Work Communication

The decline in orally negotiated news: Revisiting (again) the role of technology in reporting

“…Face-to-face encounters are regarded as the ‘gold standard’ (Guirdham, 2015: 12), not only in journalism (Fishman, 1980; Frank, 1999; Tait, 2011; Zelizer, 2007) but also in interpersonal communication, urban geography, sociology and pragmatics (Guirdham, 2015: 12; see also Boden and Molotch, 1994; Fidler, 1997; Giddens, 2010; Goffman, 1972; Hutchby, 2001; Hutchby and Barnett, 2005; Rogers, 1986; Urry, 2001). According to Guirdham (2015), physical presence offers most channels (including verbal behavior, paralinguistic behavior which includes voice, tone, pace, loudness, pauses, silence and alterations as well as non-verbal behavior called also body language including facial expression, posture, gesture, proxemics, kinesics and the alterations of all these over the duration of the interaction).…”

“…Telephones were seen as the ultimate technology-mediated channel for human communication (Boden and Molotch, 2004; Fidler, 1997; Hutchby and Barnett, 2005), sharing more resemblance than difference with physical presence. They allow intimacy and ‘conversationality in a way that preserves all the personality, recognizability and inflections of the ordinary voice’, and the ‘paralinguistic’ attributes of voice, tone, speed of speech, non-verbal cues and ‘identifying markers’, such as the other party’s age, gender, ethnicity and social position (Boden and Molotch, 2004; Fidler, 1997; Giddens, 2010: 154; Guirdham, 2015; Hutchby, 2001; Hutchby and Barnett, 2005; Ong, 1982; Strentz, 1989).…”