9/9/14

Introduction to Communications
Professor Harris
Chapter 2 :Thinking About Communication
Introduction
- Rising literacy rates had a profound impact on social life
-definition of wise shifted from who was experienced to who was
learned meaning who could read
- different kinds of communication technologies and infrastructures
shape the way people think as well as shape social organizations
Ways of Knowing
- personal experience is one of the first ways we learn as humans
- personal experiences can shape personality
- limited to the individuals perception, and consequently often
subjective.
-authority occurs when we are able to speak
-adults give an order and children accept and learn from it
-as adults we accept orders for religion, medical assistance, etc.
we obey what others who have the credentials tell us to
believe and know
-risk because authority could be wrong
-going against authority is going against power
- tradition is simply another form of authority
-in the past you were outcaste if you challenged authority (what
everyone believed)
- observation, analysis, generalization is a more practical way of
learning
-this is how Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo observed the stars
and discovered the earth revolved around the sun
- limited to the individuals perception, and consequently often
subjective.
The Scientific Method
- Francis Bacon
-philosophical advocate and practitioner of the Scientific Method
- process of observation stating knowledge should be acquired through
the accumulation of data and inductive reasoning based on the data
-invented to make observations not subjective
- observations will not be tainted by perceptual bias or personal beliefs
- Empirical data-data that are observable, measurable, objective

Steps:
1)Review the prior research on a specific topic and develop a
research
2)Develop a hypothesis or preliminary answer to the research
question.
3)Construct a method to collect data to test whether the
hypothesis is true or false.
4)Collect the data.
5)Analyze the data.
6)Draw conclusions about the truth or falsity of the hypothesis.
7)Contextualize the finding within a larger understanding of the
world.
The Role of Theory
-theories- general explanations of the way the world works
- based on evidence already gathered that has supported or rejected a
series of hypotheses.
-Overarching framework that knits together existing evidence
to provide a broader and more comprehensive understanding
of the world
-greatest theory was the survival of the fittest
Charles Darwin
-greatest theory was the survival of the fittest
-natural selection
-theory became the foundation for modern evolutionary studies
-Theories are developed in two ways
1) Deduction
-reasoning from general to specific
-if something is true for a class of things in general, then it must
be true for all members of that class
2) Induction
-reasoning from specific to general
-makes broad generalizations
- starts with data and results rather than an overall story
- data that do not fit the theory are labeled anomalous and disregarded
-Anomalous
-does not fit expectations
-rare occurrence but if not rare the theory is abandoned
- Paradigm shift
- reworking of the theory is radical enough
-vast majority of experimental results generated by researchers
working in a specific area

-occurs when a significant amount of unexplained data and

unanticipated results emerge
-Challenges with the Scientific Method
-difficulty to measure accurately and measurement is mportat t
empirical research
-challenging to isolate specific variable to understand which
specific variable influences what specific outcome
-many people measure own personal experience against the
theoretical prediction, and if predictions do not match their
experience, they tent to disregard the theories
Sources of Communication Education
-Three distinct source
1) classical education in the form of rhetoric
2) professional education
3)social science research.
Classical Eduction
- education based on Greek tradition and focused on the liberal
arts
- study of rhetoric done to understand the elements of effective
speech and how to engage in public discourse
sevenliberalarts.
- trivium= rhetoric, grammar, and logic
- quadrivium = arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy
- study of communication was said to be at the center of the
science of man under the general heading of Reason.
Professional Education
-focal point in higher education in the United States
- 1860s, Robert E. Lee launched the first program to train people
to become journalists
-1885 advertising degree programs established at major
universities
-1876 JHU established as a research instituiton
- 1908, the school of journalism at the University of Missouri was
established by Walter Williams
- focused on the technical skills students needed to succeed in
their chosen profession.
Social Science Research
-Used Scientific Methods to study communications processes
-post WWI and WWII Government initiatives to understand
propaganda
-developed concepts and techniques developed in other social
sciences
- social scientific approach-focusedonthewayhumanscreated,
transmitted,andreceivedmessages,andthenderivedmeaningfromthose
messages.

Rhetoric: The First Study of Communication

-the art of discourse
- Traveling teachers known collectively as the Sophists taught public
speaking as a means of human improvement
-elements of persuasive speech
1)ethos
2)pathos
3)logos
According to Plato
-rhetorics goal is to instill beliefs in the listener
-can be used unjustly displaying false statements
According to Aristotle
- seen as a parallel skill to the art of dialectic
-3 Categories for Rhetoric Used in Civil Affairs
1)judicial rhetoric to determine the truth or falsity of events that
took place in the past,
2)deliberative rhetoric to determine if a specific action should be
taken in the future,
3)ceremonial rhetoric that was concerned with praise and blame
in the present.
- Persuasive speech is comprised of three elements
1) ethos= character of the speaker
2)pathos= emotional state of the listener
3)logos= the argument itself.
The Modern Study of Communication
- In professional education, the apprenticeship model dominated even
at the university level
- no longer limited to interpersonal communication with intro to typing
and telegraphs
- in 1927 Harold Lasswell define propaganda as a technique of
influencing human action through the control of representations
- governments and other entities could control human action through
the use of symbols and the control of stories, news reports, pictures,
and even music
- model of communication
-SPEAKER + MESSAGE + MEDIUM + RECEIVER = IMPACT
- Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver
- primarily interested in the quantification of information and the
limits on compressing, storing, and reliably delivering that datato
the intended destination
Theories of Communication
- Middle-range theories do not try to explain everything about
everything. Instead, they attempt to explain something about
something

- start with a clearly defined aspect of social phenomena

- supported or disproved through the collection of data
- magic-bullet/ hypodermic-needle/ pessimistic mass society
thesis.
- proposed by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Frankfurt School
of Social Research
-used to understand certain social phenomena
-attempted to explain the relationship between media and
society
-implied that media injected ideas-good and bad- into society
According to Plato
- media content is injected into viewers, who then respond to
that content in either anticipated or unanticipated ways
- equated the growth of mass media with the loss of
interpersonal relationships and community
- Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld published Personal Influence
-theorized that media do not affect everybody in the public
directly
- within different social groups, different people are looked at as
the experts in a specific area
- two-step process for media effects
- The media influence tastemakers and experts, who, in
turn, influence their friends
- weak media effects theory
- theory, also proposed by Katz, uses and gratifications.
- Audiences seek out certain types of media because the
mediated content fulfills a specific need
-Pierre Bourdieu
- the way people present their social space to the world depicts
and defines their status
- people use and consume media to display to the world who
they are and how they fit into society
Textual Analysis
-focuses on the content distributed through different channels of
communication
-theoretical approached to analyzing text can vary
Semiotics
-how things become carriers of meaning
-science of signification
1) semantics- relation among signs and the things to which they
refer
2) syntactics- relations among signs in formal structure (rules)

3) pragmatics- relation between signs and the effects they have

on people who use them
-Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure
Political Economy
- press does not play an adversarial or watchdog role to government
- media serve to support the existing power structures in society
- media reinforce the status quo
- rooted in a Marxist analysis of society
- Marxism holds that the economic organization of society basically
determines its social structure
The Critical Cultural Approach
- attempts to integrate aspects of the other theoretical approaches to
communication
- Stuart Hall put forth the notion of encoding and decoding messages
-impact of the cultural, political, and economic context on the
encoding
process
-influence of the channel of communication on the message
-impact of the cultural, political, and economic context on the
decoding
process
Key Topics in Communication
- impact of violence in the media
- causal connection existed between media violence and aggressive
behavior in some children
-Sex in the media
- children who watch a lot of television become sexually active at
a younger age
- teenagers and preteens with televisions in their bedrooms are
more likely to use drugs, smoke cigarettes, binge drink, and have
sex
- presentation of stereotypes in the media is of concern
- Public health campaigns
- political issues
Professional Performance
- market research is geared to identifying:
-who might be interested in purchasing a specific product or why
-how satisfied consumers are with a specific product
-how the product might be enhanced
-how content consumers are with the supplier of a product or
service
-public opinion focuses on:
-identifying what people think and feel about goods, services,
and people

-surveying the public by choosing a highly selected sample

-representing the opinion of the population
-Market Research attempts to identify and understand the market for a
particular product and service