We live in a world consumed by communication. Anyone at anytime can broadcast what they are thinking about or how they feel to anyone willing to listen. This semester in com 320 we as a class have used blogs to reflect on the class and how it affects us on a weekly basis. Group communication has been the overall topic of the class but is sadly missed in our reflection time. Each group in class has a set blog they use, but here is little to no connection between different members and their posts each week. Real group blogging does exist in rare forms on the internet but is hard to come by. I just wanted for my last post to be a reflection on blogging in general as it relates to the topics covered in class.
It seems like the communication department here at Purdue loves using blogs in class. Just about every class in com uses them in some form or another. Blogs are a new form of communication that has become very popular in the last 10 years. They are a great cheap way to express yourself, and as many companies have found out a cheap way to get people to read about new products. As I stated above the real weakness of blogs are that they have no real group communication. People may submit different posts about the same topics but they do not have group communication. These people never experience forming, storming, norming and performing while they blog their lives away. Maybe video blogging can solve this problem if all members of the group are on tape at the same time. Group mechanics may be more prevalent then but I have seen no proof of this. I didn’t mean for this post to be a generic bash on blogs, because I do feel they play a great role in communication I just feel that used in their present state that they have no relation to group communication. It would be a very interesting topic for a master’s student or PHD candidate to do research on, to find a better way we can utilize this resource to better our group communication skills.
Jarrett Hullinger
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