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Take a break and listen to my laid-back talk about communication and public relations.
17 APR 2021 · Previously on my podcast Episode 3, I talked about how my sore throat became a physiological noise in my verbal communication with others, because my cracked voice made the pronunciation blurry and it is challenging for people to understand some words I say, thus disrupting the communication flow. I have no control over my sore throat, but I can use non-verbal system of communication using writing that can help the communication flow between me and my listeners. I did put the podcast text in the description.
My verbal communication could be worse, I have been through far worse physiological noise in my speech such as stuttering and anxiety. And in one occasion, I collapsed and passed out before my oral presentation because of my health condition at the time. During the presentation, I stuttered a lot and was lack of confidence. My lecturer wasn't impressed at all. I really hope that nobody else has to suffer the same situation and the communication noise like I did.
On another occasion, one big oral presentation, I have been prepared to avoid fuss and I've been practicing alone a week prior. When the day comes, I couldn't pull through, my thoughts wasn't in line with my words. I was hyperventilating and sweating uncontrollably. As the kids say, my last two brain cells were not connected. I was freaking out and failed the presentation, which I have to repeat. It was a painful memory of how little control I had over my own body.
One day when I need to present via Google meet, I have been preparing for a week prior too. I haven't sleep well in 24 hours, I drink maybe seven to eight cups of premix coffee because I believe in coffee health benefits, and it's containing neurotransmitter that help people to stay awake, alert, and think faster. I thought it will help me nailing this presentation. Boy was I dead wrong. When it's my turn to present, the history repeats itself. Right when I see other people in the meeting room, I mean they are all communication experts and scholars, I can't feel my body hips down. This time I was totally nervous and started to forget the points for the presentation. My feet feels like ice. My body trembled as I struggle to utter one word after the other. I can't feel a bone in my fingers. Again, I failed the presentation and had to repeat it. Hearing that, I collapsed for a few hours before getting my strength back.
In the second attempt few days later however, I managed to nail the presentation, be very calm and minimum stutter, I didn't feel cold and numb hips down, I can feel all my fingers, and I feel great getting my messages delivered to the smart people in my audience. It was a wonderful feeling. I think it's helpful that I drank a cup of coffee only once that day four hours before presentation. I only focus on delivering meaningful messages. I wanted to respect my audience's time they allocated to be with me, I wanted that communication to be as effective and efficient as it can be.
One life-changing lesson I can learn from that particular presentation is, I didn't rely on heavy consumption of coffee to stay alert. Normally I would drink lots of coffee because I like the taste and I hope it helps my brain cells stay connected. Turns out, I can still be effortlessly alert without coffee. I also learned that the safe level of coffee consumption for adults is no more than four cups a day[1]. What have I done with seven cups of premix coffee all this time? Let alone the amount of refined sugar, additives, and other stimulants in the drink. I was in the state of ignorance, abusing premix coffee, albeit not illegal, and it could cost me my future one communication at a time.
Public service announcement here, take everything in moderation. The recommendation for caffeine is no more than 400 milligram per day, that is not more than four cups of regular coffee[2]. Again, take everything in moderation.
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[1] J. Liu, X. Sui, C.J. Lavie, J. R. Hebert, C. P. Earnest, J. Zhang, S. N. Blair. 2013. Association of Coffee Consumption With All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality. Mayo Clinic Proceedings,
Volume 88 (10), p. 1066-1074,
ISSN 0025-6196,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2013.06.020.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025619613005788)
[2] H. C. Vogel. 2020. High-Dose Insulin Euglycemic Therapy in the Treatment of a Massive Caffeine Overdose. Chest. 157(5):e145-e149. doi: 10.1016/j.chest.2019.11.030. PMID: 32386647.
15 APR 2021 · Welcome to Episode 3 of Safiah's Podcast. In this episode, I share my personal experience of hurdles in communication.
Noise is the disruption of the communication flow between the sender of information and the receiver. For example, my sore throat is the physiological noise to the messages I send to people in conversation.
Noise in communication can create very unpredictable outcome. I remember a situation during my junior days in Reserve Officer Training Unit (ROTU) in college, where I responded to my trainer, Kapten Haniff calling to the senior cadet squad but I was the only one among the junior squad answered 'yes sir!'. Confidently and loudly that my squad despised me for that, afraid that Kapten Haniff will punish us all for my mistake.
I'm sorry skot, my bad.
I have so much more sad circumstances back in the days, I'm not sharing them here today. But my point is noise creates hurdles in communication. In that sample situation, I decoded Kapten Haniff verbal messages with my own limitation of hearing, it made me answer him from my own context and understanding. Such noise can undermine a communication process, can you imagine if my commander says 'don't shoot' but I only hear 'shoot' and proceed to shoot someone who's not an enemy? People could die because of noise in communication, and the catch is, noise is not in my control, it's not in your control either. We can not change people's norm, physical ability, and our relation in one conversation. All we can do to ensure people interpret our messages the way we send it is through more messages that clarify our context according to the social, cultural, and relational context in our messages.
In my imaginary utopia, there is no manipulation and misleading information can foster in the masses. Mass communication and society interactions are done completely with mutual benefit and nobody knowingly harms anyone else. The only thing that can make a communication ineffective in this utopia is, noise. Because it is out of our control. There should be no harm done on purpose in my utopia, but if there is harm to happen, that might be out of our control because we are all bound to make mistakes.
In short, to minimize noise, we can talk clearly, use appropriate speed, use good grammar, use body language and symbols if necessary, listen carefully, ask questions when we aren't clear of the message, and be ready to react appropriately when noise happen in communication.
14 APR 2021 · My first knowledge about NASA's public relations was from the movie The Martian directed by Ridley Scott in the year 2015. From that movie, I learn that public companies need to release information to the public as soon as possible and in one scene, NASA's PR stated that they need to call a press conference to inform the public about astronaut Mark Watney condition on Mars in 24 hours after their first lead. I also learned that NASA couldn't issue a statement that quote they will bring the presumed-dead astronaut back to earth alive. And when NASA established communication with astronaut Mark Watney, he typed in profanities in his messages. As a result, US president called NASA to address his manner. You should watch the details in the rest of the movie but my point is that NASA has a great PR team and great response to the critical information in relation to the interests of their affiliates, general public, and other constituents. Talking about informing the public on their interests, I just got an email from NASA which is pretty cool to me, I never thought that NASA would actually reach out to me in my lifetime but they did. For that, I thank NASA PR team.
On April 13th, NASA via the Virtual Guest Ops Team was sending me an update about their Crew-2 space mission that will be launched in April twenty second. The live broadcast will available on launch day starting at 2 a.m. EDT. Earlier, I registered to virtually join NASA to launch NASA's SpaceX Crew-2, which means I will be watching the launch on a live broadcast. So in that email, they send me an update so that I will quote, have all the latest information about the launch and participation opportunities.
They also tell a brief summary of the crew and how I can keep in touch with NASA, how I can keep informed via hash tag launch America and use a Launch America filter for Facebook profile picture, and how I can spread the information by forwarding the email to family and friends. So I'm well informed that the contents in this email wasn't exclusive or too private to share with others.
Guess what NASA Virtual Guest Ops Team, I did use the hashtag and the Facebook profile picture filter, as well as forwarding the email to people. I guess I just acted upon an actionable information that makes the communication effective. NASA will get public's participation, we will get experience of a huge leap in STEM and space exploration, and public relations too. Now, we take note what exactly we can do to manage and sustain a mutually beneficial relationship between organizations and the public.
14 APR 2021 · The firstborn episode of my podcast is a story about my research titled 'Relationship between Ethical Evaluation and Ethical Climate in Decision Making among Public Relations Practitioners in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah using Excellence Theory'.
My question is what happens in PR practitioners’ personal ethics and the organizational ethics when they make their decisions for the organization?
If we can explain how practitioners evaluate ethically challenging situations and how the situations are handled in an organization to make a decision, then we can strategically alter the evaluation criteria or improve the collective ethics to minimize the conflicts in decisions, eventually minimize the risk of unethical elements in organizational messages. I began by asking practitioners in a locality convenient to me, Kota Kinabalu (KK) using a questionnaire. These practitioners are ethically sourced, organic, free-range adults who actively engaged in PR activities in their organizations. In the questionnaire, I asked them about the criteria of personal ethics including:Â
1. Their intention consideration,
2. Their reasoning, both deontological that based on the process, and consequential that based on the outcome, and
3. Their judgment on what would they do in ethical situation? The last part of the questionnaire also asks about the ethical climate of the organization.Â
Take a break and listen to my laid-back talk about communication and public relations.
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| Author | Safiah |
| Organization | Safiah |
| Categories | Society & Culture |
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