Communications and Media

In the world today, technology and media play a very significant role in shaping the listening strategies. Significant modalities of control, co modification, dream work and social bonding in the media are constituted of sound, noise and music. This is why technology and media are playing a significant role in shaping listening strategies. It is however important for the message to be communicated properly to the receiver and for this there are some strategies that should be adopted by the party that is interested in conveying the message. There are two terms i.e. hearing and listening and the two have a lot of difference between each other. The word hearing means that a person is just hearing what is being told to him but is not giving importance to it and has not understood the real message while listening means that the person is carefully hearing and is understanding the message (Sterne 23).

When we have to convey some message to the listener, the first and the foremost thing that should be done is to identify the real purpose of conveying the message. Similarly, even the listen has to identify the real purpose of listening to something. For instance, children carefully listen to what their parents say to them so that they understand the message correctly so that they can obey and do what their parents tell them to. Similarly, children also pay heed to what their teachers say in the class and they carefully listen to the teachers instructions in order to score good grades. This therefore proves that as everything has a purpose, even listening has some purpose. Another important thing that has to be taken care of when listening is to maintain contact with speaker as this helps the person better understand to what the speaker wants to say. The non-verbal cues are very important during a conversation as they tell even those things that the speaker himself does not want to say. Therefore, the speaker has to take care of the tone in which he is speaking, his gestures as well as his facial expressions. For instance, when the speaker is telling the listener about something important, he should emphasis it with the use of his hand or his facial expressions. Similarly, when a mother or a teacher is scolding a child, the tone in which she speaks changes and her anger reflects in the way she speaks. Even her facial expression changes and this tells the child that her mother is angry at something he or she has done. Therefore, the child always avoids repeating the same thing again in future, however if the mother will not scold the child and will tell him about his mistake in a calm manner, there are chances that the child will repeat the same mistake again as he would not give much attention to what his mother is saying. In the same way, when the media is trying to convey some message to the listeners or to the people watching the television, the hosts have to be very careful of their tone, facial expressions and their gestures and nothing should conflict with what they are speaking. When a newscaster is delivering news on the television, her voice has to be serious and firm so that the people watching the news program believe in what he or she is saying and they know that the news is correct. However, if the newscaster will joke around while podcasting news, people will end up believing in what he or she is talking about. Therefore, it is important for the person conveying the message to act accordingly.

People are fascinated with the visuals more than when they are when they have something only to listen to. During the listening process, it is essential for the speaker to emphasize more on the words and phrases that are of more value. As I already discussed the difference between hearing and listening, for the speaker to make the listeners actually listen to what he has to say, he or she must ensure that the other sounds are tuned out. Another important aspect is to relate the information that is being given to the listener to what he has already heard earlier so that it becomes easier for him to comprehend what is being told.

    In order to improve the listening skills of the people to whom the media aims to communicate its message, there are some strategies that should be developed. Learning of the language basically depends on listening that serves as an input and it enables the learners to interact during the communication process. Learning instructors, who are effective, make themselves adjust to the behavior of their students to deal in various situations and they actually help the students to develop strategies that can be applied therein. The techniques or activities that directly contribute to the listener and helps him in comprehending what is being told to him and also in recalling what he has already listened are basically what listening strategies are. These can be classified by the way in which the listener processes the input. Some of the strategies are mentioned below.

Top-down strategies
    This is listener based and the previous knowledge of the subject is tapped by the listener and the knowledge of the topic consists of the context, the type of text and the language itself. The background knowledge that is provided to the listener helps in activating his expectations and he can easily interpret the things that will follow. These strategies consist of the following.
listening for the main idea
predicting
drawing inferences
summarizing
Bottom-up strategies
    These are based on text and the listener relies basically on the language that is used in the message which consists of a bundle of words, grammar and sound. These strategies consist of the following.
listening for specific details
recognizing cognates
recognizing word-order patterns

Met cognitive strategies are used by strategic listeners for the purpose of planning, monitoring as well as to evaluate their listening. It is decided in the plan whether a strategy would be good or not after which the effectiveness of the strategies is evaluated by monitoring the process. Evaluation is done by determining the fact whether the listener has actually comprehended the message or not and whether the strategies that have been selected are effective or not. For the purpose of extracting the meaning from a listening text, there are some steps that need to be followed.

The purpose of listening should be figured out, background knowledge should be shared to anticipate the listeners.

Just the identified purpose should be given importance while the rest should be ignored. Only the specific parts should be talked about so that the important ones stay in the minds of the listeners and they can easily recognize it in the future.

Strategies such as top-down and bottom-up strategies should be selected according to their appropriateness.
It is necessary to take feedback in order to know that the listener has well understood the real message of the speaker or the person who is conveying the message.

In the world today, technology is improving every second and people are coming up with novel gadgets as well as new technology that have a great impact on the media. Technology is playing a major role in the improvement of media however as everything has some pros and cons, even technology is associated with certain types of pros and cons (The Role of Information And Communication Technologies in Global Development 19). The purpose of mass media is to reach a large number of people, this term came into existence in 1920s and became popular when radio networks and circulation of newspapers and magazines began throughout the nation. Other forms of mass media are books as well as manuscripts that have been used by people for a very long time. There are many other mass distributors of news as well as various forms of entertainment through the television, newspapers, radio and the Internet, etc. The Internet consists of  blogs, message boards and video sharing options that are available for the users and this allows people to have exposure to things that had previously been restricted for people. There are some special characteristics of mass media and they are helping people to progress in the world today.

Purpose of media
    With the emergence of technology, mass media can be used for a variety of purposes i.e. for businesses as well as for social concerns. For businesses the mass media is used merely for advertising and marketing of goods and services while for social concerns, it can be used for giving a public message. For instance to use birth control pills in order to reduce the population in a country or to give a public message to the youth to stay away from smoking as it is injurious to health. Besides this, entertainment is another big factor for  which media is being used as people like to watch music shows, sports as well as movies and so media serves this purpose as well.

Characteristics of media
Although media has various advantages for everyone, however one of the greatest cons that technology has left on media is that it may convey any kind of message that may also be something that should not be told to the children or something that must not be told to a particular group of people. There are basically two forms of media i.e. the print media and the television and these are further divided into many other forms of media such as the television, movies, radio, Internet, newspapers, books and magazines, etc. All types of media are both good and bad in the interest of the people and this is where the role of technology in media is not being productive.

In the end, I would conclude by saying that everything should be controlled to a certain extent in order to prevent it from getting misused because misuse of anything leaves behind negative points and they are not just bad for an individual but they impact the overall society as well. For instance, parents freely allow their children to use the Internet and watch the television but nowadays children are very intelligent and inquisitive about things and due to peer pressure they might do things their friends are doing such as watching pornography, etc. Therefore, some controls should be kept by the government or higher  authorities to prevent misuse of media(Luckin 43).