What is it about?
People and organizations often communicate through technologies that restrict their communication to very few characters; a difficult task when the content is highly technical and specialized. This study found that even though Twitter is limited to 140 alphanumeric characters, almost one-third of the messages examined in this study contained some type of technical details. Sometimes the tweets just stated technical terms, but other times, there were explanations of technical terms. The explanations were either embedded in the tweet or briefly introduced along with expanded details available by accessing hyperlinks.
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Why is it important?
Everywhere we look today there are brief messages. We get text messages, read tweets, and skim other forms of social media. This research begins to address a growing concern of how to communicate complex ideas using limited words.
Perspectives
I'm fascinated about communicating complex topics to a wide variety of audiences. Whether it is health information, technical details in a crisis situation, or helping people learn, we must find ways to get our point across quickly. Much of my work focuses on how to reach people with important messages; especially in an organizational communication context. I also study redundancy, persuasion, and the role that technology plays in helping humans reach their audiences.
Professor Keri K. Stephens
University of Texas at Austin
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Communicating Briefly, International Journal of Business Communication, July 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/2329488414525463.
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