Communication – by Naseer Ahmed

The best kind of communication is about accuracy, clarity, precision, equality, responsibility, tolerance and participation of all communicators. Human progress is basically a history of improvisation of communication skills through freedom of thought and speech, through technological advances and through inclusion of a variety of participants.

Advances include communications psychology and media psychology; an emerging field of study. Researchers divide the progression of written communication into three revolutionary stages called “Information Communication Revolutions”.

During the first stage, written communication first emerged through the use of pictographs. The pictogram were made in stone, hence written communication was not yet mobile.

During the second stage, writing began to appear on paper, papyrus, clay, wax, etc. Common alphabets were introduced and allowed for the uniformity of language across large distances. A leap in technology occurred when the Gutenberg printing-press was invented in the 15th century.

The third stage is characterized by the transfer of information through controlled waves and electronic signals”The effective communications skills have to include most of democratic values like freedom,participation and tolerance to have meaningful and purposeful discourse.European Human Right Charter recognizes this important aspect of freedom of communication”Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises”

The best communication skills mean that all participants should feel free to express their ideas, gestures ,thoughts and their own take about whatever issues we want to discuss. The agenda setting, the organization and the facilitation should not be used to exclude the versions other people feel uncomfortable with. The downside of communication is when certain interest groups attempt to establish their control over means and methods of communications. For example, Soviet Union state controlled the flow of information in order to control the the ideas, thoughts and knowledge of its citizens. Therefore, the state shaped, managed, organized and decided what a citizen should know. Communications systems were controlled by the regime and were primarily used by it to convey decisions and to facilitate the execution of directives affecting the economy, national security, and administrative governmental functions. ”The Ministry of Communications, union-republic ministry was responsible for radio, telegraph and telephone transmissions, communications satellites, and the postal service. Several other governmental organizations were concerned with communications, including the State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting, the Ministry of Defense (for military communications), the Ministry of Culture (for educational broadcasts), and others that controlled and operated electronic communications for their own needs. Communications organizations were also on the republic and lower administrative levels”. This attempt at absolute control over communications created a system of fear, deceit, lies and wrong information which resulted in policies that lead to the demise of whole Soviet system. When people did not have right information in their state media, they began to ridicule it. Every morning a man would come up to the newspaper stand, and buy a copy of Pravda, look at the front page and then toss it angrily into the near-by bin. The newspaper-seller was intrigued. “Excuse me,” he said to the man, “Every morning you buy a copy of Pravda from me and chuck it in the bin without even opening it. What do you buy it for?” “I’m only interested in the front page,’ replied the man. ‘I’m looking out for a death notice.” “But you don’t get death notices on the front page,” said the newspaper-seller, taken aback. “I assure you, the death notice I’m looking for will be on the front page.”When Gorbachev started his Perestroika(reform movement)in 1985/1986,people began to have relatively, accurate, clear, free, precise and participatory information about their world.This change in the ways of communication helped to change the political system.

Second important value of communications that ensures better communication skills is accuracy. Business dictionary.com defines accuracy in these terms ”Freedom from error (correctness), or closeness to truth or fact, resulting from exercise of painstaking carer due diligence. Accuracy depends on how the data is collected, and is usually judged by comparing several measurements from the same or different sources.It is very difficult task to be accurate about something because senses, memory and ad analysis are not absolutely reliable. To make them more reliable is to consult, proper fact checking and including every possible version of an event into your report. Lack of accuracy could jeopardize your communications because it often generates mistrust(Banking Crisis) harm(Iraq War)fear(The Fake Alien invasion report) distress(News of the world case) and miscommunication.

The third important value and skill is clarity. It is a very difficult to get things straight but for effective and meaningful communication we need to explain our thoughts, refine our ideas and need to take a proactive approach to present them. We could use technological support like computers, hearing aids and braille system. We could have proper feed back from all participants whether they understand what is being communicated. We could develop visual scenarios to explain with more detail. We cannot eliminate uncertainty, confusion and misunderstandings entirely but we could do our best to make our communication more effective by forming and organizing it in a more understandable way. ”Meaning is what people attribute to words; meanings lie within the experiences and feelings of persons. Thus meanings are within people” The best way is to understand the view points of all communicators until everybody is satisfied with it. If we could develop such a consensus where all parties agree about what is being said or written, we could minimize the possibilities of error, confusion and misunderstanding.

We also need to be precise in order to avoid unnecessary details. We should develop a tolerant attitude to all relevant communicators because irritation, frustration and disappointments are big obstructions to good communication. Criticism and the ability to handle it, is an essential thing to improve communications.

We should deal with the communication responsibly by trying to support our claims with evidence. We must not mislead or misinform because this could result in harm ,hazard and danger.

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