ICW – Inleiding communicatiewetenschap (custom for UvA)
Launching your study of communication theory (H1)
Burgoon: ‘A theory consists of a set of systematic, informed hunches about the way things
work.’
A set of hunches (ingevingen): we aren’t yet sure we have the answer. Theories always
involve an element of speculation or conjecture. Theories go beyond accepted wisdom and
they involve multiple hunches.
Informed: Before developing a theory, there are articles to read, people to talk to, actions to
observe or experiments to run. Casmir: ‘Theories tend to result when their creators have
prepared themselves to discover something in their environment, which triggers the process
of theory construction.’ (educated guesses)
Systematic: a theory not only lays out multiple ideas, but also specifies relationships among
them.
- Theories as nets, to catch what we call ‘the world’
- Theories as lenses, to focus on certain features and ignore others
- Theories as maps, a travel guide that presents a close-up view of each site.
There are more than 120 definitions of communication, there is no single, absolute essence.
Communication is the relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a
response.
1. Messages; Craig: talking and listening, writing and reading, performing and
witnessing or doing anything that involves ‘messages’ in any medium or situation.
Communication is a crossroad discipline. A text is a record of a message that can be
analysed by others.
2. Creation of messages; constructed, invented, planned, crafted, constituted, selected
or adopted by the communicator. Only when we become more mindful of the nature
and impact of our messages will we have the ability to alter them.
3. Interpretation of messages; the meaning that a message holds for the creators and
receivers doesn’t reside in the words that are spoken, written or acted out. Words
don’t mean things, people mean things.
, 4. A relational process; the flow of communication is always in flux, never completely the
same, and can only be described with reference to what went before and what is yet
to come. It takes place between two or more persons and affects the nature of the
connections among those people.
5. Message that create a response; if a message fails to stimulate any cognitive,
emotional or behavioural reaction, it seems pointless to refer to it as communication.
Any vocal response indicates that some kind of communication has occurred.
2. Social information Processing Theory (SIP) of Joseph Walther
CMC = computer-mediated communication, often referring to text-based messages, which
filter out nonverbal cues.
Social presence theory = suggests that CMC deprives users of the sense that another actual
person is involved in the interaction.
Media richness theory = purports that CMC bandwidth is too narrow to convey rich relational
messages.
Cues filtered out = interpretation of CMC that regards lack of non-verbal cues as a fatal flaw
for using the medium for relationship development.
Social information impression formation relationship development
Impression formation = the composite mental image one person forms of another.
Two features of CMC that provide a rationale for SIP theory:
1. Verbal cues
2. Extended time
Example: glass of water
Multimodal = using multiple media to maintain a relationship
Anticipated future interaction = a way of extending psychological time’ the likelihood of future
interaction motivates CMC-users to develop a relationship.
, Chronemics = the study of people’s systematic handling of time in their interaction with
others.
Hyperpersonal perspective = the claim that CMC relationships are often more intimate than
those developed when partners are physically together.
Selective self-presentation = an online positive portrayal without fear of contradiction, which
enables people to create an overwhelmingly favourable impression.
Attribution = a perceptual process whereby we observe what people do and then try to figure
out what they’re really like.
Asynchronous channel = a nonsimultaneous medium of communication that each individual
can use when he or she desires.
Self-fulfilling prophecy = the tendency for a person’s expectation of others to evoke a
response from them that confirms what was originally anticipated.
Warranting value = reason to believe that information is accurate, typically because the
target of the information cannot manipulate it.
Agenda-setting theory (H9)
The mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of items on their news to the public
agenda. We judge as important what the media judge as important. People desire media
assistance in determining political reality. It sets the agenda of public discussion. The press
may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly
successful in telling its readers what to think about. Agenda-setting reaffirms the power of
the press while maintaining that individuals are free to choose.
Media agenda = the pattern of news coverage across major print and broadcast media as
measured by the prominence (position) and length of stories.
Public agenda = the most important public issues as measured by public opinion surveys.
Media agenda Voters’ agenda
People are not automatons waiting to be programmed by the news media.
Index of curiosity = a measure of the extent to which individuals’ need for orientation
motivates them to let the media shape their views. Need for orientation arises from high
relevance and uncertainty.
