CMM

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.