physical film media) based to digital (electronic image sensor) devices which has fostered an innovation trajectory of smaller, lighter, more mobile and easier to use devices. Associated with these hardware technology developments has been the improved visual quality and lower costs associated with employing software to edit digital content. These trends have also increased the participation of amateurs in the creative content production arena since there are fewer cost based barriers to entry and individual creative artists can self-manage the content production and editing processes.

Digital platforms for content aggregation and distribution

The Internet and its associated Web 2.0 tools for communications, connectivity (community) and commerce are putting the aggregator (e.g. Google, Amazon) at the center of content distribution. Moreover, the most web savvy aggregators are developing digital platforms that can collect and distribute a wide range of digital content from a variety of sources, both internal and external. These platforms are developing APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow both digital content suppliers and buyers to conduct their respective transactions with the aggregator with ease.

Participatory culture

A major development in a growing number of creative industries is the rise of a participatory culture in which media content consumers are engaging with media products and services as content evaluators, content producers and content co-creators. A key consideration in participatory culture is the altered sensibilities of a new generation of media consumers who are digital natives and accustomed since childhood to actively participate in both the consumption and creation of their media experiences. Moreover, this is a generation that is accustomed to sharing their media creations and media experiences with others online.

DIGITALIZATION

The term digitization is often used when diverse forms of information, such as text, sound, image or voice, are converted into a single binary code. Digital information exists as one of two digits, either 0 or 1. These are known as bits (a contraction of binary digits) and the sequences of 0s and 1s that constitute information are called bytes.^[3]

Analog signals are continuously variable, both in the number of possible values of the signal at a given time, as well as in the number of points in the signal in a given period of time. However, digital signals are discrete in both of those respects – generally a finite sequence of integers – therefore a digitization can, in practical terms, only ever be anapproximation of the signal it represents.

Digitization occurs in two parts:

Discretization

The reading of an analog signal A, and, at regular time intervals (frequency), sampling the value of the signal at the point. Each such reading is called a sample and may be considered to have infinite precision at this stage;

Quantization

Samples are rounded to a fixed set of numbers (such as integers), a process known as quantization.

In general, these can occur at the same time, though they are conceptually distinct.

A series of digital integers can be transformed into an analog output that approximates the original analog signal. Such a transformation is called a DA conversion. The sampling rate and the number of bits used to represent the integers combine to determine how close such an approximation to the analog signal a digitization will be.

Examples[edit]

The term is often used to describe the scanning of analog sources (such as printed photos or taped videos) into computers for editing, but it also can refer to audio (where sampling rate is often measured in kilohertz) and texture map transformations. In this last case, as in normal photos, sampling rate refers to the resolution of the image, often measured in pixels per inch.

Digitizing is the primary way of storing images in a form suitable for transmission and computer processing, whether scanned from two-dimensional analog originals or captured using an image sensor-equipped device such as a digital camera, tomographical instrument such as a CAT scanner, or acquiring precise dimensions from a real-world object, such as a car, using a 3D scanning device.^[4]

Digitizing is central to making a digital representations of geographical features, using raster or vector images, in a geographic information system, i.e., the creation of electronic maps, either from various geographical and satellite imaging (raster) or by digitizing traditional paper maps or graphs^[5][6] (vector).

"Digitization" is also used to describe the process of populating databases with files or data. While this usage is technically inaccurate, it originates with the previously proper use of the term to describe that part of the process involving digitization of analog sources, such as printed pictures and brochures, before uploading to target databases.

Digitizing may also used in the field of apparel, where an image may be recreated with the help of embroidery digitizing software tools and saved as embroidery machine code. This machine code is fed into an embroidery machine and applied to the fabric. The most supported format is DST file. Apparel companies also digitize clothing patterns^{[citation needed]}

Analog signals to digital[edit]

Analog signals are continuous electrical signals; digital signals are non-continuous. Analog signal can be converted to digital signal by ADC.^[7]

Nearly all recorded music has been digitized. About 12 percent of the 500,000+ movies listed on the Internet Movie Database are digitized on DVD.^{[citation needed]}

Handling of analog signal becomes easy ^{[according to whom?]} when it is digitized because the signal is digitized before modulation and transmission. The conversion process of analog to digital consists of two processes: sampling and quantizing.

Digitization of personal multimedia such as home movies, slides, and photographs is a popular method of preserving and sharing older repositories. Slides and photographs may be scanned using an image scanner, but videos are more difficult.^[8]

STEPS IN CONDUCTING RESEARCH

Steps in conducting research[edit]

Research is often conducted using the hourglass model structure of research.^[7] The hourglass model starts with a broad spectrum for research, focusing in on the required information through the method of the project (like the neck of the hourglass), then expands the research in the form of discussion and results. The major steps in conducting research are:^[8]

• Identification of research problem
• Literature review
• Specifying the purpose of research
• Determine specific research questions
• Specification of a conceptual framework, usually a set of hypotheses^[9]
• Choice of a methodology (for data collection)
• Data collection
• Verify data
• Analyzing and interpreting the data
• Reporting and evaluating research
• Communicating the research findings and, possibly, recommendations

The steps generally represent the overall process; however, they should be viewed as an ever-changing iterative process rather than a fixed set of steps.^[10] Most research begins with a general statement of the problem, or rather, the purpose for engaging in the study.^[11] The literature review identifies flaws or holes in previous research which provides justification for the study. Often, a literature review is conducted in a given subject area before a research question is identified. A gap in the current literature, as identified by a researcher, then engenders a research question. The research question may be parallel to the hypothesis. The hypothesis is the supposition to be tested. The researcher(s) collects data to test the hypothesis. The researcher(s) then analyzes and interprets the data via a variety of statistical methods, engaging in what is known asempirical research. The results of the data analysis in confirming or failing to reject the Null hypothesis are then reported and evaluated. At the end, the researcher may discuss avenues for further research. However, some researchers advocate for the flip approach: starting with articulating findings and discussion of them, moving "up" to identification research problem that emerging in the findings and literature review introducing the findings. The flip approach is justified by the transactional nature of the research endeavor where research inquiry, research questions, research method, relevant research literature, and so on are not fully known until the findings fully emerged and interpreted.

Rudolph Rummel says, "... no researcher should accept any one or two tests as definitive. It is only when a range of tests are consistent over many kinds of data, researchers, and methods can one have confidence in the results."^[12]

Plato in Meno talks about an inherent difficulty, if not a paradox, of doing research that can be paraphrase in the following way, "If you know what you're searching for, why do you search for it?! [i.e., you have already found it] If you don't know what you're searching for, what are you searching for?!"^[13]

Scientific research[edit]

Main article: Scientific method

Generally, research is understood to follow a certain structural process. Though step order may vary depending on the subject matter and researcher, the following steps are usually part of most formal research, both basic and applied:

1. Observations and Formation of the topic: Consists of the subject area of ones interest and following that subject area to conduct subject related research. The subject area should not be randomly chosen since it requires reading a vast amount of literature on the topic to determine the gap in the literature the researcher intends to narrow. A keen interest in the chosen subject area is advisable. The research will have to be justified by linking its importance to already existing knowledge about the topic.
2. Hypothesis: A testable prediction which designates the relationship between two or more variables.
3. Conceptual definition: Description of a concept by relating it to other concepts.
4. Operational definition: Details in regards to defining the variables and how they will be measured/assessed in the study.
5. Gathering of data: Consists of identifying a population and selecting samples, gathering information from and/or about these samples by using specific research instruments. The instruments used for data collection must be valid and reliable.
6. Analysis of data: Involves breaking down the individual pieces of data in order to draw conclusions about it.
7. Data Interpretation: This can be represented through tables, figures and pictures, and then described in words.
8. Test, revising of hypothesis
9. Conclusion, reiteration if necessary

A common misconception is that a hypothesis will be proven (see, rather, Null hypothesis). Generally, a hypothesis is used to make predictions that can be tested by observing the outcome of an experiment. If the outcome is inconsistent with the hypothesis, then the hypothesis is rejected (see falsifiability). However, if the outcome is consistent with the hypothesis, the experiment is said to support the hypothesis. This careful language is used because researchers recognize that alternative hypotheses may also be consistent with the observations. In this sense, a hypothesis can never be proven, but rather only supported by surviving rounds of scientific testing and, eventually, becoming widely thought of as true.

A useful hypothesis allows prediction and within the accuracy of observation of the time, the prediction will be verified. As the accuracy of observation improves with time, the hypothesis may no longer provide an accurate prediction. In this case, a new hypothesis will arise to challenge the old, and to the extent that the new hypothesis makes more accurate predictions than the old, the new will supplant it. Researchers can also use a null hypothesis, which state no relationship or difference between the independent or dependent variables. A null hypothesis uses a sample of all possible people to make a conclusion about the population.^[14]

The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective
by Kidendei Segereti

The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in bandwidth, efficiency, and price.

People, companies, and institutions feel the depth of this technological change, but the speed and scope of the transformation has triggered all manner of utopian and dystopian perceptions that, when examined closely through methodologically rigorous empirical research, turn out not to be accurate. For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of isolation, alienation, and withdrawal from society, but available evidence shows that the Internet neither isolates people nor reduces their sociability; it actually increases sociability, civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures.

Our current “network society” is a product of the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. One of these is the rise of the “Me-centered society,” marked by an increased focus on individual growth and a decline in community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general. But individuation does not mean isolation, or the end of community. Instead, social relationships are being reconstructed on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects. Community is formed through individuals’ quests for like-minded people in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace, and the local space.

Globally, time spent on social networking sites surpassed time spent on e-mail in November 2007, and the number of social networking users surpassed the number of e-mail users in July 2009. Today, social networking sites are the preferred platforms for all kinds of activities, both business and personal, and sociability has dramatically increased — but it is a different kind of sociability. Most Facebook users visit the site daily, and they connect on multiple dimensions, but only on the dimensions they choose. The virtual life is becoming more social than the physical life, but it is less a virtual reality than a real virtuality, facilitating real-life work and urban living.