The Act of Communication and Modalities

The Act of Communication

• Communication relates to society and is explored in Sapir's work, "The Act of Communication."
• Key components of communication: media, message, channel, senders, and receivers
• Primary communication processes encompass language, gesture, imitation of overt behavior, and social suggestion.
• Secondary communication techniques facilitate primary communication through language transfer methods like writing systems (including Morse code).
• Radius of communication has expanded throughout history.
• Transmission Model emphasizes ensuring the message sent is received without distortion and minimizing interference.
• In the Transmission Model, communication is seen as linear; the message sent is directly the message received.
• Peters defines media as symbolic connectors with three dimensions: message, medium, and agents.
• Peters builds on the idea of secondary techniques to facilitate communication.

Modalities of Communication

• Orality involves spoken or verbally communicated content, relying on ears and sounds that is evanescent, unique and enveloping.
• Literacy involves written content, relying on eyes that is silent, permanent, timeless, linear, and reproducible.
• Age of Typography: transitioned from writing, printing, and reading to watching television. Information became entertainment, discouraging thoughtful reading. This is seen as a "Boston to Las Vegas" shift.
• Printing is uniform, easy, and involves machinery, like the Gutenberg Bible.
• Postman writes that writing freezes speech, giving rise to scholars and scientists.
• Age of Television sees a decline of Typography and rise of Television, using visual imagery and conversation in images.
• Mnemonics are formulas, memorable, rhythmic, and repetitive phrases.
• The Google Effect and transactive memory shows that people think of computers when faced with difficult questions, lowering recall rates.
• Internet is the primary form of external information
• Postman's "medium as metaphor" suggests culture recreates itself through each medium of communication, altering thought, expression, and sensibility and our perception of nature.
• Socrates noted that writing may decrease reliance on memory, and cause forgetfulness.

Performance and Rhetoric

• Rhetoric includes the techniques of making an argument and the means of persuasion
• Persuasion is the art of effective speaking and writing, making opinions believable through logic, emotions, and credibility.
• The three basic elements of rhetoric: ethos, pathos, logos
• Ethos involves presenting oneself as trustworthy, aligning interests with the audience.
• Logos relates to reasonableness, not necessarily logical or factually accurate in forwarding ethos through reasoning by induction
• Pathos pertains to emotional appeal.
• Five elements of rhetoric: invention, style, arrangement, memory, and delivery

Performance and Presentation of Self: Erving Goffman

• Goffman introduced the dramaturgical perspective, comparing social interactions to theatrical performances, noting front stage vs. backstage.
• Social interaction is environments in which two or more individuals are within one another's response presence.
• Includes face-to-face/co-presence NOT meditated.
• Any social setting, family dinner, bus stop, class etc
• Expressions Given are verbal symbols and substitutes that are planned.
• Expressions Given-Off: non-verbal / unintentional
• Front Stage involves individuals performing impression management, using a learned social script shaped by cultural norms.
• Back Stage is where the impression is knowingly contradicted as a matter of course, indicating a "truthful" type of performance.
• The World is social encounters, face-to-face or mediated contact with other participants.
• Line is a pattern of verbal acts to express views on the situation and evaluation of the participants.
• Face is a positive social value claimed by a person effectively through the line others assume he has taken.

The Public: Ideal and Reality

• Public (Jennifer Petersen): As many express opinions as receive them with effective opinions, that lead to converted action and are autonomous
• Mass (C.W.Mills): Fewer express opinions than receive, that are difficult, slow, and risky, controlled by authorities and not always autonomous
• Public Sphere (Jennifer Petersen) practices citizen sovereignty of self-rule with groupings of strangers relying on reason over rhetoric. Can be separated by space and time to Discuss & to decide
• Reading publics are public areas for conversation
• Counterpublics emerge as a kin of reaction against a dominant public with an awareness of its subordinate status

Mediated Communication: Talk and Technology

• Mediated communication: the telephone
• Tethering involves mobile media tethering users to places, embedding but not enslaving them.
• "The Three Wishes,": "That we will always be heard, put our attention where we want it to be, and never have to be alone"
• Tempted to Present Ourselves as We Would Like to Be "Alone Together" :
• Engineering the human interface involves usage of dial telephones.
• Mobile media tethers users to themselves, offering social connection while in transition.
• Three Wishes granted via mobile devices is providing a sense of being heard, attention control, and the elimination of boredom.
• Sherry Turkle's research "Alone Together" explores how technology impacts face-to-face conversations. The presence of phones can alter the way people interact in person.
• Manners and Domestication marks when people are told the proper telephone etiquette
• Party Lines is the rise of mass media led to new forms of address, both impersonal and personal

Mass Media and Mass Effects

• Edward R. Murrow's live radio broadcast from London during WWII was mass media (many receivers and one sender).
• Boxing match that was broadcasted in real time became mediated simultaneity, meaning a simultaneous moment that is mediated and broadcasted live.
• "War of the Worlds" was a radio broadcast that depicted an alien invasion; most did not panic.
• Quality of the broadcast and trust in radio matters.
• "Lonesome Gal" was an anonymous woman, radio broadcast for a predominantly male audience who formed parasocial relations.
• X ERF Radio from the Mexico border allowed radio shows that are illegal or inappropriate.
• Payne Fund Studies on movies Key findings: Key findings: Emotion responses = fear, arousal, sleep deprivation, imitation & social learning with age as a factor
• Comic Books in the USA during the 1950s caused a panic from parents that children were being negatively affected leading to pressure on publishers for a "seal of approval"
• Hypodermic needle / magic bullet theory: Audience is a mass (undifferentiated, homogeneous) with weak social ties where media powerfully stimulates thought. Effects can be uniform and immediate
• limited effects model helps in proving magic bullet theory wrong The vast majority of subjects “never changed their minds"
• Media reinforces rather than converts.
• "Personal Influence concluded that ideas flow from Media → opinion leaders → less active members of population
• Two-step flow of communication (other people impact how we interact with media)

Propaganda

• Propaganda has intentional techniques for control through propaganda for explicit objectives, e.g. coordinated campaign with media of all types known as Committee on Public Information
• Example: Germany staged videos during the Nazi party, known as Triumph of the Will
• Propaganda for social objectives can be achieved through Monopolization (absence of counter-propaganda), Canalization (focus on existing behavior, patterns, attitudes), Supplementation (face-to face and small group follow-up)

Social Functions of Media

• Status Conferral can confer status, authority, and prestige on public issues.
• Enforcement of Social Norms closes the gap between public a private behavior, and can reaffirm social norms
• Narcotizing Dysfunction means that some citizens may feel self interested and neglect from partaking in any actual decision
• The media has the capacity to make people feel apathetic about things