COMM402 Exam 1

Proposition

are descriptive and provide information about only one variable at a time.

index

composite measures of concepts

Human nature concerns...

determinism vs. voluntarism

Critical studies

dissensus and local/emergent Critical researchers identify and critique forms of domination and oppression by showing that various constructions of reality favor certain interests and obscure others.

Nomothetic inquiry

follows the process of inquiry in the natural sciences that involves testing hypotheses according to established and rigorous protocols.

(4) Principles

guidelines for action A principle is a proposition, precept, or guideline that enables someone to: 1) Interpret and evaluate an event, and 2) decide how to act in the situation.

Theoretical statements include...

hypotheses, propositions, and assumptions.

Methodological consequences...

nomothetic inquiry vs. ideographic inquiry

Ideographic inquiry

relies on subjective reports from individuals;to understand something. The researchers must get inside the experience being investigated.

A continuous variable

represents a theoretically unbroken whole whose parts cannot be distinguished one form the other except by arbitrarily dividing the continuum into categories.

Value (or an attribute)

represents one part or quantity of the variable.

Traditional theorists belief regarding the dimensions of a theory....

say that theories should stop at the level of explanation.

Axiology

study of value, *Questions regarding value

Theories that stop at the conceptual level are known as...

taxonomies

(2) Concepts

Building beliefs that underlie the theory

Negative hypothesis relationship

"If A increases, then B decreases." "If A increases, then B decreases.""The more A, the less B." The less A, the more B."

Positive hypothesis relationship

"If A increases, then B increases." "If A decreases, the B decreases.""The more A, the more B." The less A, the less B."

Hypothesis that test relationships: "If, then" vs. "The more, the more."

"If, Then": Independent and dependent variables have two values ( a large share or a lesser share; a lot or less information) "The more, the more": Independent and dependent variables are continuous.

Theoretical definition

(aka. the conceptual definition) conveys the meaning we attached to the concept and generally suggest indicators of it. the "dictionary" definition

Robert Craig's Traditions of Communication Theory

1)The Semiotic Tradition 2)The Phenomenological Tradition 3)The Cybernetic Tradition 4)The Sociopsychological Tradition 5)The Sociocultural Tradition 6)The Critical Tradition 7)The Rhetorical Tradition

The 6 evolution methods for evaluation a theory

1)Theoretical Scope 2)Appropriateness 3)Heuristic Value 4)Validity 5)Parsimony 6)Openness

Two kinds of explanations and the difference between the two...

1. Causal (traditional) explanation: Events are seen as connected causally, with one variable seen as an outcome or result of the other. 2. Practical explanation: Practical explanation explains actions as goal related, with the action designed to achieve a future state. •In practical explanation, actions are chosen because a particular outcome is desired. (examples) "I want to get an A in this course, so I studied hard for this test."

Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan's Paradigms

1. Functionalist: objective and regulation 2. Interpretive: subjective and regulation 3. Radical Structuralist: objective and radical change 4. Radical humanist: radical change and subjective

3 parts of a principle

1. It identifies a situation or event 2.It includes a set of norms or values 3.It asserts a connection between a range of actions and possible consequences.

Three points of conceptual differentiation in regard to defining communication

1. Level of observation 2. Intentionality 3. Judgement

3 things that make a theory "good"

1. Theories that provide insights we would not ordinarily have. 2. Theories that change constantly. 3. Theories that have staying power.

Frameworks for organizing theories

1.Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan's Paradigms 2.Stanley Deetz's Discourses 3.John Powers's Tiers 4.Robert Craig's Traditions

Validity

1.Value (or worth): It refers to the importance or utility of a theory. This is a primary form of validity in practical theories. 2.Correspondence (or fit): Whether the concepts and relations specified by the theory actually can be observed? 3.Generalizability (which is exactly the same as theoretical scope).

A construct v. a concept

A Construct vs. AConcept •Similarity: An abstraction that describes a portion of reality ****.•Difference:Constructs are more abstract or general than concepts.

Hypothesis

A testable statement about the relationship between two or more concepts (variables)

Assumption

A theoretical statement that is taken for granted, not tested. It may describe the relationship between variables or the usual value of one variable in a given situation. Ex.) Agenda setting theory

Theoretical Scope

A theory's scope is its comprehensiveness or inclusiveness.

How is the appropriateness of a theory evaluated?

Appropriateness of a theory is evaluated by the logical consistency between a theory (theoretical questions and research methods) and its epistemological, ontological, and axiological assumption.

Appropriateness

Are the theory's epistemological, ontological, and axiological assumptions appropriate for the theoretical questions addressed and the research methods used?

Vertical Axis: Consensus vs. Dissensus

At the Consensus endpoint: What is "normal" is featured and what is dissonant is downplayed. Try to reduce dissonance, deviance, and uncertainty in favor of existing norms. At the Dissensus endpoint: Conflict and struggle are highlighted. The research process is one of constantly challenging seemingly stable orders and revealing what previously had not been visible about the tensions and conflicts operating in society.

Operational definition

Complete and explicit information about how the concept will be measured. Although the indicators in the theoretical definition hint in which the concept may be measured, the full measurement scheme is specified in the operational definition.

Interpretive studies

Consensus and local/ emergent Interpretive studies are concerned with people as active sense makers The key concepts and explanations are worked out with those whom the researcher is studying.

The Critical Tradition

Critical scholars investigate how power, oppression, and privilege are the products of certain forms of communication throughout society.

Stanley Deetz's Discourses

Critical studies, Dialogic studies, Normative studies, and Interpretive studies

The Cybernetic Tradition

Cybernetics deals with complex systems in which interacting elements influence one another - A systemis the core of cybernetic thinking.

(3) Explanations

Dynamic connections made by the theory • Answers the question of "why?"

Normative studies

Elite/A Priori and consensus The goal of normative research is to discover fundamental processes that in turn can contribute to the creation of changes for the betterment of the human social world. The label normative highlights the interest in the normalization or generalization of experience through a search for law-like rules to govern human experience.

(1) Philosophical Assumptions: what are the 3 philosophical assumptions?

Epistemology, Ontology, and Axiology

The Rhetorical Tradition

Five Canons of Rhetoric: Invention, Arrangements, Style, Delivery, and Memory.

To what extent is communication contextual?

Human life and action are best understood by looking at universal factors that operate generally across all situations. VS. Behavior is contextual and cannot be generalized beyond the immediate situation - that the specifics of the particular interaction must be considered.

Determinism

Humans are determined by their environment. All human action is caused by or subject to forces outside the human being.

Voluntarism

Humans are the creators of their environment. Human will is the fundamental agency or principle governing human action.

To what extent can knowledge be certain?

Is knowledge absolute? Or is knowledge relative and changing? Those who take a universal stance (who believe they are seeking absolute and unchangeable knowledge) will admit errors in their theories, but they believe that these errors are merely a result of not yet having discovered the complete truth. VS. •Relativists believe that knowledge will never be certain because universal reality simply does not exist. What we know is filtered through our experiences and perceptions.

Interpretive

It also features regulation, but it has a subjective standpoint. •This paradigm seeks to explain the fundamental nature of social world as it is manifest in the level of subjective experience. •Scholars see the world as fundamentally ordered and cohesive and they are interested in how it emerges, develops, and evolves for each participants. •Example) Social action media theory

**Functionalist (what we look at in class)

It approaches inquiry from an objective stance and is firmly rooted in the regulation mode. •Theories share a view of the social world as relatively stable and concrete. •The objects and relationships that comprise this world can be studied by approaches developed in the natural science. •Example) Theory of reasoned action

Law v. Theory v. Hypothesis

Law: a scientific law implies that observations have been made with unvarying uniformity. Theory: is a statement of science that implies considerable evidence, but not complete uniformity of finding. Hypothesis: is a scientific statement that asks to be tested. Order: a hypothesis turns into a theory, and then can possibly turn into a law if it can be supported indefinitely

Dialogic studies

Local/ emergent and dissensus Dialogic studies share with critical studies an interest in domination, but they do not see domination as a preexisting condition or structure. Domination is situational rather than fixed.

Horizontal Axis: Local/Emergent vs. Elite/A Priori

Local/Emergent: oncepts develop and emerge in relation to those who use them (with the concepts themselves transformed by the research process) VS. Elite/A Priori: Concepts are static (developed and applied by the research to those under investigation

what is the level of measurement for a Categorical Variable

Nominal variables: Variables whose attributes have only the characteristics of exhaustiveness and mutual exclusiveness (e.g., biological sex).

Theory

One's understanding of how something works.

Openness

Openness is means that a theory is open to other possibilities. It especially important in the practical paradigm.

what is the level of measure for continuous variables?

Ordinal measures: Variables with attributes we can logically rank-order (e.g., education). Interval measures: A level of measurement describing a variable whose attributes are rank-ordered and have equal distances between adjacent attributes (e.g., Fahrenheittemperature). Ratio measures: A level of measurement describing a variable whose attributes are rank-ordered and have all the qualities of nominal, ordinal, and interval measures, and in addition are based on a "true zero" point (e.g., age).

The Phenomenological Tradition

Phenomenology deals with how interpretation of phenomena occurs

4 dimensions of a theory

Philosophical Assumptions, Concepts, Explanations, and Principles *Most scholars believe that to be a theory, it must consist of at least the first three dimensions

Epistemological concerns...

Positivism and Anti-Positivism

Ontological Concerns...

Realism and nominalism

Realism

Reality is external to the individual. There is a real world out there. No matter how we perceive these or name them, they still exist.

Anti-positivism

Reality is more personal and subjective, the result of reflection and insight. Anti-positivism sees the world as relativistic and reject the possibility of any kind of objective standpoint.

Positivism

Reality is something objective and real, capable of being knownwith logical and mathematical proof. Positivism seeks to explain and predict what happens in the social world by search for regularities and causal relationships.

Nominalism

Reality is the product of cognition - a product of human mind. Universals are mere names without any corresponding reality. There are only concepts, created by humans, in order to describe the world.

***The Sociopsychological Tradition

Research deals with the individual human mind - the mind is seen as the locus for processing and understanding information. •Much of the work has focused on persuasion and attitude change -how humans develop, process, and strategize message and the effects of messages on individuals. •The sociopsychological tradition can be divided into three large branches: (1) the behavioral branch: (How people actually behave in communication situations); (2) the cognitive branch: (How individuals acquire, store, and process information in a way that leads to behavioral outputs); (3) the biological branch: (the effects of brain function and structure, neurochemistry, and genetic factors in explaining human behavior).

Radical Humanist

Scholars are committed to emancipating individual consciousness from the constraints that social arrangements have on human development. •The desired outcome is a release of human consciousness from alienating and limiting ideologies that structure the nature of society. •The change itself is not a change to the structures of society but to individual consciousness itself. •Example) Critical Ethnography

Is human experience primarily individual or social?

Scholars with an individualistic perspective focus on the psychological dimension of the individual - the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that affect how that individual experiences and act in the world. •Scholars who focus on the group study social life. These social scientists believe that humans cannot be understood apart from their relationship with others in groups and cultures.

Social Science

Social Science deals with knowledge of society and the social world. It focuses on the socially constructed phenomena, the structure of society, and the activity of its members.

The Sociocultural Tradition

Sociocultural approaches posit that reality is not an objective set of arrangements outside of us, but constructed through a process of interaction in groups, communities, and cultures.

Which of Robert Craig's traditions of communication theory do we focus on in class?

The Sociopsychological Tradition

Whether human behavior is best understood in terms of States or Traits?

The State view deals with fairly temporary, situational conditions that affect how people behave. It argues that human are dynamic and go through numerous states, depending on what is being experienced. VS The Trait view deals with fairly stable, enduring dimensions of human behavior (e.g., introversion or passivity) that an individual generally exhibits across situations - It believes that people are mostly predictable because they display more or less consistent characteristics across time.

The Semiotic Tradition

The basic concept is the symbol (a complex sign with many meanings). The study of signs

Epistemology

The branch of philosophy that studies knowledge. *Questions regarding knowledge.

To what extent do humans make real choices?

The determinists who claim that behavior is caused by a multitude of prior conditions that largely determine human behavior - Humans are basically reactive and passive, creatures who simply respond to the world around them. •The pragmatists who claim that people intentionally plan to meet future goals. Humans are active, decision-making beings who affect their own destinies.

Parsimony

The test of parsimony involves logical simplicity. If two theories are equally valid, the one with the simplest logical explanation is better.

To what extent does the process of inquiry itself affect what is being seen?

The traditional scientific viewpoint is that scientists must observe carefully without interference so that accuracy can be achieved. VS. Critics doubt this is possible, believing that no method of observation is completely free of distortion.

Concepts are defined by what two kinds of definitions?

Theoretical and operational definitions

Can a theory be value free?

Theories and research are value free, scholarship is neutral, and scholars attempt to uncover the facts as they are. VS. Science is not value free because the researcher's work is always influenced by particular ways of viewing the world as well as preferences about what to study and how to conduct inquiry.

Is knowledge best conceived in parts or wholes?

Those who take a holistic approach believe that phenomena are highly interrelated and operate a a system. True knowledge cannot be divided into parts but consists of general, indivisible, gestalt understanding. VS. Others believe that knowledge consists of understanding how parts operate separately. They are interested in isolating, categorizing, and analyzing the various components that together comprise what can be considered knowledge.

Tier 2: The nature of the communicator

Three primary concerns about the communicator: (1)The communicator as an individual- the individual and the mental processes, personality characteristics, and traits that affect message creation, presentation, and reception. (2)The nature of the relationship created, maintained, disrupted, and destroyed through communication - those aspects of message that come to play in the interaction between two communicators. (3)The role of communication in creating a cultural community-the role of communication in "creating, maintaining, disseminating, and changing a culture's understanding of reality."

John Powers's Communication Tiers

Tier 1. The Nature of Messages Tier 2. The Nature of the Communicator Tier 3. Levels of Communication Tier 4. Contexts of Communication

Should scholarship be designed to achieve change or is it function simply to generate knowledge?

Value-free scholarship: Researchers believe they can seek objectivity without personal value affecting that scholarship. They claim that they are not responsible for the ways scientific knowledge is used - that it can be used for good or ill. VS. Value-conscious scholarship: Researchers recognize the importance of values to research and theory, are careful to acknowledge their particular standpoints, and make concerted efforts to direct those values in positive ways. That is, scholars have a responsibility to make efforts to help society change in positive ways.

Heuristic Value

Will the theory generate new ideas for research and additional theory? Heuristic literally means serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem solving.

Dependent variable

a variable (often denoted by y ) whose value depends on that of another.; the presumed effect in a hypothesis.

Variable

is a measurable version of a concept or construct that can take on two or more values.

A concept

is an abstraction that describes a portion of reality.

A categorical variable

is one whose values represent theoretically discrete parts or amounts of the thing being studied. The values cannot be broken down any more finely.

scale

the measurement of a single variable (e.g., Likert Scale)

Ontology

the study of the nature of being *Questions regarding existence

Practical theorists belief regarding the dimensions of a theory...

theories should go beyond of how the world is; they should provide a guide to practical action -principles.

A hypothesis must be made up of at least how many variables?

two

Independent variable

variable that is manipulated; the presumed cause in a hypothesis.

To what extent is knowledge explicit?

•Knowledge is that which can be articulated explicitly. •Many philosophers and scholars believe that you cannot know something unless you can state it. VS. •Knowledge is said to be tacit. •Others claim that much of knowledge is hidden - that people operate on the basis of sensibilities that are not conscious and that they may be unable to express.

Tier 3: Levels of communication

•Level refers to the nature of or sphere of communication. •There are distinctive patterns of communication that occur at each level that significantly affect how the message is deigned and presented and how the communication behaves. •The number of people & degree of formality are factors for distinguishing among levels. •Three levels that traditionally have defined the communication discipline -Interpersonal, Group, and Public. •Today we would add mediated, cultural, and societal levels to this scheme.

To what extent can knowledge exist before experience?

•Many believe that all knowledge arises from experience. We observe the world and thereby come to know about it.VS. •There is something in our basic nature that provides a kind of knowledge even before we experience the world.

By what process does knowledge arise?

•Rationalism suggests that knowledge arises our of the sheer power of the human mind to know the truth. It places ultimate faith in human reasoning to ascertain truth. •Empiricism states that knowledge arises in perception. We experience the world and literally "see" what is going on. •Constructivism holds that people create knowledge in order to function pragmatically in the world and that knowledge is what the person has made of the world (phenomena can be understood many different ways). •Social Constructivism suggests that reality is socially constructed, a product of group and cultural life. Knowledge is a product of symbolic interaction within social groups.

***Radical Structuralist (objective, what we look at in class)

•Theorists seek a change in societal structures and relationships. •They desire emancipation, but it comes through the capacity for change built into the nature and structure of society. •Fundamental conflicts are what lead to social change. •Radical change is not only possible but also natural and necessary. •There is a deterministic dimension to this paradigm.

Tier 4: Contexts of Communication

•Tire 4 takes into account the recurring social contexts in which communication is studied in the three previous tiers. •The situations include education, the family, health context, legal settings, mediated communication, organizations, etc. •If communication discipline were defined just in terms of this tier, the coherence of the discipline might be difficult to see. This is why it is important that the previous three tiers are always evident and acknowledged.

Tier 1: the nature of messages

•What makes the field of communication unique is the concept of the message. "The concept of message is the single core concept that most clearly differentiates any communication-centered discipline from all other intellectual pursuits." •The first tire is devoted to the analysis of messages. •Traditional divisions of the field: 1)Verbal vs. Nonverbal communication 2)Signs vs. Symbols 3)Intentional vs. Nonintentional messages