Communication Barriers

The greatest ingenuity of the Homo sapiens breed has been development and evolvement of language over time. Looking at the long standing human history of more than 60,000 years, semantics, we can argue is not older than 15,000 years. In the gap of 45,000 years, our ancestors developed sign languages, stone carvings and the likes to communicate with themselves. Such act tells us something that has been inborn with humans—their ability to communicate, and their ability to communicate effectively. It also highlights that communication, since its discovery has been an integral part of human history. It also has become a meter that differentiates us from other living species that inhabit the earth.

While communication has helped us to express ourselves amongst our peers, it also has come with a drawback—the inability of a speaker or a receiver to express and understand the message. This faultiness leads the receiver to

misinterpret the content. The inability of the speaker to express her thoughts into spoken or written words, in turn, also leads to communication gap. Such communication barriers are abundant in our everyday lives where, we, once in a while, falter to express our thoughts or understand the content.

The virtues of effective speaking can be very appealing and its power is greatly realized. However, miscommunication, as shown by a recent communal riot of Muzzafarnagar, an Indian town where many people lost their lives due to a spam video posted on Facebook, gives us a glimpse of what miscommunication could lead to. The incident also brings forward numerous concepts that communication theorists put forward to answer communication barriers.

A person is a reflection of the society that he inhabits. The cultural values, social mores and norms, traditions, upbringing, beliefs, religion and attitudes, all define a person and his thoughts. Such social institutions, then, plays an important role in successful communication or its lack. Moreover, in modern times, the heterogeneous audience that the media attracts across the world further intensifies communication barriers.

Technical jargons, emotional barriers and taboos, inattention, distraction or irrelevance of a subject to the receiver also affects desired content delivery. Moreover, expectations, and prejudices which leads to false assumptions also hinders communication process. Briefly, these hurdles can be categorized into six headings; language barrier, psychological barrier, physiological barrier, physical, systematic and attitudinal barriers.

Language barrier incorporates the inability of the receiver or the speaker to effectively put one’s word to express ideas. This barrier includes technical jargons and abbreviations, regional colloquialism and expressions. For example, a person who is attending a lecture on health issues is unlikely to understand specific words related to medicine.

Moreover, the psychological state of a speaker or a receiver also affects the reception of desired message. To illustrate, a person disturbed by certain incidents is unlikely to listen and grab the news he is hearing on a radio. In doing so, he is likely to recall certain words from the news and react accordingly.

Physical barrier, likewise, could obstruct sound content delivery and its effects. People who have hearing problems are unlikely to grab every word spoken. In turn, he misunderstands the message and reacts differently. For example, I have a relative who has hearing problem. In turn, he, often times, misses the words and replies to what he “thinks to have heard”. Consequently, the message goes undelivered.

A systematic barrier in communication arises in organizations when there are undefined communication channels or when there is lack of understanding in roles and responsibilities of staffs in communication process due to improper management.

Attitudinal barriers comprise behaviors from the receiver or speaker to a specific content. Biases, preconceived notions, and one’s inability to judge contents impartially also hinders communication. Attitudinal barriers also includes a person’s resistance to change. For a successful communication to happen, both the speaker and the receiver should overcome their biases and act consciously.

To sum up, we can therefore say that while communication has played a vital role in expressing oneself, its inability could also affect effective content delivery. Our perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, social values, customs, and rituals also assists or hinders the communication process. 

Media in the social world

Advances in the media has affected tremendously increased information access

MEDIA AND MEDIA PRODUCTS:

We are all aware that the media creates media products. However, on a closer look, the content created by media is usually the ones created by the editors in general. Editors direct their reporters to write specific media content every day in order to cater to the audiences’ demands. For example, the media content created by an entertainment industry is completely different to those created by the news industry. While the entertainment industry would  concentrate with entertainment content—fashion, soap operas, music and other infotainment subjects, news media, on the other hand, would opt news—national and international current affairs, politics and analyze its effects. Regardless of the products media give to the audience, initially, it attempts to bring in some common elements between disparate and diverse cultures; that is, some sort of a shared belief or way of life. It also unconsciously shapes what audiences need and don’t need; a kind of filtration process that the audience internalizes without knowing the effects.

MEDIA PRODUCTS AND THE AUDIENCE:

Eventually, media content are directed to audience and the latter completes the communication process. While the impacts may vary with regard to the content, the audience is where the content ends. For example, a person, interested with movies is likely to be affected by news. However, s/he gradually develops the way of life as reflected in the movies. A person engrossed with Hollywood films, for example, might not find it weird to see a couple kissing and is likely to accept it into his or her life and, later, himself kiss a girl.

However, media products, while it may seem a one way process is not so. In the first phase, media products intrigue as well as shock audience. Yet, it later shapes the way of life of the audience—their likes and dislikes, what they want and don’t want, their values and so forth. In due course, audience develop their taste with the content and therefore seek specific and improved subjects. In turn, we can therefore say that media products and the audience are mutually related—each shaping the other.

AUDIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY:

As discussed earlier, media contents are directed to the audience. In the process, technology is the key factor. With advances in technology, the level of interaction between media and the audience has increased significantly. In traditional media like print and broadcast, messages were unidirectional. While the audience knew the person who disseminated media content, it, however, was not the case with latter. As a result, there was lesser number of participatory approaches by the audience. With the upsurge of the “new media”, the internet, the level of interaction the general public have with the media has skyrocketed. Convergence media like Facebook, Twitter and blogs have further kindle fired the interaction. For example, convergence media disseminate information as soon as it is at their disposal. It signifies two things—one, the speed at which information is bought into public has seen a dramatic rise. Second, since information travels almost at the speed of light, so has the level of interaction—especially because of the immense space that the “new media” has at its disposal. Billiions of terabytes that can be made out of thin air.

MEDIA INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY:

To a human eye, it might seem that no technology is involved when media contents are being disseminated to the audience, it is not the case. The media industry relies heavily on technology and vice versa to cater to the audience. We would not have newspapers if we had no printing press, and printing press would not survive if there were print contents. Televisions would not exist if there were breakthroughs in audio-visual means. As a result, the medium, rather than the message, has become a driving force for change. However, each technological limitation sets parameters of their use and effects. For example, an illiterate person cannot read a newspaper or a book or any content published by the print media. While s/he can listen to the radio or watch television, she, however, cannot use the “new media” which requires literacy and computer skills required to get the most out of it.

It therefore can be deduced that while the new media is more interactive to than the tradition media, each has its own set of barriers that needs to be bridged in order to reach to the masses. Nevertheless, each media and its content can affect its daily audience, and therefore, change their way of life, their values and beliefs. Such changes, however, will take time to become a habit.

To sum up, in the social world, each component of the media is interlinked with one another. Each shape the other and thence, affect the society at large. In this course, while they help to bring in shared values and beliefs across the world and to disparate audiences, it, if not checked, could put a person’s traditions, rituals, cultures and histories at stake. 

Knowing Greater Noida

A view of an express way of Greater Noida

When I first landed at the Indira Gandhi International Airport on August 4, 2013, I was amazed to see how India had developed in few years of time. Over the past few decades, India seemed to have concentrated its developments heavily on infrastructures; roads and telecommunication, which eased access to the local people.

Two buses from Sharda University which was to take the international students to the college premises waited outside the airport. On the way, I realized the pace of development despite the scorching heat where I sweated. Coming from a country which is surrounded by hills, and where rainfall is a blessing during heat, I lamented and continue to lament the weather of excessive heat without rain.

The weather here is extreme heat. Once in a while, I noticed, that rain does fall. However, it does not last for more than 10 minutes. Even despicable is the fact that the rain is hot and not cold like Nepal, the country blessed with the world’s seven highest peaks.

After almost two hours of the long bus ride, I reached Sharda University. The University is located in Knowledge Park 3, one of the four knowledge parks in Greater Noida. After a day’s rest, I went to see around, and with my background in journalism, with every person I met, I tried to find out more about the city, the place where I would be living for the next two years.

One thing that particularly stroked me was the way the areas were given Greek names—Alpha, Beta, Delta, Zeta, Eta. The city, around 30 km away from Noida was first built as an extension to the latter. However, during its planning, it was seen to it that the settlement were better off than Noida, one of the first two residential and industrial areas developed by the Indian government in order to reduce the crowd of Delhi in the early 80s.

When I queried some local people about the city, they said that before the Mayawati government, it was huge forest and swamp area. For this reason, I could see wetland bird species like the gulls once in a while. The infrastructures, as they say, were developed by her government. However, it was much late that the construction of houses began to build. One man, pointing at Sharda University, said that the current building was built in the last three to four years and expressed that the buildings that now are seen at the city were built not before a decade. The Gautam Budhha International Circuit which hosts the annual Indian Grand Prix on October is one of the attractions and pride to the city.

On retrospect, so far, Greater Noida, with its big lanes and planned settlement is a good place to live in except the weather. However, the Greater Noida Industrial Development Authority which looks after city needs to be cautious with the inflow of population willing to live in the town. While it is impressive for the city to grow so quickly in a decade, it also blares out a red signal of quick growth like Noida, a place which was supposed to hold the population for 25 years, but, was overwhelmed in 15 years.

The Fist of 23,000 ft.

The fight between Sherpas and three renowned world climbers, Swiss Ueli Steck, Italian, Simone Moro, British alpine photographer, Jon Griffith, on April 30, 2013 shows how the new breed of Sherpa climbers are approaching their profession and grabbed international headlines. 

 The fight, which took at around 23,000 feet (between Camp 2 and Camp 3), was the first of its kind and “strangest incident in mountaineering history”, Rajendra Bajgain, Managing Director of Gurkha Encounters said. In turn, speculations are rife about security concerns to foreign climbers.

A DIVIDED VIEW

Pawan Thapa, reservation officer of Cho-Oyu Trekking, the company responsible for organizing the three climbers feat confided that a small piece of ice was actually dislodged, to which the trio apologized.

However, Simone Moro, in his first extended interview with the National Geographic on May 2 dismissed the ‘false story’ of an ice they accidently dislodged at the rope-fixing team. “There was also this story, a false story, that when we traversed and went to our tent we caused some piece of ice to fall down and hit one Sherpa on the face. But that (next) day (May 1), the Sherpa who was bleeding from the nose went officially to his leader and said, “Listen, nobody hit me. It was my mistake. I was jumaring on and I slipped on my crampons and hit my nose on the ice. There was no piece of ice falling from above.” 

MOUNTAINEERING SCAR

The incident, which occurred when Nepal and the world are celebrating the 60^th year of the first conquest of Mount Everest by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953 AD seems to have left a small wound in the international mountaineering community.

However, Bacchu Narayan Shrestha, Immediate First Vice President of Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal (TAAN) dismissed media exaggerations. “That was a small incident and let it remain that way,” Shrestha said, adding, “that life was normal and both the Sherpas and other foreign climbers were well along to climb the world’s highest peak,” Shrestha said over a telephone conversation from Namche Bazaar.

INTERNATIONAL REPORTS AND ITS IMPLICATIONS

International news stories reported that around 100 Sherpas had attacked the climbers after a Sherpa, who was fixing ropes was hit by an ice dislodged by westerners, an allegation that the three climbers deny.

Stories published in The Guardian and Huffington Post, on the other hand, suggested that the fight was an outpour of the past years, when Sherpas were treated as coolies and guides or as both. 

However, Shrestha said that it had nothing to do with honor as exaggerated by both the national and international media. While Shrestha argued that Sherpas and foreign climbers shared good and harmonious relation, Kusang Sherpa, the porter and cook of the trio at Base Camp said that they were still looked down as porters. Kusang denied speaking further despite several attempts. 

Nonetheless, Moro, said that the three “wanted to send a strong signal and needed time to regain (their) trust in Everest and the Sherpas”.

When asked if its effects could be weighed or if the number of foreign climbers would see a steady fall in the foreseeable future, Rajendra Bajgain, Managing Director of Gurkha Encounters, said that it would not be the case, primarily because scaling the highest peak was and always will be full of adventure and danger.

“It is not just about scaling the world’s highest peak. It is more about a man conquering his never ending adventure.”   However, “we will have to assure climbers of their security, and as long as one comes with truth, the incident will always bring in rumors,” Bajgain said, adding, until then, we would have to bear the damage.

SAVING THE JUBILEE

Shrestha added that the incident would not hamper the Diamond Jubilee of the first conquest of Mt. Everest, the world’s highest peak in 1953 AD. Shrestha further said that the Government of Nepal along with TAAN and Nepal Tourism Board were high on making the celebration a success.

CHANGING EVEREST

Meanwhile, international media extensively covered the fight at 23,000 ft. as the fight of Sherpas to gain control of the mountains and to share an equal part in any ascents foreign climbers complete. However, Bajgain said that over the years, Sherpas have become arrogant because they are growing rich and also because foreign climbers, like it or not, have to rely on their skills to scale the Everest. “Without Sherpas, nobody climbs Everest. Without foreigners, there are no jobs for Sherpas. This concept is often forgotten,” Moro said. Since the first conquest, around 4000 climbers have scaled the world’s highest peak.

In his story for the National Geographic, Broughton Coburn said that despite their cross cultures and the disparate worlds that they come from, Sherpas and the sahibs (foreign climbers) share an extremely close relationship of give and take, each providing the other what they lack, “manpower for the sahibs, money for the Sherpas.”

In such retrospection, “Sherpas have compromised in proper equipments, are offering cheaper but riskier ways to scale the Everest, which, in turn, has affected quality service delivery,” Bajgain said.

While Sherpas have become skilled, professional and thoughtful climbers, since the first conquest in 1953 AD, so have the Western climbers like Simone Moro and Ueli Steck. Consequently, Moro argued that they were not good for business as they were different from the commercial part of business. 

“Sometimes people like us, who are not clients are (not) considered good for business (because) we don’t need Sherpas. We don’t need fixers (and) are out of the groove of the commercial part of Everest.”

YOUNG BLOODS MORE PRONE TO JEALOUSY

Moro’s interview with National Geographic further strengthens what Bajgain has to share. “Today everything is business. Jealousy. Anger. Competition. High tension.” The interview reads, adding, “…especially this year…when you come here(Base Camp), you will find that, behind many smiles, there are many economic issues”. 

Moro further added that since there are so many expeditions to the Mt. Everest this year, many commercial expeditions have hired as many as they could, without knowing them or their experiences with the mountainous terrains. “This year so many Sherpas (are) young. Not the typical older, experienced Sherpas. The person leading the rope-fixing team was young (and) probably not that experienced (and) not open to accept that someone could climb without their help, as we were doing. I think this is especially a problem this year.”

Climbers like Moro and Steck are professional and skilled climbers, and therefore, do not require a Sherpa to guide them. As a result, Sherpas, like it or not, are losing their clients. With each climb, a Sherpa earns around Rs. 500,000 to Rs. 600,000, Kushang Sherpa, the cook and guide of the three climbers up to Base Camp said.