Communication in an Online Culture

The internet and social media are not conducive to complex, detailed dialogue about important issues. It favors hasty, insufficiently supported, decontextualized, emotionally driven, relationally insensitive responses. We ought to fear a society in which citizens develop whatever communication skills they have by immersion in this environment-- especially because this is increasingly the society in which we live. We are steadily cultivating an exceptionally vocal culture of inept communicators.