Chapter 7 - Electronic Messages and Digital Media

Chapter 7 - Electronic Messages and Digital Media

Most of people use electronic messages and digital media rather than traditional paper for writing and sharing messages to each other.Electronic messages and digital media are not unfamiliar things for us, especially when we live in business world.There are many electronic messages that we have commonly used such as  electronic mail, instant messaging, text messaging, podcasts, blogs, wikis, and social networking. There are pros and cons of instant messaging and text. There are two different perspective about it, the first perspective is some people say that it really useful for doing business and develop our business and the second perspective say that it may be dangerous for business.

Here is the pros and cons :

The pros :

1. Messaging avoids phone tag and eliminates the downtime associated with personal telephone conversations.
2. Texting can be a low-cost substitute for voice calls.
3. Both IM and text enable users to get answer quickly and allow multitasking.
4. Instant Messaging (IM) allows people to share information immediately and make decisions quickly.

The cons :

1. Organizations fear that privileged information and company records will be revealed through public instant messaging systems.
2. Companies worry about phishing (fraudulent) schemes, viruses, malware (malicious software programs), and spim (IM spam).
3. Companies fear that business track and store messaging conversations need to comply with legal requirement.


The existence of electronic messages and digital media cannot be avoided. You just need to use electronic media professionally. 
To keep  instant messaging and texts professional, you must know your company’s policies, separate personal from business contacts, stay away from personal messaging at work, make yourself unavailable when you need to concentrate, wait until receiving a reply before shooting off multiple messages, avoid sending confidential information, and use correct grammar and spelling.