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In the interview with Griffin, Poole says, "whenever we act, we’re using a structure to act; but our action is also creating the grounds for that structure’s existence. We’re producing it, using it." As Griffin then points out, this process can constrain group behavior. However, it also means that if group members alter their behaviors, they can make changes in how the group functions. Poole suggests that individual group members can change their communication strategies if they're not satisfied with how the group is working. In addition, group members can "undertake a major intervention" by explicitly talking about and taking steps to change how the group interacts.
When I taught at Ohio University, a member of the faculty was always assigned to be the process observer in department meetings. This person would keep the group on track, remind members of the meeting's purpose, and also note if the members weren't following the rules of discussion, such as critiquing ideas, not people. Having a process observer highlighted how the group structured itself and made it easier to make changes if needed.
~ Professor Cyborg
Probably the greatest contribution of Poole's structuration theory is its application in group decision support systems (GDSS). Group members meet online, either synchronously or asynchronously. The software structures the decision-making process to promote a democratic approach. Contributions and voting are anonymous to allow for a freer exchange of ideas. The system is quite task oriented and designed based on Poole's notions of rules and resources. Poole and his associates were the first communication researchers to systematically examine the use of computer-mediated communication in small group work.Griffin reports "Poole notes that group members sometimes appropriate rules or resources in ways that thwart their intended use. He calls this an ironic appropriation because it goes against the spirit of the structure" (p. 241). This notion of ironic appropriation fits well with my earlier discussion of the communication imperative. Rather than taking a deterministic view of technology, the idea of a communication imperative suggests that humans are wired to communicate with each other and will use the technology at their disposal to achieve their communicative goals. People don't just follow the rules--they make the rules, they change the rules, they discard the rules.~ Professor Cyborg
My spouse and I are writing a small group communication text for McGraw-Hill, so I'm especially interested in this week's chapters. In our book's chapter on critical thinking that I'm finishing up today, I discuss the importance of goals in critical thinking. That is, when group members have a clearly stated goal for a meeting or other interaction, and a plan to achieve that goal, they're more likely to carefully analyze and interpret information presented, leading to a better decision. As Griffin notes in Chapter 17, "Because group members need to be clear on what they are trying to accomplish, Hirokawa and Gouran regard discussion of goals and objectives as the second requisite function of decision making" (p. 224).
I've observed the importance of goals in faculty meetings. At the suggestion of one of my colleagues in the department, Dr. Shawn Spano, I instituted a new way of setting up the agenda for faculty meetings when I was department chair. In addition to listing an item for discussion, I also listed the goal or the outcome we should achieve from the discussion. For example, one item we discussed at a meeting was laptop security (after one faculty member's laptop was stolen). I listed the item, laptop security, and then the goal, decide on a system or systems we want to use to prevent/handle laptop theft. By having a goal, we kept our discussion more focused and on topic. The faculty met nearly every other Friday for 3-4 hours in the spring semester. Listing our goals for the meetings greatly improved our productivity and sense of accomplishment. Faculty members didn't feel like those hours were wasted.
~ Professor Cyborg
The interactional view of communication had a tremendous impact on communication scholarship, especially in the area of family communication. By placing a focus on the communication between people, the interactional moved attention away from individuals to what was happening as they interacted. Griffin’s example at the beginning of Chapter 13 highlights how the interactional view has been applied to family communication. By viewing the family as a system, therapists and communication researchers examine the family as a whole, rather than just each person in the family. Rather than blaming family problems on one person, therapists and researchers study the ways in which everyone in the family contributes to ongoing behaviors and communication patterns.The theory certainly has undergone criticism, particularly the axioms, which take a law-governing approach to communication. The first, “one cannot communicate” probably has been debated more than any of the others. Griffin discusses this at the end of the chapter, noting that the original developers of the theory admit “not all nonverbal behavior is communication” (p. 177). This is an important admission. One problem with “one cannot not communicate” is that all behavior becomes communication. More recent communication scholars have argued that communication requires intention: the sender intends to send the message, the receiver interprets the message as intentional, or both. So that’s what differentiates behavior from communication—there must be intentionality for communication to occur.
~ Professor Cyborg
In Chapter 12 Griffin discusses relational dialectics. I've applied this theory in my own work on communicating disability and communicating breast cancer. For the latter study, my colleague Joy Hart and I examined blogs written by women with breast cancer. Previous research on blogs written by people with cancer found they blogged to express their own opinions and frustrations, share stores, for empowerment, and as a coping mechanism.
In our study we examined five blogs written by women with breast cancer. We were interested in the dialectics the women expressed in writing about their experiences with the disease. We identified four dialectics: control-acceptance, same-changed, private-public, and selfish-nurturing. The first dialectic represented a tension between exercising control over the cancer and the person's overall health and accepting the diagnosis as something to live with and learn from. The same-changed dialectic represented a tension between being unaffected by the cancer and treatment (remaining "normal") and being a different person since the diagnosis. The public-private dialectic referred to a tension between seeking support from others and at the same time being alone in the experience of the illness. The selfish-nurturing dialectic highlighted the tension between focusing on the self and providing support for others, a tension the women found particularly difficult to deal with due to cultural norms.
Although relational dialectics has been applied primarily in examining interviews or surveys in which people describe their interpersonal relationships, this study demonstrated the utility of applying the theory to how bloggers describe their experiences with a health crisis.
~ Professor Cyborg
Although I don't agree completely with Walther's social information processing theory (SIP), his work has had a tremendous influence on the study of online interaction. As Griffin notes, Walther's 1992 journal article detailing the theory won a prestigious award from the National Communication Association. Most important from my perspective is this: "While most scholars assumed that online communication is an inherently inferior medium for relational communication, he [Walther] rejected that brand of technological determinism" (p. 148). Unfortunately, some scholars, particularly those in communication, still adhere to an old-fashioned view of online communication, arguing that in person communication is inherently superior. But Walther's work demonstrated that assumption is not supported.
Those immersed in new communication technologies find the distinctions between online and offline communication silly. At work and in social relationships, communicators generally move seamlessly among the various communication tools available. Early notions of "virtual" vs. "real" relationships seem quaint. Certainly online classes are just as real as in person ones. Most of my relationships involve a combination of in person, phone, and online communication. The percentages vary with the relationship, but generally are based on how far away that person lives from me. What the internet (and cell phones) has done is allowed me to more easily maintain connections with friends across the country and around the world.
~ Professor Cyborg
In the interview with Em Griffin, Dr. Berger said this in explaining uncertainty reduction theory: "The problem for all of us is that, if we’re going to act in ways that will achieve our desired goals – that is, we’ll get what we want – we have to be able to anticipate, to be able to predict what the physical world is going to do and what the people in it are going to do."
This explanation for the rationale underlying uncertainty reduction theory goes a long way toward explaining why Dr. Berger developed it. I understand the desire for predictability, but I wonder if its entirely reasonable. Can you really predict what others will do? To a certain extent, the answer is yes. But not completely. For example, I've known my spouse since 1994. I think I have a pretty good idea of his likes and dislikes. So when someone asked me if Ted likes movies such as Babe (about a pig raised by sheepdogs), I said of course not because I know he likes movies such as Terminator and The Matrix (the first one). Imagine my surprise when I found out later he really liked Babe!
Part of what makes life interesting is the uncertainty and ambiguity of our everyday interactions with others. Too much uncertainty can prove overwhelming and confusing. Too little uncertainty and you're bored and unmotivated. Some degree of prediction helps communicators navigate daily life. But achieving desired goals also calls for responding to uncertainty and developing new strategies in the moment.
Although uncertainty reduction theory has its critics it remains a popular theory because it seems so intuitive. For example, one of our cars, a 1982 Toyota Starlet, was getting pretty run down. One side window was held in with a bungee cord. There was an electrical problem so it wouldn't always start; we'd have to rock the car from side to side or take a mallet to the battery. It had little in the way of safety features (such as air bags). It was time to buy a new car. So we bought a Prius. First we did quite a bit of research on the car, including conversations with people who owned one. Then we test drove one at the dealership. After we bought it, we continued to search for information that reinforced our decision. It was a big purchase, and we wanted to reduce our anxiety about it.
Still, when applied to human communication, uncertainty reduction has its detractors. The theory assumes that all uncertainty is bad, harmony is good, and that more information will reduce uncertainty. Yet these assumptions haven't proved accurate. In addition, as the author of your text points out, several theorems have not stood the test of carefully-designed studies. The idea of uncertainty reduction is intriguing, but like all aspects of human communication, it's much more complex than it appears.
Chapter 9 in the text discusses social penetration theory. Although the theory began as a fairly simplistic representation of the self and how individuals communicate, more recent applications have posited greater complexity in interpersonal interactions.
Communication Privacy Management theory (CPM) suggests that complete breadth and depth of self disclosure isn't what's always best for a relationship or the individuals involved. CPM identifies privacy boundary rules that people develop. These rules guide the degree that individuals are willing to disclose information. Communicators don't set those boundaries all on their own, however. Boundaries are always set, and negotiated, with others. Thus, rules may change over time and based on the relationship with the other person.
My colleagues and I recently applied CPM to organizational surveillance in the workplace. Students in my previous organizational communication classes gathered much of the data, so the responses to a large extent reflect norms in Bay Area organizations. What surprised us what the degree to which organization members allowed the organization to set privacy boundaries. Granted, employees are at a power disadvantage when dealing with surveillance in the workplace. But we expected more instances of resistance and more talk about the intrusion of the surveillance. Yet for the most part organization members accepted the reasons organizations gave for the surveillance and did little to subvert the system.
I started by master's work in communication at the U of Massachusetts (finished at Central Michigan U) and took classes from Barnett Pearce and Vern Cronen, the scholars who developed the coordinated management of meaning theory. Although the theory may appear overly-complex and the use of obscure terms tedious at times, CMM has had important impacts on the field in how scholars think about communication. As Griffin notes, CMM underscores how "persons-in-conversations co-construct their social realities. . . . The coordinated management of meaning is the most comprehensive statement of social construction crafted by communication scholars" (p. 82).
Chapter 6 briefly discusses the Cupertino Community Project and how Pearce and others applied the principles of CMM to diversity forums for people living in Cupertino, teaching residents to engage in dialogic communication to discuss especially thorny issues, particularly ethnic diversity. If you want to read more about the Cupertino Project, read SJSU communication studies professor Dr. Shawn Spano's book, Public Dialogue and Participatory Democracy.
No blogging requirement this week, but I wanted to get in a brief word about constructivism.
As I mentioned before in my mapping the territory entry, I have a background in psychology. What I like about constructivism is the link it provides between psychology and communication. Constructivists are interested in individual differences in social cognitive structures and message production and message interpretation. What does that mean? Researchers in this area want to know how the ways in which people organize social knowledge (what we know about others and our interactions with them) influence their communication. For example, researchers have found that people who think of others in more complex ways produce messages that are more geared toward others as unique individuals (more person-centered).
With its focus on person-centered messages, constructivism is a very practical theory. Research has demonstrated that people can be taught to think of others is more sophisticated ways and develop messages that are more person-centered. And person-centered message are more effective in comforting and persuading others.
For me, constructivism fills a gap that many communication theories ignore--how people think. Constructivists recognize the reflexive relationship between thinking and communicating--both influence the other.
~ Professor Cyborg
Week 2 is drawing to a close. Many excellent blog entries and comments on the material in Chapters 4 and 5. My students in the summer said that blogging about the class material was a great way to better understand course concepts. And reading others' blogs highlighted concepts and points otherwise missed.
I have been going through and reading your entries, even if I don't comment on them. One goal for the blogging assignment is to get students talking with each other, rather than to me. The next time you're in an on campus class, observe the interaction. Generally, students talk to the instructor, even when they're making comments about what another student said. With blogging, the instructor isn't in the middle and you can communicate directly with each other.
I hope you're all having a great weekend! Be sure you finish up your blog entries and comments as well as Quiz 1 tonight by midnight.
~ Professor Cyborg
Chapter 5 in your text discusses symbolic interactionism, a theory developed by G. H. Mead, a sociologist, that has had a strong influence on theory in the communication discipline. Mead's theory got scholars to reconsider their view of reality. Instead of reality being something separate and apart from people, Mead's theory argues that social reality is something people create. And if that's the case, then people can create, maintain, and change that reality.
Near the end of the chapter, Griffin outlines several ways in which symbolic interactionism is applicable to communication. One area, naming, recognizes the ways in which labeling influences how communicators think of something and respond to it. Reflect on the alias you chose for your blogs--how does that alias represent you? In addition, the power to name and define is an important one. Consider the strategies politicians use to define their opponents.
~ Professor Cyborg
In a previous edition of the text, your author had separate sections focused on ethical considerations. Now he's moved the discussion of ethics into the chapters providing a more integrated view of ethics, rather as an afterthought. In Chapter 4, Griffin refers to the National Communication Association's Credo for Communication Ethics. I discuss NCA's principles in Public Speaking: The Evolving Art, recently published by Wadworth. The ethical principles apply across the broad range of communication contexts, from interpersonal communication to organizational communication to public speaking.
Adopted nearly 10 years ago in the early years of the digital age, the principles resonate with communicators today. The first one is especially relevant during a presidential campaign year: "We advocate truthfulness, accuracy, honesty, and reason as essential to the integrity of communication."
Sometimes a communicator's truthfulness, accuracy, and honesty are difficult to determine, particularly with public figures. As election day draws nearer, a useful site to visit to find out just how accurate candidates' ads and statements are is FactCheck.org. The site is sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, whose director is communication professor Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson. FactCheck.org is completely nonpartisan and scrutinizes statements made by representatives of all political parties. To maintain its independence, the project doesn't accept any funding from corporations, lobbyists, labor unions, or others who might try to influence what's investigated. Check it out. You might be surprised by what you learn.
~ Professor Cyborg
