Inclusive Communication Model Supporting the Employment Cycle of Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Difficulties with interpersonal communication experienced by individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) significantly contribute to their underrepresentation in the workforce as well as problems experienced while in employment. Consistently, it is vital to understand how communication within the employment cycle of this group can be improved. This study aims to identify and analyze the possibilities of modifying the communication processes around recruitment, selection, onboarding, and job retention to address the specific characteristics and needs of the representatives of this group. This qualitative study is based on 15 in-depth interviews conducted with 21 field experts, i.e.,: therapists, job trainers, and entrepreneurs employing people with ASD. The findings of this research informed the creation of an inclusive communication model supporting the employment cycle of individuals with ASD. The most important recommendations within the model that was created include the modification of job advertisements, use of less structured job interviews, providing opportunities for mentorship, and supportive and non-direct, electronically mediated communication. To apply the above-mentioned solutions and take full advantage of the talents of people with ASD, it is also necessary to provide tailored sensitivity and awareness training programs for their direct addressees as well as their neurotypical colleagues, including managerial staff.

Emojis and the performance of humour in everyday electronically-mediated conversation

Emojis are little pictographs commonly added to electronic messages on several social media platforms. Besides being considered as a way to express emotions in electronically-mediated communication (EMC), similarly to ASCII emoticons, emojis are strictly involved in the performance of humour in everyday digital conversation. Drawing on a corpus of casual WhatsApp dyadic chats, this paper analyses the contribution of emojis to humour in conversation. Results show that these pictographs not only help to signal the opening and closing of the play frame, but also to respond to humour, graphically reproducing laughter. For these purposes, the most common emojis employed by WhatsApp users are the popular yellow smiling and laughing faces. Nevertheless, other pictographs are also involved in electronic humour, as less common emojis can be used in playful ways by themselves.

Self, community and language in the network society

The article argues that the electronically mediated communication contributes to the construction of new, mediated forms of communities the functions of which to foster communities of interest, information spread, and equality of status all work to enhance social capital, despite their lack of direct physical orientation. The mediated, networked individuals treat these mediated communities as real. Therefore the appearance of these new forms of communities leads to the new conceptualization of the relation between self and community. The essence of community can be regarded as a kind of networked individualism in which the networked individuals can chose their own communities, rather than are fitted into them with others involuntarily. Thus the new, mediated form of community implies an individual-center existence and weaker social ties. The new technologies foster communication links outside the individuals’ immediate social surrounds. The aim of this article is to show that the medium of the mediatization and new conceptualization of community is a specific, pictorial language of electronically mediated communication.

New Media for Endangered Languages

This chapter presents three technologies essential to enabling any language in the digital domain: language identifiers (ISO 639-3), Unicode (including fonts and keyboards), and the building of corpora to enable natural language processing. Just a few major languages of the world are well-enabled for use with electronically mediated communication. Another few hundred languages are arguably on their way to being well-enabled, if for market reasons alone. For all the remaining languages of the world, inclusion in the digital domain remains a distant possibility, and one that likely requires sustained interest, attention, and resources on the part of the language community itself. The good news is that the same technologies that enable the more widespread languages can also enable the less widespread, and even endangered ones, and bootstrapping is possible for all of them. The examples and resources described in this chapter can serve as inspiration and guidance in getting started.

Cyberspace and Religion in America

Invented in 1989 and popularly accessible since the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web has always hosted a wide variety of religious content, ranging from early text-based discussion forums to live-stream video, and from rudimentary online communities to cross-platform social media activism. Known colloquially as “religion in cyberspace,” these computer-mediated, faith-based environments raise important questions in terms of how religious discourse is enacted and religious ritual performed. More than that, they challenge whether the notion of physical place will remain paramount in religious life, or if it can be displaced as believers and adherents shift aspects of their activity to electronically mediated communication space. Although initial enthusiasm for the Internet and its presumed potential led some scholars to predict large-scale uploading of religious life, there are a number of reasons to conclude that offline religious practice will continue to be important in the lives of believers despite any online activity they may pursue. That said, there are also significant ways in which online religious activity has encouraged adherents to reimagine the nature of sacred space, to envision new ways of understanding religious practice, and to enact new forms of religious community.

Mediated communication and mediated communities in the information age

This article argues that the electronically mediated communication contributes to the construction of new, mediated forms of communities which are based on the synthesis of virtual and physical communities. The appearance of these new forms of communities leads to a new conceptualization of the relation between self and community. The aim of this article, on the one hand, is to show that with the mediatization of communities, our concept of community becomes more comples. On the other hand, in this essay we consider the assumption that the medium of the mediatization and new conceptualization of community is a specific, pictorial language of electronically mediated communication.

Comparative Study of Small Office Layout Based on Amount of Communication and Knowledge Creation Behavior

The increasing use of electronically mediated communication among workers when dealing with collocated group members has become unavoidable. Besides, communication is a vital part of sustainability strategy of an organization in order to keep abreast with business agility, as well as increasing organization’s intellectual productivity. However, the importance of physical workplace as a place supporting face to face communication cannot be denied since it is one of the factors of successful accomplishment of complex group tasks and activities. In this paper, we explored and compared the characteristics of two small office layout and physical settings on group’s communication while performing their work process – in this case we adopted SECI Model behaviors. The ethnographic and cross-sectional studies were conducted, and relationship between physical design, communication and work process have been explored by considering the office layout of two project groups at research institution in Japan. The findings highlighted the differences in distribution of amount of communication in these two layouts based on several measurements such as communication contents, unit boundaries, SECI behaviors and so on. Based on the result of the study, we suggest the layout and physical settings that foster communicative workplace as well as supporting their work process.