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.