Week 1 – Background, context, concepts
Lecture
Studying for the exam, reading and studying the literature is crucial!
Mass communication was the start of communication science:
1. Public: available for everyone
2. Technologically mediated: technology plays a big role
3. Indirect: sender & receiver
4. One-sided
5. Dispersed audience: widespread
What is communication (face-to-face)?
Exchange of information and messages, non-verbal communication, one-sided/two-sided,
interpretation of messages, social/cultural background.
Definition of communication according to literature:
Awareness of all involved persons
Mutual co-orientation, working together and knowing what the other person is about
to say.
FtF is direct
Negotiation of meaning, message does not always have to be clear (encoding &
decoding model)
Exchange of communicator and receiver role, reciprocity
Process (it is dynamic)
Common signs, symbols and rules of communication
Multifunctional
Multimodal (non-verbal)
Basic components: people, message, feedback, code, noise.
Computer-mediated-communication (CMC) is human communication through computers,
several dimensions:
1. Modus (text, audio, visual)
2. Synchronous or asynchronous
3. Public or non-public
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, 4. Dyadic or group
5. Anonymous or nonymous
6. Professional or private
Technology provides us with a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical
processes, methods or knowledge.
What are emerging technologies?
“They are…
…radically novel.
…relatively fast growing.
…coherence.
…potentially of prominent impact on socio-economic domains.
…uncertain and ambiguous in the emergence phase.”
Several characteristics of innovations that are likely to succeed are:
They are of relative advantage, this means they are better than existing technologies.
They are compatible.
The complexity, how easy to use?
Trialability, is it possible to try?
Observability.
Week 2 - The theoretical backbone
Lecture
Possible affordances of digital information:
Back in the days everything was analogue, why is digital information better? It is about what
we do with it, characteristics are never objective. For example: the affordance of a pen is
writing with it, but you can also throw a pen. Is this an affordance? What we eventually do
with technology is subjective → determines the affordance.
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, 1. Storability → storing information uses less space than before, it is easier. Back in the
days information was stored in the library → nowadays in the cloud.
2. Replicability → it is easier to replicate information; the internet is the biggest copy
machine ever.
3. Searchability → it is easier to look up information. Back in the days you had to go to the
library and copy everything you needed, nowadays you can look everything up through the
internet, and even search for words in articles.
4. Distributability → information can be spread easier and faster.
Crucial technological changes
Exponential growth/increase of “computing power”, still keeps growing
Mobile connectivity
Datafication, networked information. Everything we do online produces data, and data
is retrieved automatically in several ways.
Miniaturization/minimalization of sensors, microphones and cameras. Prices are also
minimalizing.
Cloud computing
Progress in artificial intelligence, machine learning. Alpha go: the first game in which
artificial intelligence defeated the best human player. Especially in machine learning a
lot of progress, learning from big data.
Vishwanath suggested several theories in the acceptance of technology:
1. Diffusion approach (by Rogers)
Repeats the characteristics of innovation:
Relative advantages
Compatibility
Complexity
Trialability
Observability
Rogers also suggests a typology of adopters:
The innovators (2,5%), the early adopters (13,5%), the early majority (34%), the late
majority (34%) and the laggards (16%).
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, 2. Management-information-systems approach
This approach suggests two important models:
The technology acceptance model (TAM)
Perceived ease of a technology’s use → how much effort is needed to learn to use
the technology?
Perceived usefulness to achieve goals → is it useless for me, and can I use it to
reach my goals faster?
Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT)
Performance expectancy
Effort expectancy
Social influence (the influence of your social environment)
Facilitating conditions
Gender, age and technology experience affect influences
3. Cognitive approach
Technology is a concept in an individual’s mind, and the adoption of a technology is a
cognitive process. In this process, the linkages change in the cognitive concept.
This is a combination of all the models in 1 conceptual model.
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