传播学复习要点

Chapter1

1.“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.” It is said by Marshall McLuhan.

2.Robert Cathcart and Gary Gumpert, two media researchers, have called the phenomenon of seeing the present in terms of the past a “media generation gap.”

3.Definition of Communication

Communication is the transmission of information with the intention of influencing an audience. It is a symbolic, purposive, two-way process which is highly contextualized.

4.Characteristics of Communication

Communication Is a Process

Communication Is Symbolic

Communication Is Contextual

Communication Is Purposive\

Communication Is Two Way

5. Models of Communication

(1)Aristotle’s Model

one of our earliest models in his Rhetoric.In Rhetoric, Aristotle provided us with a basic idea of what variables would have to be considered in a communication event: speaker, message, audience, and form (fig. 1.1).

(2)Berlo’s Model

In The Process of Communication, David Berlo provided one of the simplest and most useful contemporary models of communication. Berlo’s source-message-channel-receiver model, commonly referred to as the SMCR model, has six basic constituents:

1.The source

2.The encoder

3.The message

4.The channel

5.The decoder

6.The receiver

In order for us to communicate with each other, we have to translate our thoughts into symbols (encode them) in order to transmit messages. In our contemporary world, we have to rely on technology to encode and decode our messages.

Berlo’s model is linear, and therefore limited.

(3) Shannon and Weaver’s Model

Shannon and Weaver’s communication model (fig. 1.2) introduces the concepts of noise, entropy, redundancy, bit, feedback, and channel capacity. Noise is anything in the channel (or

medium) that interferes with the message.

A serious limitation of the Shannon and Weaver model is that it does not take meaning into account.

(4)Lasswell’s Model

In 1948, political scientist Harold Lasswell came up with what has since been called the Lasswell formula as a model for explaining communication. He concluded that a useful way to describe communication was to ask the following about it:

Who

Says What

In Which Channel

To Whom

With What Effect? 9

Lasswell’s verbal model is helpful because it introduces the concept of effect. The model takes into account the fact that messages are not just decoded by receivers, but also have an impact on them.

（5）Gerbner’s Model

It deals with the nature of the human communicator and the role perception plays in communication. Gerbner’s model clearly distinguishes between an actual event, the way it is perceived by the sender, how that perception is made into a message, and the way the message is perceived by the receiver. This model is useful in describing both communication and perceptual problems. Applied to the mass media, it can also be used to explore how accurately events in the real world are reported by the news as measured by audience perceptions.

（6）DeFleur’s Model

1966, Melvin DeFleur created a communication model that was a development of the Shannon and Weaver model. In DeFleur’s model，the two-way process nature of communication is highlighted. His inclusion of feedback and his depiction of communication as circular suggest that the process of obtaining meaning from messages is complex. Frequently sender and receiver have to exchange roles as they work to overcome noise and negotiate a common meaning.

Generally, the term feedback refers to any response a receiver might send to a source in response to an original message.

（7）Westley and MacLean’s Model

The Westley and MacLean model, dating from 1957, has been influential because it deals with the complex situation of mass communication rather than the two-person models featuring a single sender and receiver.This model (fig. 1.5) has its origin in s ocial psychology and in the work of T. M. Newcomb who sought to represent the dynamics of communication situations by examining how people developed and maintained their relationships with each other.

Building on Newcomb’s work, Bruce Westley and Malcolm MacLean devised a more complicated model to account for communication in the mass media. In this model, A and B are still communicating about some object or topic X. Because this is a mass communication situation, however, A is acting as an advocate by selecting from many possible X s the one that is to be communicated to person B. A’s intent in selecting among these topics is to purposively modify B’s perception of X. A could be a politician or an advertiser, for example, and X could be any topic from our social environment. C is an agent of both A and B. C’s role is to select certain A’s and provide them with access to the channel reaching B or the audience. C’s inte nt is to meet B’s need

for adequate information.

Chapter II

1. Communication plays a variety of roles in our lives and in our society as a whole. Functional approaches to communication attempt to define and describe exactly what those roles might be.

Functional theories assume that societies, groups, and individuals exist as systems and that these systems try to maintain themselves in a state of equilibrium or homeostasis.

Deciding what purpose a communication event serves is not always easy because sometimes communication events serve multiple functions. Although we generally create messages with a conscious intention in mind, sometimes messages serve other functions as well.

Not all the functions of a communicated event may be intended (or manifest): some may be unintended (or latent).（news coverage of stunt driver Evel Knievel’s jump）Functional analysis helps us see how communication events affect the normal operation of a given system. Events which help maintain systems are considered functional; those which cause strain are considered dysfunctional.

Categories of Communication Function

The categories most often used to describe the different functions communication serves are information, instruction, persuasion, and entertainment.

Persuasion

Persuasion refers to that class of messages designed to alter our beliefs or behavior. The key to recognizing communication’s persuasive function is to look for appeals to personal values and motives. The Greek rhetorician Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) wrote about three major types of appeal. He called them Iogos(理性ration), or the appeal to logic; ethos（气质）, or the appeal to character; and pathos（情感）, or the appeal to emotions.

When persuasion is designed to influence human actions by manipulating spoken, written, or pictorial representations, then it is considered propaganda.

Harold Lasswell, a pioneering theorist in the realm of propaganda, argued that advertising also falls into the category of propaganda.

People with whom the listener and viewer can readily identify or look up to are ideal for creating effective propaganda. A similar approach is used in creating commercials. That’s why celebrity endorsements（明人代言）and testimonials are so often very successful.

Entertainment

Communication events whose function is to give us pleasure are called entertainment. Most of the people who provide entertainment events for us are professionals working in an entertainment industry—radio, television, film, or publishing.

Problems with Information

We expect information to be complete and accurate, but the mere fact that information is prepared by human beings means that completeness and accuracy cannot be assume d. People who provide information serve as gatekeepers. They have to make some decisions about what information should be made available and what can be eliminated.

A second problem is that sometimes what appears to be information is really opinion or propaganda pretending to be fact.

Another problem with information lies in the way we bring facts to bear in our individual

lives. When we receive information, we try to integrate it into our existing knowledge in order to make use of it.

How we see the world is shaped by our cultural and personal experiences and these affect how we react to factual data.

Problems with Instruction

Many minority and women’s groups point to implicit biases in instruction when they critique the course offerings in colleges and universities.

Two other problems related to the instructional function of communication are the fact that not all people learn the same way and that not all people have the same motivation for learning.

Problems with Persuasion

The intent of persuasion is to get us to change either our behavior or our attitudes about something. In order to get us to act, persuasion often works on our deepest-held personal beliefs.

In order to avoid having our emotions manipulated, receivers of persuasive messages often have to make a special effort to remain aware of such techniques being applied to us.

Media sources effectively act as agenda setters（议程设置者）.

The news, by selecting what stories we hear about, tells us essentially what it is that is important for us to know. There is currently a bit of controversy among communication researchers about whether or not the media can make us think what they wish, but t here is general agreement that they can at least get us to think about what they wish.

Problems with Entertainment

Entertainment and leisure are big business, and these businesses are driven by profit motives. Some critics of the media—especially television—point to their commercial nature as a major cause of the poor quality of their products.

The discussion of television as the “great wasteland”; objections of many peop le to t he sex, violence, and drugs associated with rock culture

the search for quality is second to the search for profit. Critics of the media as big business would consider much of the entertainment they produce dysfunctional.

It encourages passivity.“ narcotizing” effect；mediated entertainment may encourage social isolation.

2. THE SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION

Mass communication—radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and the like—affects us all. Surveillance

The term refers to the function the mass media serve when they keep close watch over what is happening in the environment.

Just as with communication’s information function, surveillance raises issues of gatekeeping.

Another dysfunctional aspect of surveillance is directly related to the abundance of information available to us in the information age. （overwhelming，overload）

Correlation

It is the function mass media provide when they interpret what is happening in the

environment.

One of the problems with correlation is the issue of agenda setting.

Socialization

Socialization refers to the function media play in teaching members of society what their roles are and how things work. Socialization is often considered a regulatory function. Actually they do teach us about how to be and what to do.

Entertainment refers to mass media’s primary function as a source of enjoyment or pleasure. PERSONAL FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION

The four functions of communication we will look at here include the following: the personal identity function, the social integration function, the cognitive function, and the escape function. Personal Identity Function

Personal Identity Function

On a personal level, one of the most important functions that communication serves is to provide us an understanding of who we are.

Self-concepts are developed through communication.

Social Integration Function

Related to how we feel about ourselves is how we feel about others’ judgments of us. The social integration function of communication refers to the way in which communication is used to

Cognitive Function

we can understand current events because we can remember the past and project our understanding to the future.

Thus, the cognitive function of communication, the ability to internalize speech, frees us of the constraints of time and space because we can use our memory and imagination to deal with the future. The cognitive function of communication also f rees us from our own perception of the world and allows us to see the world through what we believe to be the eyes of another.

Escape Function

All of us use communication to relax, as a diversion, a release, or an escape at some time or other. From the point of view of the individual, virtually any kind of communication can serve this escape function.

Chapter III

Memory is the process whereby we are able to recall what we have learned consciously or what we have retained through nonconsious associations.

Learning refers to the process by which we acquire or modify previously acquired information and skills.

PERCEPTION

Perception is a two-part process. The first part of the process involves use of our sensory systems to apprehend the elements of the physical world which surround us—the sights, sounds, smells of the external environment. The second part of the process involves the integration of

these sensory impressions with information already stored in our memories.

Human Senses and Communication Technology

Television, like film, relies on persistence of vision to create its illusion of continuous motion. Persistence of vision refers to the amount of time that an image lingers in the visual sensory system before it is replaced by another discrete image.

Psychological Dimensions of Perception

The psychological dimensions of sensory processing, however, depend on memory and learning and are more directly related to communication study.

Thus, memory and learning condition our sensory experiences by supplying value and weight to the messages we receive.

Context—as determined by past experience and memory—provides meaning to our sensory impressions and makes understanding and responding to the various languages we use to communicate with each other possible.

State of mind and life experiences affect our perception, and, consequently, affect how we interpret messages we receive.

Attention

the ability to concentrate, is one of the important psychological variables affecting communication.

Selective Processes

Selective perception The perception is greatly influenced by such factors as our needs, beliefs, attitudes, and a host of other mental and emotional factors. Culture, education, mood, attitudes, and motivation are some of the variables that affect perception

we are likely to interpret what we see and hear in terms of already existing psychological factors.

Selective attention refers to the tendency of people to concentrate most intently on those messages that are consonant with their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors and to ignore those messages that are dissonant.

Selective exposure is the tendency of people to expose themselves to messages congruent with the psychological variables and to avoid those messages that are at variance with those variables.

Selective retention reflects the impact of our past experience and preferences on our perception of information. It refers to the process whereby we remember some things and forget others.

MEMORY

Psychologists have determined that the capacity of the STM is 7 ±2 items.

As we learn and develop memories, we develop methods of handling information by placing it in groups rather than dealing with each item separately.

Psychologists commonly refer to categories, which are composites of experience, as constructs.

memories are contextual。

MOTIV ATION

When talking about motivation, we need to distinguish between the motivation of the message sender and that of the receiver.

Physical Needs

psychological needs

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs

Uses and Gratification Research

E. Katz, E. M. Gurevitch, and H. Haas is typical. These researchers surveyed the literature on

needs and grouped the thirty-five needs they found listed into five major categories:

1.Cognitive needs

2.Affective needs

3.Personal integrative needs

4.Social integrative needs

5.Tension release needs.

The core assumption of uses and gratification theory

Susceptibility to Influence

Both persuasion and propaganda are built on the concept that behavior and attitudes can be changed by appealing to our various needs.

Harold Lasswell, defines propaganda as the control of opinion by the manipulation of symbols, by which he means all forms of communication—written, spoken, pictorial, and musical.

Lasswell also included advertising and public relations and most of what we would consider persuasive discourse under the umbrella term of propaganda.

Appeals of Advertising

Humanistic and Behaviorist Perspectives on Motivation

Behavioristic models of human motivation tend to see human beings as reactive rather than proactive.

behaviorist models argue that human beings react to their needs, following a stimulus-response pattern.

Humanistic models of motivation see human beings as proactiv e, as capable of growth and free will. To be proactive means to act rather than respond.

Magic bullet theory: This theory attributed enormous power to mass communication, claiming that well-formed “bullets” of information would “hit” audiences at which they were “aimed.”

The bullet theory was basically a behavioristic theory because it assumed that a well-defined stimulus could be counted upon to give a clearly-recognized response, that humans had

predictable and generalizable patterns of needs and motivations.

Chapter IV

Interpersonal communication occurs between two persons, called a dyad.

interpersonal communication involves talking directly with another person and using all of the verbal and nonverbal codes available to us.

Intrapersonal communication refers to the communication we have with ourselves. we are both the sender and receiver as we talk to ourselves about issues in our lives.

To create one’s self means to decide who one is, what one values, and to determine how one relates to people and to things in one’s environment.

A self-concept is not a static entity which, once formed, remains fixed forever. Rather, our self-concepts constantly undergo modification as our life experiences change us. Sometimes when we are faced with major life disruptions such as the death of a loved one, divorce, or the loss of a job, our self-concepts undergo major alterations. Our self-confidence can get undermined, and we have to make a conscious effort to redefine ourselves, our goals, and our beliefs.

Roles(角色)

Shakespeare :“All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.”

Basic roles are those assigned by cultural and social expectations. They include such things as being a student, teacher, man, woman, parent, lawyer, daughter, or son.

Life Scripts

NATURE OF INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Good interpersonal relationships are based on good interpersonal communication. Through communication, we develop close human relationships marked by high levels of trust, respect, and even love. Happiness and success in our lives at home and at work are dependent upon our ability to build these sound relationships.

Stages in the Development of Relationships

Proximity and Chance

Even though we have the potential for establishing relationships with a number of people, we cannot do so unless they are around for us to interact with over time.

Attraction

Appearance is significant here because in order to have an interpersonal relationship, two people have to be attracted to each other enough to begin communicating.

For many people, initial attraction is based on looks; for others, different factors are equally important. Research on first impressions suggests that physical beauty is more important for males than it is for females. Although females also wanted attractive dates, they indicated stronger preferences for intelligence, consideration, and extroversion than did males.

Disclosure and Risk Taking

One of the most significant ways of gathering information about another is a particular kind of exchange that marks interpersonal relationships. Self-disclosure is the process whereby we tell others things about ourselves in the hope that they will disclose information about themselves in exchange.

Trust and Intimacy

Sharing highly personal information with another person can build trust and intimacy. Trust is essential for relationships to develop intimacy.

Achieving Balance

Balance refers to psychological congruence between two individual personalities.

Dissolution of Relationships

The dissolution of a relationship begins with one or both people’s dissatisfaction with how things are going.

they can do so by reversing the process that brought them together—spending less and less time with each other and gradually fading out of each other’s lives.

MAINTAINING GOOD INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS Recognizing and Managing Conflict

One may be able to resolve a particular conflict, but it is not possible to eliminate conflict from our interpersonal relationships.

Power is the ability to get something done. In an ideal situation, we would bring open minds to conflicts, treating each incident as a problem to be solved through communication.

Avoidance is one major approach to managing conflict. The second general strategy for conflict resolution is accommodation. A third strategy for approaching conflict is competition .A fourth general strategy for approaching conflict is collaboration.

Chapter Five

Size

A group is composed of a number of people who are brought together or who come together voluntarily and who share a common goal, task, or purpose. Groups may be as small as three people or include hundreds of people Groups of from three to twenty-five people are generally called small groups. Groups larger than twenty-five are called large groups.

Primary and Secondary Groups

The group into which we are born is called our primary group; the ones we join later are called

secondary groups.

Being born into a family confers group membership but does not automatically guarantee that communication will be easy and effective. Marrying into a family does not guarantee good communication either.

Secondary groups attract our attention because we are involved in so many of them and because they help define who we are, what we believe in, and what we hope to accomplish. Studying secondary groups also lets us understand how people create and function in groups and examine how these groups affect our values and behavior. Secondary groups include task, support, and social groups.

Task groups

Task groups such as study groups, editing groups, research groups, and problem-solving groups exist primarily as a means of accomplishing specific projects. These groups are generally quite formal. Membership in task groups is often determined by others. Frequently, people are placed in task groups by employers, teachers, or others with authority over us.

support groups

Support groups are referential in nature; that is they serve as reference points for us on major questions of belief and identification.

social groups

A social group exhibits some degree of social cohesion(凝聚力)and is more than a simple collection or aggregate of individuals. Characteristics shared by members of a group may

include interests, values, representations, ethnic or social background, and kinship(类似) ties. The members of the groups contact each other which Ackeema Johnson calls a "regular interaction." This group also should have a common identity, rules, structure, etc.

Task groups of the sort we find ourselves in at work or school, exist primarily as a means of accomplishing specific projects.

In Bales model, there were two different leaders: one who controlled the group’s orientation to the task(t he task leader)and one who influenced group members’ orientation to each other (t he socio-emotional leader).

Identifying these two leaders makes it easier to see how the task leader and group members approach problem-solving and how the socio-emotional leader works with the group to improve interactions.

The linear problem-solving approach: One identifies the problem, explores the alternatives, selects the alternative which seems most likely to succeed given the information available, and then puts the alternative in action. After the alternative has been in place for a while, then its effectiveness needs to be evaluated and changes made if necessary.

Brainstorming: It is a group creativity technique designed to generate a large number of ideas for the solution of a problem. In order to foster this diversity, a leader can create round-robin subgroups. These subgroups can all be assigned the same problem and given time to work out possible solutions. The leader can get people to brainstorm and come up with divergent ideas and share their solutions.