What are some pragmatic challenges and opportunities for online and multimodal communication?

1 Text and context

One of the main challenges of online communication is that it often relies on text-based messages, which can lack some of the contextual cues that are available in face-to-face communication, such as tone of voice, facial expressions, gestures, and eye contact. These cues can help convey the speaker's intentions, emotions, attitudes, and politeness. Without them, text-based messages can be ambiguous, misunderstood, or misinterpreted. To overcome this challenge, you can use various strategies to provide more context and clarity to your messages, such as emojis, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviations, and hashtags. These can help express your mood, emphasis, irony, sarcasm, or humor, and signal your relationship and expectations with the interlocutor.

2 Multimodality and meaning

Another challenge of online communication is that it often involves multiple modes and media, such as images, videos, audio, graphics, and hyperlinks, in addition to text. These modes and media can enrich and complement the meaning of the message, but they can also create confusion or inconsistency if they are not aligned or integrated well. For example, a video message can contradict or undermine a text message if the speaker's body language or facial expression does not match the verbal content. To overcome this challenge, you can use multimodal communication to enhance and reinforce your message, rather than distract or contradict it. You can also pay attention to how different modes and media interact and influence each other, and how they can create different effects and interpretations depending on the context and the audience.

3 Culture and norms

A third challenge of online communication is that it often crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries, which can lead to misunderstandings or conflicts due to different expectations, values, and norms of communication. For example, some cultures may prefer direct and explicit communication, while others may prefer indirect and implicit communication. Some cultures may use more formal and polite language, while others may use more informal and casual language. Some cultures may value emotional expression, while others may value rational argumentation. To overcome this challenge, you can develop your intercultural competence and awareness, which means being able to recognize and respect the diversity and complexity of online communication across different cultures and contexts. You can also adapt your communication style and strategies to suit the specific situation and purpose, and to avoid stereotypes and generalizations.

4 Feedback and engagement

A fourth challenge of online communication is that it often lacks immediate and direct feedback from the interlocutor, which can affect the quality and continuity of the interaction. For example, in text-based communication, you may not know if the interlocutor has received or read your message, or if they are interested or bored by your message. In multimodal communication, you may not be able to see or hear the interlocutor's reactions or responses to your message. To overcome this challenge, you can use various techniques to elicit and provide feedback and engagement in online communication, such as asking questions, giving compliments, expressing agreement or disagreement, showing appreciation or empathy, or using emojis or likes. These can help establish rapport and trust, maintain interest and attention, and facilitate dialogue and collaboration.

5 Creativity and innovation

A final opportunity of online communication is that it offers a lot of potential for creativity and innovation in the use of language and multimodality. Online communication allows you to experiment with new forms and functions of language, such as memes, gifs, acronyms, slang, or neologisms. It also allows you to explore new possibilities and combinations of modes and media, such as podcasts, blogs, vlogs, webinars, or infographics. These can help you express your identity and personality, convey your message in a more engaging and effective way, and reach a wider and more diverse audience. However, you also need to be aware of the ethical and social implications of your online communication, such as copyright, plagiarism, privacy, security, or cyberbullying.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?