Download Histories of Communication - Academic Resources at Missouri

Histories of
Communication
Online Chapter
Historiography
Persuasive effect of writing history in
particular ways.
 History written within contemporary
political, social forces.
 Textbook offers histories rather than
definitive history of communication
discipline.

Importance of
Communication

All communication studies matter.
Communication is central to conduct
of society.
 Communication is affected by society.


Multiple definitions of communication.
Interconnections are as important as
the differences.
 Relational basis underlies all kinds of
communication.

Importance of
Communication

Relational Influences
Faculty relationships formed,
developed departments.
 Oral cultures as communication origin.
 Later literate cultures expanded
freedom of ideas and expression.

• Printed word leads to social changes.
• Written word alters ability to remember.
Importance of
Communication

Relational influences (cont.)
Today’s technologies make definition
of communication more difficult.
 These technologies still used for
social and interpersonal uses.

Configuration of
Communication
Departments

There are numerous configurations.
Theater and Art departments focused
on performance.
 Radio, TV, and film separated from
Speech departments.
 Speech departments combine with
journalism and mass communication
departments.

Configuration of
Communication
Departments

Other formats exist as well, based on
interpersonal relationships between
faculty.

Different styles developed based on
social historical forces based on
relationships of scholars.
Traditions: Rhetoric

Originates with ancient rhetoricians.


Also wrote about relationships and
love, including role of relationships in
persuasion.
Centuries of discussion of “good
people speaking well.”
Traditions: Rhetoric


Organization of speech departments in late
1800s.
Teaching speech led to study of nature of
rhetoric and persuasion.


Led to study of persuasive writing speaking,
including developing media technologies.
Development of professional organizations
in early 1900s.
Traditions: Media Studies
and Mass Communication
Emerged from psychology, sociology,
technology.
 Original focus on speech of “one to
many,” but expanded with media
technologies.

Traditions--Media Studies
and Mass Communication

Mass communication and media
studies overlap.
Rhetorician’s audience is large, but
less than mediated.
 Media studies focuses on audience or
technology.
 Media studies scholars focus on what
counts as medium.

Traditions: Media Studies
and Mass Communication
Original focus on how technology
connects, helps people.
 Today, a major focus on alienation
and more sinister implications of
technology.

Traditions: Performance


Speech and drama at root.
In oral cultures, drama was force for
representing morality and ethics.


Today, still a critical theme in dramatic
performance studies.
Symbolic Interaction: Mead & Goffman


People perform identities in constraints and
circumstances.
Team, or cultural forces, construct and
maintain identity.
Traditions: Communication
Research
Style, method of inquiry, derived from
psychology and sociology.
 Early work focused on social
influence, attitude change, persuasive
messages, uncertainty reduction,
influence of opinion leaders.
 Scholars of persuasion had rhetorical
analyses, shifted to lab experiments.

Traditions: Interpersonal
Communication
Origins in personal influence.
 Some scholars shift from mass
phenomena to micro-sociology and
small group.
 Small group, organizational split from
interpersonal to separate categories.

Major Perspectives: Social
Science

Assumptions




Truth exists independent of the observer.
Establishment of numerical patterns.
Operationalization of terminology.
Methods


Direct measures of responses and
communicative activities.
Questionnaires, laboratory experiments,
standard measures of occurrences over
time.
Major Perspectives: Social
Science

Advantages
Reduction of subjectivity of analysis.
 Theoretical explanation of patterns
and new predictions.
 Making generalizations, explaining
variance.
 Determination of cause-effect
relationships to predict outcomes in
untried circumstances.

Major Perspectives: Social
Science

Disadvantages
Are results merely agreements
between researchers using the same
vocabulary?
 Experimenters may impose too much
restriction on subjects’ reports.
 Is generalization really useful?

Major Perspectives:
Interpretivist

Assumptions
There is no objective reality.
 People’s interpretations of experience
are more important.
 Rejection of underlying global causal
laws.
 Research cannot be value-free.

Major Perspectives:
Interpretivist

Methods
Grounded theory focuses on
observation grounded in data,
developed systematically.
 Knowledge emerges from
observation, reading data.
 Comparison with other data until valid
interpretation obtained.

Major Perspectives:
Interpretivist

Advantages
Draws attention to value laden nature
of observation.
 Questions whether it is possible to
separate knower, known.

Major Perspectives:
Interpretivist

Disadvantages




What is real must reveal itself to an
interpreter.
If interpreter must be trained to recognize,
interpretivism falls into trap of social science.
Questions of ethics in selection of theory,
methods.
Can there be general interpretation of
individual understanding?
Major Perspectives: Critical
Theory

Assumptions
Inbuilt structure gives advantage to
one set of people at expense of
others.
 Power is absolute authority, used to
oppress, devalue minority groups.

Major Perspectives: Critical
Theory

Methods
Similar to interpretivists.
 Analysis of texts rather than
interviews.
 Look for hidden undertones in which
power dynamics are transacted.

Major Perspectives: Critical
Theory

Advantages


Redirects thinking toward awareness of
inequity.
Disadvantages



Critical theory gives itself power to comment
on how communication is used, rather than
discovering misuse.
Ignores how power is accepted by those
without it.
What kinds of power matter more, less than
others.
Major Perspectives: PostModernism

Assumptions, Methods
Discourse of representation
 Discourse of modernism,
interpretivism
 Discourse of suspicion
 Discourse of vulnerability

Major Perspectives: PostModernism

Advantages
Does not assume there is one way to
do things, as held by other scientists.
 Aware of power in construction of
knowledge.


Disadvantages

Reducto ad absurdum
Future of Communication
and Relational Perspective
Development of discipline is not
finished, is still continuing.
 All areas can use a relational
approach.
 All topics contain presumption of
nature of relationships.
 Future of discipline is to apply
principle of relationships more broadly.
