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Samenvatting introduction to communication science (ICW)

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  • Course
  • Introduction to communication science
  • Institution
  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  • Book
  • A First Look at Communication Theory

This document is a summary for the course Introduction to communication science. Each communication theory is discussed briefly and clearly. All material needed for the partial exams for this course is covered in this document. I myself got an 8.5 for this course.

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  • Yes
  • April 11, 2024
  • 37
  • 2023/2024
  • Summary

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  • partial exam
  • exam
  • summary

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  • Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
  • Communicatiewetenschap
  • Introduction to communication science
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Inhoud
Chapter 1: Launching your Study of Communication Theory.................................................................2
Chapter 2: objective and interpretive approaches to communication theory........................................3
Chapter 3 weighing the words................................................................................................................4
Chapter 5: symbolic interactionism........................................................................................................5
Chapter 6: expectancy violations theory................................................................................................7
Chapter 8 social penetration theory.......................................................................................................7
Chapter 9 Uncertainty Reduction Theory...............................................................................................9
Chapter 10: social information processing theory................................................................................10
Chapter 12: communication privacy management theory...................................................................11
Chapter 14 social judgement theory.....................................................................................................12
Chapter 15: Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM).................................................................................13
Chapter 16 Cognitive Dissonance Theory.............................................................................................15
Chapter 36 Cultivation Theory..............................................................................................................16
Chapter 37: Agenda-Setting Theory......................................................................................................17
Chapter 20 Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making............................................................19
Chapter 21: symbolic convergence theory............................................................................................21
Chapter 22: cultural approach to organizations....................................................................................22
Chapter 24 Critical theory to communication in organisations.............................................................24
Participation.....................................................................................................................................25
Chapter 17: The Rhetoric......................................................................................................................26
Dialectic speaking.............................................................................................................................26
Rhetoric speaking.............................................................................................................................26
Chapter 31: media ecology...................................................................................................................29
Chapter 32 context collapse.................................................................................................................30
Chapter 35 uses and gratifications........................................................................................................31
Chapter 25 communication accommodation theory............................................................................33
Chapter 27: co-cultural theory..............................................................................................................34
Chapter 29: Feminist Standpoint Theory..............................................................................................36
Chapter 33: Muted group theory..........................................................................................................37

,Chapter 1: Launching your Study of Communication Theory

According to Judee Burgoon a theory is: a set of systematic, informed hunches about the
way thinks work.

If a theory is a set of hunches, it means we aren’t yet sure we have the answer.

Hunches should be informed, so not a blind guess

Hunches that are systematic, a theory connects the dots

Theory as nets, theories are nets cast to catch what we call the world. We endeavour to
make them finer and finer. To in the end develop an all-encompassing theory.

Theory as lenses, we see a theory as a way of looking at the world while keeping a specific
focus. Lenses can highlight features by focussing their attention to it while at the same time
ignore other features. Danger: we abandon what’s really true or not

Theory as maps: a communication theory is a kind of map that is designed to help you
navigate some part of the topography of human relationships.

Communication: the relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a
response.

Messages (or texts) are central to communication scholars. Text: a record of a message that
can be analysed by others.

The creation of messages: if you send a text there always is a reason why you chose those
words. Only if we become more mindful about our habitual responses, we can alter them.

Every message has two levels: content and relational. The content level is the topic
addressed by the message. The relational level communicates how each person thinks and
feels about the other.

Interpretation of messages: words don’t mean things, people mean things. Blumer: humans
act toward people or things on the basis of meanings they assigs to those people or things.
Words and other symbols are polysemic, open for multiple interpretations.

Interpretation: the process of deciding what a message means.

A relational process: communication is a process, never completely the same and can only
be described with reference to what happened before and what is to come. Condit: the
communication is more about relationships than about content. Communications takes
place between two or more persons

Messages that elicit a response: if a message fails to stimulate any response, it seems
pointless to call it communication.

,A message isn’t always conscious but they always have a meaning.

Research: the process of asking questions and finding answers.



Chapter 2: objective and interpretive approaches to communication theory

Glenn sparks (objective approach): the assumptions that truth is singular and is accessible
through unbiased sensory observation: committed to uncovering cause-and-effect
relationships. Glenn was a behavioural scientist: a scholar who applies the scientific method
to describe, predict, and explain recurring forms of human behaviour.

Marty Medhurst (interpretive approach): the linguistic work of assigning meaning or value to
texts and assumes that multiple meanings or truths are possible. Marty was a rhetorician: a
scholar who studies the ways in which symbols forms can be used to identify with people or
to persuade them toward a certain point of view.

1. Ways of knowing: discovering truth of creating multiple realities

Objective scholars: there is one truth that only needs to be discovered Epistemology: the
study of the origin, nature, method and limits of knowledge.

Interpretive scholars: truth is largely subjective and socially constructed. Understanding why
people behave in a certain way. Language creates social relationships that are always in flux
and thus not static.

2. Human nature: determinism or free will?

Objective scholars: determinism = focus on human behaviour as a consequence or heredity
and environment. They describe human conduct as occurring because of forces outside the
individual’s awareness.

Interpretive scholars: people make conscious choices. They use phrases as ‘’in order to’’ and
‘’so that’’. This shows the persons cognitive involvement.

3. The highest value science can achieve: objectivity of emancipation?

Objective scholars: finding the truth. Trying to exclude own values. They want empirical
evidence: data collected through direct observation.

Interpretive scholars: trying to understand what is going on. Including own values of what is
right and wrong. They seek to liberate socially relevant research from any sort of oppression-
economic, political, religious, emotional, racial, or sexual empowerment.

Stanley deetz: communication scholar who believes that every general communication
theory has two priorities: effectiveness and participation. Effectiveness is concerned with
successfully communicating information, ideas, and meaning to others. Participation is

,concerned with increasing possibility that all points of view will affect collective decisions
and individuals being open to new ideas. Objective scientist foreground effectiveness and
regulate participation whereas interpretive scholars foreground participation and regulate
effectiveness.

4. Purpose of theory: universal laws or interpretive guides?

Objective scholars: seeking for universal laws. Process of a behaviour scientist: hunch ->
tightly worded hypothesis -> multiple test -> can somewhat predict, never sure

Interpretive scholars: its not about proving but it is about understanding. Don’t try to prove
a theory.

Metatheory: theory about theory, the stated or inherent assumptions made when creating a
theory.

Chapter 3 weighing the words

What makes a theory good?

What makes an objective theory is good:

 Prediction of future events
- Objective theory predicts what will happen.
- Predictions are only possible If we’re dealing with things we can: hear, smell, see,
touch, and taste over and over again.
- In social sciences, a certain humility on the part of the theorist is advisable: we
often don’t speak of things that will happen, but that are likely to happen.
 Explanation of the data
- Objective theory draws order out of chaos.
- A theory needs commentary and argumentation
 Relative simplicity
- Objective theory should be as simple as possible
- Rule of parsimony: given two plausible explanations for the same event, we
should first accept and test the simpler version
 Hypotheses that can be tested
- Objective theory should be testable.
- Falsifiability: requirement that scientific theory must be stated in a way that it
can be tested and disproved if it is indeed wrong.
- No clear data to dismiss the theory ≠ no clear data that the theory is true.
 Practical utility
- Good objective theory is useful
 Quantitative research
- Most objective research depends on a comparison of differences of testing
relations. They use experiments and surveys to test their predictions.
- Experiment: research method that manipulates a variable tightly in a controlled
situation in order to find out if it has the predicted effect.

, - Survey: research method that uses questionaries and structured interviews to
collect self-reported data that reflects what respondents think, feel, or intend to
do.

What makes an interpretive good?

 Clarification of values
- Interpretive theory brings people’s values into the open. The theorist actively
seeks to acknowledge, identify, or unmask the ideology behind the message.
- Ethical imperative: grant others that occur in your construction the same
autonomy you practice constructing them.
- Critical theorists: scholars who use theory to reveal unjust communication
practices that create or perpetuate an imbalance of power.
 New understanding of people
- Interpretive theory offers insight into human condition
- Interpretive scholars researches a one-of-a-kind speech community that exhibits
a specific language style.
- Self-referential imperative: include yourself as a constituent of your own
construction.
 Aesthetic appeal
- Interpretive theory should capture readers’ imaginations.
 Community of agreement
- Interpretive theory must be supported by other scholars. But, also it must
become the subject of widespread analysis: people should start discussing it.
 Reform of society
- Good theory leads to change
- Critical interpreters are reformers who can have an impact on society
 Qualitative research
- Interpretive scholars use words to support their theories:
- Textual analysis: research method that describes and interprets characteristics of
any text. Communication theorists use this term to refer to the intensive study of
a single message grounded in a humanistic perspective.
- Ethnography: method of participant observation designed to help a researcher
experience a culture’s complex web of meaning.



Chapter 5: symbolic interactionism

Theory by: George Herbert Mead

x


Social constructionist: one who believes our thoughts, self-concept and the community we
live in are created through communication.

, Symbolic interaction: the ongoing use of language and gestures in anticipation of how the
other will react.
Social reality is constructed by people, by giving meaning to objects in reality.
Human act towards people or things on the basis of the meanings they assign to those
people or things. It is thus the interpretation that counts instead of facts: stimulus ->
interpretation -> response
We create meaning through communication. Meaning is not statically connected to an
object, the meaning of the object is negotiated through language.
Without learned words we cannot think – language is the software to activated the mind.
Symbolic interactionists describe thinking as a inner conversation. Mead called this inner
dialogue minding: an inner dialogue used to test alternatives, rehearse actions, and
anticipate reactions before responding.


How do we think about our self:
Reflections in a looking glass (mirror): the mental self-image that results from taking the
role of the other.
I: the subjective self; the spontaneous, driving force that fosters all that is novel, unpredicted
or unorganized in the self. Me: the objective self; the image of self-seen when one takes the
role of the other.’’
Role taking: mentally imagining that you are someone else who is viewing you
Individuals self-conceptions result from assimilating the judgments of significant others.
Mead calls the person in our mind with whom we converse our generalized other. These
conversations are important because they help us figure out how to behave and help us
analyse how we behaved in a social situation. Generalized other: the composite mental
image a person has of themselves based on societal expectations and responses.
Six applications of symbolic interactionism:
1. Creating reality; we are all involved in a constant negotiation with others to
publicly define our identity and the nature of the situation
2. Meaning-full research; Mead advocated for participation observation: a method of
adapting the stance of an ignorant yet interested visitor who carefully notes what
people say and do to discover how they interpret the world.
3. Generalized other
4. Naming;
5. Self-fulfilling prophecy: the tendency for out expectations to evoke responses in
other that confirm what we originally anticipated.
6. Symbol manipulation: symbols can stimulate people into united action.

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