Ryan Henry3/19/15

Communicating in Social and Professional Relationships

In every day life you have to deal with people. Whether it is through work, picking up

food, learning from a professor, or even talking to your friends. You have to interact with people

wherever you go. In the two videos Shelly Turkle and Tanja Hollander explain different ways we

interact and how we can not interact with your friends, family, and even strangers.

1) My first observation of the concepts used, was in Tanja Hollanders speech on “Are you

really my friend.” She talks about how she has a lot of friends on Facebook all over the world.

Tanja decides she wants to take photos of these people in their homes, and talks about how even

though some of them don’t talk everyday they have a friendship. She explains that with every

home she went to she was welcomed, the concept she was using was the need to belong theory.

Which is the theory proposing a fundamental human inclination to bond with others. Even

though her friendships were not great they were there for her when she needed them.

2) Social exchange theory is defined as a theory suggesting that people seek to maintain

relationships in which their benefits outweigh the costs. Tanja is photographer who did not have

a lot of money, but wanted to do her project where took pictures of her friends in her home. She

had $100 in her bank account but knew that if she did this project she would learn a lot about not

just herself but how other people have relationships with people.

3) In Shelly Turkle’s video she talks about in todays generation and world that everyone

has an iPhone now. One way or another someone has some sort of social media whether its twit-

ter, instagram, and the most popular Facebook. She uses the concept meeting our social needs

online, which is finding the ways of communication through social media. We may be alone at

home but we have the social media to not feel alone.

Ryan Henry3/19/15

4) “Connected, but not alone” heavily stresses that the technology we are using today is

having a deep impact on our everyday lives, whether we know it or not. Things like Facebook

help us connect to people when we are not in the same area or city. The relational maintenance

behaviors theory, states that behaviors needed to maintains relationship. We use this in every

aspects whether it is in person or on social media.

5) Lastly as Tanja is going about her trip she is seeing how people live and in the every

day personal lives. She is using the self-disclosure method. As she travels the country she reve-

las what she does by traveling and also has the people open up to her. For example she talked

about a family that had their niece that got shot a year before. They invited her to the one year

anniversary where the whole community held an event in honor of their niece. That family

opened up to her and allowed them to reveal their feelings to her.

In conclusion, there are many things that we do in our day to day lives that use all of

these described concepts. Without these we could not grow within ourselves. Learning the cul-

tures and adapting to new technology changes how we perceive things. It opens our eyes more

to see how the world really is.