CHAPTER 8: ADAPTING COMMUNICATION TO CULTURES AND

SOCIAL COMMUNITIES

Relationships between Culture and Communication

We Learn Culture in the Process of Communicating

1. Culture: a way of life—a system of ideas, values, beliefs, customs, and language that is
passed from one generation to the next and that sustains a particular way of life

Communication Is a Primary Indicator of Culture

[intercultural communication]

1. Individualistic cultures:
 regard each person as distinct from other people, groups, and organizations.
 value personal freedom, individual rights, and independence
 tends to be assertive and often competitive
 celebrate successful individuals—Most Valuable Player, Salesperson of the Month
 Self-reliance is highly valued, as are personal initiative, accomplishment, and growth.
 rely on a low-context communication style (very direct, explicit, and detailed)
 argument and persuasion are perceived as appropriate
2. Collectivist cultures
 regard people as deeply connected to one another and to their families, groups, and
communities.
 value intergroup order and harmony, group welfare, and interdependence
 tends to be other-oriented and cooperative
 collective accomplishments are more valued
 tend to celebrate communal achievements more
 rely on a high-context communication style (indirect and undetailed; conveys
meanings more implicitly)
 assumed as alike in terms of their values and understandings
 a person’s history (family, status in community) forms a context for understanding
what a person says – context > message

Multiple Social Communities May Coexist in a Single Culture

1. Most societies have a dominant, or mainstream, way of life

2. A culture includes a number of social communities, groups of people who live within a
dominant culture yet also belong to another social group or groups. (initially known as
subcultures)
3. Standpoint theory – “social groups within a culture distinctively shape members’
perspectives” —their perceptions, identities, expectations, and so forth.
4. Belonging to a particular social community may lead members to develop a standpoint
5. standpoints reflect power positions in society
6. A culture’s conventional, nonverbal communication often reflects the perspective of
dominant groups.
7. gendered communities:
  children’s play is sex segregated, that boys and girls tend to play different kinds of
games
 the rules we learn through play remain with many of us as we grow older
 each gender tends to perceive as the center of a relationship.
8. social classes:
 lower income people tend to live closer to and rely more on extended families
9. race:
 African Americans generally communicate more assertively than European
Americans
 African Americans and Hispanics have stronger commitments to collective interests
such as family or race
 African Americans also interact more directly and vigorously

Communication Expresses and Sustains Cultures

1. Each time we express cultural values, we also perpetuate them

2. E.g. Asian Americans avoid displaying emotions, express the value of self-restraint and the
priority of reason over emotion; Westerners argue, speak up for their minds and uphold the
values of individuality and assertiveness
3. E.g. Western preoccupation with time and efficiency – the abundance of words that refer to
time (hours, minutes, seconds, days, weeks)

Communication Is a Source of Cultural Change

1. Reason:
 Social communities - to resist the mainstream’s efforts to define their identity
 helps propel change by naming things in ways that shape how we understand them
(e.g. environmental racism and environmental justice)
 prompts changes in cultural life (e.g. The Civil Rights and Black Power) – also to
persuade non-black citizens to rethink their attitudes and practices

Guidelines for Adapting Communication to Diverse Cultures and Social Communities

Engage in Person-Centered Communication

1. Uncertainty reduction theory – “because we find uncertainty uncomfortable, we try to

reduce it” -> seek information -> becomes more comfortable
2. person-centeredness involves recognizing another person’s perspective and taking that into
account as you communicate
3. requires us to negotiate between awareness of group tendencies and equal awareness of
individual differences

Respect Others’ Feelings and Ideas

1. do not attempt to speak for others

2. do not assume they understand people whose standpoints are not their own
3. Ask for explanation if you don’t understand

Resist Ethnocentric Bias

1. Ethnocentrism - tendency to regard ourselves and our way of life as normal and superior to
other people and other ways of life.
 2. E.g. Nazi Germany’s declaration that Aryans were the “master race” -> massive genocide of
Jewish people
3. Cultural relativism - cultures vary in how they think and behave as well as in what they
believe and value.
4. Cultural relativism =/= moral relativism - reminds us that something that appears odd or
even wrong to us may seem natural and right from the point of view of a different culture

Recognize That Adapting to Cultural Diversity Is a Process [response to diversity]

1. Resistance
 Can be seen in hate crime
 Insulation within a single culture
 Assimilation - people give up their ways and adopt the ways of the dominant culture
(melting pot metaphor)
 Is used to provoke change in cultural practices and viewpoints
2. Tolerance
 respecting others’ rights to their ways even though we may think their ways are
wrong
3. Understanding
 Builds on the idea of cultural relativism (differences are rooted in cultural teachings
and that no cultural teachings are intrinsically best or right)
4. Respect
 appreciate the distinct validity and value
5. Participation
 incorporate some practices and values of other groups into our own lives
 e.g. practicing multilingualism
 Chapter 9: Communication and Self Respect

Communication and Personal Identity

The Self Arises in Communication with Others

1. self-fulfilling prophecies - expectations or judgments of ourselves that we bring about

through our own actions

Particular Others

1. specific people who are especially significant to us and who shape how we see ourselves
2. reflected appraisal - The process of seeing ourselves through the eyes of others

Generalized Others

1. the collection of rules, roles, and attitudes endorsed by the overall society and social
communities to which we belong
2. communicated by other people who have internalized those views
3. role of institution:
 convey the perspective of the generalized other (e.g. judicial system)
 reflect and express prevailing social prejudices

Communication with Family Members

1. Direct definition
 Def: communication that explicitly tells us who we are by labelling us and our
behaviors
 learn how others see them and what others value and expect of them
2. Life Scripts
 Def: rules for living and identity
 define our roles, how we are to play them, and the basic elements of what our
families see as the right plot for our lives
 unconscious process by which we internalize scripts that others write and assign to
us
3. Attachment Styles
 Def: patterns of parenting that teach us how to view ourselves and personal
relationships
 Secure attachment style
o Caregiver: consistently attentive and loving way to a child;
o Child: positive sense of self-worth and a positive view of others
o outgoing, affectionate, & able to handle the challenges and disappointments
of close relationships without losing self-esteem
 Fearful
o Caregiver: negative, rejecting, or even abusive ways to a child
o Children: unworthy of love and that others are not loving
 Dismissive
o caregivers who are uninterested in, rejecting of, or abusive
o do not accept the caregiver’s view of them as unlovable; dismiss others as
unworthy
 o child: develop a positive view of themselves and a low regard for others and
relationships
o defensive tendency to view relationships as unnecessary and undesirable
 Anxious/ambivalent
o Most complex
o fostered by inconsistent treatment from the caregiver; unpredictable
o child: creates great anxiety; often assume that they themselves are the
source of any problem
o tend to be preoccupied with relationships
o may act inconsistently
o uneasy with closeness

Communication with Peers

1. Reflected Appraisals
 Judgments; knowing their perspectives about ourselves
2. Direct definitions
 Def: communication that explicitly tells us who we are by labelling us and our
behaviors
3. Social comparisons
 Def: our rating of ourselves relative to others with respect to our talents, abilities,
qualities, and so forth
 we use others to evaluate ourselves
 How?
o to decide whether we are like them or different from them
o to assess specific aspects of ourselves
4. Self-disclosure
 Def: the revelation of personal information about ourselves that others are unlikely
to learn on their own.
 take place when the communication climate is affirming, accepting, and supportive
 The Johari Window:
o Open area
o Blind area
o Hidden area
o Unknown area
 Is used to reduce uncertainty – refer to uncertainty reduction theory (Chapter 8)
 Effect:
o fosters personal growth and increase closeness

Communication with Society

1. Race
 E.g. white privilege
 race is socially constructed
2. Gender
 Western society: men > women
 Society’s gender prescriptions is less rigid today
3. Sexual orientation
 Focuses on the LGBTQ+ community
  E.g. passed laws on gay marriage
 Rejecting and resist negative social views – supporting positive self-images
 Become more aware of their sexuality
4. Socioeconomic level
 Difficult to pinpoint – not necessarily visible
 basic part of how we understand the world and how we think, feel, and act
 affects our ideas about what we need and what we are entitled to

Guidelines for Communicating with Ourselves

Reflect Critically on Social Perspectives

1. values and views endorsed by a society at any given time are arbitrary and subject to change
2. has an ethical responsibility to speak out against social perspectives that we perceive as wrong
or harmful

Commit to Personal Growth

1. Set realistic goals

 not realistic and usually not effective to expect dramatic growth immediately
 require realistic standards
 establish a series of small goals that you can meet
2. Assess yourself fairly
 should appreciate how our individual qualities and abilities fi t together to form the
whole self
 judge yourself from an overall perspective
 be attentive to unrealistic assessments of us that others may make
 accept yourself as someone in process
 realize you can change
3. Self-disclose appropriately
 reciprocity of disclosure seems important
 self-disclosure also entails risks

Create a Supportive Context for the Change You Seek

 think about settings

 consciously choosing to be around people who believe in you and encourage your
personal growth
 communicate with ourselves healthily – avoid self-sabotage: undermining our belief
in ourselves
 Uppers – people: communicate positively reflect positive appraisals of our self-
worth
 Downers – communicate negatively about us and our worth
 Vultures – extreme downers; initiate harsh criticism of us
 Chapter 11: Communication in Groups and Teams

Understanding Communication in Groups and Teams

Defining Groups and Teams

1. Group
 three or more people who interact over time, depend on one another, and follow
shared rules of conduct to reach a common goal
 interdependent – needing one another to achieve something,
2. Team
 a special kind of group characterized by different, complementary resources of
members and by a strong sense of collective identity
 Differences:
i. consist of people who bring different and specialized resources to a
common project
ii. develop greater interdependence and a stronger sense of identity
3. Group teams develop rules:
 Constitutive rules – state what counts as what
 Regulative rules – regulate how, when, and with whom we interact
4. Having shared goals

The Rise of Groups and Teams

1. Project Teams
 consist of people who have expertise related to different facets of a project and who
combine their knowledge and skills to accomplish a common goal
2. Focus groups
 to find out what people think about a specific idea, product, issue, or person
 mainstay of advertisers
 guided by a leader or facilitator who encourages members to express ideas, beliefs,
feelings, and perceptions relevant to the topic
3. Brainstorming groups
 to come up with as many ideas as possible
 work together to appraise the ideas generated
4. Advisory Groups
 develop and submit recommendations to others, who make the final decisions
 provide expert briefing to an individual or another group that is empowered to make
a decision
5. Quality Improvement Teams (continuous quality improvement team)
 include three or more people who have distinct skills or knowledge and who work
together to improve quality in an organization
 also involves people at different levels in an organization’s hierarchy
 focus on complaining about problems, identifying needs or problems
 often generate impressive and creative solutions to organizational problems
 usually make reports on a regular basis (weekly or monthly) to keep management
informed
6. Decision-Making Groups
  to make a specific decision

Potential Limitations and Strengths of Groups

Potential Limitations of Groups

Potential Strengths of Groups

Features of Small Groups

Cohesion

1. Def: degree of closeness among members and the sense of group spirit
2. Groupthink – members cease to think critically and independently; extreme cohesion

Group Size

 group size ↑ , contributions of each member ↓

 Commitment: large groups < small groups
 Cohesion and satisfaction: large groups < small groups
 Too small:
o limited resources
o may be unwilling to criticize
 Optimal size: 5 – 7 members

Power Structure

1. Power – the ability to influence others in the achievement of goals

2. Power over – the ability to help or harm others
3. Power to – the ability to empower others to reach their goals; do not emphasize their status
4. Power can be resulted from (a) position, or (b) it may be earned
5. Distributed power structure – all members of a group have roughly equal power
6. Hierarchical power structure – one or more members have greater power than others
7. Social climbing – the attempt to increase personal status in a group by winning the approval
of high-status members

Interaction Patterns

 Centralized patterns – one or two people hold central positions; goes directly to them or is
funneled through them
 Decentralized patterns – more balanced; members have roughly equal power

Group Norms

1. Norms – guidelines that regulate how members act as well as how they interact with each
other
2. By noticing patterns and tendencies, you can exert influence over the norms

Five Bases of Power

 Reward Power - The ability to give people things they value, e.g. attention, approval
 Coercive Power - The ability to punish others through demotions, firing, and undesirable
assignments
 Legitimate Power - The organizational role (e.g. manager, CEO) that results in others’
compliance
  Expert Power - Influence derived from expert knowledge or experience
 Referent Power - Influence based on personal charisma and personality

Guidelines for Communicating in Groups and Teams

Participate Constructively

1. Task communication – provides ideas and information, clarifies members’ understanding,

and critically evaluates ideas; asking for ideas and criticism from others.
2. Procedural communication – helps a group get organized and stay on track; may curb
digressions and tangents, summarize progress, and regulate participation
3. Climate communication – creating and maintaining a constructive climate that encourages
members to contribute freely and to evaluate ideas critically
4. Egocentric communication (dysfunctional communication) – block others or to call attention
to oneself

Provide Leadership

1. Leadership
 Effective participation
o to organize discussion
o to create a productive climate
o to build group morale
o to discourage egocentric communication

Manage Conflict Constructively

1. Disruptive Conflict
 communication that is competitive as members vie with each other to wield
influence and get their way
 a self-interested focus
 fosters diminished cohesion and a win–lose orientation
 Group climate deteriorates
2. Constructive Conflict
 members understand that disagreements are natural and can help them achieve
their shared goals
 should demonstrate openness to different ideas, willingness to alter opinions when
good reasons exist
 Chapter 12: Communication in Organizations

Key Features of Organizational Communication

Structure

 provides predictability for members so that they understand roles, procedures, and
expectations
 rely on a hierarchical structure

Communication Networks

1. Communication Networks – formal and informal links between members of organizations

2. virtual networks are becoming more common (telecommuting)

Links to External Environments

 systems as interdependent, interacting wholes

 contributes to the performance of an organization
 e.g. global economy

Organizational Culture
Vocabulary

1. Hierarchical Language
 designate status
 reflects the close ties among rank, respect, and privilege
 Unequal terms of address
2. Masculine Language
 Taken from sports (develop a game plan), military life (battle plan), and from male
sexual parts and activities (screw, hit on a person)
 may also normalize sexist practices, including sexual harassment (sweetheart)

Stories

1. Corporate Stories
 Function: to socialize new members into the culture of an organization
2. Personal Stories
 tell stories about themselves; announce how people see themselves and how they
want to be seen by others
3. Collegial Stories
 offers accounts of other members of the organization
 assert identities for others in an organization

Rites and Rituals

1. Rites - dramatic, planned sets of activities that bring together aspects of cultural ideology in
a single event
 Rites of passage - to mark membership in different levels or parts of organizations
 Rites of integration - affirm and enhance the sense of community in an organization
  Blaming rites (counterpart of enhancement rites) - Firings, demotions, and
reprimands
 Renewal rites - to revitalize and update organizations (Training workshops)
 Conflict resolution rites - standard methods of dealing with differences and discord
(e.g. arbitration, collective bargaining, mediation, executive fiat, voting)
2. Rituals - forms of communication that occur regularly and that members of an organization
perceive as familiar and routine parts of organizational life
 Personal rituals – routine behaviors that individuals use to express their
organizational identities
 Social rituals – standardized performances that affirm relationships between
members of organizations
 Task rituals – repeated activities that help members of an organization perform their
jobs

# workplace bullying – recurring hostile behaviors used by people with greater power against
people with lesser power

Structures

Def: organize relationships and interaction between members of an organization

1. Roles
 Def: responsibilities and behaviors expected of people because of their specific
positions in an organization
 Each role is connected to other roles within the system.
2. Rules
 Def: patterned ways of interacting
 Constitutive rules – specify what various kinds of communication symbolize
 Regulative rules – specify when, where, and with whom communication should
occur (e.g. organizational chart)
3. Policies
 Def: formal statements of practices that refl ect and uphold the overall culture of an
organization
4. Communication Networks
 link members of an organization together through formal and informal interactions
and relationships
 Formal – Job descriptions and organizational charts
 Informal – Friendships, alliances, carpools, and nearby offices
 Grapevine – Communication outside the formal channels of an organization;
suggesting free-flowing quality

Guidelines for Communicating in Organizations

Adapt to Diverse Needs, Situations, and People

1. have a cafeteria-style benefits package – allow employees to select benefi ts from a range of
options (family leave, flexible working hours, employer-paid education)
2. Flexible rules and policies

Expect to Move in and Out of Teams

 1. requires interacting intensely with members of teams that may form and dissolve quickly
2. able to adjust your style of communicating to the expectations and interaction styles of a
variety of people and to the constraints of a range of situations

Manage Personal Relationships on the Job

1. Friendships between co-workers or supervisors and subordinates

2. Romantic relationships between people who work together
3. Learn to manage those relationships so that the workplace doesn’t interfere with the
personal bond and the intimacy doesn’t jeopardize professionalism
 Chapter 13: Public Communication

Public Speaking as Enlarged Conversation

Distinctive Features of Public Communication

1. Greater Responsibility to Plan and Prepare

 Listeners’ expectations affect the planning and preparation
 Expecting more evidence, clearer organization, and more polished delivery in public
speeches
2. Less Obviously Interactive
 Speakers tend to dominate
 Participation: head nods, frowns, perplexed expressions, applause
 must anticipate listeners’ attitudes and knowledge and must adapt their
presentation to the views of listeners
 must adapt to listeners’ feedback

The Purpose of Public Speeches (are often overlap)

1. To entertain
 to engage, interest, amuse, or please listeners
 by sharing stories – to share experiences, teach a lesson
2. To inform
 increasing listeners’ understanding, awareness, or knowledge of some topic
 may take in the form of demonstration
3. To persuade
 aims to change listeners’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors or to motivate them to take
some action
 an advocate who argues for a cause, issue, policy, attitude, or action

Planning and Presenting Public Speeches

Earning Credibility

1. Def: having trust and believe in the speaker’s words

2. based on listeners’ perceptions of a speaker’s position, authority, knowledge (also called
expertise), dynamism, and trustworthiness (also called character)
3. Initial credibility
 the expertise, dynamism, and character that listeners attribute to them before they
begin to speak
 based on titles, experiences, and achievements that are known
4. Derived credibility
 listeners grant as a result of how speakers communicate during presentations.
5. Terminal credibility
 cumulative combination of initial and derived credibility

Planning Public Speeches

1. Select a topic
 Select topics that they know and care about
 Must be appropriate
  Limited in scope
2. Define the Speaking Purpose
 General purpose: to entertain, inform & persuade
 Specific purpose: exactly what you hope to accomplish
3. Define the thesis
 Having a clear thesis statement – main idea of the speech
 Summarizes the focus of the speech

Organising Speeches

1. Introduction
 should gain listeners’ attention, give them a reason to listen, establish the credibility
of the speaker, and state the thesis
2. Body
 Development of the thesis
 Chronological patterns (time patterns): emphasize progression, sequences, or
development
 Spatial patterns: according to physical relationships; explaining layouts, geographic
relationships, or connections between parts of a system.
 Topical patterns (classification patterns): order speech content into categories or
areas
 Wave patterns: feature repetitions
 Comparative patterns: compare two or more phenomena

Organizational patterns (for persuasive speech):

 Problem–solution patterns
 Cause–effect and effect–cause patterns
 motivated sequence pattern:
o Attention step – focuses listeners’ attention on the topic with a strong
opening
o Need step – real and serious problem exists
o Satisfaction step – recommends a solution
o Visualization step – intensifies listeners’ commitment to the solution by
helping them imagine the results
o Action step – appeals to listeners to take concrete action
3. Conclusion
 Summarizes main idea of the speech
 Leaves the audience with memorable final idea
4. Transitions
 words, phrases, and sentences that connect ideas in a speech

Researching and Supporting Public Speeches

1. Evidence – material used to support claims, such as those made in a public speech
 used to make ideas clearer, more compelling, and more dramatic
 fortifies a speaker’s opinions, which are seldom sufficient to persuade intelligent
listeners
 heightens a speaker’s credibility
 Types:
 o Statistics
o Examples
o Comparisons
o Quotations
 Halo effect

Developing Effective Delivery

1. Oral style
 Should be personal
 Tends to be immediate and active
2. Impromptu delivery
 extemporaneous delivery
 Manuscript delivery
 memorized delivery

Guidelines for Public Speaking

Understand and Manage Speaking Anxiety

Communication apprehension – detrimental level of anxiety associated with real or anticipated

communication encounters

1. Causes of Communication Apprehension

 Situational or chronic
2. Reducing Communication Apprehension
 Systematic desensitization – relaxing and focusing on the physiological part
 cognitive restructuring – revising how people think about their speaking situations
3. Positive visualization
 through imagined positive speaking experiences
4. Skills training
 teaching people such skills as starting conversations, organizing ideas, and
responding effectively to others

Adapt Speeches to Audiences

1. need to understand what listeners already know and believe and what reservations they
might have about what we say
2. be observant
3. gather information through conversation or survey

Listen Critically

1. take in and understand what a speaker says

2. suspend your preconceptions about topics and speakers
3. recognize fallacies in reasoning and do not succumb to them
 Chapter 14: Mass Communication

The Evolution of Mass Communication

The Tribal Epoch

1. oral tradition reigned

2. communicated face to face, giving and getting immediate feedback
3. knitted together by stories and rituals that passed along the history and traditions of a
culture

The Literate Epoch

1. Invention of the phonetic alphabet

2. Written communication emerged
3. Established a linear form for communication

The Print Epoch

1. Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century

2. Visual media were no longer limited to an elite
3. Mass-produced writing cultivated homogeneity of perspectives and values; same message
could be delivered to many people

The Electronic Epoch

1. Invention of telegraph, television

2. Global village – modern worldwide community that resembles the tribal village
3. Invention of computers

Theories of Mass Communication

The Hypodermic Needle Model

1. A.k.a. magic bullet theory & direct effects model

2. Def: media are powerful forces that are injected directly into vulnerable, passive audiences
3. E.g. Hitler used mass communication (radio, film, and print material) to rise to power – a
tool of propaganda
4. Is discredited – people are not entirely powerless, messages can be rejected
5. Hypothesis rejected – mass communication is NOT the sole influence on human behaviour
6. Too simplistic

Uses and Gratification Theory

1. People are active agents who make deliberate choices among media to gratify themselves
2. “we select media that we think will give us something we value or want”
3. offers a more realistic view of audiences, but it tells little about how media affect society
4. Not only to gain information, but also for pleasure
5. Question: What are the reasons people use media? – individuals’ motivations shaped their
choices of mass communication

Agenda Setting
 1. Def: media’s ability to select and call to the public’s attention ideas, events, and people and
to offer frames, or ways of seeing, those phenomena it selects
2. Mass media set the public agenda.
3. Processes: (a) direct us to pay attention to particular topics (b) lead us to ignore or give
minimum attention to other topics
4. Gatekeeper
 the people and groups that decide which messages pass through the gates that
control information flow to reach consumers (e.g. editors, advertisers and political
groups)
 screens information and its sources

Cultivation Theory

1. “television cultivates, or promotes, a worldview that is inaccurate but that viewers

nonetheless may assume reflects real life”
2. claims to create a synthetic reality that shapes heavy viewers’ perspectives and beliefs about
the world
3. Cultivation - cumulative process by which television fosters beliefs about social reality
4. Mechanism of cultivation:
 Mainstreaming – stabilizing and homogenizing of views within a society
 Resonance – the extent to which media representations are congruent with
personal experience

Cultural Studies Theories

Def: a theory exploring the relationship between mass communication and popular culture

1. Textual analysis
 involves closely reading texts
 Frame analysis: examination of consistent patterns in the ways stories are presented
2. Audience studies
 A.k.a. reader-response research
 focuses on the meanings that audiences (readers or viewers) assign to their
engagement with media
 audiences are active, not passive
3. Political economy studies
 offers critical analysis of tensions between the current corporate media system and
democratic ideals and practices
 the logic of the market increasingly shapes every facet of cultural life
 driven by capitalism
 media primarily benefit wealthy individuals and corporations
 mass communication’s survival depends on attracting and keeping advertisers
 Product placement: the practice of featuring products in media and ensuring that
viewers recognize the product
 Methods by the media to gain profit: advertising, reality TV
 Immersive advertising: incorporates a product or brand into actual storylines in
books, television programs, and fi lms

Guidelines for Engaging Mass Communication

Develop Media Literacy
 1. Realistically Assess Media’s Influence
 cultivate your ability to analyze, understand, and respond thoughtfully to media
 mass communication is one of many influences on individual attitudes and social
perspectives.
2. Become Aware of Patterns in Media
3. Actively Interrogate Media Messages
 use critical thought to assess what is presented
 be thoughtful and sceptical
 Puffery: one of the advertising strategies – superlative claims for a product that
seem factual but are actually meaningless
4. Expose Yourself to a Range of Media Sources
 “mindful exposures”
5. Focus on Your Motivations for Engaging Media
 realize that media serve many purposes, and they make deliberate choices that
serve their goals and needs at particular times.

Respond Actively

1. must recognize that you are an agent who can affect what happens around you
2. question or challenge the views of reality they advance
3. must speak out their mind
 Chapter 15: PERSONAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

A History of Communication Technologies

1. Communication technologies

Written Communication

1. allows us to record, transfer, and work with information.

2. also record and transfer information in written memoranda – “to be remembered”

Telephonic Communication

1. e.g. facsimile machine (or the fax) – fast & inexpensive; Cell phones and text messaging
2. stay in touch without the inconvenience of coordinating different time zones

Computer-Mediated Communication

1. Wi-Fi
 increases our ability to connect with the Internet
2. Email
 speed of transmission and the convenience of using the technology when we please
 does not automatically produce hard copy for records
 not truly appreciated as a medium of touch

Electronic Conferencing

1. teleconferencing – discussion among people who are geographically separated

2. Audioconferencing – over the telephone
3. Computer conferencing - allows multiple participants to send and receive e-mail in
sequential exchanges.
4. Videoconferencing -

Interconnected Communication Technologies

1. Interconnectivity - connecting of various devices to each other and to the Internet so users
don’t have to independently configure each new system

Controversies about Personal and Social Media

How Do Computer Technologies Affect Thinking?

1. Encourage multitasking
 engaging in multiple tasks simultaneously or in rapid sequence in overlapping and
interactive ways
 humans can’t really concentrate on more than one thing in the same time
2. Encourage Response to Visual Stimuli [visual emphasis affects thinking]
 Humans will expect new stimulation frequently
 hold attention for only short spans of time and to expect—perhaps need—new
stimuli continuously
 respond to dazzling images more
 unequally stimulates the two brain lobes (stimulates the right side of the brain
more)
 3. Discourage Independent, Critical Thinking
 make it easy to rely on external authorities
 may undermine imaginative, independent thought and sustained mental focus
 comes from the democratization of the Internet

How Do Online Communities Affect Social Relations?

1. have the potential to promote narrow-mindedness

2. can visit our virtual communities no matter where we ar
3. basic aspects of personal identity may be unclear or even deliberately misrepresented in
online communication
4. create on-screen identities to become comfortable with different sides of themselves
 accept limitations or changes in ourselves
5. fabricated online characters can mislead others, sometimes in dangerous ways – online
predators

Do Newer Technologies Increase Productivity?

Guidelines for Living with Personal and Social Media

Consciously Manage Information Flow

Participate in Deciding How to Regulate Communication Technologies

1. cookies - bits of data that websites collect and store in users’ personal browsers.
2. spyware - allows a third party to track individuals’ online activity, gain personal information,
and send pop-up ads tailored to users’ profi les