INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION IN THE ERA OF e-COMMUNICATION

What we want to investigate in this article is the impact of the pervasive role of technology, and especially of computers in human interaction. The main focus, however, will be on the challenges posed by electronically mediated communication to interpersonal communication. We shall address both positive and negative aspects of technology use in interpersonal communication experiences. Additionally, we shall approach the ways in which the recourse to electronically mediated communication has influenced the teacher-student interaction. Instant messaging, e-mail messages, chat rooms, online social networks - virtual worlds, in general, may be very appealing from the perspective of interpersonal communication, mainly due to the fact that they seem less threatening. These means of communication offer plenty of benefits, but there are quite a lot of challenges and hazards to face in this respect. Another thing we want to turn our attention to is how the interaction in the field of education is affected by the use of technology. Is computer-mediated learning better or worse than face-to-face learning? In what ways? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this practice in terms of interaction? What are the present trends and what are the reasons behind them? Given the fact that e-communication lacks non-verbal cues or subliminal information, how does this influence interpersonal communication in the process of learning? In this paper we shall also investigate the ways and the extent to which these drawbacks are dealt with. We shall prove that people have looked for answers to these sensitive questions and have come up with some solutions to solve the problem of remoteness during communication.