Showing papers in "Communication Theory in 2007"

Reinforcing Spirals: The Mutual Influence of Media Selectivity and Media Effects and Their Impact on Individual Behavior and Social Identity

Abstract: The attitudinal or behavioral outcomes of media use can be expected to influence selection of and attention to media content. This process can be conceptualized in terms of mutually reinforcing spirals akin to positive feedback loops in general systems theory. This reinforcing spirals perspective highlights the need for longitudinal modeling of mutually influencing media selection and effects processes; study of the impact of such processes in youth and adolescent identity development; and analysis of social and psychological factors that control, dampen, or eventually extinguish the influence of such spirals. This perspective may also, more speculatively, be extended to address the maintenance of social identity for political, religious, and lifestyle groups. The relevance of a reinforcing spirals model to theories including spiral of silence, agenda-setting, framing, cultivation, selective attention, and uses and gratifications is also discussed.

Deconstructing Journalism Culture: Toward a Universal Theory

Abstract: Despite a large array of work broadly concerned with the cultures of news production, studies rarely attempt to tackle journalism culture and its dimensional structure at the conceptual level The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to propose a theoretical foundation on the basis of which systematic and comparative research of journalism cultures is feasible and meaningful By using a deductive and etic approach, the concept of journalism culture is deconstructed in terms of its constituents and principal dimensions Based on a review of the relevant literature, the article proposes a conceptualization of journalism culture that consists of 3 essential constituents (institutional roles, epistemologies, and ethical ideologies), further divided into 7 principal dimensions: interventionism, power distance, market orientation, objectivism, empiricism, relativism, and idealism

Communicating About Culture and Health: Theorizing Culture‐Centered and Cultural Sensitivity Approaches

Abstract: This essay proposes that health communication in cultural settings may be categorized under 2 broad umbrellas: the culture-centered approach and the cultural sensitivity approach. Whereas the culture-centered approach is based upon the commitment to building theories and applications from within the culture, the cultural sensitivity approach pushes the agenda of the status quo and seeks to adapt the messages to the cultural markers of the target audience. In this article, theoretical issues are presented for the discussion of each approach, accompanied by examination of the ways in which power, ideology, and hegemony play out in these approaches. Ultimately, this theoretical essay provides a conceptual framework for understanding the ways in which culture is theorized and applied in health communication.

Language of the Lost: An Explication of Stigma Communication

Abstract: Although stigmas appear throughout history, even in present-day virtual communities, an explanation of stigma communication has yet to be offered; this essay attempts to do just that. This essay argues that stigma communication includes specific content: marks, labels, responsibility, and peril, in order to induce affective and cognitive responses to create stigma attitudes, to generate protective action tendencies, and to encourage the sharing of these messages with others. Stigma messages bear the following attributes: they provide cues (a) to distinguish people, (b) to categorize distinguished people as a separate social entity, (c) to imply a responsibility for receiving placement within this distinguished group and their associated peril, and (d) to link this distinguished group to physical and social peril. Different qualities of stigma messages, moreover, evoke different emotions (disgust, fear, and anger) that motivate people to access relevant social attitudes, form or bolster stigma attitudes, and to remove the stigmatized threat. Stigma attitudes encourage the sharing of stigma messages with others in a network, which may, subsequently, bond in-group members.

How Messages Affect Their Senders: A More General Model of Message Effects and Implications for Deliberation

Abstract: This paper argues that in all areas of communication theory, we should give greater consideration to the possibility of expression affecting the expresser. A general model of the effects of messages on both senders and receivers is introduced, organizing and resolving contradictions in past research by distinguishing between effects of the expectation of expression, effects of message composition, and effects of a message being released to others. When applied to deliberation, the model results in several experimentally testable explanations of causal mechanisms involved in deliberation’s predicted effects, a stronger basis for the distinction between deliberative and argumentative discussion, and several tentative practical recommendations for encouraging open-mindedness in deliberation. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2007.00306.x When both scholars and laypeople attempt to explain communication, they most often do so using a reception-effects paradigm in which all effects of communication are assumed to result from message reception. Communication is thought of in terms of several related metaphors, such as information flow and information transmission (Krippendorff, 1993), all of which imply that preexisting information travels in some form from one actor to another and then has its effects, if any, on arrival. This paradigm guides our thinking away from several possibilities, including that the act of expression might change the message sender, that expressed ideas often do not exist intact, if at all, in the sender’s mind prior to expression, and that attention to— and thus effects of—received messages may result from the expectation of being able to respond. This paper offers a general model of the effects of both sending and receiving messages, organizes the disconnected but substantial empirical evidence for its expression-effects propositions, and illustrates the model’s utility by using it to generate alternative explanations of some of the predicted effects of deliberation.

Considering “The Professional” in Communication Studies: Implications for Theory and Research Within and Beyond the Boundaries of Organizational Communication

Abstract: This essay positions contemporary “professionalism” as a contested term and a nexus of important theoretical and practical concerns for communication scholars, including, for example, those engaged in the empirical, interpretive, and critical examinations of culture and the self. We advance communication-based understandings of the meanings and practices of professionalism as a complement to the predominantly sociological conceptions of the rise and place of the professional in modern industrialized societies. We are deliberately playful with the term professionalism in demonstrating the power of its ambiguity for reflecting, shaping, and indexing particular kinds of social relations and expectations for them. Part of our argument concerns the complex interplay of symbolism and materiality in the domains of interaction and artifacts surrounding “the professional,” and especially its embodiment in work and other settings. This brings us directly to an examination of the “intersectionality” of aspects of difference in the world of the professional (and by implication, the nonprofessional), including race, gender, and class, and to observe a broad-based cultural dialectic of the civilized and the primitive. Finally, we briefly consider extensions as relevant to domains of communication studies beyond the accustomed domain of organizational communication.

Entrapping the Innocent: Toward a Theory of Child Sexual Predators’ Luring Communication

Abstract: This paper examines an unexplored form of communication deviance—the communicative process of entrapment used by child sexual predators to lure their victims into an ongoing sexual relationship. Specifically, using grounded theory methodology to analyze extant literature, a theory of luring communication (LCT) is proposed. The LCT begins by discussing how certain perpetrators gain access to particular types of children. Once in contact with a child, the perpetrator sets in motion the cycle of entrapment, which allows him to communicatively groom and entrap the child into accepting sexual advances. The theory then explores how certain communication responses by the perpetrator and the victim characterize the sustenance or disruption of an ongoing sexually abusive relationship. The essay ends with a series of propositional statements and suggestions for empirically testing and extending the theory.

An Organizational Stakeholder Model of Change Implementation Communication

Abstract: Despite a growing interest in the communicative dimensions of planned change processes in organizations, a comprehensive theoretical treatment of change implementation communication has not yet emerged in the literature This essay offers a beginning remedy by presenting a model situated within stakeholder theory The model connects implementers’ selection of communication strategies, stakeholders’ concerns, assessments, and interactions with 3 critical features of the observable system after implementation has begun (fidelity, uniformity, and authenticity) Model linkages are supported by current and recent scholarship in communication and change, and propositions and hypotheses are generated to provide heuristic value

The Successive Use of Information and Communication Technologies at Work

Abstract: Past research on information and communication technology (ICT) use has largely assumed that people use only one ICT per task. Yet completing a task often requires a mix of ICTs used over time. ICT succession theory argues that by examining the modalities—for example, auditory, visual, and textual—found in ICTs today, we can predict how to use follow-up or successive ICTs to complete tasks efficiently and effectively. The six propositions that form the core of this theory make predictions linking tasks and types of successive ICT use. Using complementary modalities should help people best accomplish persuasion, status, information, and problem-solving tasks. This strategy should also increase the likelihood that communicators will reach their audience. Using mass media as a precursor, should ICT help people best accomplish information, status, and learning tasks. Using text-capable ICTs as a follow-up strategy is most helpful in persuasion, information, and problem-solving tasks.

Pragmatism in the Field of Communication Theory

Abstract: This article reconsiders Craig’s (1999) constitutive metamodel of communication theory as a field in light of Russill’s (2004, 2005) critique and proposal of a pragmatist tradition of communication theory. After reviewing the constitutive metamodel, I examine Russill’s argument and assess its implications for a reconstructed field of communication theory including pragmatism as a distinct tradition. I argue, in conclusion, that the problems of pluralistic community in the field of communication theory are not unconnected to the corresponding problems in society generally.

Political Communication and the Epistemic Value of Diversity: Deliberation and Legitimation in Media Societies

Abstract: By employing the theory of deliberative democracy, Habermas provides a critical assessment of the effects of the media on citizens’ deliberation. His premises, if modified, can also supply the basis for a positive argument for dispersing media power more widely as a way to improve deliberative practices. Contrary to Habermas, however, the epistemic dimension of deliberation should be cast in terms of error avoidance rather than “truth tracking.” Error avoidance is best achieved through the availability of the full range of social perspectives. On empirical and normative grounds, deliberation in heterogeneous groups is the best means for avoiding cognitive errors and biases and for improving the quality of political communication.

To Identify or Not to Identify: A Theoretical Model of Receiver Responses to Anonymous Communication

Abstract: Although anonymity has been studied for well over a century, scholarship on anonymous communication has been fragmented and the role of message receivers, in particular, warrants greater attention. A theoretical model is developed here explaining receiver responses to anonymous communication. The context of the communication, degree to which the source is perceived to be anonymous, receiver’s desire to identify the source, and potential ability to determine the source’s identity are posited to influence receiver attempts at identifying (or further anonymizing) the source as well as perceptions of the source, message, and medium. The study concludes by identifying instances where anonymity may be particularly beneficial or problematic for message receivers and offering directions for future research.

Networks of Terror: Theoretical Assumptions and Pragmatic Consequences

Abstract: Very little has been written in scholarly or popular venues on the conceptualization and utilization of the term network to describe terrorist organizing. In this paper, we identify critical disjunctures between the assumptions of contemporary communication network theory and the assumptions and appropriation of network concepts by the current U.S. Administration in discussions of terrorism networks. We argue that the theoretical and empirical foundations of contemporary network research provide a more complex and constructive platform from which policy makers may ask better questions and find better solutions.

Bringing the Mountain to the Public: Dilemmas and Contradictions in the Procedures of Public Deliberation Initiatives That Aim to Get “Ordinary Citizens” to Deliberate Policy Issues

Abstract: Engaging “ordinary” citizens in public deliberations on policy issues raises both theoretical and pragmatic issues. Theorists have delineated a series of broad normative conditions for such deliberative forums to achieve participative democracy ideals, but a common critique is that there is a need for a “more detailed,” practice-oriented normative theory of public deliberation. Attempts to realize theoretical stipulations can be found in the practices and procedures employed in current deliberative initiatives. Such practices might be useful in the elaboration of a normative theory of deliberation. Yet, as illustrated in the Health Parliament initiative that took place in Israel, contradictions emerge when certain procedures are employed to accomplish normative stipulations—in particular procedures aimed to enhance participants’ competence in discussing policy issues.

Vernacular Discourse and the Epistemic Dimension of Public Opinion

Abstract: Habermas argues that the epistemic dimension of a democracy resides in public opinion. This paper argues that a deliberative model of public opinion needs to take into account exchanges among ordinary citizens that underwrite public opinion and are a major source of the political public sphere’s unruliness. Second, it argues that when we examine how ordinary citizens make arguments about public problems that intersect their lives, there is evidence that their norms of reasoning, standards of evidence, and modes of argumentation challenge the presuppositions and rationality of authority. Finally, it argues that although the power of media moguls is not to be discounted, the clock is ticking. Internet communication has opened new avenues for information and participation that can elude corporate power’s capacity to control the game.

Toward a Theory of Agentic Orientation: Rhetoric and Agency in Run Lola Run

Abstract: In this essay, we explicate the nature and function of agentic orientation, a pattern of interaction that predisposes an individual to a particular enactment of agency. We use the film Run Lola Run to explicate three agentic orientations—victim, supplicant, and director—each with a different interpretation of structure, a different response to that interpretation, and a different outcome. Resume Dans cet article, nous expliquons la nature et la fonction de l‘orientation d’agent (agentic orientation), un type d‘interaction qui predispose un individu a une forme particuliere de mise en acte de l’agence. Nous utilisons le film Cours, Lola, cours pour expliquer trois orientations d′agent (victime, suppliant et dirigeant), chacune refletant une interpretation differente de la structure, une reponse differente a cette interpretation et un denouement different. Abstract In diesem Artikel explizieren wir das Wesen und die Funktion einer selbstbestimmt handelnden Ausrichtung als ein Muster der Interaktion, welches eine Person a priori auf eine bestimmte Art der Ausubung von Selbstbestimmtheit festlegt. Am Beispiel des Films Lola rennt werden drei Ausrichtungen dargestellt: Opfer, Bittsteller und Direktor – jeweils mit einer unterschiedlichen Auslegung der Struktur, unterschiedlichen Reaktionen auf diese Interpretation und unterschiedlichen Folgen. Resumen En este ensayo, explicamos la naturaleza y la funcion de la orientacion del agente, una pauta de interaccion que predispone a un individuo hacia una forma particular de representacion de la agencia. Usamos el film Corre Lola Corre para explicar tres orientaciones del agente—victima, pedido, y director—cada uno con una interpretacion diferente de la estructura, una respuesta diferente a esa interpretacion, y un resultado diferente. ZhaiYao Yo yak

Ecology of Meanings: A Critical Constructivist Communication Model

Abstract: Ecology of meanings is proposed as a theoretical model to explain communication processes. It is a critical constructivist approach that integrates the model of exchange values by Jean Piaget and the communication model of schematization by Jean-Blaise Grize, and explores a research path envisaged by Jurgen Habermas in the theory of communicative action. The model leads to an understanding of communication science as a transversal discipline that crosses all others; that is, both psychological and social, and that accounts for universal and necessary as well as particular and contingent knowledge. In this article, the model and potential contributions are explained. Resume Une ecologie des significations : Un modele communicationnel constructiviste critique Une ecologie des significations est proposee comme modele theorique pour expliquer les processus de communication. Il s’agit d’une approche constructiviste critique qui integre le modele d'echanges des valeurs de Jean Piaget et le modele communicationnel de la schematisation de Jean-Blaise Grize et qui explore une trajectoire de recherche prevue par Jurgen Habermas dans la theorie de l’action communicative. Le modele amene a comprendre les sciences de la communication comme une discipline transversale qui traverse toutes les autres, qui est a la fois psychologique et sociale et qui rend compte des connaissances universelles et utiles comme des connaissances particulieres et conditionnelles. Dans cet article, le modele et ses contributions potentielles sont expliques. Abstract Eine Okologie der Bedeutungen: Ein kritisch-konstruktivistisches Kommunikationsmodell Als theoretisches Modell zur Erklarung von Kommunikationsprozessen wird eine Okologie der Bedeutungen vorgeschlagen. Es handelt sich um einen kritisch-konstruktivistischen Ansatz, welcher das Modell von Tauschwerten nach Jean Piaget und das Kommunikationsmodell der Schematisierung von Jean-Blaise Grize integriert sowie einen Erkenntnisweg nach Jurgen Habermas' Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns untersucht. Das Modell beschreibt die Kommunikationswissenschaft als eine transversale Disziplin, die alle anderen durchkreuzt, die sowohl psychologisch als auch sozial ist, und die universelles und notwendiges wie auch spezielles und bedingtes Wissen berucksichtigt. In diesem Artikel werden das Modell und sein potentieller Mehrwert erlautert. Resumen La Ecologia de los Sentidos: Un Modelo Critico Constructivista de la Comunicacion La ecologia de los sentidos es propuesta como un modelo teorico para explicar los procesos comunicacionales. Es un enfoque critico constructivista que integra el modelo de intercambio de valores de Jean Piaget y el modelo de comunicacion de esquematizacion de Jean-Blaise Grize, y explora un camino de investigacion imaginado por Jurgen Habermas en la teoria de la accion comunicativa. Este modelo conduce a un entendimiento de la ciencia de la comunicacion como una disciplina transversal que cruza a todas las otras, esto es psicologica y socialmente, y explica el conocimiento universal y necesario asi como tambien el particular y contingente. En este articulo, el modelo y las contribuciones potenciales son explicados. ZhaiYao Yo yak

A Local Model of Information Sharing in Small Groups

Abstract: This paper sketches a 2-step model of information processing in small groups in which the process of communication influences the quantity and quality of information mentioned during discussion. The first step in the model, activation, describes how information becomes available in short-term memory, such that it provides the basis for a potential contribution to discussion. It is a process based on coherence; activation is a function of antecedent and projected contributions to discussion. The second step, choice, describes the conditions under which members contribute or withhold active information. Although choice to participate can be based on a host of antecedent conditions, the model focuses on the effects of contributing shared and unique information to discussion. Resume Cet article esquisse un modele a deux etapes du traitement de l‘information dans des petits groupes, au sein duquel le processus de communication influence la quantite et la qualite de l’information mentionnee durant la discussion. La premiere etape du modele, l‘activation, definit comment l’information devient disponible dans la memoire a court terme, de facon a offrir une assise a une eventuelle contribution a la discussion. Il s‘agit d’un processus fonde sur la coherence; l‘activation est fonction de contributions, precedentes et projetees, a la discussion. La seconde etape, le choix, definit les conditions regissant la contribution ou la dissimulation d’information active par les membres. Bien que le choix de participer puisse reposer sur plusieurs conditions prealables, le modele se concentre sur les effets de la contribution a la discussion d‘information partagee et unique. Abstract Nachfolgender Artikel skizziert ein Zweistufenmodell der Informationsverarbeitung in Kleingruppen, bei dem der Kommunikationsprozess, die in einer Diskussion erwahnten Informationen in ihrer Quantitat und Qualitat beeinflusst. Der erste Schritt im Modell, namlich Aktivierung, beschreibt, wie Informationen im Kurzzeitgedachtnis verfugbar gemacht werden und so die Grundlage fur einen potentiellen Beitrag zur Diskussion liefern. Dieser Prozess basiert auf Koharenz; Aktivierung selbst ist eine Funktion von Vorbedingungen und geplanten Beitragen zur Diskussion. Der zweite Schritt, die Wahl, beschreibt die Bedingungen unter welchen die Teilnehmer aktive Informationen beitragen oder zuruckhalten. Auch wenn die Entscheidung, sich in eine Diskussion einzubringen, auf eine Vielzahl von Vorbedingungen zuruckzufuhren ist, fokussiert das Modell auf den Beitrag geteilter und einzigartiger Information zu einer Diskussion und damit verbundene Effekte. Resumen Este manuscrito esboza un modelo de procesamiento de informacion en pequenos grupos de dos pasos, en el cual el proceso de comunicacion influye sobre la cantidad y la calidad de informacion mencionada durante la discusion. El primer paso en este modelo, la activacion, describe como la informacion se vuelve disponible en la memoria de corto plazo de manera tal que provee de base para las contribuciones potenciales en la discusion. Este es un proceso basado en la coherencia; la activacion es una funcion de las contribuciones precedentes y proyectadas en la discusion. El segundo paso, la opcion, describe las condiciones bajo las cuales los miembros contribuyen o retienen informacion activa. Aun cuando la opcion de participar puede ser basada en una congregacion de condiciones predecesoras, el modelo se enfoca en los efectos de la informacion contribuyente compartida y unica en la discusion. ZhaiYao Yo yak

An Eye at the Edge of Discourse

Abstract: To what extent can the visibility of a thought be questioned when that thought is still in process? How does an idea appear? How does an idea communicate or signal its presence to the mind when it does not yet exist in the objectivized form of a work? Even in this larval stage, an idea does have a concrete existence: It manifests itself in the form of an eye that stares at the one who is thinking it. The birth of an idea is thus the birth of a gaze. This gaze is none other than language itself, which, when it gives itself in the emergence of an idea, is shared between a signifying face and a plastic face—between discourse and figure, to cite the title of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s principal text. Through the idea, the eye of language looks at us and settles “at the edge of discourse.”

Of Glitch and Men: The Place of the Human in the Successful Integration of Failure and Noise in the Digital Realm

Abstract: Linking the concept of high-fidelity reproduction to histories of representation, we suggest that the former contradicts widely held beliefs about the nature of representation throughout the 20th century. Through analyses of advertisements for certain sound reproduction technologies at different points in history, however, we propose that a shift is taking place that complicates the high-fidelity ideal. This ideal is complicated further still in the musical genre known as glitch, but the full extent of this problematization can only be apprehended through an analysis of the material ontology of the technology used to create this music. Digital technology thus only appears to surpass all previous standards of high-fidelity reproduction because it displaces a human perceptive faculty into the technological apparatus itself.

Normative Potentials of Rhetorical Action Within Deliberative Democracies

Abstract: Jurgen Habermas’ theoretically generated normative recommendations for deliberative democracies prompt a number of questions that are symptomatic of a mode of theorizing that has given short shrift to an empirical is that asserts itself either as constraints upon emancipatory potentials of public sphere communication or as the emancipatory potentials themselves as expressed concretely within empirically situated communicative practices. This limitation is apparent in the relative neglect of subaltern groups that remain walled off from effective participation in the public sphere. Consideration of the rhetorical practices of subalterns, I argue, invites critical reappraisal of Habermas’ discourse-based theory of the public sphere which, in turn, suggests that some modification of his normative recommendations for deliberative democracies may be in order.

“Only Connect”: Between Morality and Ethics in Habermas’ Communication Theory

Abstract: Habermas’ recent work on political communication reveals a distrust of persuasion and private judgment. His distinction, however, between ethical and moral questions opens up a space for localized, rhetorical deliberation within a universalized communicative morality.

The Failure of Spectatorship

Abstract: During the heyday of psychoanalytic film theory, critics enlisted the work of Christian Metz in support of a concept of spectatorship that presented the viewer as a passive receptacle for ideological messages emanating from the screen. This reading of Metz mistakenly attributed his idea of primary cinematic identification to the experience of spectatorship. Through an analysis of framing technique in C. Akerman’s (2000) The Captive, this essay argues that Metz’s identification of spectatorship’s nonphenomenal element allows us to understand not only how the cinema lures, captures our desire, but also how it can potentially reorient our relation to the visual field by causing spectatorship’s failure, at least in what we might call its bourgeois mode.

A Philosophy of the First-Person Singular

Abstract: According to Emile Benveniste, there are only 2 grammatical persons (the first and the second) because being a grammatical person is a matter of taking part actively in a dialogical act of speech. The so-called third person should rather be called the nonperson, the “absent” of the dialogue. Paul Ricoeur has questioned this interpretation of the third person in so far as it meets a philosophical dogma once maintained by Jean-Paul Sartre in his theory of the novel. Sartre claimed that the author of a novel, when introducing a character into the narrative, should choose between the first-person point of view and the third-person one. Ricoeur has rightly argued that this was not the case, as it is obviously possible to use the grammatical third person in order to present the personal thoughts and feelings of somebody else. If one could not do that, it would not be possible to consider “oneself as another.”