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Our Way to Understand Communication
We are going to talk about the concept of communication. It is an essential part of our process to learn about what is known as "communication and media studies". In addition, it is worth mentioning that understanding communication and media as concepts in this field of research, is the engine of your success.
In fact, our lecture is divided into four sections:
1. Today's Quote
2. Communication: The Basics of the Concept
3. Types of Communication
4. What is Communication Studies?
Today's Quote
Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899-1916).
"When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen".
- Ernest Hemingway has been seen as was one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
- He is well-known by hi work, The Old Man and the Sea,
- He earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1953,
- E.Hemingway won, in 1954, the Nobel Prize for Literature for his style-forming mastery of the art of narration.
- Ernest Hemingway's Best Tips on Writing:
"Write what you know, leave out unnecessary words, and don't do it to be famous"
Find out more about the biography of E Hemingway
Communication: The Basics of the Concept
Harold Lasswell, an American political scientist and communication theorist, came up with a model of communication in 1948: for the act of communication to take place you need the following elements: The sender, the message, the channel, and the receiver – and the process must have an effect that can be evidenced. The receiver is important: you need to know their needs for the process to be effective.
Figure 1. The Lasswell's Model of Communication
Source : McQuail and Windahl [1982] 1993, p. 13.
Types of Communication
According to some studies, we can divide our experiences of communicating into four types or categories. These categories are generally based on the numbers of people involved with the act of communication. They are a useful way of trying to define our field of study, like the terms ‘form’ and ‘media’. Some forms or media belong more to one category than another, though there is no absolute rule.
A. Interpersonal communication is communication between people.
Usually this type is taken to refer to two people interacting face to face. it is worth remembering that face-to-face communication takes place in situations where there are more than two people present. Examples of familiar interpersonal situations are an interview, a salesperson talking to a client . It is the fact of face-to-face direct contact and the emphasis on speech and non-verbal forms of communication which make such situations in this category distinctive.
B.Group communication is communication within groups of people and by groups of people to others. In this case; it is convenient to make two more divisions: small and large groups as well. Small groups behave differently from pairs. even if they still interact face to face. However, large groups have diffrent behaviours from small groups, not only because they are bigger, but because they are often brought together or come together for purposes that are rather different from those of small groups.
C.Mass communication is communication received by or used by large numbers of people. In making a definition based on numbers, we don’t have to be specific. An open-air concert for a thousand people might reasonably be called masscommunication. The point is that the numbers involved at any one time are much bigger than anything we would reasonably call a group. It is the fact of large numbers being involved that makes this category special, in terms of who is able to control the tools of communication, and in terms of what its effect may be.
D.Mass self -communication it has been introduced for the first time by Manuel Castells, a Spanish sociologist. It can be defined as a new form of communication, distinct from both interpersonal and mass communication and capable of reaching global audiences, where the message is self-generated, the definition of the potential receiver(s) is self-directed, [and] the retrieval of specific messages (or content) is also self-selected.
Why study communication?
We spend every moment communicating, and we do depend on this activity in our personal, social and working lives. So it makes sense to find out what we’re communicating, how we’re communicating and why we’re communicating. That is why we can say that the study of communication is about the three following factors:
Knowing : what happens when people communicate with themselves and with each other;
Understanding : how that knowledge can be used to explain and interpret the processes of communication in our daily life;
Skills: using this knowledge and understanding to enable us to communicate more effectively.
In the past, the art of effective communication (being able to express your ideas and opinions and understand other people’s) was thought to be based on ‘correct’ uses of language.
However, communication studies goes beyond this to include ‘appropriate’ uses of both language and other forms of communication. These are studied to enable us to understand and deal with people. Communication studies embrace the use and analysis of media technologies, for instance: information technology, video, films and audio materials.
The art of communicating is not a natural process or an ability we are born with. We learn how to communicate. Therefore we may study what we learn in order to use our knowledge more effectively.
All communication involves the creation and exchange of meanings. These meanings are represented through ‘signs’ and ‘codes’. Communication studies are concerned with the issues of making and understanding ‘signs’.
Doing Research in Media and Communication Studies
What is Science?
Science refers to difficult high school or college-level courses such as physics, chemistry, and biology meant only for the brightest students. To others, science is a craft practiced by scientists in white coats using specialized equipment in their laboratories. In fact, the word “science” is derived from the Latin word "scientia" which means knowledge. To be more specefic, science refers to a systematic and organised body of knowledge in any area of inquiry that is acquired using “the scientific method”. Science can be grouped into two broad categories: natural science and social science. Natural science is the science of naturally occurring objects or phenomena, such as light, objects, matter, earth, human body. It can be further classified into physical sciences, earth sciences, life sciences, and others.
In contrast, social science is the science of people or collections of people, such as groups, firms, societies, or economies, and their individual or collective behaviours. Social sciences can be classified into disciplines such as psychology (the science of human behaviours), sociology (the science of social groups), and economics (the science of firms, markets, and economies).
The natural sciences are different from the social sciences in several respects. Let me clarify that point. The natural sciences are very precise, accurate, deterministic, and independent of the person making the scientific observations. For instance, a scientific experiment in physics, such as measuring the speed of sound through a certain media, should always yield the exact same results, irrespective of the time or place of the experiment, or the person conducting the experiment. As an illustration, if we have two students undertaking the same physics experiment obtain two different values of these physical properties, and then it generally means that one or both of those students must be in error. However, the same cannot be said for the social sciences, which tend to be less accurate, deterministic, or unambiguous.
Look at the following example: if you measure a person’s happiness using a hypothetical instrument, you may find that the same person is more happy or less happy (or sad) on different days and sometimes, at different times on the same day. One’s happiness may vary depending on the news that person received that day or on the events that happened earlier during that day.
In conclusion, in the social sciences there is a high degree of measurement error and there is considerable uncertainty and little agreement on social science policy decisions. As an example, you will not find many disagreements among natural scientists on the speed of light or the speed of the earth around the sun, but you will find numerous disagreements among social scientists on how to solve a social problem such as reduce global terrorism or rescue an economy from a recession.
2. Exploring Research
The Oxford English Dictionary (2002) defines research as, the systematic study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions. Now this may sound straightforward (and is often presented that way), but in practice research is often an open-ended process that is likely to generate as many questions as it does answers.
In fact, the methods of research, particularly in the social and applied sciences, have evolved to become highly complex and diverse, and having some basic knowledge is certainly a necessity.
This knowledge, however, is not in itself sufficient to begin designing and carrying out a study. Without a doubt, you must, as students, creatively and strategically ‘think’ your way through the process. Research needs to be considered both a ‘thinking game’ and a ‘whole-brain’ activity.
Contrary to many research methods texts that offer ‘recipes’ for research, it is not believed that the competent researcher can rely on any defined set of rules for selecting, designing, and carrying out research. Good research is about a thinking person’s game.
It is a creative and strategic process that involves constantly assessing, reassessing, and making decisions about the best possible means for obtaining trustworthy information, carrying out appropriate analysis, and drawing credible conclusions.
As a budding researcher, it is of crucial importance to remember that particular research strategies are good or bad to the exact degree that they fit with your problem statement.
The perspectives you will adopt and the methods you will use need to be as fluid, flexible, and eclectic as is necessary to answer the questions posed.
'Logical’,‘analytic’,‘systematic’,‘formal’,‘factual’,‘linear’, these are terms we tend to associate with research, while ‘Well-organised’,‘well-disciplined’, and even ‘pedantic’ are words we associate with researchers.
Broadly speaking, it is thought thqt the best researchers are those who manage to be creative in thinking, yet logical in structure. They manage to:
1.Be original, innovative, and imaginative ; or they know where they want to go,
2.Think outside the box… yet stay squarely on target,
3. Use their intuition … but they are able to share the logic of that intuition,
4. Be fluid and flexible … yet deliberate and methodical,
5 . Be inspired, imaginative, and ingenious … in the development of methods that are realistic, practical, and doable.The production of knowledge through rigorous scientific investigation or 'the Construct of Research' was regarded as scientific enterprise that followed the rules of scientific method. Sure, the object of scientific inquiry might differ, i.e. chemistry, biology, physics, the social, and so, but research was united by common objectives, logic, presuppositions, and methodological approaches. generally, in our field of research there qre two types of paradigms which are :
1. Positivism:
It is a paradigm that relies on measurement and reason, that knowledge is revealed from a neutral and measurable (to be quantified) observation of activity, action or reaction. It states that if something is not measurable in this way it cannot be known for certain. Scientific knowledge is derived from the accumulation of data obtained theory-free and value-free from observation.
This suggests that anything that cannot be observed and thus in some way measured (that is quantified), is of little or no importance. Positivism is closely associated with quantitative methods of data collection. For positivists, the objective of research is describing what we experience through observation and measurement in order to predict and control the forces that surround us. The social is seen as an object that can be studied ‘scientifically’. In other words, positivism assumes that social phenomena can be approached with scientific method and makes a number of assumptions about the world and the nature of research.
1.1.How to See The world
Positivists believe that the world is a fixed entity whose mysteries are not beyond human comprehension. They believe that the world is: knowable – what we do not know will be uncovered in the future as technology improves and science evolves; predictable – there are laws, theories, and maxims that regulate the world, for example the theory of relativity and the law of gravity; and singular in truth and reality – there is a truth out there that is applicable to all.
1.2.The Nature of Research
Social research is a purely scientific endeavour that needs to follow set of rules and procedures. It is empirical – involves exploration of those things that can be seen, felt, heard, tasted, and smelled as the grounds for all scientific knowledge; and it is often reductionist – involves the study of discrete parts of a system, rather than the system itself or its interconnectivity.
1.3.The Researcher
Positivists do believe that research is a specialist activity that needs to be undertaken by trained and qualified ‘scientists’. Researchers should be: experts – generally scientists who have appropriate experience and qualifications; and always objective – a researcher’s personal biases have no part in the research endeavour. The purpose of research is to produce knowledge not contingent on the researcher’s beliefs and desires.
1.4.The Methods
Methods are defined sets of procedures that need to be carried out with exacting detail. The methodologies are usually: deductive – researchers test a theory and look for confirmation through observations; hypothesis-driven – researchers propose a tentative statement that they attempt to prove/disprove; reliable – researchers use methods that will give the same results under repeated trials; and reproducible – methodological procedures can be repeated by other scientists who will glean similar findings.
1.5.The Findings
Positivists generally want their findings to have broad applicability to the whole of a population. Findings are generally: quantitative – represented through numerical data; statistically significant – results are shown to be true beyond mere chance; and generalizable – findings are applicable to a population beyond a sample.
Think of at least two advantages and two disadvantages of working in teams
"Strenght lies in differences, not in similarities"
Stephen Covey, US author and management consultant