5. Communication skills (synonyms are e.g. socio-emotional literacy): refer to the skills that allow individuals to interact with other people through social media.
Social media offer new opportunities to interact with other people. There are several ways to share information with one person and even with more persons at the same time, for example e-mail, instant messaging, online learning communities, online discussion groups, chat rooms or social networking sites (SNS). People have to learn how to deal with the characteristics and complexities of these social media. Learning communication skills is increasingly important in the current web 2.0. environment, in which social media such as social networking sites are widely spread.
These communication skills are the skills needed to make, send and react to text messages. In this respect, communication skills are strongly related to the above mentioned creative skills and hence both skills are needed to create a text message. Communication skilled or socio-emotionally-literate users are “those who are willing to share data and knowledge with others, capable of information evaluation and abstract thinking, and able to collaboratively construct knowledge” (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004, p. 57). In other words, communication skills enable individuals to evaluate and to analyse what the other person is saying (for example if the information is true) and who the other person is with who you are interacting. In addition, it is also using the right words or signals.