COMM Quiz 3
Real worlders
people who started their relationship face-to-face and continue to maintain it primarily in that manner
Stonewalling
withdrawing from a conversation
Health Messages in Media
- News coverage - Advertising - Entertainment - Online
Forming and communicating in romantic relationships: Bonding
5. Bonding: The stage of relationship development at which partners make a public announcement of their commitment to each other.
Advertising
- Models in cancer or HIV-related appeared healthy - Framing theory---How we think about the issue: framing theory suggests that how something is presented to the audience (called "the frame") influences the choices people make about how to process that information. - Advertising of tobacco and alcohol - Cigarette manufacturers regularly advertised on TV and radio before the U.S. congress banned that practice in 1971.
Why we maintain social relationships: Equity theory
- A good relationship is one in which one's ratio of costs and benefits is equal to the partner's. - Our costs and benefits in friendships aren't just about tangible goods (e.g., time, attention, care, etc.). - Over-benefited: A state in which one's relational benefits outweigh one's costs. - Under-benefited: A state in which one's relational costs outweigh one's benefits.
How Do Media Messages Affect Us
- Agenda setting theory - Cultivation theory
What are social networks?
- All the friendships and family relationships you have, whether maintained face-to-face or online. - Share your social networks with another. - When your networks converge, it's an important way to keep relationships stable and strong.
Media Images Can Increase Health Risks
- Body Image, Eating Disorders, and Steroid Abuse - Social Comparison Theory: People have an innate drive to evaluate themselves, often in comparison to others. - Upward comparison - Body Positivity: A social movement focused on empowering individuals no matter their physical weight or size, while also challenging the ways in which society presents and views the physical body. - Alcohol Use and Abuse - Underage drinking - Sexual Health - 1/25 TV sex scenes reference to safe-sex methods - Violence - TV shows and video games
Intimate Relationships Require Deep Commitment
- Commitment: the desire to stay in a relationship no matter what happens - Emotional commitment - Social commitment - Legal and financial commitment
Media Activism
- Coordinated efforts to express displeasure with media messages and to force changes in their content. - Violence, nudity, profanity, & sexual behavior - Misrepresentations and under-representation of minority groups - Symbolic annihilation: media underrepresentation - Mainstream Media vs Alternative Media (Media channels that give voice to a wider range of viewpoints)
Intimate relationships spark dialectical tensions
- Dialectical tensions: conflicts between two important but opposing relational needs or desires - Autonomy vs. connection - Openness vs. closeness - Predictability vs. novelty
Computer mediated messaging: Email
- Email: Electronic mail messages exchanged through a computer network—one of the earliest mass uses of the Internet. - Spam: E-mail messages sent indiscriminately to thousands of recipients at once, often to advertise a product or service.
Benefits of Self-Disclosure:
- Enhancement of relationships and trust - Reciprocity - When others disclose to us, we tend to disclose back to them - Emotional release - Self-disclosures can reduce the stress of holding on to a secret - Assistance to others - Offering encouragement - Letting them know that they are not alone
Media Oversight
- Federal Communications Commission (FCC): All TV and radio stations must hold an FCC license. - The equal time rule: Stations are required to offer competing political parties equal access to the airwaves. - The Telecommunications Act of 1996: A federal law requiring that all TV sets 13 inches or larger manufactured after Jan. 1, 2000 include a V-chip, which allows TV owners to block access to certain types of programs. - The fairness doctrine: A law enacted in 1949 that required broadcasters to air all sides of a public issue.
Contempt
- Hostile behavior in which people show a lack of respect for each other. - Responding to conflict with contempt often increases stress physical health & relational satisfaction
Image media
- Image media: Composed of TV programs and movies (narratives communicated with moving images), combine sound with visual stimuli. - Broadcasting TV: Initially sent its signal through the air in analog form. Users need an antenna to receive the signal. - Cable TV: Used orbiting satellites to send the signals to local cable systems. HBO, 1975, first cable TV network.
Movie and Television Programming Guidelines:
- In order to avoid government regulation of their content, the movie and television industries have each imposed guidelines and restrictions on themselves. - Motion Picture Production Code (the Hays Code, 1930): Distinguished acceptable and unacceptable content for movies in the U.S. - Motion Picture Rating System (1968): A means of evaluating a film's suitability for various audiences. - TV Parental Guidelines (1997): A system for rating the content of TV shows.
Forming Relationships Online:
- Individuals follow largely the same steps whether forming relationships online or in face-to-face contexts - Challenges - Digital divide - 13% of the US adults don't use the internet at all Information accuracy
Ending Romantic Relationships:
- Mark Knapp: Five stages relationships go through when they end - differentiating, circumscribing, stagnating, avoiding, terminating
How Do We Hold Media Accountable?
- Media oversight - Media Activism
Agenda setting theory
- Media tells people what to think about by determining what they watch, read, and hear. - Doesn't directly determine people's opinion about issues, but put certain topics on the public's agenda, making them relevant to public discussions.
Social Cognitive Theory
- People base their behavioral decisions on the interaction of cognitive and environmental factors - People are most comfortable changing their behavior when cognitive and environmental factors both support the change. - Cognitive factors: Expectations, values, knowledge, habits, and attitudes - Environmental factors: Limitations of the physical environment, conditions that engender social approval - E.g., jogging with others' support and good weather - Cognitive dissonance: Mental discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes. - E.g., smoking à cancer - Optimism bias: A cognitive bias that causes someone to believe that they themselves are less likely to experience a negative event
Health Belief Model: Threats vs. Benefits
- People compare perceived threats to perceived benefits - Threats vs. Benefits - Perceived susceptibility: One's opinion on their chances of getting sick - Perceived severity: One's opinion of how serious a condition and its consequences are - Perceived benefits: One's belief in the efficacy of the advised action to reduce risk or seriousness of impact - Perceived barriers: One's opinion of the tangible and psychological costs of the advised action
Why we maintain social relationships: Social equity theory
- People seek to maintain relationships in which their benefits outweigh their costs - Costs: money, time, etc. - Any type of abuse (e.g., physical, psychological, emotional) is a cost - Comparison level: the set of expectations we have regarding the costs and benefits of a relationship - What do you expect your close friends/colleagues to do when you are in trouble? - Comparison level for alternatives: an assessment of how much better or worse one's current relationship is than one's other options - Our comparison level for a particular relationship strongly influences how satisfied we are in that relationship; our comparison level for alternatives more strongly influences whether that relationship will last.
Health Belief Model
- People will take a health related action if: - A considerable negative outcome can be avoided - Changing their behavior is worth the cost and effort - They are able to complete the recommended action
Transactional Model:
- Precontemplation: When people have never even thought about changing, nor do they realize there is a problem. - Contemplation: When people understand that there is a problem, and start thinking about it - Preparation: When people are planning to take action. - Action: When people are actually doing something about it to change their behavior. - Maintenance: When people keep up their behavior change for at least six months.
Printing Press
- Printing press: German publisher Johannes Gutenberg, 1440s - Print media: newspapers, magazines, and books - Penny press: Benjamin Day founded The Sun, a New York City newspaper in 1833; The first mass medium; The Penny Press was the term used to describe the revolutionary business tactic of producing newspapers which sold for one cent.
Communicating in Romantic Relationships: Conflict
- Romantic relationships vary in how they handle conflict - Validating couples talk about their disagreements openly and cooperatively; respect - Volatile couples talk about their disagreements openly but in a competitive way - Conflict-avoiding couples tend to avoid open discussion of issues about which they disagree - Hostile couples have frequent and intense conflict
Communicating in Romantic Relationships: Instrumental Communication
- Romantic relationships vary in how they handle instrumental communication - Instrumental communication: Communication about day-to-day topics and tasks - Most common forms of communication among romantic partners. - Opposite-sex relationships: traditional gender role beliefs a divide instrumental tasks among stereotypical gender lines - Same-sex relationships: divide tasks more equally
Defensiveness
- Seeing oneself as a victim and denying responsibility for one's behaviors. - People are prone to defensiveness when they recognize that the criticisms have merit but don't want to accept the responsibility of changing their behavior.
Revealing Ourselves in Relationships:
- Self-disclosure: the act of intentionally giving others information about oneself that one believes is true but thinks others don't already have - Intentional and truthful - Verbal leakage: information unintentionally shared with others - Social penetration theory: self-disclosing over time is like peeling away the layers of an onion: each self-disclosure helps us learn more and more about a person we're getting to know - Breadth: the range of topics we self-disclose to various people - Depth: the degree of intimacy of our self-disclosure
News Coverage
- Sensationalism: The tendency of media personnel to favor dramatic health stories and exaggerate their importance. - Reverse sensationalism: News outlets provide too little coverage for health problems that are quite serious (e.g., how much coverage received by breast cancer vs. lung cancer).
Compter mediated messaging
- Social Media: User-generated websites offering content that individual users construct for delivery to mass audiences - Blogs: Websites providing news, commentary, or personal diary entries from the user—the blogger—often along with comments from visitors. - Social networking sites (SNS): Websites that allow users to meet, communicate, and share information online (e.g., Facebook). - Facebook: Context collapse: Different audiences occupy the same space, and a piece of information intended for one audience finds its way to another - Media sites: Websites on which people can share audio-visual messages (e.g., TikTok, YouTube). - Microblogging: A combination of blogging and texting supported by the website Twitter - Instant messaging: A form of text communication that occurs instantaneously between two or more connected users (e.g., Skype, Facebook Messenger). - Texting: Instant messaging with a cell phone (e.g., WhatsApp)
Sound Media
- Sound media: Mediated message that you listen to, rather than read or watch. - Thomas Edison, phonograph, 1877 - Recorded sounds (e.g., recorded music, audio books, ambient noises, and live events) & radio - Radio (starting in 1920s, now U.S. has over 15,000 licensed radio stations) - Satellite radio: Launched in 2001, relays signals through satellites orbiting the Earth, allowing the signals to reach a wider geographical area.
Cultivation theory
- Television encourages or cultivates a distorted view of the world among heavy viewers. - Suggests a distinction between the real world and the televised world. - George Gerbner: By the age of 18, the average U.S. viewer had witnessed 32,000 murders and 40,000 attempted murders on TV. - "Mean world syndrome": A cognitive bias wherein people may perceive the world to be more dangerous than it actually is, due to long-term moderate to heavy exposure to violence-related content on mass media.
Traditional Mass-Interpersonal Divide
- Traditionally, mass communication has been defined as (1) one-way, (2) technological mediated messages, (3) delivered to large audiences (4) of individuals not known personally by the sender - Interpersonal communication has been traditionally defined as (a) two-way, (b) non-mediated message exchange between (c) a very small number (usually two) of participants, (d) who have personal knowledge of each other - The gold standard of interpersonal communication has been face-to-face interactions, though mediated interpersonal communication (e.g. via telephone, email) has gradually been accepted among interpersonal scholars - Masspersonal Communication can be conceptualized by either the use of mass communication channels being used for interpersonal messages, interpersonal channels being used for mass communication, or both contexts being simultaneously used.
Making Media Choices
- Uses and Gratifications Theory (U&G): - "Communication behavior, including media selection and use, is goal-directed, purposive, and motivated." - "Social and psychological factors guide, filter, and mediate behavior (Rubin, 1994, p.167)." - Different needs lead to different media behavior.
Catalytic theory
- Watching violence in the media can encourage real-life violence, but only if other influences are also present. - Violence depicted in the media is rewarded and glorified rather than punished. - Violence is portrayed in an exciting manner. - Occurs frequently - Similar to the viewer's own experience
Criticism
- Words that pass judgment on someone or something - Should focus on a problematic behavior rather than the person's personality or character
relational maintenance behaviors theory
- theory specifying the primary behaviors people use to maintain their relationships - Positivity: show positive behaviors, be pleasant, etc (social contagion) - Openness: A person's willingness to discuss his or her relationship with the relational partner - Assurances - Verbal and nonverbal behaviors that stress faithfulness and commitment to others. - Social networks - Sharing tasks: Performing your fair share of the work in the relationship.
Theory of Reasoned Action and Theory of Planned Behavior:
-Assumption: People make rational, deliberate decisions about their behaviors. - The strongest predictor of engaging in a specific behavior, is an intention to perform that behavior. - Subjective norms: The belief that an important person or group of people will approve and support a particular behavior. - Attitude: Learned predispositions to a concept or object. Whether you like something or not. - Belief: Convictions. Whether you think something is true. - TPB adds Self-efficacy to TRA: Behavior change is most likely to happen when people intend to change their behavior and believe that they have the ability to do so.
Why We Form Relationships:
1. Attraction Theory: a theory that explains why individuals are drawn to others - The process of forming most relationships begins with interpersonal attraction, the force that draws people together 2. Uncertainty reduction theory: people find uncertainty to be unpleasant, so they are motivated to reduce their uncertainty by getting to know others - The less uncertain we are, the more we will like a new acquaintance - No guarantee, we may not like the information learned from others
Planning a health campaign
1. Define the goal - To plan an effective health campaign, you must know what you intend to achieve: reducing a problematic behavior or increasing a health-promoting behavior. 2. Understand the audience - Conduct research on your audience - E.g., Interest in getting vaccinated against Covid-19 increased right after the director of the US CDC announced that vaccinated people could take off their masks. 3. Design the message - Logical appeals: Educate people by pointing out cause-and-effect relationships between behaviors and health outcomes (e.g., Drinking while pregnant more than triples the chances of severe birth defects). - Positive-affect appeals: Make people feel good about adopting the recommended behavior change. - Negative-affect appeals: Make people feel anxious, guilty, or fearful about not adopting the recommended behavior change. 4.Identify communication channels - How large is the population you want to reach? - How diverse is that population? - Do you need singular or repeated exposure? - What resources do you have?
Forming and communicating in romantic relationships: Initiating
1. Initiating: The stage of relationship development at which people meet and interact for the first time.
The Nature of Intimate Relationships
1. Intimate relationships require deep commitment 2. Intimate relationships foster interdependence 3. Intimate relationships require continuous investment 4. Intimate relationships spark dialectical tensions
Communication in Social Relationships:
1. We form relationships because we need to belong Need to belong theory: a psychological theory proposing a fundamental human inclination to bond with others 2. Social relationships bring rewards - Social capital: "The sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network ... of mutual acquaintance and recognition" (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 14). - Social capital can take various forms, such as human capital for favors, and intellectual capital for new information. - Emotional rewards: emotional support (encouragement) & happiness - Material rewards - Health rewards
Media Literacy
1.Recognize the Message Form - Know the difference between an interpersonal message and a mass message (appear personal?) 2.Consider the Source - Consider what motivates the message (e.g., inform vs. persuade). - Tell the intent to persuade vs. cynicism (a general distrust of others' motives) 3.Beware of Media Limitations - Appreciate each medium for what it does best.
Forming and communicating in romantic relationships: Experimenting
2. Experimenting: The stage of relationship development at which people converse to learn more about each other.
Forming and communicating in romantic relationships: Intensifying
3. Intensifying: The stage of relationship development at which people move from being acquaintances to being close friends.
Forming and communicating in romantic relationships: Integrating
4. Integrating: The stage of relationship development at which a deep commitment has formed, and the partners share a strong sense that the relationship has its own identity.
Entertainment
E.g., ER and Grey's Anatomy a knowledge about breast cancer and intentions to obtain screening
Media and Violence
Exposure to media-depicted violence can have at least two detrimental effects: - Desensitization theory: People's acceptance of real-life violence grows as they see more violence reflected in the media: Justify violence, objectify the targets of violence, have little empathy for victims. - Social learning theory: Social learning theory suggests that individuals learn from direct experience and from behavior modeled by others, which can occur via the media.
Intimate relationships foster interdependence
Interdependence: the state in which what happens to one person affects everyone else in the relationship
Media Convergence
Media products are available in more than one form. The increasing interconnection of media content and communication technology.
Intimate relationships require continuous investment
Research shows that romantic partners are happiest when they are both investing in the relationship to the same degree
Three forms of interpersonal attraction
Physical attraction: attraction to someone's appearance Social attraction: attraction to someone's personality Task attraction: attraction to someone's abilities or dependability
Circumscribing
The stage of relationship dissolution at which partners begin to decrease the quality and quantity of their communication with each other (e.g., not communicating openly).
Differentiating
The stage of relationship dissolution at which partners begin to view their differences as undesirable or annoying (e.g., want privacy).
Avoiding
The stage of relationship dissolution at which partners create physical and emotional distance from each other. (e.g., "I don't want to talk to you any more.")
Terminating
The stage of relationship dissolution at which the relationship is officially deemed to be over.
Stagnating
The stage of relationship dissolution at which the relationship stops growing and the partners feel as if they are just "going through the motions."
Handle Conflict Constructively: Goffman
The way couples argue, not how frequently, predicts their chances of staying together.
Search engines
Websites that identify and rank other websites according to key terms (e.g., Google, Yahoo).
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
criticism, contempt, defensiveness, stonewalling
Cyber migrant relationship
the relationship starts offline but people have since begun to maintain their relationship primarily or exclusively online
Virtual Relationships
the relationship starts online and stays online
Pinocchio relationships
the relationship starts online but people have since met in the real world
