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- Theorist all McLuhan\'s definition of communication
- information transportation
- Aristotle saw communication as __________.
- \"rhetoric\" - that is, discovering, in any given case, the available means of persuasion.
- Define communication.
- Transactional (sometimes linear or interactive) process whereby senders and receivers exchange messages (verbal and/or nonverbal) through one or more channels in a social context that may be affected by intent and noise. The message is created/encoded by a sender and interpreted/decoded by a receiver.
- Messages may be intentional or unintentional, but a person cannot _______.
- not communicate
- What is a transactional message?
- A transactional message is when encoding and decoding occur simultaneously for both the encoder and the decoder.
- What is a linear message?
- A message where only one person is encoding and transmitting the message, and one or more persons are receiving and decoding the messages. Ex. public speaking or media broadcasts
- What is interactive communication?
- Interactive communication is similar to a ping pong game - back and forth, back and forth. Ex. e-mail
- Explain the communication process.
- The communication process involves the production of a message by a source and the interpretation of that message by the receiver.
- What are the basic parts of communication?
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Source: The person or entity that generate the message. The sender.
Receiver: The person who perceives and assigns meaning to the message. The destination.
Message: The signs and/or symbols (verbal and nonverbal cues) transmitted either intentionally or unintentionally that evoke meaning for the receiver.
Encoding: The formulation and transmission of the message.
Decoding: The reception, perception, interpretation and usually evaluation of the message. Meaning is created in the mind of the receiver.
Channel: The means through which the message is transmitted of conveyed. This involves any, possibly all, five human senses and includes broadcast media and print journalism as well as the vocal mechanism.
Feedback: The response by the receiver to the message.
Noise: Anything that interferes with the communication process. It may be physical (usually external) or psychological (internal, such as daydreaming) or semantic (confusion about word meanings, or a foreign language).
Context: The specific communication situation, scene, or setting within a broader social milieu or environment.
Environment: The broader communication situation or background within which the context is located. - What is the difference between transactional and interactive communication?
- Interactive communication has delays between they messages. Thereby, feedback is delayed, rather than immediate. Ex. e-mail.
- Feedback
- The concept that is used to identify the response of the receiver to the sender.
- Nonverbal communication
- Communication \"without words.\"
- Noise
- Noise is a concept the usefully describes interference in the communication process. The noise may be internal or external. Noise may be semantic when meanings of words or not clear, or if the speaker is speaking in a foreign language that you do not know.
- Message
- A message may be verbal or nonverbal, spoken or written, or some combination of these elements.
- Verbal
- The use of words only.
- What does a message travel through?
- A channel
- Nonverbal message
- The sounds and gestures an other non-word cues transmitted through channels.
- Mediated message
- Mediated messages are the messages you hear on the radio and television, where feedback is limited and almost non-existent.
- Context
- The context of a communication situation contains elaborate and implicit conventions and rules that govern the origin, flow, and effects of the message.
- Theories explain, but do not cause ________.
- communication events
- Theory
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A body of statements that present a clear, rounded, and systematic view of a subject.
It provides for a systematized, organized method of investigation that reveals new perspective for future investigations and inquiries. - Theories guide collection of ________.
- data, analysis, and the overall process of fitting information together
- It is through the viewpoint of a selected theoretical perspective that we are able to look at ...
- the communication process and abstract, explain, and, at times, predict the nature of unique human behavior.
- What do theorists sometimes use to clarify the relationships of the concepts pertinent to a particular theory?
- Models or representations
- What to theories use to demonstrate relationships between ideas or concepts?
- A high level of abstraction, which have explanatory power for either a limited or general domain.
- The broader the domain...
- the more useful the theory is
- The most useful theories have _______.
- predictive caability
- Name an important aspect of theory building.
- Research and testing
- In communication theory, the application of information to communication has ...
- a focal point in social cognition theory.
- Scientific attitude
- Scientific attitude is an approach to inquiry that poises itself for implementation of the scientific method.
- For a theory to be useful...
- it must be widely applicable and the internal parts o the theory must fit together with consistency and logical relationships.
- Generality
- refers to how widely applicable the theory is
- \"All horses run of four legs\" has much greater domain/generality than \"some horses run of four legs.\" This is an example displays _______ and the structure of the sentence makes clear how the range of phenomena was covered, which is....
- syntactic generality and domain generality
- A theory must demonstrate...
- necessity
- Nomic necessity
- casual relationships
- Logical necessity
- The internally consistent system of relationships in the theory. The theory must not contradict itself. It must make sense in light of research and experience.
- Practical necessity
- The amount of force to act. (Is this the practical thing to do?)
- What are the three general perspectives in theory construction?
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The form of the conclusions or generalization in the theory determines the classification.
Laws perspective: All A\'sav are B\'s under conditions 1, 2, 3.\" Ex. Law of Gravity, Attribution Theory
Systems perspective: A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> A
Ex. Food chain
Rules perspective: A does B in order to effect/bring about C
Ex. Many interpersonal communication theories - Types of data
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Nominal: a listing of items
Ordinal: items are rank-order by a characteristic, giving each item a priority or relative degree of importance.
Interval: Data that has statistical weighting
Ratio: comparisons with other related values - Questions for evaluating theories
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1. Is this theory clear? Simple? Coherent?
2. Does it provide for knowledge integration?
3. Is it fresh? Original?
4. Is is comprehensive?
5. Is it widely applicable?
6. Is it testable? Verifiable? Confirm-able with other data?
7. Can it predict?
8. Is it flexible and open for change? - Systems Theory: Ludwig von Bertalanffy
- One of the most widely applicable theories. Not purely ua communication theory, but is serves as a useful examples of broad theory applicability.
- System
- A set of part or objects that are structured and interrelated, forming a unique whole in an environment; set apart by a boundary; usually open (not closed).
- What is the difference between open systems and closed systems?
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Open systems have exchange with the environment (ex. humans).
A closed system does not (ex. battery watch. It keeps ticking whether anyone is wearing it or not). - Characteristics of systems
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Wholeness: The whole is greater than sums of the individual parts.
Interdependence: each part affects another part (A affects B affects C affects D affects E, and so on).
Equilibrium: systems adapt and change to achieve balance/homeostasis.
Equifinality: the goal-seeking behavior of a system. The long-range goal of every system is survival. A wide variety of short-term goals may characterize a personal or an organizational systems. We often change our paths/behaviors in order to achieve goals. This is the notion of equifinality. If the first approach is not successful, the system will try something else. The system will change and adapt to reach the goal.
Hierarchy: the lines of power and control as in superior/subordinate relationships. In any system, some parts are more important, more essential, than other parts.
Change/Adaptability: the system adjustments in order to survive; influenced by feedback. The system must change in order to adjust.
Exchange with the environment: the system transforms input into output. An open system has exchange with the environment. Systems receive input from the environment and transform it into output that is returned to the environment. - Levels of systems (view these as a continuum)
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Closed systems - have no exchange with the environment.
1. Static structure - universe
2. Simple dynamic - clock
3. Cybernetic control - thermostat
Open systems - have exchange with the environment
4. Self-maintenance - the cell
5. Biological - plants
6. Biological - animals
7. Human - individual
8. Social - human organization
9. Transcendental - metaphysical - Cybernetics
- A special case of systems theory. Cybernetics involves control and self-regulation via communication with an emphasis on feedback. It is distinctive from other systems because of its ability to communicate with itself, and to control and self-regulate through the effective use of feedback.
- Cybernetic mechanisms have:
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1. Goal parameters
2. A control center: sensor, comparator, activator - senses data, compare data to what is desire, and will activate if measures are needed to stay within goal parameters.
3. Feedback: negative or positive [maintain deviation].
4. Corrective action capability - takes place if there is negative feedback - According to Theories of Verbal Coding, list & define the three ways in which the study of signs and/or verbal coding can be approached.
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Semantics: how signs relate to things ---> meaning.
Ex. What words means, words don\'t mean the same thing to different people, words don’t mean the same thing in different context, some cultures don\'t have words or phrases found in other cultures.
Pragmatics: how signs affect human behavior.
Ex. How traffic lights affect human behavior (some people slow down at yellow light, some speed up)
Syntactics: signs relating to other signs.
- Information Theory: Shannon and Weaver
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Information: reduces uncertainty. It may involve data, process, channel, and/or outcomes/uses.
Entropy: The amount of chaos, randomness, turbulence, the degree of uncertainty.
Piece: a unit of information.
Bit: a unit of information that reduces the alternatives by half; a decision between two alternatives [binary decision].
Turbulence: the degree stability/instability in the environment; affects entropy.
Information load: quantity of information combined with relative difficulty in transmission; burnout may result from under load or overload.
Uncertainty reduction: People seek information to reduce uncertainty; they may also create uncertainty by the information that transmit. - Chronemics
- how time affects communication
- Social cognition theory
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How we come to know things in social contexts.
Has its roots in information theory because information is used to reduce certainty, and thus increase one\'s knowledge of a social situation.
If we asks questions using our knowledge of information theory, we can gain greater quantities of information in less time. - Every situation has...
- some degree of uncertainty (instability, turbulence, chaos, entropy).
- The redundancy in a language helps us..
- overcome the relative uncertainty.
- Attitude
- a predisposition to behave in a positive or negative way toward an object
- Non-identity
- A is not A. the map is not the territory it represents. The word is not the thing it represents.
- Artifacts
- objects that communicate (clothing, glasses, jewelry, cars, art objects, etc.)
- Indexing
- Recognizing that Person #1 is not Person #2.
- inartistic proof
- not speaker controlled (ex. Facts are not speaker controlled - they either are or are not).
- abstraction
- the process of leaving out details in perceiving, thinking about and labeling objects and events.
- multi-ordinal
- a word can mean a number of things to different people.
- cognitive dissonance
- two cognitive elements (attitude and behavior can be irrelevant/consonant/dissonant) and dissonance- a relationship in which one element would not be expected to follow from the other. NOT a matter of logical relationship but of psychological consistency.
- Mystification
- physical and experiential separation of individuals creates mystery in various ways; a phenomenon in which average people feel they have \"bonded\" with noted figures.
- Non-allness
- the map never represents all of the territory. No statement says all there is to say about an event.
- Proxemics
- The study of how people unconsciously structure \"microspace\" - the distance between people, objects, houses, etc.; how space affects the communication process.
- Haptics
- touch, an important element in interpersonal communication.
- Paralanguage
- vocalics) the study of how elements of the voice such as rate, pitch, volume, tone, etc. are used to communicate.
- peripheral routing
- occurs when non-elaboration, or non-critical thinking, occurs and the listener is influenced by element extraneous to the argument itself.
- Kinesics
- the study of body movements, facial expressions, and gestures.
- self-reflexiveness
- we abstract from abstractions –infinitely. The reporter can report on the report of the fire. We are still interpreting translations of translations of Aristotle and Plato.
- taxonomy
- A list of related concepts.