Communication Needs and Practices

Write a 700- to 1,050-word paper in which you detail communication needs and practices with considerations of:
? Possible public sector stakeholders and partners
? Cultural and ethical considerations for public sector communications
? Differing public administration communication genres
Address the following in your paper:
? In what ways does the public sector differ from the private sector in regard to stakeholders?
? Does the purpose of the communication change when factoring in cultural and ethical considerations and factors?
? How do the differing genres affect communication style and practices?
? Should there be training mandatory training for public sector employees in these areas?
Format your paper according to APA guidelines.
Communication Needs and Practices
• Paper/ ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
• no new messages
Objectives:
Write a 700- to 1,050-word paper in which you detail communication needs and practices with considerations of:
• Possible public sector stakeholders and partners
• Cultural and ethical considerations for public sector communications
• Differing public administration communication genres
Address the following in your paper:
• In what ways does the public sector differ from the private sector in regard to stakeholders?
• Does the purpose of the communication change when factoring in cultural and ethical considerations and factors?
• How do the differing genres affect communication style and practices?
• Should there be training mandatory training for public sector employees in these areas?
Format your paper according to APA guidelines.

Week1
Uniqueness of Public Sector Communication
Sep 13 – Sep 19 / 10 points
Objectives/Competencies
•
o 1.1 Determine implications for communications based upon the possible stakeholders.
o 1.2 Identify cultural and ethical considerations for public sector communications.
o 1.3 Compare public administration communication genres.
Learning Activities
Required
•
•
Week One Listen to Me First
no new messages
• •
Business Communication, Ch. 1
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Business Communication, Ch. 2
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• •
Human Resource Management in Public Service, Conclusion
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Media Now, Ch. 1
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Media Now, Ch. 14
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Cultural and Language Communication Barriers: Solutions
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Week One Electronic Reserve Readings
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Assignments
Assignment Status Friendly name Title Due Date Points Unread Comments

Week One Participation
Due Sep 19, 11:59 PM /4

Communication Needs and Practices
Due Sep 19, 11:59 PM /6 no new messages
Total Points /10

READINGS:

Business Communication: In Person, In Print, Online 9 edition

Amy Newman

Senior Vice President, Global Product Management: Jack W. Calhoun

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013934363

ISBN-13: 978-1-285-18704-4

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Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 19 18 17 16 15 14 13
Front Matter
Part 1 Foundations of Business Communication
Chapter 1 Understanding Business Communication
Chapter 2 Team and Intercultural Communication
Chapter 3 Interpersonal Communication Skills
Part 2 Developing Your Business Writing Skills
Chapter 4 The Writing Process
Chapter 5 Revising Your Writing
Part 3 Written Messages
Chapter 6 Neutral and Positive Messages
Chapter 7 Persuasive Messages
Chapter 8 Bad-News Messages
Part 4 Report Writing
Chapter 9 Planning the Report and Managing Data
Chapter 10 Writing the Report
Part 5 Oral and Employment Communication
Chapter 11 Oral Presentation
Chapter 12 Employment Communication
Reference Manual
A Language Arts Basics
B Formatting Business Documents
C Common Types of Reports
D Glossary
Subject Index
Front Matter
About Amy Newman

Amy Newman specializes in business communication at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. As a senior lecturer, she teaches two required communication courses: a freshman business writing and oral communication class and an upper-level persuasive communication class. Amy also teaches an elective, Corporate Communication, which focuses on communication strategy, crisis communication, and social media.

Amy was an adjunct instructor at Ithaca College; Milano, The New School for Management and Urban Policy in New York City; and eCornell, where she taught classes online. She has won several awards for excellence in teaching and student advising and grants to develop technology-based learning solutions.

Amy’s research focuses on social media and other communication technologies. She has published articles and delivered presentations about instant messaging, email, and social media.

Prior to joining Cornell, Amy spent 20 years working for large companies, such as Canon, Reuters, Scholastic, and MCI. Internally, she held senior-level management positions in human resources and leadership development. As an external consultant, Amy worked to improve communication and employee performance in hospitality, technology, education, publishing, financial services, and entertainment companies.

A graduate of Cornell University and Milano, Amy is author of Business Communication: In Person, In Print, Online, 9e. Amy has developed several multimedia company scenarios to accompany the book and maintains a blog, BizCom in the News.
Acknowledgments

Business Communication: In Person, In Print, Online was inspired by my teaching and learning from students at Cornell, and I am grateful for how they have shaped my thinking about business communication and who I am as an instructor. Several research assistants contributed to this revision and its supplements. Without their help, the book would not have the currency and life that I intended: Katie Satinsky, Shannon Comolli, Grace Lee, and Abigail Needles.

Throughout the 9e revision process, I have consulted many colleagues, friends, and family for valuable feedback on book content and, when needed, a sympathetic ear: Daphne Jameson, David Lennox, Maria Loukianenko Wolfe, Peggy Odom-Reed, Valerie Creelman, Joshua Bronstein, Daniel Meyerson, Laura Newman, and Crystal Thomas.

The following instructors participated in the editorial review board for the ninth edition. Throughout each stage of the revision process, they offered creative input that shaped the chapter content and dynamic design. I thank each of them for their valuable feedback and suggestions:

Kate Archard, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Fiona Barnes, University of Florida

Christina Bergenholtz, Quinsigamond Community College

David Bolton, University of Maryland

Dominic Bruni, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh

Melisa Bryant, Forsyth Technical Community College

Marilyn Chalupa, Ball State University

Sara Cochran, Drury University

Cindi Costa, Mohave Community College

Melissa Diegnau, Riverland Community College

Pat Farrell, Roosevelt University

Peggy Fisher, Ball State University

Jorge Gaytan, North Carolina, AT&T

Beverly George, University of Texas at Arlington

Bill Graham, Seton Hall University

Valerie Gray, Harrisburg Area Community College

Mary Groves, University of Nevada, Reno

Teresa Horton, Baker College

Gloria Lessman, Bellevue University

Andrew Lutz II, Avila University

Molly Mayer, University of Cincinnati

Karen Messina, SUNY Orange

Bill McPherson, Indiana University-Purdue

Zachary Owens, University of Cincinnati

Hem Paudel, University of Louisville

Jessica Rack, University of Cincinnati

Renee Rogers, Forsyth Technical Community College

Jean Anna Sellers, Fort Hays State University

Stacey Short, Northern Illinois University

Lynn Staley, University of Missouri, St. Louis

Kathleen Taylor, SUNY-Utica

Sanci C. Teague, Western Kentucky Community and Technical College

I would also like to acknowledge the following reviewers for their thoughtful contributions on previous editions:

Lisa Barley, Eastern Michigan University

Lia Barone, Norwalk Community College

Carl Bridges, Arthur Andersen Consulting

Annette Briscoe, Indiana University Southeast

Mitchel T. Burchfield, Southwest Texas Junior College

Janice Burke, South Suburban College

Leila Chambers, Cuesta College

G. Jay Christensen, California State University, Northridge

Cheryl Christiansen, California State University, Stanislaus

Connie Clark, lane Community College

Miriam Coleman, Western Michigan University

Anne Hutta Colvin, Montgomery County Community College

Doris L. Cost, Metropolitan State College of Denver

L. Ben Crane, Temple University

Ava Cross, Ryerson Polytechnic University

Nancy J. Daugherty, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

Rosemarie Dittmer, Northeastern University

Gary Donnelly, Casper College

Graham N. Drake, State University of New York, Geneseo

Kay Durden, The University of Tennessee at Martin

Laura Eurich, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Mary Groves, University of Nevada, Reno

Phillip A. Holcomb, Angelo State University

Larry R. Honl, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire

Kristi Kelly, Florida Gulf Coast University

Margaret Kilcoyne, Northwestern State University

Michelle Kirtley Johnston, Loyola University

Alice Kinder, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Emogene King, Tyler Junior College

Richard N. Kleeberg, Solano Community College

Patricia Laidler, Massasoit Community College

Lowell Lamberton, Central Oregon Community College

E. Jay Larson, Lewis and Clark State College

Kimberly Laux, Saginaw Valley State University

Michael Liberman, East Stroudsburg University

Julie MacDonald, Northwestern State University

Marsha C. Markman, California Lutheran University

Beryl McEwen, North Carolina A&T State University

Diana McKowen, Indiana University, Bloomington

Maureen McLaughlin, Highline Community College

Sylvia A. Miller, Cameron University

Billie Miller-Cooper, Cosumnes River College

Russell Moore, Western Kentucky University

Wayne Moore, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Gerald W. Morton, Auburn University of Montgomery

Danell Moses, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC

Jaunett Neighbors, Central Virginia Community College

Judy Nixon, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Rosemary Olds, Des Moines Area Community College

Richard O. Pompian, Boise State University

Rebecca Pope-Ruark, Elon University

Karen Sterkel Powell, Colorado State University

Seamus Reilly, University of Illinois

Carla Rineer, Millersville University

Jeanette Ritzenthaler, New Hampshire College

Betty Robbins, University of Oklahoma

Joan C. Roderick, Southwest Texas State University

Mary Jane Ryals, Florida State University

Lacye Prewitt Schmidt, State Technical Institute of Memphis

Jean Anna Sellers, Fort Hays State University

Sue Seymour, Cameron University

Sherry Sherrill, Forsyth Technical Community College

John R. Sinton, Finger Lakes Community College

Curtis J. Smith, Finger Lakes Community College

Craig E. Stanley, California State University, Sacramento

Ted O. Stoddard, Brigham Young University

Vincent C. Trofi, Providence College

Deborah A. Valentine, Emory University

Randall L. Waller, Baylor University

Maria W. Warren, University of West Florida

Michael R. Wunsch, Northern Arizona University

Annette Wyandotte, Indiana University, Southeast

Betty Rogers Youngkin, University of Dayton

Finally, I am grateful to the inspiring team at Cengage Learning. It is a true pleasure to work with this team and their staff, who nurtured the book from a list of ideas to printed copy and every step along the way:

Erin Joyner, VP General Manager

Mike Schenk, Product Director

Michele Rhoades, Product Manager

Kristen Hurd, Brand Manager

Jason Fremder, Product Manager

Roy Rosa, Market Development Manager

Joanne Dauksewicz, Managing Content Developer

Jana Lewis, Content Project Manager

John Rich, Senior Media Developer

Stacy Shirley, Senior Art Director

Amy Newman
Part 1 Foundations of Business Communication
Chapter 1 Understanding Business Communication
Chapter 2 Team and Intercultural Communication
Chapter 3 Interpersonal Communication Skills
Chapter 1 Understanding Business Communication

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After you have finished this chapter, you should be able to

LO1 Identify the components of communication.
LO2 Identify the major verbal and nonverbal barriers to communication.
LO3 Describe criteria for choosing communication media.
LO4 Avoid potential legal consequences of communication.
LO5 Communicate ethically

The Learning Objectives (LOs) will help you learn the material. You’ll see references to the LOs throughout the chapter.

“T-shirts that combine ‘Just Do It’ ‘Get High’ with pictures of pill bottles ore a more than unfortunate twist on your corporate slogan, and I urge you to remove them.”1

–THOMAS MENINO, MAYOR OF BOSTON

Chapter Introduction: Nike’s “Get High” T-Shirts

When Nike produced T-shirts with messages about using drugs, the company didn’t expect a backlash—or did it? Displayed in a store window in Boston, shirts with sayings such as “Get High”and “Dope” weren’t well received by the city mayor.

In a letter to the company, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino wrote,

Your window display of T-shirts with drug and profanity wordplay are [sic] out of keeping with the character of Boston’s Back Bay, our entire city, and our aspirations for our young people… not to mention common sense.2

With the handle @BizComlnTheNews, Amy Newman tweeted to @Nike for an explanation and received this response.

These tweets are consistent with Nike’s statement that the T-shirts were “part of an action sports campaign, featuring marquee athletes using commonly used and accepted expressions for performance at the highest level of their sport.” An article in Forbes summed up the company’s position this way: “if history is any guide, there is a next-to-zero chance that decision makers at the company did not anticipate some public outcry and have a planned response to it.”3

The controversy may have been invited, but the situation still calls the company’s ethics into question.
COMMUNICATING IN ORGANIZATIONS

Walk through the halls of any organization—a start-up company, a Fortune 500 giant, a state government office, or a not-for-profit organization—and what do you see? Managers and other employees drafting emails, attending meetings, reading articles online, writing reports, conducting interviews, talking on the phone, and making presentations. In short, you see people communicating.

Communication is necessary for an organization to achieve its goals.

People in organizations work together to achieve a common goal that can only be reached through communication. Groups of people must interact in order to communicate their ideas, needs, expertise, and plans. Communication is how people share information, coordinate activities, and make better decisions. Understanding how communication works in companies and how to communicate competently will make you more effective in every aspect of business.

But many employees lack the communication skills required by their employers, as illustrated by these studies and examples:
Figure 1 Employers Rate Importance of Candidate Skills/Qualities

• Written and oral communication skills are among the top ten skills that employers look for on college students’ resumes. According to The National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Job Outlook Survey, employers also rated “Ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization” and “Ability to create and/or edit written reports” among the most important skills for new college hires to have, shown in Figure 1.4
• “People who cannot write and communicate clearly will not be hired and are unlikely to last long enough to be considered for promotion,” reports The College Board, based on a survey of human resource directors.5
• The College Board also reports that one-third of employees in U.S. blue-chip companies write poorly, and companies spend as much as $3.1 billion each year on remedial writing training.6
• Two recent Wall Street Journal articles highlight poor business writing skills. One says that although “M.B.A. students’ quantitative skills are prized by employers, their writing and presentation skills have been a perennial complaint. Employers and writing coaches say business-school graduates tend to ramble, use pretentious vocabulary, or pen too-casual emails.”7 Another article, humorously titled, “This Embarrasses You and I*,” says that,“Managers are fighting an epidemic of grammar gaffes in the workplace. Many of them attribute slipping skills to the informality of email, texting, and Twitter, where slang and shortcuts are common.”8
• On a more positive note, companies that are considered highly effective communicators had 47% higher returns to shareholders than companies considered the least effective communicators. This study, by Towers Watson, a global professional services firm, calls communication “a leading indicator of financial performance and a driver of employee engagement.”9
• Employees who are happy with how their company communicates difficult decisions are twice as likely to be motivated to work for the company and four times as likely to recommend their company10

Jamie Dimon uses a common but potentially misunderstood business expression, which means revealing information to outside parties. Some consider the term sexist and racist. 12

Clearly, good communication skills are crucial to your success in an organization. Competence in writing and speaking will help you get hired, perform well, and earn promotions. If you decide to go into business for yourself, writing and speaking skills will help you find investors, promote your product, and manage your employees. These same skills will also help you achieve your personal and social goals.

Communication is the process of sending and receiving messages—sometimes through spoken or written words, and sometimes nonverbally through facial expressions, gestures, and voice qualities. If someone sends a message to you, and you receive it, communication will have taken place. However, when Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, testified before the U.S. Senate Banking Committee about billions of dollars in trading losses, he used a common U.S. business expression. But was his communication universally understood?11

Communication is sending and receiving verbal and nonverbal messages.
THE COMPONENTS OF COMMUNICATION

LO1 Identify the components of communication.

How does communication happen among people and throughout an organization? In this section, we’ll discuss the communication model (or process) and the directions of communication within a company.
The Communication Model

The communication model consists of the communication need, sender, message, audience, and response, as shown in Figure 2. Consider the example of one company acquiring another. Imagine that you are the VP, business development, and need to announce this decision to all employees. Other stakeholders—for example, customers and investors—will have to be informed, too, but let’s use the example of internal communication here.
Communication Need

A communication need—either from the sender’s mind or from an organizational situation—starts the process of communication in organizations. After you and the rest of the executive management team decide to acquire a company, you agree that you’ll announce the decision to employees.

A communication need begins the process.
Figure 2 The Communication Model
Sender

As the message sender, you have a lot of work to do to ensure that the message is received as you intend:

• Interpret the communication context: You’ll consider the organizational culture (e.g., how formal the language should be), legal constraints (e.g., whether you should avoid making certain statements in writing), and the ethical circumstances (e.g., whether employees will be worried about losing their jobs).
• Identify and analyze the audience: You’ll think about the wide range of employees who will receive the message. What is important to them, and how are they likely to react?
• Determine objectives: You’ll identify what, specifically, you want employees to think, do, or feel about your message.
• Choose the medium: You’ll choose a way to convey your message, for example, by email.
• Create the message: Finally, you’ll write the email and get it ready for distribution.

Message

Whether a communication achieves the sender’s objectives depends on how well you construct the message (the information to be communicated). Oral messages might be transmitted through a staff meeting, individual meeting, telephone conversation, voice mail, podcast, conference call, videoconference, or even less formally, through the company grapevine. Written messages might be transmitted through an email, a report, a blog post, a web page, a brochure, a tweet, or a company newsletter. Nonverbal messages might be transmitted through facial expressions, gestures, or body movement. As we’ll discuss later in this chapter, choosing the right medium for your audience, message, and objectives is critical to the success of your communication.

The message conveys information in some form (the medium).

The purpose and content of your message maybe clear, but messages often are obstructed by verbal and nonverbal barriers. Employees may misinterpret your email or not read it at all.
Audience

As the receiver of your message, the audience filters the communication and reacts by doing the following:

The audience filters the communication and reacts.

• Interprets the message: Each audience member (in this situation of acquiring a new company, each employee) will filter the message according to his or her knowledge, experience, background, and so on. When communication is successful, the message is interpreted as originally intended.
• Provides feedback: Employees may be happy about the news and apply for a job to work in the new company, or they may believe the company is expanding too rapidly and will gossip about it during lunch. At this point, the audience becomes the sender of a new message—the response.

Response

As a new message, the audience’s response to your communication begins the cycle again—and is subjected to the same complexities of the original process.
The Dynamic Nature of Communication

You probably know from your own experience that communication rarely flows neatly from one stage to the next, with the sender and audience clearly identified at any given point. Two or more people often send and receive messages simultaneously. For example, the look on your face when you receive a message may tell the sender that you understand, agree with, or are baffled by the message being sent. And your feedback may prompt the sender to modify what he or she says. The model helps us understand each step of the process—but communication is far more complicated than presented in the graphic.

Communication is not a linear, static process.
Directions of Communication

For an organization to be successful, communication must flow freely through formal and informal channels.
The Formal Communication Network

Three types of communication make up an organization’s formal communication network: downward, upward, and lateral. Information may be transmitted in these directions, which we’ll illustrate with Starbucks’ organization chart, shown in Figure 3.13

The formal communication network consists of downward, upward, and lateral (horizontal) communication.

Downward Communication. Downward communication is the flow of information from managers to their employees (people who report to them). From the Starbucks organization chart, we could assume that Howard Schultz, as CEO and president, communicates downward to his direct reports. When Starbucks decides to close stores, for example, he would likely communicate this message to Cliff Burrows (president, Americas), who would then communicate the bad news to his direct reports, the divisional senior vice presidents. This is called cascading communication, which directs information from one level in an organization down to another.
Figure 3 Starbucks’ Organization Chart

Employees have many justifiable complaints about their managers’ communication. A Florida State University study proves the adage “Employees don’t leave a company; they leave a manager.”14 Some of the disappointing results are shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4 In FSU Study, Employees Rate Their Supervisors

Another issue with downward communication is that managers assume their employees receive and understand their messages. From our discussion on filters—and probably from your own experience—you know this isn’t always the case. Employees pay attention to their managers’ messages, but managers need feedback from employees to determine whether their messages are received as intended.

Upward Communication. Upward communication is the flow of information from lower-level employees to upper-level employees or managers. Upward communication provides upper management with feedback about their communication, suggestions for improving the business, and information needed for decision making. Encouraging employees to voice their opinions and concerns is one of the most important parts of a manager’s job.

In the example of Starbucks closing stores, Troy Alstead, as chief financial officer, probably gave oral and written financial reports to Howard Schultz to tell him which stores were underperforming. Lower-level employees may have expressed their frustration about the closings through formal upward communication channels, for example, during team meetings.

Lateral (or Horizontal) Communication. Lateral communication (also called horizontal communication) is the flow of information among peers within an organization. Through lateral communication, employees coordinate work, share plans, negotiate differences, and support each other. At Starbucks, managers responsible for closing a store probably communicate with each other to coordinate messages and timing—and perhaps to console each other during the process.

Lateral communication can be challenging in an organization because you’re trying to influence people but have no management authority over them. This is particularly difficult when the lateral communication is cross-functional—across different departments, divisions, or branches. In these situations, you’ll need to rely on your relationship-building and persuasive communication skills to rally support and accomplish your goals.
The Informal Communication Network

The informal communication network (or grapevine) transmits information through unofficial channels within the organization. Employees share what’s happening in the company in person (while eating in the cafeteria or refilling their coffee cup) and online (on social networking sites and blogs).

The informal communication network transmits information through unofficial channels within the organization.

Without good formal communication, the grapevine will take over. People need information, particularly when they fear change that may affect them: layoffs, benefit cuts, or organizational restructurings. Although the grapevine is surprisingly accurate (75% to 90% according to some studies),15 managers who let the grapevine function as employees’ main source of information miss out on the chance to convey their own messages.

Websites such as Glassdoor.com provide a public forum for current and former employees to voice their opinions about companies. As you can imagine, employees posted negative comments when Starbucks closed stores. This is potentially embarrassing for a company, but there’s little management can do about the site—or any informal communication network.

Rather than trying to eliminate the grapevine (a futile effort), competent managers pay attention to it and act promptly to counteract false rumors. They use the formal communication network (meetings, email, the intranet, and newsletters) to ensure that all news—positive and negative—gets out to employees as quickly and as completely as possible. Savvy managers also identify key influencers in an organization to get accurate messages infused into the grapevine.

The free flow of information within the organization allows managers to stop rumors and communicate their own messages to employees. However, managers face additional challenges at work: verbal and nonverbal barriers to communication.
COMMUNICATION BARRIERS

LO2 Identify the major verbal and nonverbal barriers to communication.

Considering the complexity of the communication process and the many communication channels, your messages may not always be received exactly as you intend. As mentioned earlier, verbal and nonverbal barriers can interfere with the communication process.
Verbal Barriers

Verbal barriers are related to what you write or say. They include inadequate knowledge or vocabulary, differences in interpretation, language differences, inappropriate use of expressions, overabstraction and ambiguity, and polarization.

You must know enough about both your topic and your audience to express yourself precisely and appropriately.
Inadequate Knowledge or Vocabulary

Before you can communicate an idea, you must first have the idea and know enough about it. Assume, for example, that you’re Michelle Gass, president, Starbucks Europe, Middle East, and Africa. In your role, you’ll need to inform international employees that several U.S. stores will be closed. The decision may not affect stores in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa directly, but employees should be aware of the move and should hear the rationale from you—not public news organizations. You know all of the background information and are ready to announce the change to staff. Or are you?

Have you analyzed your audience? Do you know whether international employees already know about the closings, so you can decide how much background information to include? Do you know how much detail about the decision to provide? Employees should know why certain stores were selected, but do they need to see the financial performance of each? How personal should your communication be? Are international employees worried about their own jobs? Should you reassure them about the company’s plans in other countries, or would that just worry them more? Determining the answers to these questions will be important for you to achieve your communication objectives.
Differences in Interpretation

Sometimes senders and receivers attribute different meanings to the same word or attribute the same meaning to different words. When this happens, miscommunication can occur.

Every word has both a denotative and a connotative meaning. Denotation refers to the literal, dictionary meaning of a word. Connotation refers to the subjective, emotional meaning that you attach to a word. For example, the denotative meaning of the word plastic is “a synthetic material that can be easily molded into different forms.” For some people, the word also has a negative connotative meaning—”cheap or artificial substitute“—or they associate the term with its environmental impact. For other people, the word means a credit card, as in “He used plastic to pay the bill.”

A word’s denotation defines its meaning; its connotation indicates our associations with the word.

Most interpretation problems occur because people ascribe different connotative meanings to a word. Do you have a positive, neutral, or negative reaction to the terms broad, bad, aggressive, workaholic, corporate raider, head-hunter, golden parachute, or wasted? Are your reactions likely to be the same as everyone else’s? Some terms cause an emotional reaction that turns off the receiver and could harm your relationship.
Language Differences

International Communication

International business people say that you can buy in your native language anywhere in the world, but you can sell only in the local language. Most communication between U.S. or Canadian firms and international firms is in English; in other cases, an interpreter (for oral communication) or translator (for written communication) may be used. But even with such services, problems can occur.
Poor translations can result in funny unintended messages, as on this sign in China.

To ensure that the intended meaning is not lost in translation, important documents should first be translated into the second language and then retranslated into English. Of course, communication difficulties arise even among native English speakers. A British advertisement for Electrolux vacuum cleaners displayed the headline “Nothing Sucks like an Electrolux.” Copywriters in the United States and Canada would never use this wording!
Inappropriate Use of Expressions

The intended meaning of an expression differs from its literal interpretation. Examples of expressions include slang, jargon, and euphemisms.

• Slang is an expression, often short-lived, identified with a specific group of people. Business has its own slang, such as 24/7, bandwidth, bottom line, strategic fit, window; of opportunity, and as we saw earlier, open kimono. Using slang that your audience understands serves as a communication shortcut. But issues arise when the sender uses slang that receivers don’t understand, either because they’re excluded from a group or because of language differences.
• Jargon is the technical terminology used within specialized groups—sometimes called “the pros’ prose.’ Technology, for example, has spawned a whole new vocabulary. Do you know the meaning of these common computer terms?

Use slang, jargon, and euphemisms cautiously.

FAQ

JPEG

retweet

POS

Trojan horse

VoIP

SEO

hacker

followers

spam

thumbnail

HTML

patch

CAD
As with slang, the problems arise not when simply using jargon—jargon provides a very precise and efficient way of communicating with those familiar with it. Problems arise when we use jargon just to impress others, which can alienate people.
• Euphemisms are expressions used instead of words that may be offensive or inappropriate. Sensitive communicators use euphemisms when appropriate; for example, some consider “passed away” more pleasant than “died.” Euphemisms, like slang and jargon, shouldn’t be overused. Euphemisms for firing people have become a corporate joke; now companies downsize, right-size, smartsize, rationalize, amortize, reduce, redeploy, reorganize, restructure, offshore, outsource, and outplace. In a Merck layoff memo, the president avoided “jobs” or “layoffs.” Instead, a journalist identified twelve euphemisms and accused the writer of “swallow[ing] a thesaurus of business-writing cliches before he began his email.“16 On a website, employees posted memorable expressions that managers used to tell them they were fired (see Figure 5).17

Figure 5 Euphemisms Used to Fire Employees
Overabstraction and Ambiguity

An abstract word identifies an idea or a feeling instead of a concrete object. For example, communication is an abstract word, but newspaper is a concrete word, a word that identifies something that can be seen or touched. Abstract words are necessary to describe things you cannot see or touch, but we run into difficulty when we use too many abstract words or when we use too high a level of abstraction. The higher the level of abstraction, the more difficult it is for the receiver to visualize exactly what the sender has in mind. For example, which sentence communicates more information: “I acquired an asset at the store” or “I bought a printer at Staples”?

Ambiguous terms such as a few, some, several, and far away, may be too broad for business communication. What does ASAP (as soon as possible) mean to you? Does it mean within the hour, by the end of the day or something else? A more specific deadline, for example, January 20 at 3:00 p.m., will improve your chances of getting what you need when you need it.
Polarization

Not every situation has two opposite and distinct poles—usually we can see gray areas.

Thinking in terms of all or nothing limits our choices.

Is a speaker telling the truth or lying? What the speaker says may be true, but she may selectively omit information and give an inaccurate impression. Most likely, the answer lies somewhere in between. Competent communicators avoid inappropriate either/or logic and instead make the effort to search for middle-ground words to best describe a situation.

Although we’re discussing verbal barriers to communication, what you do not say can also cause issues in communication. What if you congratulated only one of the three people after a company presentation? How would the other two presenters feel—even though you said nothing negative about their performance?

What you do not say may also communicate a message.
Nonverbal Barriers

Not all communication difficulties are related to what you write or say. Some are related to how you act. Nonverbal barriers to communication include inappropriate or conflicting signals, differences in perception, inappropriate emotions, and distractions.
Inappropriate or Conflicting Signals

Suppose a well-qualified applicant for an auditing position submits a resume with a typographical error or shows up to an interview in jeans. When verbal and nonverbal signals conflict, we tend to believe the nonverbal messages because they are more difficult to manipulate than verbal messages.

People will usually believe what we do rather than what we say.

Many nonverbal signals vary from culture to culture—both within the United States and internationally. What is appropriate in one context might not be appropriate in another. We’ll explore this further when we discuss intercultural communication in the next chapter.
Differences in Perception

Even when they hear the same presentation or read the same report, people will form different perceptions because of their filters.

When employees receive an email from the company president, they’ll probably react differently based on their experience, knowledge, and points of view. One employee may be so intimidated by the president that he accepts everything the president says, whereas another employee may have such negative feelings about the president that she believes nothing the president says.
Inappropriate Emotions

Although a moderate level of emotional involvement intensifies communication and makes it more personal, too much emotional involvement can hinder communication. For example, excessive anger, prejudice (automatically rejecting certain people or ideas), stereotyping (placing individuals into categories), and boredom can create obstacles to effective communication. These emotions tend to close your mind to new ideas and cause you to reject or ignore information that is contrary to your prevailing belief. Keeping an objective, open mind is important for effective communication—and for you to develop as a person.
Distractions
Multitasking may diminish your ability to communicate effectively.

Noise, or environmental or competing elements, can hinder your ability to concentrate and can affect communication. Examples of environmental noise are poor acoustics, extreme temperature, uncomfortable seating, or even your coworker’s body odor. Examples of competing noise are too many projects, meetings, or emails.

Communication technologies themselves can cause distractions. Can you watch TV, listen to music, and text at the same time? You may think you’re good at multitasking, but a Stanford University study concludes the opposite: “Heavy multitaskers are lousy at multitasking.“18 Another study conducted at the University of London’s Institute of Psychiatry found that “an average worker’s functioning IQ falls ten points when distracted by ringing telephones and incoming emails.”19

Competent communicators try to avoid verbal and nonverbal barriers that might cause misunderstandings. They also choose the best communication media for their messages.

Information overload is an increasingly serious issue at work.
COMMUNICATION MEDIA CHOICES

LO3 Describe criteria for choosing communication media.

As a business communicator, you have many options (channels or media) through which you can communicate a message. The real challenge is deciding which medium to use for your communication.
Traditional Communication Channels

Traditional forms of oral and written communication still exist in all organizations today.
Traditional Written Communication
Travel brochures, a traditional form of written communication, use photos of exotic destinations to lure customers.

Organizations still print slick, colorful brochures; internal newsletters for employees without computer access; financial statements for customers who don’t choose the online option; solicitation letters; and periodicals such as magazines, journals, and newspapers. Complex reports also may be printed because they’re difficult to read on a computer screen.

How much longer will some of these print communications exist? It’s hard to say. In an office environment today, you’ll likely receive few interoffice memos and postal letters. These communications are considered more official and formal, so you may receive important information about your pay or benefits but not much else. Many companies no longer have printed letterhead with the company’s name and logo; when you print a memo or letter, you’ll insert the logo from a digital file. You may receive a report that you’ll print, but it will probably come as an email attachment.
Traditional Oral Communication

Fortunately, people do still meet in person. Face-to-face meetings are the most personal form of business communication and the best choice for building relationships. Traditional meetings include one-on-one (individual), small group (team), or large group gatherings.

Face-to-face is the best medium for building relationships.

At many organizations, flip charts and handouts are still used during meetings and training programs. Some companies don’t have technology available in all meeting rooms, and some believe smartphones during meetings hinder communication. At times, low-tech options may be best to stay within organizational norms and to achieve your communication goals.
Technology-Based Communication Media

Technology has changed workplace communication, providing many options for sending a message. Depending on the type of message, you may choose from a variety of communication technologies.

Communication Technologies
Email, Phone, Voice Mail

Email is often the default communication channel in organizations.

Although they are technology based, email, the phone, and voice mail are considered more conventional channels of communication. Email is so pervasive in organizations that it has become the default choice for communication.20 Landline office phones persist, but who knows for how long, considering that smartphones have replaced so many home phones. People still call each other at work, but sending an email to someone in the next cubicle is common. It’s no surprise that so many people believe email is used too often instead of face-to-face communication.21
Instant and Text Messaging

Instant messaging (IM) and texting are becoming increasingly popular at work. For short messages and quick questions, these channels are ideal.22 Of course, with smartphones, email may elicit an instant response as well, but this varies by organization and people. As you probably know, the real value of IMing is “presence awareness”—you know when someone is available to respond immediately. Although some people consider IM an annoying interruption at work, people who use IM at the office report fewer disruptions23 and believe that IM saves time and provides timely, relevant information.24 One large, global study found that 73% of respondents use IM daily to communicate with coworkers and external contacts, spending an average of 41 minutes per day on IM.25

Texting is still considered quite informal for communicating at work. And texting in front of other people—particularly during class!—may be considered rude. But it’s useful for these business tasks:

• Confirming deliveries
• Sending product alerts
• Providing fast client contact
• Advertising a new product or service
• Sending important information in a meeting
• Providing instant reminders26

Social Media

Social media gives companies tremendous opportunities to connect with people online. Social media is about having a conversation. To promote interaction, companies use social technologies, for example, blogs, wikis, video, and social networking sites. These tools are used on the Internet (for the public), on a company’s intranet (for employee access only), and on extranets (private networks for people outside the company, e.g., customers or franchisees). Examples of social media are shown in Figure 6.

Companies use social media to have a conversation with internal and external audiences.
Figure 6 Social Media Examples

For many companies, social media focuses on user-generated content (UGC), also called consumer-generated media (CGM). This content can be blog entries, product reviews, videos, or other messages posted about a company. As we discussed earlier in the Glassdoor.com example, content isn’t always positive and is one of the more difficult communication challenges for companies. Next, we’ll look at five types of social media and how businesses use each.

After introducing a few examples here, we’ll discuss social media—and other technologies—where relevant throughout the book. For example, we’ll explore wikis for team communication; social networking for interpersonal communication; email, blogs, and instant messaging for written communication; user-generated content for customer communication; and video for oral presentations.

Blogs. Companies use blogs to connect with employees and customers. Successful blogs are updated regularly with news or commentary, and many encourage interactivity through comments, email subscriptions, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to share news and other content. Of the Fortune 500 companies, 139 (28%) have corporate blogs, with the highest percentage (40%) coming from the telecommunications industry27

Wegmans, a regional supermarket, has an active blog called “Fresh Stories” to educate and engage customers—and keep them coming back. The blog includes videos, photos, and posts by CEO Danny Wegman. In one recent post, the CEO wrote,

Visit the author’s blog at www.bizcominthenews.com for current communication examples.

With the spring season upon us (we hope! It’s been a cold April in the Rochester area), I wanted to kick off the season with a fresh story from the farm. I’m hoping you’ll start sharing your growing stories and questions as we experience this new season together!28

With a blog, a CEO can build direct relationships with customers and personalize the company, particularly with a conversational style such as Danny Wegman’s.

The Wegmans blog also allows open comments, which are not always positive. Following the earthquake and tsunami disasters in Japan, one customer wrote, “I would like to see Wegmans train their cashiers to not ask me 50 times to donate.… NO MEANS NO.” Although this is embarrassing to the company, at least the open blog gives representatives the opportunity to respond, as someone did quickly: “We’re sorry to hear about your recent experience at the checkout. Our cashiers have not been instructed to ask for donations, but some of them have done so on their own. We’ll share your comments with our folks at Warrington.”29 Negative comments from customers give companies the chance to improve service.

A vlog is simply a video form of a blog. Instead of primarily text, this type of blog is like Internet television.

Microblogs. Microblogs are used for short messages with timely information. Twitter, a popular microblogging site, allows for only 140 characters per message. Although Twitter feels like a social network, relationships with “followers” are weak and primarily one-way (for updates only).30,31 As a college student, you may not be excited about Twitter: only 31% of 18- to 24-year olds are on Twitter,32 and about 23% are on Tumblr,33 although these numbers are increasing.
Figure 7 Kevin Smith’s Tweet About Southwest Airlines

As a business tool, Twitter is useful for reporting news and connecting with customers. With a well-established online presence, Southwest Airlines, for example, can quickly respond to customers’ concerns. The tweets in Figures 7 and 8 illustrate a partial Twitter exchange between Kevin Smith, a popular filmmaker, and Southwest Airlines after Smith was asked to give up his seat for being “too fat to fly.”

Although most companies avoid public criticism, Southwest’s active online presence provided a forum for the company to apologize to Smith and present its perspective on the incident.

Multimedia. Multimedia may incorporate several forms of media. Corporate videos, for example, can promote products and services, illustrate product functionality, address crisis situations, and excite prospective employees. Deloitte Consulting held a contest—the Deloitte Film Festival—for employees to create videos showing what it’s like to work at the company. The videos were fun for employees to create and watch, and examples posted on YouTube became an effective recruiting tool.
Figure 8 Southwest’s Response to Kevin Smith

Pinterest, a social photo-sharing site, has been wildly popular since its inception in 2010. With over 4 million unique visitors a day34 the site is a retailer’s dream, although some reports show low conversion rates, that is, the percentage of users who actually buy something.35

If you have used iTunes, you know what a podcast is. People download and listen to these audio and video files at their desktop computers or on the go. Companies use podcasts to provide portable audio or video content about their products and services.

Wikis. Wikis are online spaces where people collaborate. Wikipedia, for example, allows people to edit a web page to co-create content. Within a company, wikis allow workgroups to share documents and track revisions, schedule team meetings, communicate online, and manage deadlines. With more web content moving to “the cloud” (stored centrally on the Internet), wikis are popular for small group work, as we’ll see in Chapter 2.

Social Networking. If you use Facebook, you’re familiar with social networking. Under the social media umbrella, social networking sites are for communities of people who share common interests or activities. Facebook has certainly evolved from its collegiate roots, with the average user now 40.5 years old.36 The site has been aging steadily, and some reports show, now that mom and dad are on Face-book, it’s less intriguing for young teens, who are frequenting Twitter and Tumblr instead.37 As a business student, you might be registered on Linkedln, the popular professional networking site.

Social networking is a subset of social media.

Participate in discussions about current news at Facebook.com/bizcominthenews.

Social networking tools often are integrated into other social media platforms. For example, companies install social networking software on their intranets to connect employees within the organization. Google+, a relatively new entrant into the social media world, is, according to Google, a “social layer” rather than a social network. Although some analysts don’t see the distinction, Google+ maybe more of a social destination—and the evolution of Google itself.38 In Chapter 3, we’ll explore how companies use social networking to connect with customers and employees.
Choosing Communication Media

Given all of these media choices, which is best for your message? You should always consider your audience and communication objectives first. What do you want your audience to do, think, or feel differently as a result of your message, and what’s the best medium to achieve this?

Although perceptions of communication media vary, we can think of our choices along the continuum shown in Figure 9. Do you agree with this sequence? From your own experience and perspective, which would you move, and why? For example, is a text message more personal than an email because it’s sent immediately to someone’s phone?
Figure 9 Continuum of Communication Medio

As you plan your messages, you also might find the considerations in Figure 10 useful.
Figure 10 Considerotions For Choosing Communication Media

Companies often will use multiple communication channels as part of a large communication strategy. Sending multiple messages through a variety of communication media helps the company reach different audiences. To announce a company acquisition, for example, executives may hold a conference call with analysts, meet with the management team in person, send an email to all employees, and post a video on the company intranet. This coordination is part of a strategic communication plan, typically created at senior levels in an organization.
Convergence of Communication Media

Technology is blurring many forms of communication—oral and written, face-to-face and online. Imagine that you’re meeting with a customer in person and send a text to someone back at the office to ask a quick product question. Or, you’re on a phone call and respond to an IM. These examples could be considered multicommunicating, or synchronous (at the same time), overlapping conversations.39

Multicommunicating can be effective—up to a point. As you can imagine, with too many conversations going at the same time, it’s easy to get confused. And you can be effective at multicommunicating only if people around you tolerate this. In some work situations, texting during a meeting may be acceptable, but not in others. Pay attention to what your respected peers do, and adjust your behavior to match theirs.

Communication technologies themselves are also connecting and converging. Mashups, for example, are web applications or pages that combine content from different sources. Geolocation services such as Foursquare display mashups based on where you are. Some programs allow you to open an email and listen to an attached voice message or open a text and watch a video. What will distinguish email, IM, and texting in the future if communication becomes more and more immediate? This remains to be seen.
POTENTIAL LEGAL CONSEQUENCES OF COMMUNICATION

LO4 Avoid potential legal consequences of communication.

In a business environment, we need to consider legal consequences—and other repercussions—of our communication. When you work for a company, anything you write and say may become public if your company is sued or is part of a government investigation. During legal discovery, the company must produce evidence related to an inquiry, including emails, IMs, recorded phone conversations, voice mail messages, and other communications the attorneys believe are relevant.

All company communications may become public during legal battles.

General David Petraeus, former head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), shocked the world when he resigned because of an extramarital affair with his biographer. How was the affair discovered? Email messages were sent between others involved in the situation, including another military official, who sent between 20,000 and 30,000 pages of emails and attachments described as “flirtatious” to a Florida “socialite.”40
Former CIA Director General Petraeus with Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom he had an affair, which was discovered through email messages.

In the CIA case, email messages became public as part of a broader investigation of impropriety; however, messages themselves may be the impetus for a lawsuit. An American Management Association study found that 15% of U.S. companies fought legal claims based on employees’ email.41

When you join a company, you will probably sign several policies about communicating at work. These are designed to protect the company against lawsuits, public relations nightmares, and breaches of confidentiality privacy, and security. Your company may provide guidelines, such as the following examples from Time Warner Cable’s (TWC) social media policy:

• Follow copyright, fair use, and financial disclosure laws.
• Don’t publish confidential or other proprietary information.
• Don’t cite or reference clients, partners, or suppliers without their prior approval. When a reference is made, where possible, link back to the source.
• When communicating online, behave professionally and with the utmost respect for those individuals involved in the discussion. Ethnic slurs, personal insults, foul language, or conduct that would not be acceptable in TWC’s workplace should not be used.
• On social networks where you identify yourself as an employee of TWC, be mindful that the content posted will be visible to coworkers, customers, and partners. Make sure the information posted is the most professional reflection of your opinions and beliefs.
• Do not insult or disparage TWC, its products and services, or any fellow employees, even if specific names are not mentioned.42

Apple’s social media policy—which was leaked (a violation of the policy itself)—concludes with this sound advice for all employees:

In sum, use your best judgment. Remember there maybe consequences to what you post or publish online, including discipline . …43

You can protect yourself and your company by paying careful attention to what you put in writing and what you say. A law firm suggests asking yourself, “Would I be comfortable two years from now being cross-examined in federal court in front of a jury about the content of this email I am about to send?”44 If you wouldn’t, then don’t send the email. You might ask yourself the same question for all communications related to your company.
ETHICS AND COMMUNICATION

LO5 Communicate ethically.

Ethics in Communication

Beyond the legal requirements, companies will expect you to communicate ethically. Consider this situation: Brian Maupin, a Best Buy employee, posted videos about the company on YouTube.45 His first cartoon video, which received over 3.3 million views within two weeks, mocked a customer of “Phone Mart,” desperate for the latest version of the iPhone (Figure 11).

Maupin was suspended, and before being invited back, he published another video poking fun at the company’s policies. The interaction depicted in the second video, between the store employee and the woman who “run[s] the ethics department” at the corporate office, illustrates gray areas in communication ethics—and the importance of social media policies.

Was Maupin’s behavior ethical? Most corporate executives would consider the videos disparaging to the company. Although Maupin didn’t expect the videos to be such a huge success, he still publicly disagreed with sales policies, questioned loyalty to a top Best Buy supplier (Apple), and insulted customers. Things worked out fine for Maupin, but negative comments about your company—or people—are best kept private.
Figure 11 Best Buy Employee Posts a Video

Each of us has a personal code of ethics, or system of moral principles, that go beyond legal rules to tell us how to act. Our ethics represent our personal belief about whether something is right or wrong. As children, we begin forming our ethical standards based on how we perceive the behavior of our parents, other adults, and our peer group.

Consider professional, social, and individual ethics.

Let’s consider three types of ethics:

• Professional ethics are defined by an organization (such as Best Buy or The Public Relations Society of America). Employees and members are expected to follow these guidelines, which define what is right or wrong in the workplace—often beyond established laws. For example, 97% of Fortune 500 companies protect their employees from discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation. This goes beyond the U.S. federal legal requirement.46
• Social ethics are defined by society. For example, although accepting gifts from suppliers is strictly frowned upon in North American societies, this practice may be common place and accepted in other societies.
• Individual ethics are defined by the person and are based on family values, heritage, personal experience, and other factors. For example, most universities have guidelines to deter plagiarism. In addition to the guidelines that represent professional ethics, you probably have your own beliefs about cheating.

What Affects Ethical Behavior

According to ethicists, when people make unethical decisions, they do so for one of three reasons:

1. We do what’s most convenient. In other words, we take the easy route.
2. We do what we must to win. Some people think that embracing ethics would limit their ability to succeed—that “good guys finish last.”
3. We rationalize our choices. We decide that the decision we make depends on the particular circumstances (this is called situational ethics).

The corporate culture affects ethics. If everyone spends time during the workday on Facebook, you are likely to do the same (the “everybody-does-it” defense). If managers are aware of unethical practices and don’t stop them, they are condoning these actions.

Ethics are affected by the corporate culture.

How much freedom an organization gives an employee to behave unethically also affects behavior. At fast-food restaurants, for example, one employee takes your order and receives your payment, and another employee fills the order. This means that the person filling your order doesn’t handle the money, and the person who handles the money doesn’t fill your order. In this case, less opportunity for theft occurs.

When a strict code of ethics is in effect and enforced, employees have fewer opportunities to be unethical. Employees know what is expected of them and what happens if they fail to live up to these expectations, which is why a clearer policy at Best Buy may have helped Brian Maupin.
Ethics Pays

Companies do well by doing good.

Companies that are considered the most ethical outperform the S&P 500 and FTSE 100. The Ethisphere Institute identifies an annual list of ethical companies based on their corporate citizenship and responsibility, innovation that contributes to public well-being, executive leadership and tone from the top, and other criteria. Gap Inc., for example, appears on the Ethisphere list—and on the list of “Best Corporate Citizens,” published by Corporate Responsibility Magazine. On its website, shown in Figure 12, you can see how Gap promotes its social responsibility47

Many companies are including corporate social responsibility (CSR) into their business model. CSR (or being socially responsible) means that companies consider the public’s interest in their business practices. CSR extends beyond a solely numbers-driven measurement of success and instead encourages focus on a triple bottom line of people, planet, profit. Progressive companies consider CSR good for business—and the right thing to do.
Figure 12 Gap Promotes Its Social Responsibility
Framework for Ethical Decision Making

When faced with an ethical decision, consider the factors shown in Figure 13.

In addition to ethical decisions, we face communications that challenge us to be responsible and appropriate. When a recent law school graduate, Dianna, sent emails to her prospective employer (a criminal defense attorney),48 she didn’t think about the consequences. In an email, she stated that she decided not to accept the firm’s job offer. However, William, her hiring manager, had a different perspective: that she had already accepted the job. He said that he had finished preparing a computer and ordering office supplies for her. If William’s version is true, most people would probably agree that Dianna’s decision was unethical.
Figure 13 Framework for Ethical Decision Making

Beyond the ethics of the decision, were Dianna and William’s communications responsible and appropriate? Dianna sent an email and left a voice mail message at 9:30 p.m., when William would not likely be in the office. She certainly could have chosen a more appropriate medium for her message, perhaps a phone call during business hours. William responded to Dianna’s email with anger, writing that her email “smacks of immaturity.” Dianna could have let it go, but she responded, questioning William’s legal knowledge. Not to be outdone, William responded and warned her to avoid “pissing off more experienced lawyers.” Did the exchange end there? Of course not. Dianna sent one final email with three words: “bla bla bla.” William then forwarded the email chain, which was forwarded again and again, until it became viral and made ABC Nightly News. Both Dianna and William could have taken the high road and ended the exchange earlier. Their angry, belittling, back-and-forth dialog did not reflect professional business behavior.

You’ll find this entire email exchange on www.bizcominthenews.com, under Company Samples.
Communicating Ethically

According to one communication professor,

Much of what is controversial in the workplace today revolves around ethics and the way people express their views.… Ethics is inextricably tied to communication. The rhetorical acts of persuading or of simply passing on information are deeply influenced by individual ethical perspectives.49

When communicating, we constantly make decisions regarding what information to include and what information to exclude from our messages. For the information that is included, we make conscious decisions about how to phrase the message, how much to emphasize each point, and how to organize the message. According to one business survey, 63% of the managers surveyed stated that misleading communications had undermined their trust in companies.50

When communicating, we constantly make decisions with ethical implications.

Communication decisions have legal and ethical dimensions—both for you as the writer and for the organization. For example, Reebok was fined $25 million by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for making false claims about shoes. It turns out, you can’t tone your physique just by wearing the company’s sneakers. The company advertised its EasyTone products on claims such as “You can work your hamstrings and calves up to 11% harder” but, according to the FTC, provided insufficient evidence to support the results. In response, Reebok issued this statement:

We have received overwhelmingly enthusiastic feedback from thousands of EasyTone customers, and we remain committed to the continued development of our EasyTone line of products.

Business communicators consider the impact of their messages to ensure that receivers are not deceived.
INTRODUCING THE 3PS (PURPOSE, PROCESS, PRODUCT) MODEL

Every chapter in this text concludes with a 3Ps model to illustrate important communication concepts covered in the chapter. These short case studies, which relate to each chapter introduction, include the purpose, the process, and the product (the 3Ps). The purpose defines the situation and discusses the need for a particular communication task. The process is a series of questions that provides step-by-step guidance for accomplishing the communication. Finally, the product is the result—the final communication.

The 3Ps model guides you step-by-step through a typical communication by posing and answering relevant questions about each aspect of the message.

The 3Ps model demonstrates examples of communication so that you can see the process of communicating, not just the results. This approach helps you focus on one aspect of your communication at a time. Using the 3Ps in your own communication will help you produce messages more easily and deliver a better result. Pay particular attention to the questions in the process section, and ask yourself similar questions as you prepare your own messages.
3Ps in ACTION: An Ethical Decision at a Retail Company

Purpose

Imagine that you work in the marketing department for a clothing retailer. Your manager, the director of marketing for junior wear, is particularly interested in increasing sales among the 14- to 19-year-old age demographic. She has what she thinks is a great idea: a campaign aPout Pody image—something dramatic that will capture attention. Like UrPan Outfitters’ “Eat Less” T-shirts on a thin model,51 these clothes will get a lot of social media Puzz, which your manager thinks will Pe good publicity, even if some comments are negative. She wants you to create a series of slogans to appear on T-shirts and other apparel.

You plan to research how similar retail campaigns turned out, Put first you want to consider your manager’s request from an ethical perspective.

Process

To help you decide whether to accept the project, you use the Framework for Ethical Decision Making. You choose the following questions because they are most relevant to the situation:

1. Is the action legal? Yes, as far as you know, no laws regulate slogans on clothing.
2. Who will be affected by my decision and how? Teenagers will see the advertisements and may be influenced by them. If they buy and wear the clothes, their peers may emulate them and want to do the same, which would be good for sales Put may reinforce the teens’ negative self-image.
3. Is this project in line with my values? I knew several girls in college—and one boy—who struggled with their weight and had gone through periods of bulimia. I worried about their health and wished they could have felt better about their bodies as they were.
4. How will I feel after the decision is known? I won’t be happy about having to write these slogans. What will I say when my parents and teenage sister ask me what I’m working on?

Product

Based on the answers to these questions, you try to persuade your boss to abandon the campaign. You’ll bolster your argument with research about how similar campaigns have backfired. You’ll provide an alternative for targeting this market in a more ethical way—Put you’ll let her know that you’re not comfortable creating the new line of products.
3Ps in PRACTICE: Media Choice to Communicate a Decision

Purpose

In the previous scenario, your manager asked you to develop a series of slogans around body image, and you decided not to because you don’t consider it ethical. What medium will you use to convey your message to your manager? Consider that she sent the request to you in an email.

Process

1. What do you want to achieve with your message? Consider both short- and long-term objectives.
2. Why are face-to-face meetings (a rich medium) most commonly used for difficult discussions?
3. What criteria will you use to determine the Pest communication medium for your message? Consider using multiple formats (e.g., email, a meeting, or a report)—perhaps for different points or objectives.
4. What medium or media will you use for your message(s) to your manager? Why did you choose each option?

Product

Prepare your message for your manager. If you chose more than one medium, use one for this exercise. Explain to her why you do not want to create the slogans.
Summary

LO1 Identify the components of communication.

The components of communication explain how communication happens. The communication process begins with a need, which is conveyed by the sender through a message to the audience, who responds, therefore creating a new message. The organizational context and communication barriers complicate this process. These components of communication are used in both formal and informal communication networks. The formal communication network consists of downward, upward, and lateral (horizontal) communication, while the informal communication network (the grapevine) consists of information transmitted through unofficial channels.

LO2 Identify the major verbal and nonverbal barriers to communication.

Barriers may interfere with effective communication. Examples of verbal barriers are inadequate knowledge or vocabulary, differences in interpretation, language differences, inappropriate use of expressions, overabstraction and ambiguity, and polarization. Examples of nonverbal barriers are inappropriate or conflicting signals, differences in perception, inappropriate emotions, and distractions.

LO3 Describe criteria for choosing communication media.

Verbal communication includes oral and written communication. Traditional communication channels, such as face-to-face meetings and letters, still exist, but technology-based communication, such as social media, are increasingly popular for business communication. When deciding which channel (medium) to use for your message, first identify your audience and communication objectives. Consider lean channels for routine and neutral messages and rich channels for complex messages and bad news.

LO4 Avoid potential legal consequences of communication.

Although communication is essential to all organizations, oral and written communication may have negative consequences as well. Email and other messages may be part of a legal discovery process, and inappropriate communication may be the impetus for litigation. To avoid these damaging situations, follow your company’s guidelines and policies regarding email and other communication.

LO5 Communicate ethically.

Beyond the legal requirements, we all have our own system of moral practices that guide our behavior. At the company level, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become part of progressive organizations’ communication strategy. At the personal level, you’re responsible for behaving ethically, which includes how you communicate at work. The Framework for Ethical Decision Making will help guide your behavior and ensure that you communicate ethically.
Exercises

LO1 Identify the components of communication.

1. Identify communication components in a current news story.

Use a current news item to identify the components of the communication process. You may use examples from the author’s blog at www.bizcominthenews.com. After reading background information about the story, choose one aspect of communication and identify the need, sender, message, audience, and response. You may add your own assumptions if you don’t have enough details from the story.

2. Examine your own communication filters.

Looking at the same news story, list at least ten ways you personally are filtering the information you receive. Consider such factors as your individual experiences, culture, emotions at the moment, personality, knowledge, socioeconomic status, and demographic variables.

3. Create an organization chart to identify a company’s formal communication network.

Think of an organization where you’ve recently worked. Create an organization chart for two or three levels of employees. Then add arrows to identify the three directions of the formal communication network.

4. Describe a company’s grapevine.

For the same organization you explored in the previous question, consider the informal communication network. With a partner, discuss how you heard about unofficial information about the company. How accurate do you think this information was? Was senior management plugged into the grapevine? Do you have examples of how management responded to information spread through the grapevine? If management ignored the grapevine, what do you think should have been done instead?

5. Identify communication barriers between a manager and an employee.

LO2 Identify the major verbal and nonverbal barriers to communication.

In the movie Office Space, watch Scene 13, “Flair.” This communication does not go very well. Identify the verbal and nonverbal barriers of communication in this scene.
Scene from the Movie Office Space

6. Identify communication barriers between a retail sales representative and a customer.

Watch the video clip from the fictitious retail store, Aggresshop. Identify the verbal and nonverbal barriers of communication in this scene. Think about the interaction from both perspectives: the sales associate’s and the shopper’s.

7. Identify communication barriers in an episode of Mad Men.

Watch an episode of Mad Men, the television series on AMC about an advertising agency in the 1960s. What verbal and nonverbal barriers do you notice? What could the characters do to avoid these barriers in future interactions?
Scene from the Aggresshop Video

8. Discuss communication barriers.

Which category of communication Parriers—verbal or nonverbal—do you believe is easier to overcome? Why? Share your thoughts with the rest of the class.

9. Adapt jargon for your audience.

Think of a topic you know well (e.g., a sport, a hobby, or an academic subject). Write an email to a colleague who is also an expert on the subject. Include at least six jargon terms that flow easily into the context of your email.

Now assume that you are sending the same email to someone who is not at all familiar with the topic. Revise your original message to make it appropriate for this reader. Which email is longer? Which is more effective? Why?

10. Analyze print communication.

LO3 Describe criteria for choosing communication media.

Find an example of print communication, for example, a flyer on campus, a newsletter, or a magazine ad. With a partner, discuss why the creator of the message may have chosen a print medium. In your opinion, was this the Pest choice? What technology-based media may have worked instead or could supplement the printed message?

11. Explore how a company uses social media.

What’s your favorite company? Spend some time exploring how the company uses social media. Does it have a customer blog, Facebook page, Twitter account, and other online places to connect with audiences? Now compare this company’s online presence to one of its close competitors’ online presence. Which has more online activity, for example, more followers on Twitter, more people who “like” it on Facebook, or more blogs targeted to different audiences? In small groups, discuss findings about each of your favorite companies.

12. Choose communication media for different audiences.

Imagine that you’re the CEO of a retail store such as Aggresshop (described at the end of this chapter and at www.cengagebrain.com). Let’s say you’re planning to redesign each of the 16 stores in the United States. As part of this effort, you’ll need to close stores for two weeks at a time. Working in teams, identify in the communication plan template below which medium you would use to communicate with each audience. You may have multiple communications for some audiences. Include the rationale for your decisions.

Audience

Communication Medium (or Media)

Rationale for Choosing the Communication Medium

Store managers

Store sales representatives

Corporate office employees

VIP customers

Other customers

Suppliers

13. Choose how to reject a job offer.

We’ll discuss employment communication in Chapter 12; for now, consider a situation in which you’re offered a summer internship Put decide not to accept it. With a partner, discuss the most appropriate communication channel to use for your message. Would you use a different channel if you received the offer by email or by phone?

14. Give your manager advice about communication media.

For this exercise, you’ll help your manager be a better communicator. Let’s say you’re lucky enough to have a good working relationship with your manager, and he or she tells you—before the rest of the team—that your department will be moving from downtown Chicago to a suburb. This is a major change and will be Pad news for most people.

In response to this email from your manager, write a reply to suggest that he also hold a face-to-face meeting for employees. Explain why you think this is important.

15. Research a lawsuit about communication.

LO4 Avoid potential legal consequences of communication.

Find an example of a company that was sued because of its communication. Research the situation with a particular focus on the communication that was called into question (e.g., email messages, unclear reports, or discriminatory language).

Imagine that you’re a consultant who was hired by one of the company’s competitors. The competitor would like to avoid a similar situation and wants to hear what you learned about the case. Prepare and deliver a short presentation to your class, summarizing the main points. Focus on how the company can avoid a similar lawsuit.

16. Write a policy about email use.

Draft a policy about employees’ email use. Consider what would be important for a company to communicate to employees about their email communication. Next, search the Internet to find a sample policy about appropriate use of email. You may find one on your school’s website (perhaps you had to read and sign a policy when you first enrolled). Compare your draft to the sample. Did you miss any important points? Revise your policy if necessary.

Then, in small groups, discuss your policy and be honest about how your use of email may violate the policy. Now that you know what is expected, would you handle email differently? Why or why not?

17. Discuss a questionable marketing strategy.

LO5 Communicate ethically.

During Hurricane Sandy, American Apparel sent an email to customers with this subject line:

The email encouraged people to take advantage of the sale if they were “bored during the storm” and to enter the coupon code “SANDYSALE” at checkout on the website.

Some people found the email offensive. In small groups, discuss your view: is this a clever marketing approach, insensitive, unethical, or something else?

18. Respond to an email that suggests an unethical practice.

Imagine that you’re an intern for the law firm Dewey, Wright, and Howe. As part of a team, you’re developing an Orientation Plan for future interns. Your team receives an email from the HR recruiter at the firm.

These email messages are part of the company scenario Dewey, Wright, and Howe, available at www.cengagebrain.com.

In small groups, first discuss the situation and why this is an ethical dilemma. Then, on your own, write an email to respond to Mark’s suggestion. You will want to balance ethics with tone to avoid accusing Mark of anything inappropriate and potentially making him feel defensive. When you’re finished, share your draft with your group members and compare emails. Which works Pest and why?

19. Discuss ethical dilemmas.

Working in small groups and using the guidelines for ethical decision making discussed in this chapter, decide what you would do in each of the following situations:

1. Confidentiality: Your boss told you that one of your employees will have to be laid off because of budget cuts, Put this information is confidential for the time being. You know that the employee just received a job offer from another company Put is planning to reject the offer.
2. Copyright Issues: During peer reviews in a class, you read another student’s paper and noticed two paragraphs of information that sounded familiar. The content appears to be quoted directly from a textbook used in your Introduction to Marketing class.
3. Employment: You accepted a job Put received an offer for a much better job two days later.
4. Hiring: A Colombian candidate is the most qualified for a job, Put the position requires quite a Pit of face-to-face and telephone communication with customers, and you’re concerned that customers won’t understand his accent.
5. Academic Integrity: A friend asks you to proofread and correct his 12-page Financial Accounting report, which is due online in two hours. You notice lots of grammatical and typographical errors.
6. Merit-Based Pay: An employee has performed well all year and deserves a pay raise. However, she is at the top of her grade scale and can’t be promoted.

20. Address a questionable business tactic.

You work part-time at a busy pawnshop in central San Antonio. A number of neighborhood stores have been burglarized in recent years, and the owner wants criminals to think twice before they break into his pawnshop. After thinking about the situation, he posts this sign in the window one night: “$10,000 reward offered to any officer of the law who shoots and kills someone attempting to rob this property.“

When you come to work the next morning and see the sign, your first thought is that it will probably be an effective deterrent. As the day goes on, however, you begin to have doubts about the ethics of posting such a sign. Although you don’t know of any law that would apply to this situation, you’re not sure that your boss is doing the right thing. You decide to speak with him. To prepare for this discussion, list the points you might make to convince the boss to take the sign down. Next, list the points in favor of leaving the sign up. If you were in charge, what would you do? Explain your answer in a brief oral report to the class.
Company Scenario: Aggresshop

Each chapter ends with a company scenario available at www.cengagebrain.com. This first scenario, Aggresshop, is also used at the end of Chapter 8, “Bad-News Messages.”

Imagine that you work for Aggresshop, an upscale women’s clothing boutique with 16 stores throughout the United States. At www.cengagebrain.com, you’ll find Aggresshop’s company blog for customers and employees.

As you’ll read in the scenario, Aggresshop is experiencing many customer complaints about its sales associates’ overtly aggressive techniques (two posts are shown below). The CEO decides to change the sales compensation structure to address this issue.

On the blog, you’ll see examples of several communication concepts discussed in Chapter 1: directions of communication, communication media, barriers to communication, and ethics in communication. This scenario will also help you learn to do the following:

• Respond to customer complaints on a company blog.
• Communicate a change internally.
• Tailor message content and tone for different audiences and communication channels.

To help you practice your business communication, your instructor may assign the following activities now or later in the semester:

• Write customer service standards for Aggresshop sales associates.
• Respond to customer comments on the blog.
• Write an article for customers on the blog.

Endnotes
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Thomas W. Jackson, Anthony Burgess, and Janet Edwards, “A Simple Approach to Improving Email Communication,” Communications of the ACM 49 (June 2006): 107-109.
22.

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23.

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24.

Eulynn Shiu and Amanda Lenhart, “How Americans Use Instant Messaging,” Pew Internet & American Life Project, September 2004, www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2004/How-Americans-Use-Instant-Messaging.aspx, accessed December 21, 2012.
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Sara Radicati, ”Corporate IT and Business User Suruey, 2012-2013,” The Radicati Group, Inc., http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-contentAiploads/2012/08/Corporate-IT-and-Business-User-Survey-2012-2013-Executive-Summary.pdf accessed September 8, 2012.
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28.

Danny Wegman, “Down on the Farm: Watching Our Tomatoes Grow,” Wegmans Blog, May 3, 2011, www.wegmans.com/blog/, accessed May 12, 2011.
29.

Colleen Wegman, “Responding to the Crisis in Japan and How You Can Help,” Wegmans Blog, March 17, 2011, www.wegmans.com/blog/, accessed May 12, 2011.
30.

Dan Zarrella. “Is Twitter a Social Network?” HubSpot blog, June 22, 2009, http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/Default.aspx?Author=Dan%20Zarrella&BBPage=7, accessed July 12, 2010.
31.

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32.

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33.

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34.

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35.

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Chapter 2 Team and Intercultural Communication

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After you have finished this chapter, you should be able to

LO1 Communicate effectively and ethically in small groups.
LO2 Collaborate to improve team writing.
LO3 Communicate with intercultural audiences.
LO4 Communicate with diverse populations.

“We gave this thoughtful consideration and felt the time was right to come out in support of this civil rights issue.” 1

–NORDSTROM EMAIL TO EMPLOYEES

Chapter Introduction: Nordstrom Supports Same-Sex Marriage

As states vote on whether to legalize same-sex marriage, companies must decide how, if at all, to show their support. Their decision could affect whether customers purchase from the brand, investors buy or sell stock, and employees apply for jobs.

In an email to employees, Nordstrom’s three presidents expressed clear support for pending local legislation—and for the company’s employees:2

The email also says that Nordstrom was an “early adopter” of including sexual orientation in its anti-discrimination policy. The retailer is in good company: 88% of the U.S. Fortune 500 have added this stipulation, which gives gays and lesbians the same protections as all other employees.3 Contrast Nordstrom’s stance with that of Exxon Mobile, which, for the 14th year in a row, has denied a shareholder proposal to add sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policy.4

Companies have to make tough choices on such controversial topics. Those that truly live their values of creating an inclusive workplace may follow Nordstrom’s example.
WORK TEAM COMMUNICATION

LO1 Communicate effectively and ethically in small groups.

By definition, people who work in organizations communicate with other people. Working in small groups and with diverse groups of people is one of the most enriching—and sometimes one of the most challenging—aspects of a business environment. In this chapter, we’ll explore ways that you can get the most out of your experience working with and learning from others.

A team is a group of individuals who depend on each other to accomplish a common objective. Teams are often more creative and accomplish more work than individuals working alone; a group’s total output exceeds the sum of each individual’s contribution. As a manager, if you work well as part of a team and can resolve conflicts, you will likely be seen as an effective leader with potential for promotion.5

On the other hand, teams can waste time, accomplish little work, and create a toxic environment. If you have worked as part of a team, you know all too well that people don’t always contribute equally. Someone you might call a “slacker” is practicing social loafing, the psychological term for avoiding individual responsibility in a group setting.

Two to seven members—with five as an ideal—seem to work best for effective work teams.6 Smaller teams often lack diversity of skills and interests to function well, and larger teams struggle with managing their interactions because two or three people may dominate discussions and make key decisions.

If the group is too large, members may form cliques, or subgroups.
The Variables of Group Communication

Three factors—conflict, conformity, and consensus—greatly affect a team’s performance and how much team members enjoy working together. Let’s consider a situation when these variables would come into play. Imagine that you worked for Disney when a young boy was killed by a bus at the Florida theme park.7 To address this tragedy, you are working on a crisis management team with managers from several departments: transportation, public relations, human resources, and legal. To be successful, this crisis team needs to navigate the variables that shape group communication, explained in Figure 1.
Initial Group Goals

Teams work more effectively when the members know each other well—their strengths and weaknesses, work styles, experiences, attitudes, and so on. Starting off by getting to know each other improves the social dimension of your work, which may make tasks go more smoothly and help you enjoy the team experience more.

The group’s first task is to get to know each other.

Small talk about friends, family, and social activities before and after meetings is natural and helps establish a supportive and open environment. Even in online meeting environments, you can post a profile to introduce yourself or spend time IMing to learn about each other.

Too often, decisions just happen on a team; members may go along with what they think everyone else wants. Instead, teams should agree on how they’ll operate and make decisions; for example, consider discussing the following early on with your team:

• What if someone misses a deliverable or team meeting? How should he or she notify the team? What will be the consequences?
• What if someone needs help completing a task? How should he or she handle this situation?
• What if two team members are having a conflict? How should it be resolved?
• Which decisions will be most important for our team? How should we make those decisions?

Figure 1 The Variables of Group Communication
Constructive Feedback

Giving and receiving feedback should be a part of every team’s culture.

Giving and receiving constructive feedback is critical to working through team problems. These proven methods for giving and receiving criticism work equally well for giving and receiving praise.8
Acknowledge the Need for Feedback

Imagine a work environment—or a class—in which you never receive feedback on your performance. How would you know what you do well and what skills you need to develop? Feedback is the only way to find out what needs to be improved. Your team must agree that giving and receiving feedback is part of your team’s culture—how you’ll work together. This way no one will be surprised when he or she receives feedback.
Give Both Positive and Negative Feedback

Many people take good work for granted and give feedback only when they notice problems. In one study 67% of employees said they received too little positive feedback.9 Hearing only complaints can be demoralizing and might discourage people from making any changes at all. Always try to balance positive and constructive feedback. Figure 2 suggests ways to give both positive and constructive feedback.
Figure 2 How to Give Positive and Negative Feedback

Use “I” statements to describe how someone’s behavior affects you. This approach focuses on your reaction and helps avoid attacking or blaming the other person. Use the guidelines in Figure 3, but adapt the model to your own language, so you’re authentic and sound natural.10

“I”statements tell specifically how someone’s behavior affects you.
Figure 3 Using “I” Statements When Giving Feedback
Conflict Resolution

As discussed earlier, conflicts are a natural and effective part of the team process—until they become personal or disruptive. Most conflicts in groups can be prevented if a group spends time developing itself into a team, getting to know each other, establishing ground rules, and discussing norms for group behavior. However, no matter how much planning is done or how conscientiously team members work, conflicts occasionally show up. Consider using these strategies to manage team conflicts:

• Ignore fleeting issues. Try not to overact to minor annoyances. If someone introduces an irrelevant topic once during a meeting, you can probably let it go.
• Think of each problem as a group problem. It’s tempting to defuse conflicts by making one member a scapegoat—for example, “Wed be finished with this report now if Sam had done his part; you can never depend on him.” Rarely is one person solely responsible for the success or failure of a group effort. Were expectations clear to Sam? Was he waiting for data from someone else? Did he need help but couldn’t get it from the rest of the team? What is the team’s role in encouraging or allowing behavior, and what can each of you do differently to encourage more constructive behavior?

React to problems appropriately, consider them “group” problems, and have realistic expectations about the group process.
• Be realistic about team performance. Don’t assume responsibility for others’ happiness. You’re responsible for being a fully contributing member of the team, behaving ethically, and treating others with respect. But the purpose of the group is not to develop lifelong friendships or to solve other people’s time-management or personal problems. If someone is sick, you may decide to extend a deadline, but you do not need to spend 20 minutes of a meeting talking about the illness.
• Encourage all contributions, even if people disagree. You may not like what someone has to say, but differences contribute to productive conflict. Try to respond in a nonthreatening, constructive way. If the atmosphere temporarily becomes tense, you can make a light comment, laugh, or offer a compliment to restore harmony and move the group forward.
• Address persistent conflicts directly. If interpersonal conflict develops into a permanent part of group interactions, it’s best to address the conflict directly. Working through the conflict as a team may not be fun, but it will bring you to greater understanding and a higher level of productivity. It takes a brave manager to say, “I’d like to talk about how we interact with each other at these meetings. It seems like we often end up fighting—it’s not productive, and someone usually gets hurt. Does anyone else feel that way? What can we do differently?”

The Ethical Dimension of Team Communication

Ethics in Communication

When you agree to participate on a team, you accept certain standards of ethical behavior. One of these standards is to put the good of the team ahead of personal gain. Effective team performance requires members to set aside private agendas and avoid advocating positions that might benefit them personally but that would not be best for the team. In baseball, team ethics are clear. If a runner is on base, the batter may bunt the ball, knowing he’ll probably be thrown out (i.e., the pitcher will get the ball to first base before he gets there). The batter makes the sacrifice for the good of the team, so that the teammate can advance a base.

Concentrate on group goals rather than individual goals.

New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez affected the entire team when he admitted steroid use.

Team members also have an ethical responsibility to respect each other’s integrity and emotional needs. Everyone’s ideas should be treated with respect, and no one should feel a loss of self-esteem. Team members should be encouraged to produce their best work, rather than feel criticized for not performing up to standard. When a baseball player hits a home run, the entire team celebrates. When a player strikes out, you’ll never see team members criticizing him.

Finally, each member has an ethical responsibility to promote the team’s well-being—refraining from destructive gossip, dominating meetings, and sabotaging work. When New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez admitted using performance-enhancing steroids, for example, his behavior created controversy and bruised the reputation of the entire team. One team member’s behavior can undermine the team’s ability to reach its goals.
COLLABORATION ON TEAM WRITING PROJECTS

LO2 Collaborate to improve team writing.

The increasing complexity of the workplace makes it difficult for any person to have the time or expertise to write long or complex documents on his or her own. Team writing is common in organizations for sales proposals, recommendation reports, websites, financial analyses, and other projects that require input from people in different functions or departments.
Applying Strategies for Team Writing

Let’s take an example of a start-up business. If you and two friends want to open an ice cream store and need funding—from either a bank or private investors—you would write a business plan. You would probably all do extensive research to make sure the business is feasible. Then, you might have one person write the financial projections, another write the marketing plan, and so on, until you complete the business plan. No one person will have expertise in all areas of planning your new business. When you present your idea to investors, each of you will create slides for your part of the presentation. And later, when you create a website, you may divide up the writing for that, too. Consider the steps in Figure 4 when writing as part of a team.

Figure 5 shows the start of a simple project plan. You can create something much more detailed, or keep it simple and build on these steps.
Figure 4 Seps for Team Writing
Commenting on Peers’ Writing

Commenting on a peer’s writing is useful for both of you. Your peer receives feedback to improve his or her writing, and you practice techniques to objectively evaluate others—and eventually your own—writing. When done effectively giving each other feedback can build a sense of community within the team. Follow the tips in Figure 6 for commenting on peer writing.
Figure 5 Example of a Simple Project Plan
Figure 6 Tips for Commenting on Peer Writing
Using Technology for Work in Teams

Communication Technologies

Although working in teams can be a challenge, technology such as wikis and Google Docs can help you manage documents and deadlines—and may improve your team communication. Wikis are websites where groups of people collaborate on projects and edit each other’s content. At LeapFrog, the toy maker, a team of researchers, product designers, and engineers uses a wiki to “log new product ideas, track concepts over the course of their development, and spark better collaboration between team members.”11
A happy customer with one of LeapFrog’s interactive toys. Product teams at the toy maker use wikis to collaborate on new product designs.

More businesses are adopting wikis to produce these useful results:12,13

• Improved work processes. Wikis make it easy to share information, monitor contributions, and track who makes revisions to which documents when.
• Better collaboration. Because wikis include interactive tools, such as chat and blogging, team members can communicate easily.
• More contributions. Wikis level the playing field, allowing users to contribute equally from anywhere in the world.
• Better work outcomes. With greater collaboration and contribution, users can expect better project results.
• Improved knowledge management. Because information is stored in one central place, knowledge is more easily retrieved and retained. Knowledge retention is particularly important for high-turnover organizations as the workforce ages and more people retire.
• Less email. Case studies show that employees participating in a wiki receive less email and experience a more organized flow of communication.
• Fewer meetings. With better online communication and editing, wikis may reduce the number of in-person meetings.

Wikis are easy to use and can be created for no cost.

The technology behind wikis is relatively simple. Designed as a website, wikis are fairly intuitive to use and can incorporate links, video, message boards, and other web features. With wikis, you can control who can access and edit which information, ensuring privacy and security. Wiggio, Wikispaces, and Google Drive are all free and offer enough functionality for small team projects, whereas enterprise wikis offer more functionality and control for large companies and major projects.
Figure 7 Wiggio Home Page

Although it looks like a typical website, a wiki has an important distinction: any member can post to the site and edit the content. Shown in Figure 7, Wiggio (www.wiggio.com) offers additional functionality, such as hosting virtual meetings, creating to-do lists, and polling and sending voice and text messages to group members.

Google Docs is a good alternative to a wiki for smaller and shorter projects. You can use Google Docs to share documents and revise each other’s work. However, with Google Driue, which is more like a wiki, you can use multiple Google applications and other functionality in one place.

If you’re using Microsoft applications rather than Google Docs, you can still show revisions using the “Track Changes” feature. Although this type of sharing doesn’t offer the functionality—or the benefits—of using a wiki, this solution may be just enough for simple projects. However, when a project is more complex and requires input from multiple people, a wiki has far more options for you to collaborate and build your team online.
INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION

LO3 Communicate with intercultural audiences.

Working with others becomes even more complex—and interesting—when colleagues work in other countries. Intercultural communication (or cross-cultural communication) takes place between people from different cultures, when a message is created by someone from one culture to be understood by someone from another culture. More broadly, multiculturalism refers to appreciating diversity among people, typically beyond differences in countries of origin.

International Communication

To be successful in today’s global, multicultural business environment, managers need to appreciate differences among people. Although English may be the standard language for business, by no means do we have one standard for all business communication. If you want to do business abroad, you need to understand different cultures and adapt to the local language of business.

International business would not be possible without international communication.

When we talk about culture, we mean the customary traits, attitudes, and behaviors of a group of people. Ethnocentrism is the belief that an individual’s own cultural group is superior. This attitude hinders communication, understanding, and goodwill between business partners.

Diversity has a profound effect on our lives and poses new opportunities and challenges for managers: opportunities to expand our own thinking and learn about other cultures—and challenges in communication. Although you’ll learn in this chapter about communicating with people from different cultures, keep in mind that each member of a culture is an individual. We generalize here to teach broad principles for communication, but you should always adapt to individuals, who may think, feel, and act quite differently from the cultural norm or stereotype.
Cultural Differences

Cultures differ widely in the traits they value. For example, Figure 8 shows that international cultures vary in how much they emphasize individualism, time orientation, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, formality, materialism, and context sensitivity.14

Cultures differ not only in their verbal languages but also in their nonverbal languages.
Figure 8 Cultural Values

You can use the Geert Hofstede model to compare your own culture with another via the Hofstede Centre (geert-hofstede.com/countries.html).15 You may find the Geert Hofstede model helpful in understanding differences among your classmates and coworkers.
Figure 9 High- and Low-Context Cultures

We can look at communication differences even more deeply through a lens of “high-context” and “low-context” cultures, the last value listed in Figure 8. According to anthropologist Edward T. Hall, high-context cultures rely less on words used and more on subtle actions and reactions of communicators. Communication for these cultures is more implicit and emphasizes relationships among people. Silence is not unusual in these cultures, as it could have great meaning. Low-context cultures, on the other hand, rely on more explicit communication—the words people use. In low-context cultures, tasks are more important than relationships, so people use a direct style of communication, which we’ll explore more when we discuss how to organize a message.16 See examples of high- and low-context cultures along a continuum in Figure 9.

Let’s see how McDonald’s adapts its website to cultures around the world. The company’s Philippine website, shown in Figure 10, shows groups of people interacting.17 This might appeal to the Filipinos people, who are part of a collectivist society. The emphasis here is on family and relationships.

Contrast the Philippine website with two designed for individualist societies—those of Germany and Switzerland (Figure 11). In both of these examples, products and promotions are emphasized rather than people. The German example focuses on McDonald’s breakfast sandwich, while the Swiss example highlights a new method of payment.18 McDonald’s digital strategy is to have dynamic content on their websites, which each country updates frequently to best communicate messages for its own culture.

Companies customize their websites in other ways too. Site navigation for high-context cultures, for example, might include subtle guidance and new pages opening in several new browser windows. This strategy allows the user to select new entry points for further exploration. But for low-context cultures, which tend to have more linear thought patterns, navigational cues may be more explicit, and new pages will open within the current window, to allow the user to go back and forth easily.19

We all interpret events through our own mental filter, and that filter is based on our unique knowledge, experiences, and perspectives. For example, the language of time is as different among cultures as the language of words. Americans, Canadians, Germans, and Japanese are very time conscious and precise about appointments; Latin American and Middle Eastern cultures tend to be more casual about time. For example, if your Mexican host tells you that he or she will meet with you at 3:00, it’s most likely más o menos (Spanish for “more or less”) 3:00.

Businesspeople in both Asian and Latin American countries tend to favor long negotiations and slow deliberations. They exchange pleasantries for a while before getting down to business. Similarly, many non-Western cultures use silence during meetings to contemplate a decision, whereas businesspeople from the United States and Canada tend to have little tolerance for silence in business negotiations. As a result, Americans and Canadians may rush in and offer compromises and counterproposals that would have been unnecessary if they were more comfortable with the silence—and more patient.
Figure 10 McDonald’s Philippines Website
Figure 11 McDonald’s Germany and Switzerland Websites

Body language, especially gestures and eye contact, also varies among cultures. For example, our sign for “okay”—forming a circle with our forefinger and thumb—means “zero” in France, “money” in Japan, and a vulgarity in Brazil (Figure 12).20 Americans and Canadians consider eye contact important. In Asian and many Latin American countries, however, looking a colleague full in the eye is considered an irritating sign of poor upbringing.
Figure 12 Same Sign, Different Meanings

The use of physical touch is very culture specific. Many Asians do not like to be touched except for a brief handshake in greeting. However, handshakes in much of Europe tend to last much longer than in the United States and Canada, and Europeans tend to shake hands every time they see each other, perhaps several times a day. In much of Europe, men often kiss each other upon greeting; if you don’t know this custom, you might react inappropriately and embarrass yourself.

Very few nonverbal messages have universal meanings.

Our feelings about space are partly an outgrowth of our culture and partly a result of geography and economics. For example, Americans and Canadians are used to wide-open spaces and tend to move about expansively using hand and arm motions for emphasis. But in Japan, which has much smaller living and working spaces, such abrupt and extensive body movements are not typical. Likewise, Americans and Canadians tend to sit face to face so that they can maintain eye contact, whereas the Chinese and Japanese (to whom eye contact is not so important) tend to sit side by side during negotiations.

Also, the sense of personal space differs among cultures. In the United States and Canada, most business exchanges occur at about five feet, within the “social zone,” which is closer than the “public zone,” but farther than the “intimate zone” (see Figure 13). However, both in Middle Eastern and Latin American countries, this distance is too far. Businesspeople there tend to stand close enough to feel your breath as you speak. Most Americans and Canadians will unconsciously back away from such close contact.
Figure 13 Personal Spaces for Social Interaction

Finally, social behavior is very culture dependent. For example, in the Japanese culture, who bows first upon meeting, how deeply the person bows, and how long the bow is held depend on one’s status.

Before you travel or interact with people from other countries, become familiar with these and other customs, for example, giving (and accepting) gifts, exchanging business cards, the degree of formality expected, and how people entertain.

When in doubt about how to act, follow the lead of your host.
Group-Oriented Behavior

As shown earlier, the business environment in capitalistic societies, such as the United States and Canada, places great value on how individuals contribute to an organization. Individual effort is often stressed more than group effort, and a competitive atmosphere prevails. But in other cultures, originality and independence of judgment are not valued as highly as teamwork. The Japanese say, “A nail standing out will be hammered down.” The Japanese go to great lengths to reach decisions through group consensus.

Expect negotiations to take longer when unanimous agreement rather than majority rule is the norm.

Closely related to the concept of group-oriented behavior is the notion of “saving face.” People save face when they avoid embarrassment. When Akio Toyoda, the Japanese president of Toyota Motor Corporation, apologized for many vehicle recalls, he demonstrated emotion and great humility—far more than might have been expected of an American business leader.

The Toyoda family changed the company name to Toyota in 1937 for its clearer sound and more favorable number of strokes for writing the name.21

Human relationships are highly valued in Japanese cultures and are embodied in the concept of wa, the Japanese pursuit of harmony. This concept makes it difficult for the Japanese to say “no” to a request because it would be impolite. They are very reluctant to offend others—even if they unintentionally mislead them instead. A “yes” to a Japanese might mean “Yes, I understand you” rather than “Yes, I agree.” To an American, the Japanese style of communication may seem too indirect and verbose. At one point during Toyoda’s testimony before Congress, the committee chair said, “What I’m trying to find out … is that a yes or a no?” To Japanese viewers, this sounded rude and disrespectful.22
Akio Toyoda apologizes at recall press conference for Toyota Motor Company

Latin Americans also tend to avoid an outright “no” in their business dealings, preferring instead a milder, less explicit response. For successful intercultural communications, you have to read between the lines because what is left unsaid or unwritten may be just as important as what is said or written.
Strategies for Communicating Across Cultures

When communicating with people from different cultures, whether abroad or at home, use the following strategies.
Maintain Formality

Compared to U.S. and Canadian cultures, most other cultures value and respect a much more formal approach to business dealings. Call others by their titles and family names unless specifically asked to do otherwise. By both verbal and nonverbal clues, convey an attitude of propriety and decorum. Although you may think these strategies sound cold, most other cultures consider these appropriate.
Show Respect

When interacting with people from other cultures, withhold judgment. Although different from your own, attitudes held by an entire culture are probably based on sound reasoning. Listen carefully to what is being communicated, trying to understand the other person’s feelings. Learn about your host country—its geography, form of government, largest cities, culture, current events, and so on.

Showing respect is probably the easiest strategy to exhibit—and one of the most important.

Expect to adapt to different cultures. For Japanese business practices, it is not uncommon for the evening’s entertainment to extend beyond dinner. You can expect a second round of drinks or an invitation to a coffee shop. Refusing a drink during social business engagements may even be considered rude or impolite. If you’re not a drinker, think about how you would handle the situation in advance.
Communicate Clearly

To make your oral and written messages understood, follow these guidelines:

• Avoid slang, jargon, and other figures of speech. Expressions such as “They’ll eat that up” or “out in left field” can confuse even a fluent English speaker.
• Be specific and illustrate your points with concrete examples.
• Provide and solicit feedback, summarize frequently, write a summary of points covered in a meeting, ask your counterpart for his or her understanding, and encourage questions.
• Use a variety of media: handouts (distributed before the meeting to allow time for reading), visuals, models, and so on.
• Speak plainly and slowly (but not so slowly as to be condescending); choose your words carefully.
• Use humor sparingly; humor is risky—it may be lost on your counterpart, or worse, it may offend someone. Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou was expelled from the London Olympics after a tweet that many didn’t consider funny23

The Greek Olympic Committee said that Papachristou’s tweet was “contrary to the values and ideas of the Olympic movement.”

People who know more about, and are more comfortable with, different cultures are more effective managers because they reap the benefits of international business and avoid misunderstandings.
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

LO4 Communicate with diverse populations.

Of course, we have much diversity within the United States. Each year, the United States becomes even more diverse, which creates tremendous opportunities for companies—and a few challenges for business communicators.

Cultural diversity provides a rich work environment.
The Value of Diversity

Imagine a work environment where everyone is exactly the same. How would you allocate work when everyone has the same skills? How would you generate new ideas when everyone thinks similarly?

Diversity among employees provides richness and strength for an organization. People from varied backgrounds and perspectives help companies solve problems, make better decisions, and create a much more interesting work environment.

Companies recognize the need for diversity and actively seek employees from different backgrounds. Clothing retailer Abercrombie and Fitch’s focus on diversity is prominent on the career pages of its website (Figure 14).
Figure 14 Abercrombie and Fitch’s Careers Website

Many companies today go beyond thinking about diversity—which tends to focus on numbers of people—and strive for inclusion. Do all employees feel included and welcomed in their work environment? Are they able to contribute fully to an organization, or do invisible barriers prevent people from participating in relevant meetings, making significant decisions, getting their ideas implemented—and, perhaps most important, getting promoted? Focusing on an inclusive work environment ensures that all employees can reach their full potential with a company.

As you look at companies’ websites, you’ll see that many of them, like Abercrombie and Fitch’s, refer to both diversity and inclusion. State Farm, the insurance company, defines diversity and inclusion as follows:

Diversity is the collective strength of experiences, skills, talents, perspectives, and cultures that each agent and employee brings to State Farm. It’s how we create a dynamic business environment to serve our customers.
Inclusion is about respecting and valuing the unique dimension each agent and employee adds to the organization. We recognize that agents and employees are at their creative and productive best when they work in an inclusive work environment.27

Use language that includes everyone equally.

Communication, particularly language, is an important part of an inclusive working environment. With or without intent, people in organizations can easily offend others with insensitive language. ESPN issued an apology for using the phrase “Chink in the armor,” referring to Asian basketball superstar Jeremy Lin. The caption was displayed below an image of Lin on ESPN’s mobile website, and an ESPN commentator also used the phrase (Figure 15). In response to the controversy, the ESPN editor who wrote the caption was fired, and Rob King, an ESPN senior vice president, tweeted, “There’s no defense for the indefensible. All we can offer are our apologies, sincere though incalculably inadequate.”24 Respectful communicators use language that is unbiased and inoffensive.
Figure 15 ESPN’s Offensive Caption
Ethnicity Issues in Communication

Whether you belong to the majority culture or to one of the minority cultures where you work, you will interact and socialize with people different from yourself. In fact, the term minority is becoming something of a misnomer. By 2050, although the non-Hispanic White population will remain the largest group, no one group will represent a majority of the United States.25 Also, most of us represent the minority of some group. If not race, we may be in the minority for our ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation, ability, geographic location, or other groups.

Refer to groups of people according to their preferences.

Terminology used to refer to groups is constantly evolving. The U.S. Census Form allowed people to select from several categories to identify their origin and race (Figures 16 and 17).26 But even these categories may not apply to how each person prefers to be identified. Some White Americans prefer the term European American or Caucasian, and some Asian Americans prefer to be identified by their country of origin—for example, Chinese American or Indonesian American. Others prefer different designations.
Figure 16 Question 8 on the U.S. Census Form

When communicating about minorities—or “people of color”—in the United States, we should realize that what we call ourselves is not a trivial matter. The terms used to refer to other groups are not ours to establish. And it’s easy enough to use terms that others prefer.

We should also realize that ethnicity is not a characteristic limited to people of color; White Americans are ethnic, too. Every ethnic and racial group in the world—7 billion of us—has its own physical and cultural characteristics. Of course, every person within an ethnic group has his or her own individual characteristics as well.

No wonder communicating about ethnic and racial topics can be emotionally charged. Yet we must learn to communicate comfortably and honestly with one another. If we use the wrong terminology, make an unfair assumption, or present only one side of the story, our readers or listeners will let us know soon enough.

Men and women often communicate differently based on learned behavior.
Gender Issues in Communication

Of course, more differences exist within each gender group than between groups. We should be careful not to stereotype and wrongly assume that all women or all men communicate or behave in one way. And yet, recognizing that common differences do exist may help us understand each other better and improve communication overall (see Figure 18).27

Recognize that these differences often (but not always) exist. Thus, a woman should not take it personally if a male coworker fails to praise her work; he may simply be engaging in gender-typical behavior. If a male manager feels that a female colleague is more interested in relating to others in the group and seeking consensus than in solving the problem, she may simply be engaging in gender-typical behavior. Again, these patterns may be typical, but they certainly don’t apply to everyone.

In addition to accepting potential differences between the sexes, we can improve working relationships by avoiding sexist language. Follow these strategies for using inclusive, gender-neutral language.
Figure 17 Question 9 on the U.S. Census Form
Figure 18 Differences in Male and Female Communication Patterns

1. Use neutral job titles to avoid implying that a job is held by only men or only women.

Instead of

Use

chairman

chair, chairperson

salesman

sales representative, sales associate

male nurse

nurse

waitress

server

stewardess

flight attendant

businessmen

employees, managers

©CENGAGE LEARNING 2015
2. Avoid words and phrases that unnecessarily imply gender.

Instead of

Use

best man for the job

best person for the job

executives and their wives

executives and their partners

you guys

everyone

housewife

homemaker

manmade

artificial, manufactured

mankind

people, human beings

manpower

human resources, employees

©CENGAGE LEARNING 2015
3. Use appropriate personal titles and salutations.
• If a woman has a professional title, use it (Dr. Martha Ralston, the Rev. Deborah Connell).
• Follow a woman’s preference in being addressed as Miss, Mrs., or Ms.
• If a woman’s marital status or her preference is unknown, use Ms.
• If you do not know the reader’s gender, use a gender-neutral salutation (Dear Investor, Dear Neighbor, Dear Customer, Dear Policyholder). Or, you may use the full name in the salutation (Dear Chris Andrews, Dear Terry Brooks).
4. Avoid he or his as generic pronouns (e.g., “Each manager must evaluate his employees annually”). This is debatable, but is easy enough to work around with these alternatives:
• Use plural nouns and pronouns. “All managers must evaluate their employees annually.” (But not: “Each manager must evaluate their employees annually,” which uses a plural pronoun to refer to a singular noun.)
• Use second-person pronouns (you, your). “You must evaluate your employees annually.”
• Omit the pronoun. “Each manager must evaluate employees annually.”
• Use his or her (sparingly). “Each manager must evaluate his or her employees annually.”

With all of these alternatives, avoid using “one” as a singular pronoun (e.g., “One must evaluate one’s employees annually”). This is considered too formal for business communication in the United States.

Excessive use of the term he or she or his or hers sounds awkward.
Communicating with People with Disabilities

Managers who want to hire the best employees for their companies go beyond the legal requirements and accommodate people with disabilities. One way to think about people is that we’re all “differently abled”—each with strengths as well as areas that need development. You may have a great eye for design but need help with construction. Toys “R” Us recognizes this with a marketing campaign for “differently-abled kids.” As published on the website (Figure 19), the company promotes toys to improve auditory, social, language, and other skills that need improvement. The perspective that no one is perfect may help you communicate with people at work.

Notice the unnecessary hyphen in “differently-abled” on the Toys “R” Us website.

Reasonable changes in how you communicate with people are typically expected and appreciated. For example, when being introduced to someone who uses a wheelchair, bend over slightly to be closer to eye level. If the person is able to extend his or her hand for a handshake, offer your hand. For lengthy conversations, sit down so that you are both eye to eye. People who use wheelchairs may see their wheelchairs as extensions of their personal space, so avoid touching or leaning on their wheelchairs.

Making reasonable accommodations for workers who have disabilities is part of today’s workplace.

Most hearing-impaired people use a combination of hearing and lip reading. Face the person to whom you’re speaking, and speak a bit slower (but not louder) than usual. When talking with a person who is blind, communicate in words rather than in gestures or glances. As you approach him or her, make your presence known; in a group, address the person by name to start the conversation. Identify yourself and use your normal voice and speed.

Everyone needs help at one time or another. If someone with a disability seems to need assistance, ask whether help is wanted, and follow the person’s wishes. But resist the temptation to take too much care of an individual with a disability. Don’t be annoying or patronizing.
Figure 19 Toys “R” Us Website

Always, everywhere, avoid using language like “Are you deaf?” “He’s a little slow,” or “What are you, blind?” Jokes about people with disabilities don’t go over too well. President Obama—on a late-night TV show—compared his poor bowling skills to the Special Olympics. Even before the show aired, the President called the chair of the board of Special Olympics to apologize for the comment (Figure 20).28
Figure 20 President Obama’s Gaffe

Instead of using potentially disparaging language, use “people-first language,” which respects people’s dignity and avoids labels.29 With people-first language, you identify the person before his or her disability; for example, say, “Alejandro is a sophomore who has epilepsy” rather than referring to “the epileptic”—there’s much more to Alejandro than his disability. Also avoid referring to someone as “handicapped.” We still have “handicapped” parking spaces—an outdated term—but, when referring to people, a handicap may imply a limitation and a disadvantage. A high school in Texas printed yearbooks that referred to some students with special needs as “mentally retarded.” Understandably, parents and students were “shocked” and “appalled.”30

When making presentations, consider the needs of those with disabilities—in terms of seating, visual support, and other factors. As always when communicating, the best advice is to know your audience. Also, see the “unseen.” Recognize that some disabilities are invisible. Be alert and sensitive to colleagues who may have allergies, addictions, or other life-threatening (or even fatal) conditions.

Accept accommodations as a normal part of the workplace. We all need accommodations of some sort, not necessarily a wheelchair but perhaps an ergonomic office chair or a special keyboard. Accommodations are worth the little trouble it takes to include everyone as fully contributing members of the organization.
Communicating Across Generations
Figure 21 Generations at Work

Because people are living longer, more generations are represented in the workforce. You may find yourself working with someone from one of four generations (Figure 21).31

Much has been written about differences among the generations, but according to recent research, some of these differences—particularly the negative effects—may be overstated. According to one study of approximately 100,000 people in 34 countries within North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, 42% of employees say they have experienced intergenerational conflict at work, but the same percentage say that generational differences improve productivity. These numbers are very consistent by generation and geographic region. Between 68% and 75% of employees do adapt their communication style for colleagues from different generations; however, the method people prefer for communicating (e.g., face to face or email) is similar across generations and countries.32

It’s best to be aware of potential differences but—as discussed throughout this section—not to judge people based only on their age. Assuming that an older worker doesn’t understand technology or that a younger worker doesn’t understand the business is unfair to individuals and may lead to bad business decisions. Also, avoid age-biased language, such as referring to people as “old,” “senior citizens,” or worse.

We are all members of different groups with different customs, values, and attitudes. If you think of your audience as individuals, rather than as stereotypical members of some particular group, you will avoid bias and instead will contribute to an inclusive work environment. The value of diversity in business far outweighs the few challenges of communication.
3Ps in ACTION: Addressing Disrespectful Comments

Purpose

Imagine that you work for a U.S. beverage manufacturer, and you overhear Bruce, an employee who reports to you, say to another employee, “Kyle, why are you so slow? Are you retarded or something?” You decide to address this comment.

Process

1. How is the employee’s comment inappropriate? These comments do not reflect the company’s values or the expectations of employees.
2. What is the best way to address the situation? I’d like to address the situation immediately. I’ll ask Bruce to come with me to my office. My intent isn’t to embarrass Bruce, but I do want people around to know that I take the situation seriously. After I meet with Bruce, I’ll meet with Kyle.
3. What will you do and say? When I meet with Bruce, using “I” messages, I’ll reflect what I heard and ask him why he said it and how he thinks Kyle may feel about it. I’ll explain how it affected me. When I meet with Kyle, I’ll explain that the comment is not acceptable at the company. I’ll listen to how he was affected by it. I’ll also help coach him to address such comments in the future (while acknowledging that this may be difficult for him) and to report similar comments and uncomfortable interactions to me directly.

Product

With Bruce, I’ll begin by saying something like this: “I just overheard what you said to Kyle, and I have to say that I ‘m surprised to hear you talking this way. I was embarrassed for Kyle, and I don’t want the kind of working environment where people demean and call one another names.” Next, I’ll wait for a response to how he reacts and whether he’ll acknowledge the issue on his own.

I’ll ask questions to encourage Bruce to think about the impact of his language, for example, “How do you think the comment made Kyle feel?” and “How would you feel if someone said something similar to you?”

I’ll also explain how offensive the word “retarded” can be when used in this way. And I’ll explain the company’s harassment-free workplace policy and how Bruce’s behavior is a clear violation.

Finally, I’ll ask Bruce to refrain from using disrespectful language at work. I’ll place a note in Bruce’s file, and I may take corrective or disciplinary action.

With Kyle, I’ll say something like, “I heard what Bruce said to you, and I didn’t like it. It’s not acceptable for an employee to speak to another employee that way.” I’ll give Kyle plenty of time to explain his own feelings—and to tell me what else is happening at work; it’s likely that this isn’t an isolated issue.

Although addressing such comments may be difficult—and shouldn’t be Kyle’s responsibility—I’ll speak with him about ways he could stand up for himself. I’ll ask him, “Can you think of something to say if someone else speaks to you that way?” If he has trouble, I’ll suggest something like, ‘”Stop talking to me that way. It’s offensive.’”

I’ll also make sure that Kyle knows the company policy for reporting such behavior and encourage Kyle to see me or someone in Human Resources if this happens again.
3Ps in PRACTICE: Tailoring a Message to a Brazilian Audience

Purpose

Imagine that you work in the marketing department for a U.S. beverage manufacturer. You just read the CEO’s quarterly update about the company’s plans to increase sales in Brazil. You have an idea for a Brazilian version of the company website.

Process

1. From studying Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, what differences exist between the United States and Brazil that may be relevant to your communication?
2. What images will you use for your Brazilian website?
3. What language will be most effective in targeting this audience?

Product

Create a mock-up of the Brazilian website using Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, or another program.
Summary

LO1 Communicate effectively and ethically in small groups.

Teams can accomplish more and better quality work in less time than individuals can if the teams function properly. Otherwise, teams can waste time and cause interpersonal conflicts. Conflict about ideas is a helpful part of the group process, but interpersonal conflicts are detrimental. Consensus and conformity can lead to productivity, but too much focus on either can lead to groupthink.

When a team first forms, group members should get to know each other and decide how they’ll operate. They should acknowledge the need for positive and negative feedback and know how to give productive feedback, particularly on team writing. When problems arise, group members should react to them appropriately, consider them as group problems, and be realistic about what to expect from the group.

LO2 Collaborate to improve team writing.

For group writing projects, team members should identify project requirements, create a project plan, draft the writing, revise the writing, and finalize the project.

Teams may find it useful to create a wiki for team writing projects. Wikis can lead to improved work processes, more contributions, better work outcomes, and fewer meetings.

LO3 Communicate with intercultural audiences.

Understanding cultural differences is essential to success in a global business environment. Although individuals often defy stereotypes, consider differences in context sensitivity, feelings about space, group-oriented behavior, and other factors. When communicating with people from other cultures, maintain formality, show respect, and write and speak clearly.

LO4 Communicate with diverse populations.

In the United States, the population is becoming increasingly diverse. This diversity brings great value to companies and encourages us to appreciate differences and create an inclusive workplace. You can demonstrate respect through your language choices about ethnicity, gender, ability, age, and other variables among employees.
Exercises

LO1 Communicate effectively and ethically in small groups.

1. Analyze a team’s communication.

Think about a recent situation when you worked as part of a team. In retrospect, what worked well about the communication, and what could have been improved? Call or meet with one of your former team members to talk through your assessment and find out how he or she viewed the experience. What can you learn from this experience that may help you work with teams in the future?

2. Explain a team’s communication.

After analyzing a team’s communication, briefly describe for the class (in two or three minutes) the purpose of the team and how well you functioned. Describe how the variables of group communication—conflict, conformity, and consensus—were or were not incorporated. Was groupthink an issue? How did the other team member view the experience? In what ways was this similar or different from your own, and why do you think this might be?

3. Provide feedback.

Imagine that you’re working as part of a team to create a five-year marketing plan. Everyone had agreed to have his or her part drafted by the time your team met today. What would be an appropriate response to each of the following situations at today’s meeting? Discuss your responses in small groups.

a. Fred did not have his part ready (although this is the first time he is late).
b. Thales did not have his part ready (the third time this year he has missed a deadline).
c. Anita not only had her part completed Put also had drafted an attractive design for the final document.
d. Sunggong was 45 minutes late for the meeting because his car had skidded into a ditch as a result of last night’s snowstorm.
e. Elvira left a message that she would have to miss the meeting because she was working on another report, which is due tomorrow.

Jim wraps Dwight’s desk in Christmas paper in an episode of The Office.

4. Identify poor team behavior.

Watch an episode of The Office on NBC. This crew lacks many skills for effective teamwork! See how many flaws in their interactions you can identify. For example, what incidents of disruptive, interpersonal conflict do you observe? How do individuals demonstrate a lack of respect for each other? How do they provide feedback to each other?

5. Comment on a peer’s writing.

LO2 Collaborate to improve team writing.

Use the “Tips for Commenting on Peer Writing” to provide feedback on another student’s writing. Exchange draft documents with another student and use “Track Changes” in Microsoft Word to make comments. After you have commented on each other’s work, review each other’s suggestions. Then, discuss your reactions to the other’s feedback. To what extent do you feel that your partner followed the tips presented in this chapter? How could your partner have given you better feedback?

6. Create a project plan.

Working in groups of four or five, imagine that you are creating a new website for a local business. First, choose a business that all of you know well. Next, complete the first two steps for team writing: identify project requirements and create a project plan.

7. Contribute to Wikipedia.

To experience a wiki, contribute to an article on Wikipedia. Find a topic that you consider yourself an expert on, for example, your college, your neighborhood, a sport, or a game. Make one or two changes to a relevant article on Wikipedia. In one week, track your contribution: did it hold, or was it changed by someone else?

8. Set up a wiki.

Set up a wiki for a class project or campus organization. Take the lead to structure the site, post initial content, and encourage everyone to participate. If you have already used wikis with teams, try a different site (e.g., Wiggio or Google Drive) to experience a new approach and to see whether you prefer one to another.

9. Improve how you use a wiki.

Review a wiki you or another team used recently for a project. In retrospect, how could you have organized the files differently to improve the work process? What tools could you have used but didn’t (e.g., the chat feature or the calendar)? To prepare for a possible future team project, send an email to your former team members with your ideas for how you could use a wiki next time. If you have time, meet with your team to discuss your ideas for your next wiki experience.

10. Interpret two messages from international offices.

LO3 Communicate with intercultural audiences.

Imagine that you work for the law firm Dewey, Wright, and Howe as an intern. With a team of employees, you are working on an orientation program for new interns. Part of your plan is to have interns do research online about the firm before their date of hire. You believe this research, which will take about two hours, will give new interns a jump start before they start working.

In response to your draft Orientation Plan, you receive two emails from partners in the firm—the first from the German office and the second from Japan. From these messages, you realize that Mr. Yamashita misunderstood your intent: he thought your plan was for interns to come to the office before their start date, but you meant only for them to do research online.

These email messages are part of the company scenario Dewey, Wright, and Howe, available at www.cengagebrain.com.

Working in small groups, discuss how you interpret these messages. What feedback are the partners giving you? Consider cultural differences discussed in this chapter.

11. Adapt to cultural differences in email responses.

After you discuss your interpretation of the emails in the previous exercise, individually write separate email responses to Ms. Zimmermann and Mr. Yamashita. How can you address their concerns about the Orientation Plan, while adapting your communication style for cultural differences?

12. Research international communication and write an advice memo.

Working with a teammate, select a country for your research. Using three or more Internet sites, outline cultural differences of the country that might impact international business dealings. Look for differences regarding customs, use of space, hand gestures, time orientation, social behavior, how business is conducted, and other business-related issues. Write a memo with your advice to someone planning to travel to this country for business.

13. Present cultural differences to the class.

Choose one or two students from your class to discuss their experience traveling internationally. The students may use the following questions to guide their ten-minute presentation:

• Which country did you visit, and what was the reason for your trip?
• What surprised you most about the people? What were the most obvious differences you noticed from your own culture?
• How do you interpret the cultural values of the region? Review the following dimensions discussed in this chapter: individualism, time orientation, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, formality, materialism, and context sensitivity.
• What observations did you make about the people’s feelings about space and group-oriented behavior?
• What advice would you give to someone planning to do business in the region?

14. Analyze an intercultural situation.

Joe arrived 15 minutes late for his appointment with Itaru Nakamura, sales manager for a small manufacturer to which Joe’s firm hoped to sell parts. “Sorry to be late,” he apologized, “Put you know how the local drivers are. At any rate, since I’m late, let’s get right down to brass tacks.” Joe began to pace Pack and forth in the small office. “The way I see it, if you and I can come to some agreement this afternoon, we’ll be able to get the rest to agree. After all, who knows more about this than you and I do?” Joe sat down opposite his colleague and looked him straight in the eye. “So what do you say? Can we agree on the basics and let our assistants hammer out the details?” His colleague was silent for a few moments, then said, “Yes.”

Discuss Joe’s intercultural skills. Specifically, what mistakes did he make? What did Nakamura’s response probably mean?

15. Analyze how well a company adapts to international audiences.

Choose a large, global company and explore their website. Do you find multiple versions of the company’s site for different countries? In what ways does the company adapt its writing style, use of graphics, and other features to adapt to different cultures? Write a brief report on your findings, and include screenshots of the company’s website(s) to illustrate your points.

16. Learn about someone’s cultural background.

LO4 Communicate with diverse populations.

Interview a partner about one aspect of his or her cultural background. First, ask your partner which aspect of his or her cultural identity (e.g., race, ethnicity, sex, religion, socioeconomic background, age) he or she feels comfortable discussing.

You might ask questions such as the following:

• In what ways do you identify with this characteristic?
• How, if at all, do you think this characteristic distinguishes you from other people?
• How do you feel similar to others who share this characteristic? Within your group, what differences do you observe?
• In what ways does your Packground influence how you communicate with others?
• In a work environment, in what ways have you seen this characteristic contribute to your performance and business relationships?

Next, switch roles so you can share information about one aspect of your own Pack-ground.

17. Respond to domestic intercultural issues.

As a manager, how would you respond to each of the following situations? What kind of helpful advice can you give to each party?

a. Alton gets angry when several of the people he works with talk among themselves in their native language. He suspects they are talking and laughing about him. As a result, he tends to avoid them and to complain about them to others.
b. Jason, a slightly built office worker, feels intimidated when talking to his supervisor, a much larger man who is of a different racial background. As a result, he often is unable to negotiate effectively.
c. Raisa is embarrassed when she must talk to Roger, a subordinate who has a major facial disfigurement. She doesn’t know how to look at him. As a result, she tends to avoid meeting with him face-to-face.
d. Sheila, the only female manager on staff, gets incensed whenever her colleague Alex apologizes to her after using profanity during a meeting.
e. When Jim arrived as the only male real estate agent in a small office, it was made clear to him that he would have to get his own coffee and clean up after himself—just like everyone else. Yet whenever the FedEx truck delivers a heavy carton, the women always ask him to lift the package.

18. Use inclusive language.

Revise the following sentences to eliminate biased language.

a. The mayor opened contract talks with the union representing local policemen.
b. While the salesmen are at the convention, their wives will be treated to a tour of the city’s landmarks.
c. Our company gives each foreman the day off on his birthday.
d. Our public relations director, Heather Marshall, will ask her young secretary, Bonita Carwell, to take notes during the president’s speech.
e. Neither Mr. Batista nor his secretary, Doris Hawkins, had met the new family.

19. Discuss your views of using inclusive language.

In small groups, discuss your views about the previous sentences. If you worked for a company and read or overheard each of these statements, would you be offended? Do you believe others might be offended? Discuss the value—and potential downsides—of using inclusive language.

20. Improve diversity training.

On The Office, the company holds “Diversity Day,” a misguided attempt at diversity training for the staff. Watch Season 1, Episode 2, and see all that goes wrong. Then, be prepared to talk in class about how a diversity training program could be successful. (Watch an excerpt of the episode on YouTube: http://Pit.ly/uayAf3.)

21. Use gender-neutral language.

Identify at least one gender-neutral word for each of the following words: a. Policeman P. Clergyman

c. Fireman
d. Salesman
e. Mailman
f. Bellman
g. Handyman
h. Repairman
i. Manhole cover
j. Waiter

22. Discuss your views about a potentially insensitive party.

A Penn State sorority held a Mexican-themed party. Sporting ponchos, sombreros, and a few mustaches, women held signs that read “Will Mow Lawn for Weed + Beer” and “I Don’t Cut Grass. I Smoke It.” Read more about the situation (http://Pit.ly/121zuGE), and then, in small groups, answer these questions:

• What’s your reaction to the party? Is it offensive, just plain fun, or something else?
• What, if any, action do you think the university should take?

Company Scenario: Dewey, Wright, and Howe

Dewey, Wright, and Howe LLP

Dewey, Wright, and Howe is an international law firm that hires college interns. This company scenario, described at www.cengagebrain.com, challenges you to face many of the issues discussed in Chapter 2. Working through the activities for Dewey, Wright, and Howe, you’ll have the opportunity to do the following:

• Collaborate in a wiki to produce team results.
• Practice participating in meetings and giving and receiving feedback.
• Manage conflict in a multicultural environment.

Your team of interns at Dewey is asked to create an Orientation Plan for new hires—and you’ll run into a few obstacles along the way: conflicting messages, different communication styles, and a questionable ethical situation. But don’t worry—you’ll have plenty of direction with a detailed work plan, and you’ll rely on your team members for good, sound advice throughout the process.
Endnotes
1.

GLAAD, “Nordstrom Comes Out in Support of Marriage Equality,” October 11, 2012, http://www.glaad.org/blog/nordstrom-comes-out -support-marriage-equality, accessed June 10, 2013.
2.

GLAAD.
3.

James B. Stewart, “Exxon Defies Call to Add Gays to Anti-Bias Policy, The New York Times, May 24, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/25/business/a-corporate-giants-missing-support-for-gay-rights.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&src=ig&_r=1&, accessed June 10, 2013.
4.

James B. Stewart.
5.

“Conflict Resolution: Don’t Get Mad, Get Promoted,” Training (June 2002): 20.
6.

John R. Pierce, “Communication,” Scientific American 227 (September 1972): 36.
7.

Michael Schneider, “Boy Killed by Bus on Disney Property Identified,” Associated Press, April 2, 2010, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36137020/ns/travel-news/t/boy-killed-bus-disney-property-identified/, accessed December 30, 2012.
8.

Peter R. Scholtes, The Team Hani-booh How to Use Teams to Improve (Madison, WI: Joiner Associates, 1988), pp. 6.23-6.28.
9.

“Managers Are Ignoring Their Employees,” Leadership IQ, December 2, 2009, www.leadershipiq.com, accessed December 30, 2012.
10.

Adapted from Peter R. Scholtes, The Team Handbook, Second Edition (Madison, WI: Joiner Associates, 1996), p. 6-27. Reprinted with permission.
11.

Stewart Mader, Wikipatterns (Indianapolis, IN: Wiley, 2008).
12.

A. Majchrzak, G Wagner, and D. Yates, “Corporate Wiki Users: Results of a Survey,” Proceedings of the 2006 Internationa! Symposium on Wifeis, Odense, Denmark, 2006.
13.

Collaborative Writing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_writing, accessed July 14, 2010.
14.

A. J. DuBrin, Human Relations (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1997). Adapted with permission.
15.

Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations, Second Edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, 2001).
16.

Elizabeth A. Tuleja, Intercultural Communication for Business, Managerial Communication Series, James S. O’Rourke IV, editor (South-Western, Canada, 2005).
17.

McDonald’s Philippines Home Page, www.mcdonalds.com.ph, accessed July 16, 2013.
18.

McDonald’s Germany Home Page, www.mcdonalds.de and Switzerland Home Page, www.mcdonalds.ch/ ,accessed July 16, 2013.
19.

Elizabeth Würtz, “A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Websites from High-Context Cultures and Low-Context Cultures,”Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), 2005.
20.

Atlanta Committee for Olympic Games, by Sam Ward, USA Today. Taken from Ben Brown, “Atlanta Out to Mind Its Manners,” USA Today, March 14, 1996, p. 7c.
21.

“Toyota Motor Company,” The Ya-masa Institute, www.yamasa.org.acjs/network/english/newsletter Assue30.html, accessed December 27, 2010.
22.

Roland Kelts, “Toyota and Trust: Was the Akio Toyoda Apology Lost in Translation?” CS Monitor, February 25, 2011, www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0225/Toyota-and-trust-Was-the-Akio-Toyoda-apology-lost-in-translation, accessed March 11, 2011.
23.

Nikolia Apostolou, “The Tweet that Ousted a Greek Olympian: Youthful Mistake or Slur?” The Christian Science Monitor, July 25, 2012, http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Olympics/2012/0725/The-tweet-that-ousted-a-Greek-Olympian-youthful-mistake-or-slur, accessed September 15, 2012.
24.

Richard, Sandomir, “ESPN Apologizes for Slur Used in Headline on Lin,” The New York Times, February 18, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/sports/basketball/espn-apologizes-for-slur-used-in-headline-on-lin.html?_r=3, accessed September 15, 2012.
25.

“U.S. Census Bureau Projections Show a Slower Growing, Older, More Diverse Nation a Half Century from Now,” U.S. Census Bureau Newsroom, December 12, 2012, http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/population/cbl2-243.html, accessed December 30, 2012.
26.

United States Census 2010, “Explore the Form,” http://2010.census.gov/2010census/about/interactive-form.php/, accessed December 13, 2010.
27.

Jennifer Coates, Women, Men, and language, (New York: Longman, 1986); Deborah Tannen, You Just Don’t Understand, (New York: Ballantine, 1990); John Gray, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus (New York: HarperCollins, 1992); Patti Hathaway, Giving and Receiving Feedback, rev. ed. (Menlo Park, CA: Crisp Publications, 1998); and Deborah Tannen, Talking from 9 to 5 (New York: William Morrow, 1994).
28.

Jake Tapper and Huma Khan, “Obama Apologizes for Calling His Bad Bowling ‘Like the Special Olympics,‘” ABC News, March 20, 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7129997&page=1, accessed July 15, 2010.
29.

Washington State Developmental Disabilities Council, “The Missing Page in Your Stylebook,” www.ddc.wa.gov/Publications/090720_RespectfulLanguage.pdf, accessed July 15, 2010.
30.

James Rose, “Mesquite ISD apologizes for ‘retarded’ in yearbook,” KDFW Fox 4, May 18, 2012, http://www.myfoxdfw.com/story/18560196/mesquite-isd-apologizes-for-retarded-in-yearbook, accessed September 15, 2012.
31.

“Household Data, Annual Averages,” Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat5.pdf, accessed February 15, 2011.
32.

Kelly Services. “Kelly Global Workforce Index,” http://www.kellyservices.com/web/training/refresh_training_site/en/pages/zmag_kgwi_testpage.html, accessed July 19, 2010.
Conclusion
The Future as Opportunity, Not Destiny

There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable action.

—John F. Kennedy

Peering into the 21st century, it is clear that the future is already here. At the beginning of the 20th century, the public service was dramatically transformed by the merit system (Chapter 1), undergirded by bureaucratic structures and the scientific management principles of the Machine Age. In the context of spending cuts and demands for better service delivery, contemporary times have witnessed fundamental challenges to these ideas—privatization (provision of public services by business for corporate benefit), devolution (transfer of federal functions to subnational jurisdictions), and personnel reform (human resource management innovation)—in the name of smaller, more flexible, and more efficient government. What is needed is a systemic approach to such initiatives that deals with the overall role of government, the place of civil and military servants in that role, and the root causes of workforce problems. Strategies that focus on citizen needs, process improvement, and employee involvement likely will generate appropriate approaches, thereby enhancing the quality and productivity of government.

One hundred years ago, the public sector in all its size and diversity was an ideal laboratory for merit system innovations; in developing best practices, it became a model employer for the nation. Although remnants of such practices remain, notably in areas such as equal employment opportunity and employee-friendly policies, it has largely ceded its leadership position in the last several generations. How or whether that proud heritage is restored depends on its response to at least two major societal changes now under way: (1) rapidly expanding technologies and (2) the demand for human competency.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND HUMAN COMPETENCIES

Most obvious is the explosion of office technology. What was once seen as merely a productivity measure is now affecting the definition of work and how it is organized: Tasks done by a roomful of personnel in an earlier era can be handled by one person—anytime, anywhere. These technologies have only begun to be tapped, but the “death” of time and distance in a virtual work environment has already substantially altered the flexibility and speed of policy making—and who may be involved in decisions. These developments have affected a wide range of human resource functions with the advent of virtual recruitment centers, online job analysis systems, just-in-time computer-based training, and personnel appraisal software. Although information technologies may advance faster than human capacities to use them responsibly, they can foster broad participation on the part of the workforce. To the extent that this occurs, pathways through the paradoxes of competing needs and democracy may be discovered.

As technologies become widely accessible, requirements for human competency expand. These requirements range from technical know-how such as client server technologies, virtual teaming, and Web-based videoconferencing to personal qualities such as genuine trust and sincere service. Indeed, in a high-tech atmosphere the only way that public agencies may be able to distinguish themselves from competing private providers is by the performance of their employees. Downsizing and disrespect have made it clear that individuals must anticipate change, add value, and be responsive to reform. Unless or until they are seen as an asset worthy of investment, beginning with their selection, it is difficult to see how the public interest will be served effectively. When labor is regarded as a cost to be reduced rather than an asset to be enhanced, quality, productivity, and citizen service usually are sacrificed.
TAKING INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR PARADOXES

The scope and diversity of these technological and human capacity changes mandate that there is no one best way to manage people. Management is a highly individualized art, as one must discover what works in difficult circumstances. Any number of techniques can succeed when aligned with the needs and goals of an agency, its employees, the populace they serve, and the manager’s own natural style. Readers having come this far have ideas about what to do and why, but only those who have a strong desire to influence the performance of others and get real satisfaction in doing so will learn how to manage effectively.

Tom Morris (1997) examined what might happen if four key dimensions of the human experience were used to run a modern organization. He urged conscious recognition of the four philosophical transcendentals that enrich life: intellectual (truth), aesthetic (beauty), moral (goodness), and spiritual (unity). Each dimension produces individual and organizational excellence.

Truth—disturbing or comforting—is the foundation of all relationships; one must be true to self and in interactions with others. There is no greater source of waste than speculation, gossip, and rumor that arise in the absence of truth. Ironically, “the simplest truths,” Frederick Douglass observed, “often meet with sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.” People cannot flourish without ideas; without truth, they intellectually perish. The world is too dangerous for anything except the truth. As Helen Keller wrote, “Knowledge is happiness, because to have knowledge—broad, deep knowledge—is to know true thing from false, and lofty things from low.”

While essential, truth is not enough for fulfillment since humans are not mere intellects. They must also have something attractive to motivate them—beauty. Indeed, paraphrasing Keats, truth is beauty and beauty is truth. The aesthetic dimension includes not only external observational beauty (e.g., flowers), but also internal performance beauty (e.g., quality work). Emerson perhaps said it best: “We ascribe beauty to that which is simple, which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.” Beauty liberates, refreshes, inspires, and thereby increases productivity; in contrast, ugliness depresses the spirit. If employees are to do a good job, then they must have a good job, career, or even better a calling (see below).

Doing true, beautiful things, though, is incomplete, Morris (1997) argues. Leaders must be convinced of the essential morality of what they are doing. Indeed, goodness might be considered a special kind of truth and beauty. Paradoxically, humans are the only species capable of ethical awareness—and the only one capable of ignoring that awareness. People are at their best when engaged in a worthy task, one in which they can make a genuine difference, doing both a job that the world needs done and one that people want to do. As Emerson said, “I pass this way but once; any good that I can do, let me do it now.”

Truth, beauty, and goodness are still not sufficient: Humans also must perceive a sense of wholeness, that they are a part of something greater than themselves. It is often difficult to do something well if we do not know the reasons we are doing it. People yearn to know that their efforts contribute to a larger whole; a way to provide that context is to spend less time asking who, what, where, and how and more time asking why. Matters of spirit, then, are connected to truth, beauty, goodness—the worth of person and the collectivity to which he or she belongs. The Athenian Oath from ancient Greece, taken by all 17-year old citizens, captures the idea:

We will ever strive for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many; we will unceasingly seek to quicken the sense of public duty; we will revere and obey the city’s laws; we will transmit this city not only not less, but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.

Teddy Roosevelt’s observation that “far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing,” work that provides the opportunity to fulfill the four dimensions of excellence. If Aristotle had run GM, he would have created strength and integrity throughout the company by nourishing a culture based on those four transcendental values. Living life centered on truth, beauty, goodness, and unity is ideal for the resolution of the signature paradoxes that have animated this book: Organizations need the brains, bodies, and hearts of each individual—and vice versa. Transforming the organization—internalizing and institutionalizing the four dimensions—is anyone and everyone’s job, but one that must be assumed by leaders. The keys to excellence lie before us: “The difference,” Ghandi believed, “between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” Indeed, public service can be seen as a calling.
PUBLIC SERVICE AS A CALLING

Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.

—Anonymous

The role of work in life has been viewed in many ways throughout history—as a curse, punishment, salvation, social duty, and self-actualization (Bowman, 2010; Donkin, 2001; Hardy, 1990). Denounced as a necessary evil or praised as essential for human dignity, legacies of these perspectives affect today’s understanding of work as either degrading and demoralizing or enriching and ennobling. As a central life interest, it follows that work varies considerably in its purpose for people. It may be seen as a way to secure survival, success, or significance—that is, as a job (a means for financial gain), a career (an avenue for advancement), or a calling (one’s true place in the world).

When compared to a job or a career, a calling provides a sense of deep meaning at and authentic engagement in work. Such a belief, identity, and commitment is not reducible to self-interest, especially for the responsibilities inherent in public service. The linkage between basic questions about the purpose of life and work is found in the Latin root of vocation, vocare, which is “to call.” Clearly transcending a job or a career, to have a vocatio is to embrace a sense of direction stemming from sacred or secular sources. It lights the way for an individual to perform personally and socially significant labor, which in turn contributes to a better world.

Each person’s calling, while not easily ascertained, is unique and fits his or her abilities (Novak, 1996, pp. 34–35). The enactment of a vocation is a product of situational factors and individual talents. Components of vocation include introspection, exploration, and assertion—discerning one’s path on earth and pursuing the calling with passion and urgency. A calling is a way of life, a raison d‘être that contributes to one’s identity; fitting work is what the individual needs to do and what society needs done. Public employment is a vocation because creating democratic governance is largely dependent upon citizens taking up this station in life. In devotion to the public, for example, the federal civil servant takes the oath of office to help achieve “government by, for, and of the people.”

Since the founding of the United States, the belief has persisted that an enlightened citizenry would have concern for the well-being of the whole country. Modern bureaucracy, accordingly, was a response to the deterioration of government during the 19th-century spoils system when public service was a means to promote self-interest (Chapter 1). Service to the nation is, or should be, imbued with values that display a sense of mission and character that sustains duty and creates social capital.

Public service as a public trust is manifested in principles of political neutrality, incorruptibility, honesty, fairness, responsibility, and accountability. Such ideals can inspire and direct civic-spirited employees, and form criteria for their attitudes and actions in work life. Public administration, as a distinct vocation, is particularly critical because officials represent and exercise the power of the state. Key to sustaining these values is a disinterested civil service committed to excellence, but subject to hierarchical control to ensure responsiveness to the populace.

Prior to the 1980s, the existence of an essentially altruistic public service, while not unchallenged, was largely taken for granted. Since that time, however, the New Public Management (NPM) movement swept across Western democracies and transformed bureaucracies (Chapter 1). The civil service was not seen as an institution to protect democracy from moneyed interests and political corruption. Instead, reformists saw a self-centered elite that created a culture of big government, one out of touch with the people. The response was to defund, deregulate, and decentralize public institutions in the belief that they interfered with free markets. Employment was nothing more than an economic transaction; government work would be a commodity to be controlled and outsourced whenever possible. The distinctiveness of the civil servant as a custodian of constitutional values was further undermined as public administration became diffused both everywhere and nowhere in a hybrid enterprise of private companies, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies.

As a result, much has been lost in recent years in terms of public service values as NPM shifted governmental administration toward managerialism, entrepreneurism, and efficiency and away from promotion of, as the Preamble of the Constitution calls it, the “general welfare.” By predicating reform in economics, the value base of change was one-dimensional with the outcome that the ability of officials to shape government was limited, except to emphasize efficiency and cost containment. The objective seems to be to shield the market from society’s needs rather than to safeguard society from market demands and failures. An economic system that marginalizes human beings—the society serves the economy instead of the other way around—is a society at risk. Joanne Ciulla says it well arguing that, “When commitment is reduced to time at work, loyalty to something one pays for, and trust to a legal contract, these terms are emptied of their meaning” (2000, p. 154; emphasis in original).

While socioeconomic conditions that once sustained vocations may have diminished, “the aspiration to find a calling has not” (Muirhead, 2004: 11). A new interest in calling (even though the term may not be used) could be occurring as people search for a more humane and robust way to comprehend work life. In seeking “lives that matter,” hard questions are now asked about how best to make a living and what work has to do with self-identity (Schwehn & Bass, 2006). With the erosion of the traditional social contract, significant work is expected, if not demanded, by thoughtful people.

Instead of government mimicking business techniques, the values that animate calling can act as a beacon for those who wish to integrate what they do with what they are. The lack of integrity in private and public institutions in the “lost decade” of the new century—a litigated presidential election; the Enron Era; preemptive war, secret prisons, and torture; influence peddling and sex scandals; reckless banking industry practices and lack of oversight—have caused people to seek a deeper sense of national purpose. In the wake of the Great Recession, for instance, citizens raised doubts about the efficacy and benevolence of the private sector and questioned whether the market is efficient and self-regulating (Martinez, 2009). Privatization, for example, does not eliminate government; it institutes government by corporations for corporate profit, not for the benefit of citizens.

It seems a propitious time to rebuild the public service on the basis of calling. Indeed, public servants confront extraordinary challenges: wars, financial regulation, health care, the housing market, unemployment, global warming, and the energy predicament. It is evident that America faces a protracted test to sustain domestic harmony and international leadership. It should not be assumed that the citizenry is barren of anything but selfish values. A recognition that public administrators are “the only officials that pay attention to governmental activities all the time,” and as such hold a special duty to protect and serve the public interest (Goodsell, 2006, p. 630; emphasis in original) may be growing.

Government is a morally serious calling, and men and women are needed to respond to it. Not to do so damages the integrity of the citizenry itself as well as the foundations of self-government. Philosophers have long proposed that eudaimonic well-being is the doorway to human flourishing. “The only way to achieve success,” as Aristotle observed, “is to express yourself completely in service to society.” Let it be resolved, then, that people will come alive to the true meaning found in pursuits that command conviction and commitment in public service. Democracy is one of the great achievements of the world. Calling—that wonder from antiquity—gives voice to an abundant life by discerning purpose in what one does in government.
THE YEARS AHEAD

Turning this page marks the end of the beginning for the keen student of the management of human resources. As an introduction to the subject, the book represents an invitation to be both an informed participant and a critical observer of the field. Common and surprising, confusing and understandable, the paradoxes, processes, and problems pondered here will continue to animate theory and practice throughout your career. “The art of progress,” wrote Alfred North Whitehead, “is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.” It is only fitting, then, that the book stops where it started, with the paradoxes of democracy and needs.

Striving for excellence means dealing with conflicting organizational and individual needs, and that may be done by emphasizing democratic values at work. The workplace is in transformation as agencies are doing everything to maximize use of technology and human capacities by revamping hiring strategies, refiguring job designs, broadening employee skill bases, and redesigning reward systems. Troubled examples of this are the federal Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, which other agencies and jurisdictions nonetheless may emulate. Such changes can be assessed and used to build on the key recruitment, compensation, training, and evaluation functions discussed in earlier chapters.

Indeed, the current presidential administration confronts many problems and prospects as the second decade of the new century continues. The widely anticipated retirement tsunami of Baby Boomers from the workforce offers an opportunity to rethink the nature and character of public service, as a whole new generation of talented employees will be needed. Will a predominately bottom-up reform approach similar to the Clinton-Gore years, a top-down strategy like the Bush-Cheney era, or something different emerge? Will Americans, both at the beginning and end of their careers, see the civil service—the nation’s largest workforce—as an opportunity to make a genuine difference? Is the increase in contract workers and political appointees in the last generation healthy for the country? In the end, will there be a renaissance in public service in response to a call to serve and sacrifice for the common good?

Answers to such questions are important for both policy and management reasons. Thus, among the key stakeholders who will deal with the numerous policy issues in the years ahead—war, record deficits, alternative energy sources, the financial debacle, health care, education, global warming—are public employees. If these challenges are not dealt with, they will deal with us; if so, then, as White Feather, chief of the Bear clan, observed, “the past grows longer as the future grows shorter.”

Nothing happens in government without people. How they are managed, then, will determine investments in new technologies and human capital that drive the future. When citizens are treated as ends for which government exists rather than as means to be manipulated, when the economy serves society, the quality and productivity of public service can only improve in the years ahead. The purpose of government is to secure the blessing of liberty and to promote the common good; it is not a government that best serves the public interest by becoming a servant to corporate interests. If so, look for more initiatives and innovations in public human resource management. Some of these programs will be successful, and some will not. Those with the greatest value are likely to be cognizant of past experience and research data. Changes that seek partisan advantage with little interest in or knowledge of the complexities of governance can do a great deal of damage, and ultimately can become self-defeating (Bowman & West, 2007).
ENVOI: “DREAM WHILE AWAKE”

What a long, strange trip it has been! As you close this textbook, dear reader, you may not be the same person that you were at the beginning of the term. Because of your studies, your understanding, compassion, and ability to engage others in informed discussion of human resource management has grown. The challenge is not to “tell it like it is,” but instead to “tell it as it may become”—to eliminate hypocrisy and live up to cherished values. It does not matter when you start, so long as you start now. Unless the disconnect between autocratic organizational values and societal democratic values is bridged, human resource problems will only intensify. The entire range of an agency’s human resource functions—selection, recruitment, position management, compensation, training, appraisal, and labor-management relations—must be aligned with the norms of democratic culture if the dilemmas and contradictions discussed in this volume are to be resolved. The alternatives are either to accept the status quo as fate or to abandon ideals for the security of authoritarian institutions. Either way, life will surely be a series of collisions with the future.

Dr. Jonas Salk, discoverer of the first vaccine against polio over a half century ago, reflected on his achievement:

Ideas came to me as they do to all of us. The difference is I took them seriously. I didn’t get discouraged that others didn’t see what I saw. I had trust and confidence in my perceptions, rather than listening to dogma and what other people thought, I didn’t allow anyone to discourage me—and everyone tried. But life is not a popularity contest.

This book, too, has sought to provoke new ideas and to encourage readers to create their own futures. In so doing, few facile solutions have been offered, for to do so would defeat the purpose. Instead, general principles and specific propositions have been suggested, leaving the discerning individual to align, adapt, and apply them to make the public service, in the words of John F. Kennedy, “a proud and lively career.”
EXERCISES
Class Discussion

Simply because a textbook ends does not mean that learning stops; our end is your beginning! The future belongs to those who are prepared. There are many ways to continue inquiry into human resource management; indeed the possibilities are nearly endless. You are an echo of the future. In partnership with another class member, identify at least two initiatives; then share these ideas with the entire class. What are some things that can be done in school, at home, in your community, and on the job? What might be done today, this week, this year? It does not matter when you start as long as you start now.
REFERENCES

Bowman, J. (2010, April 9–13). Public service as a calling: Reflections, retreat, revival, resolve. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Society for Public Administration, San Jose, CA.

Bowman, J., & West, J. (2007). American public service: Radical civil service reform and the merit system. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Ciulla, J. (2000). The working life: The promise and betrayal of modern work. New York: Three Rivers.

Donkin, R. (2001). Blood, sweat, and tears: The evolution of work. New York: Texere.

Goodsell, C. (2006). A new vision for public administration. Public Administration Review, 66(4), 623–635.

Hardy, L. (1990). The fabric of this world: Inquiries into callings, career choice, and the design of human work. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Martinez, R. (2009). The myth of the free market: The role of the state in a capitalist economy. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press.

Morris, T. (1997). If Aristotle ran General Motors. New York: Holt.

Muirhead, R. (2004). Just work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Novak, M. (1996). Business as a calling: Work and the examined life. New York: Free Press.

Schwehn, M., & Bass, D. (2006). Leading lives that matter: What we should do and who we should be. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781305729766/content/image/9781305729766_0000.jpg
Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology, Ninth Edition

Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, and Technology, Ninth Edition

Joseph Straubhaar, Robert LaRose, and Lucinda Davenport

Product Director: Monica Eckman

Product Manager: Kelli Strieby

Managing Developer: Megan Garvey

Associate Content Developer: Rachel Smith

Associate Content Developer: Rachel Schowalter

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Content Project Manager: Dan Saabye

Senior Art Director: Marissa Falco

Manufacturing Planner: Doug Bertke

IP Analyst: Ann Hoffman

IP Project Manager: Farah Fard

Production Service: Lumina Datamatics, Inc.

Compositor: Lumina Datamatics, Inc.

Cover Designer: Red Hangar Design

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2014947268

ISBN-13: 978-1-305-08035-5

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Printed in the United States of America

Print Number: 01 Print Year: 2014
Front Matter
PART ONE Media and the Information Age
1 THE CHANGING MEDIA
2 MEDIA AND SOCIETY
PART TWO The Media
3 BOOKS AND MAGAZINES
4 PRINT TO DIGITAL NEWSPAPER
5 RECORDED MUSIC
6 RADIO
7 FILM AND HOME
8 TELEVISION
9 THE INTERNET
10 PUBLIC RELATIONS
11 ADVERTISING
12 THE THIRD SCREEN: SMARTPHONES AND TABLETS
13 VIDEO GAMES
PART THREE Media Issues
14 MEDIA USES AND IMPACTS
15 MEDIA POLICY AND LAW
16 MEDIA ETHICS
17 GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA
Back Matter
Glossary
References
Media Then/Media Now Credits
Index
Front Matter
Preface

Social media are the latest manifestation of media convergence, the continuing integration of conventional media forms with digital communication. In today’s world, interpersonal communication and the voices of billions of individual users have been absorbed into the media environment that was once the exclusive domain of the print, broadcasting, advertising, and film industries. Media consumption has become a personalized as well as a mass phenomenon as messages are targeted to ever narrower segments of the audience and distributed through “third screens,” the smartphones and tablets that are with us at all times, wherever we go.

Our theme is that the convergence of traditional media industries and newer technologies has created a new communications environment that impacts society and culture. Our goal throughout this book is to prepare students to cope with that environment as both critical consumers of media and aspiring media professionals.

We reach for that goal by providing an approach to mass media that integrates traditional media (magazines, books, newspapers, music, radio, film, and television) and newer media (the Internet, tablets, e-readers, smartphones, and video games), and emphasizes the intersection of technology, media, and culture.

We have already witnessed astounding changes in the structure of the radio and telecommunications industries and the rapid evolution of the newspaper, film, and television industries as they meet the challenges of new technologies and new ways of doing business, such as increased globalization of several industries, from film to the Internet. These are changes that affect our society as well as those across the globe, and our students need to learn about them in their introductory courses to prepare them to be productive citizens.
NEW TO THIS EDITION

The ninth edition of Media Now provides the most current coverage possible of the media industry and reflects the field’s latest research as well as the challenges that confront the media industries in transition. Social media and the rapid spread of third screens represent an overarching trend toward audience-originated content that forces media executives, advertisers, and public relations executives as well as dictators around the world to rethink their strategies, although we have also seen dictators use new media for their own ends as well. We believe that these changes afford “teachable moments” in which students can reflect on the future of the media and their own life plans while recognizing the cyclical nature of the economy and the impact that external events can have on providers of entertainment, information, and communication.

Chapter by chapter, here are examples of the updates you will find in this edition:

? The Changing Media examines how smartphone and tablet apps expand conventional typologies of communication.
? Media and Society considers the new business models that are emerging in the digital media environment and calls attention to the impact of social media on conventional notions of gatekeeping and popular culture.
? Books and Magazines traces the changes in books and magazines over time in content, target audiences, and delivery methods (print, audio, websites, and apps), and the effects of those changes on the industry and consumers.
? Print to Digital Newspapers looks at the positive impact of journalism on the growth of democracy and analyzes the industry as it continues its journey into the digital landscape and experiments with changes in its business model.
? Recorded Music tracks how the music industry copes with declining sales by exploring new outlets for music on the Internet, such as streaming music services.
? Radio examines the Internet “cloud music” trend, evolving Internet radio and their impact on conventional broadcasting.
? Film and Home Video analyzes how the industry prospers through premium ticket sales in 3-D and IMAX venues, while changing global distribution to fight piracy and maximize growing international revenues.
? Television explores the shifting structure of the television industry and the new business plans that are emerging to supplement the conventional ad-supported broadcast model.
? The Internet anticipates changes in Internet technology and governance that will directly impact what users see on their computer screens.
? Public Relations describes how social media present new opportunities, tools, and challenges for public relations professionals as they communicate across the country and to other cultures throughout the world.
? Advertising examines the expanding role of data brokers and online advertising exchanges and their impacts on the advertising industry and consumer privacy.
? The Third Screen monitors the latest trends in smartphones, tablet technologies, and apps.
? Video Games reviews fundamental changes in the industry brought about by the popularity of casual social media games.
? Media Uses and Impacts updates research on the positive and negative impacts of social media and video games and describes new “big data” methods based on the analysis of large data sets obtained from the Internet.
? Media Policy and Law examines the implications of a new round of media mergers and conflicting visions of the future of the Internet.
? Media Ethics points to the need for social responsibility, the processes of ethical decision-making, and the importance of ethical behavior that has magnified with the new challenges brought about by social media.
? Global Communications Media investigates the impact of social media on democratic revolutions in the Middle East and accelerating global film, television, and music flows.

UPDATED PROVEN FEATURES

This book comes with a rich set of features to aid in learning, all of which have been updated to help students better understand the ongoing changes in media, culture, and technology:

? Infographics: These visuals capture key trends and statistics in an accessible and graphically appealing style common to the new media.
? Media Literacy: Included within each media chapter, these sections focus on key issues regarding the impact of media on culture and society, encouraging students to think critically and analyze issues related to their consumption of media. With this latest edition, these sections have been expanded to include “news you can use” tips on how our readers can take practical actions that will empower them as media consumers.
? Glossary: Key terms are defined in the margins of each chapter and are listed at the end of each chapter, and a complete glossary is included in the back of the book.
? Media Then/Media Now Timelines: Major events in each medium’s industry are highlighted with a new graphical design incorporating key milestones. Important dates are also called out in the margins of the text in each chapter.
? Featured Boxes: Four types of boxes appear in the text, each designed to target specific issues and further pique students’ interest:
? Media and Culture boxes highlight cultural issues in the media.
? Technology Demystified boxes explain technological information in a clear and accessible way.
? Your Media Career guides readers to the “hot spots” in media industries updated with the latest projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
? World View expands thinking from beyond the front door to a more global perspective.
? Stop & Review: Appearing periodically throughout each chapter, these questions help students incrementally assess their understanding of key material.
? Summary & Review: Each chapter concludes with summary and review sections, which are presented as questions with brief narrative answers.

TEACHING AND LEARNING RESOURCES

MindTap for Media Now is a personalized, online digital learning platform that provides students with an immersive learning experience that builds critical thinking skills. Through a carefully designed chapter-based learning path, MindTap allows students to easily identify the chapter’s learning objectives, read the chapter, test their content knowledge, and reflect on what they’ve learned. The course is as flexible as you want it to be: you can add your own activities, PowerPoint slides, videos, and Google docs or simply select from the available content, and you can rearrange the parts to suit the needs of the course. Analytics and reports provide a snapshot of class progress, time in course, engagement, and completion rates.

The Instructor Companion Website is an all-in-one resource for class preparation, presentation, and testing for instructors. It is accessible by logging on to login.cengage.com with your faculty account. You will find an Instructor’s Resource Manual, Cognero® test bank files, and PowerPoint presentations specifically designed to accompany this edition.

? The Instructor’s Resource Manual provides you with extensive assistance in teaching with the book, including sample syllabi, suggested assignments, chapter outlines, individual and group activities, and more.
? Cengage Learning Testing Powered by Cognero® is a flexible, online system that allows you to import, edit, and manipulate content from the text’s test bank or elsewhere, including your own favorite test questions; create multiple test versions in an instant; and deliver tests from your LMS, your classroom, or wherever you may be, with no special installs or downloads required.
? PowerPoint® Lecture Tools are ready-to-use outlines of each chapter. They are easily customized for your lectures.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank our spouses, Sandy Straubhaar, Betty Degesie-LaRose, and Frederic W. Greene, for their patience and valuable ideas. We also want to thank a number of our students and graduate assistants, Stuart Davis, Josh Gleich, Julie Goldsmith, Nicholas Robinson, and Tim Penning, for their reviews and comments on the chapters. Also, thanks to Rolf and Chris Straubhaar, Julia Mitschke, and Rachael and Jason Davenport Greene for insights into their culture and concerns. Special thanks to Tammy Lin for reviewing drafts of the video games chapter.

We would also like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of everyone at Cengage Learning who worked with us to create an outstanding book and accompanying learning materials. In particular, we want to thank associate content developer Rachel Smith for overseeing the process with her organizational skills and meticulous editing. There are many who have worked tirelessly behind the scenes. Great appreciation also goes to Dan Saabye, content project manager; Jillian Borden, marketing manager; Rachel Schowalter, associate content developer; and our product manager, Kelli Strieby. The team at Lumina Datamatics did an outstanding job managing this project, in particular Valarmathy Munuswamy, Priya Subbrayal, and Manjula Devi Subramanian. We also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Teresa Mastin, for her previous work on the advertising chapter; Julia Crouse Waddell, for her excellent work on this book’s MindTap content; and Stuart Davis and Kevin Tankersley, for their help with the supplementary resources.

Finally, we wish to thank the following reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions and guidance in the development of the ninth edition:

Arnold Mackowiak, Eastern Michigan University

Tim Moreland, Catawba College

Kevin Tankersley, Baylor University

Dr. David Nelson, University of Central Oklahoma

We also thank the following individuals for their reviews of the previous editions: Robert Abeman, Cleveland State University; Jon Arakaki, State University of New York, College at Oneonta; Thomas Berner, Pennsylvania State University; Elena Bertozzi, Indiana University; Larry Bohlender, Glendale Community College; Sandra Braman, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee; Dr. Jim Brancato, Cedar Crest College; Michael Brown, University of Wyoming; Erik Bucy, Indiana University; Karyn S. Campbell, North Greenville University; Larry Campbell, University of Alaska, Anchorage; Richard Caplan, University of Akron; Meta Carstarphen-Delgado, University of Oklahoma; Jerry G. Chandler, Jackson State University; Tsan-Kuo Chang, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; John Chapin, Rutgers University; Joseph Chuk, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania; Dan Close, Wichita State University; Gene Costain, University of Central Florida; Dave D’Alessio, University of Connecticut, Stamford; Robert Darden, Baylor University; Krishna DasGupta, Worcester State College; Staci Dinerstein, County College of Morris; David Donnelly, University of Houston; Mike Dorsher, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire; Michael Doyle, Arkansas State University; Dr. Jim Eggensperger, Iona College; Lyombe Eko, University of Maine; Emily Erickson, Louisiana State University; Nickieann Fleener, University of Utah, Linda Fuller, Worcester State College; Ivy Glennon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Donald Godfrey, Arizona State University; Mark Goodman, Mississippi State University; Tom Grimes, Kansas State University; Larry Haapanen, Lewis and Clark State College; Ken Hadwiger, Eastern Illinois University; Linwood A. Hagin, North Greenville University; Junhao Hong, State University of New York, Buffalo; Kevin Howley, Northeastern University; Jack Hodgson, Oklahoma State University; Rick Houlberg, San Francisco State University; James Hoyt, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay; Susan Hunt-Bradford, St. Louis Community College; Matthew Jackson, Penn State University; Harvey Jassem, University of Hartford; Howard Keim, Tabor College; Randall King, Point Loma Nazarene University; Seong H. Lee, Appalachian State University; Bradley Lemonds, Santa Monica College; Charles Lewis, Minnesota State University, Mankato; William Lingle, Linfield College; Linda Lumsden, Western Kentucky University; Robert Main, California State University, Chico; Reed Markham, Salt Lake Community College; Judith Marlane, California State University, Northridge; Stephen McDowell, Florida State University; Timothy P. Meyer, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay; Jonathan Millien, Rider College; Suman Mishra, Temple University; Joel Moody, University of Toronto, Mississauga; Jennifer Nelson, Ohio University; John S. Nelson, Dakota State University; Kyle Nicholas, Old Dominion University; Daniel Panici, University of Southern Maine; Karen Pappin, Huntington University, Laurentian; Norma Pecora, Ohio University; Ben Peruso, Lehigh Carbon Community College; Cristina Pieraccini, State University of New York, Oswego; Michael Porter, University of Missouri; Peter Pringle, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga; Hoyt Purvis, University of Arkansas; Arthur Raney, Indiana University; Divyesh K. Raythatha, Delaware State University; Mike Reed, Saddleback College; Humphrey Regis, University of South Florida; Mark D. Ricci, State University of New York College at Brockport; Ronald Rice, Rutgers University; Karen E. Riggs, Ohio University; Shelly Rodgers, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Marshall Rossow, Mankato State University; Gay Russell, Grossmont College; Joseph Russomanno, Arizona State University; Marc Ryan, Marist College; Christian Sandvig, University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign; Tom Shaker, Northeastern University; Laura Sherwood, University of Nerasak, Kearney; Roger Soenksen, James Madison University; Jeffrey C. South, Virginia Commonwealth University; Don Stacks, University of Miami; Michelle J. Stanton, California State University, Northridge; Patrick J. Sutherland, Bethany College; Jill D. Swenson, Ithaca College; Michael Ray Taylor, Henderson State University; Don Tomlinson, Texas A&M University; Max Utsler, University of Kansas; Hazel Warlaumont, California State University, Fullerton; Alden L. Weight, Arizona State University, Polytechnic Campus; Susan Weill, Texas State University, San Marcos; Debora Wenger, Virginia Commonwealth University; Clifford Wexler, Columbia-Greene Community College; Glynn R. Wilson, Loyola University, New Orleans; Alan Winegarden, Concordia University; J. Emett Winn, Auburn University; and Phyllis Zagano, Boston University.
About the Authors

DR. JOSEPH D. STRAUBHAAR is the Amon G. Carter Centennial Professor of Communications in the Radio-TV-Film Department and Latino Media Studies Director in the Moody College of Communication of the University of Texas at Austin. He was the Director of the Center for Brazilian Studies within the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies. His most recent book is Latin American Television Industries (2013), with John Sinclair. He has published books, articles, and essays on international communications, global media, digital inclusion, international telecommunications, Brazilian television, Latin American media, comparative analyses of new television technologies, media flow and culture, and other topics appearing in a number of journals, edited books, and elsewhere. His primary teaching, research, and writing interests are in global media, international communication and cultural theory, the digital divide in the United States and other countries, and global television studies. He does research in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and has taken student groups to Latin America and Asia. He has presented seminars abroad on media research, television programming strategies, and telecommunications privatization. He is on the editorial board for Communication Theory, Media Industries, Chinese Journal of Communication, Journal of Latin American Communication Research, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Comunicación e Cultura, and Revista Intercom.

Visit Joe Straubhaar on the Web at

http://rtf.utexas.edu/faculty/joe-straubhaar

DR. ROBERT LAROSE is a full professor in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University and serves as director of the Media and Information Studies Ph.D. program. Dr. LaRose was recently recognized as a distinguished faculty member with the MSU William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award. Other awards include the Outstanding Article Award of the year in the field of communication from the International Communication Association, and the McQuail Award for the Best Article Advancing Communication Theory from Amsterdam School of Communication Research for his 2010 paper, “The Problem of Media Habits.” He conducts research on the uses and effects of the Internet. He has published and presented numerous articles, essays, and book chapters on computer-mediated communication, social cognitive explanations of the Internet and its effects on behavior, understanding Internet usage, privacy, and more. In addition to his teaching and research, he is an avid watercolor painter and traveler.

Visit Robert LaRose on the Web at

http://www.msu.edu/~larose

DR. LUCINDA D. DAVENPORT is the Director of the School of Journalism at Michigan State University, a nationally accredited program. She was Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences, among other administrative positions. She has been recognized with the Michigan State University Excellence in Teaching Award and the College of Communication Arts and Sciences Faculty Impact Award. She has earned national recognition and awards for her research, which focuses mainly on news media and innovative technology, media history, and journalistic ethics. A recent research publication in Journalism and Mass Communications Educator was one of the five most popular articles of the year. She has professional experience in newspaper, radio, television, public relations, and digital news. Her credentials include a Ph.D. in mass communication from Ohio University, an MA in journalism from the University of Iowa, and a BA double major in journalism and Radio/TV/Film from Baylor University. Her master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation were firsts in the country on computerized information services and online news.

Visit Lucinda D. Davenport on the Web at

http://cas.msu.edu/places/departments/school-of-journalism/
PART ONE Media and the Information Age
1 THE CHANGING MEDIA
2 MEDIA AND SOCIETY
1 THE CHANGING MEDIA
DIGITAL MEDIA reach us anytime, anywhere on a growing array of screens exemplifying the media convergence we will examine in the first chapter.
THE MEDIA IN OUR LIVES

If you were the typical American media consumer, you would consume over 3,400 hours of media content per year. That is the equivalent of a full-time job, with a long commute and no vacation days. The only way to cram that much media into your schedule is to surf the Internet, talk or text on the phone, read, or play a game at the same time you are watching TV (see Infographic 1.1, page 6). Since this is the information age, we can break that figure down into the bits and bytes of computer data. The world’s capacity to communicate information through broadcast (e.g., television) and two-way (e.g., the Internet) communication technologies combined is estimated at 2 sextillion (that’s 2 followed by 21 zeros) bytes (Hilbert & Lopez, 2011), or about 300 billion bytes per person. What do you do with your share?

We consume information, but we also make it when we update Facebook profiles, upload “selfies” to Instagram, or control avatars in multiplayer online games like “Guild Wars.” Most of us will enter careers in which we gather, organize, produce, or distribute information. This includes professional information specialists employed in the media as journalists, movie actors, musicians, television producers, writers, advertising account executives, researchers, Web page designers, announcers, and public relations specialists. Even in traditional manufacturing industries such as the auto industry, information-handling professionals in managerial, technical, clerical, sales, and service occupations make up a third of the workforce (Aoyama & Castells, 2002). So, we now work and play in an information society.

In an information society, the exchange of information is the predominant economic activity.
MEDIA THEN/MEDIA NOW

CHAPTER 1: THE CHANGING MEDIA

3100 bce

1455

1690

1910

Writing is first developed

The Gutenberg Bible is published

The first American newspaper appears

The United States becomes an industrial society

1949

1960

1962

1975

The Shannon–Weaver communication theory is propounded

The United States transforms to the first information society

Digital communication is deployed

Video games are created

Personal computers are invented

VCRs first reach consumers

1982

1989

1991

1995

CDs are introduced to consumers

Communication as Culture is published

World Wide Web begins

Computer-generated films are introduced

DVDs are first sold to consumers

1996

1998

2004

2009

Telecommunications Act passes Congress

Digital cable first reaches United States homes

Facebook is invented

HDTV takes over the airwaves
INFOGRAPHIC 1.1 SPENDING TIME WITH THE MEDIA
MEDIA IN A CHANGING WORLD

Media technology changes with every generation: for example, Mr. McQuitty, who is 45 years old, is a television producer. When he was in a college mass communication survey course, our fictional Mr. McQuitty studied books, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and film. He read about them in a print textbook, watched broadcast television to relax, checked in with his parents once a week on the house phone, and met with his friends face-to-face in the student union. Today, these conventional media have evolved through the advent of digital technology. Mr. McQuitty’s daughter, Rachel, wants to start her own YouTube channel. She takes some of her college courses on campus and some online, and downloads her textbooks from the Internet. Her world revolves around her iPhone and iPad. She still checks in with Facebook but knows that her dad follows her online, so she’s also into Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram.

Mass communication is one-to-many, with limited audience feedback.

Digital means computer-readable information formatted in 1s and 0s.

Conventional media forms are combining with new ones in ways that change our media consumption patterns, our lives, and the societies in which we live. Anyone who has ever used a smartphone or tablet to download an e-mail, tweet about a TV show they are watching, view a video, or stream a song has experienced the merging of conventional mass media into new media forms. New media technologies impact our culture by offering new lifestyles, creating new jobs and eliminating others, shifting media empires, demanding new regulations, and presenting unique new social issues (see Figure 1.1).

Smartphones are mobile phones that can access the Internet.
FIGURE 1.1 MEDIA CONVERGENCE
Media and information technologies, industries, and regulations are converging to impact our culture in the information society.

The changes are not purely technology driven, however. Our individual creativity and our cultures push back against the technologies and the corporations that deploy them to redefine their uses. The Internet is a prime example. Originally developed to support communication between weapons research labs in the wake of a nuclear holocaust, the Internet has evolved into a tool for entertainment, commerce, and education. Big media corporations now compete for its content with citizen journalists, Facebook users, garage bands, and amateur video producers. No talent is necessary: Cameron Dallas became an Internet star by posting videos of himself “looking pretty” on Vine. Individual users who take precautions to preserve their online privacy also take a stand against control by corporate interests and government snooping.
MERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Not many forms of purely analog communication are in common use today. We continue to experience purely analog communication when we are in a room with another person listening to what they say and taking in facial expressions. Handwritten notes are another example, but only for those who don’t text or tweet. In a short span of years, technology has moved us away from analog communication and into the digital age in which nearly all other forms of communication are created, stored, and transmitted in digital form.

Analog communication uses continuously varying signals corresponding to the light or sounds originated by the source.
DIGITAL MEDIUM
The special effects of blockbuster films in the Iron Man series are computer generated. Copies are distributed on digital discs and shown to the public on digital projectors. The last analog theaters in the United States closed in 2014.

The digital domain now encompasses nearly all media industries, including broadcasting (radio and television), film, and publishing (newspapers, magazines, and books), with an ever-narrowing list of exceptions. Local talk radio is about the only purely analog medium that remains. To catch up with the times, the “old media” have responded with digital innovations of their own. Local radio stations still transmit analog signals, but they play music that is stored on digital recordings and many broadcast on digital (HD radio) channels and stream their broadcasts over the Internet. The music industry increasingly relies on digital distribution through iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, and other digital music services after facing ruin from free-but-illegal Internet downloads. Many conventional media outlets provide apps of themselves for consumption on smartphones, e-readers, and tablets. A growing trend is to “go social” by adding social networking extensions to print and video media so that audience members can engage in interactions that focus on media content.

Apps (short for applications) are software applications for use on smartphones.

Digital technology converts sound, pictures, and text into computer-readable formats by changing the information into strings of binary digits (bits) made up of electronically encoded 1s and 0s (see Technology Demystified: A Digital Media Primer). People using a telephone today still hear a “W” phonetic sound just as people did a hundred years ago, but only after the phone converts the analog sound to digital pulses and then changes it back to sound for reception by humans (see Figure 1.2, page 10). Computers recognize a “W” in the encoded bits of 1010111 when you press the W key on the keyboard. A particularly useful quality of digital information is that many different sources can be combined in a single transmission medium so that formerly distinct channels of communication, such as telephone and television, can be integrated into a common digital medium, such as a smartphone or tablet.

A channel is an electronic or mechanical system that links the source to the receiver.
TECHNOLOGY DEMYSTIFIED: A DIGITAL MEDIA PRIMER

All digital transmissions are composed of only two digits: 1 and 0. These are actually a series of on (for 1s)–off (for 0s) events. These can be encoded in a variety of ways, including turning electrical currents or light beams on and off in Internet connections, changing the polarity of tiny magnets on the surface of a computer hard drive, or varying the patterns of pits on the surface of a DVD.

Consider a simple landline telephone call, where digital communication was born. The digital conversion occurs on a computer card that connects your line to the telephone company’s switch. First, brief excerpts, or samples, of the electrical waveform corresponding to your voice are taken from the telephone line at a rate of 8,000 samples per second. The size, or voltage level, of each sample is measured and “rounded off” to the closest of 256 different possible readings. Then a corresponding eight-digit binary number is transmitted by turning an electrical current on for a moment to indicate a 1 and turning it off for a 0.

The process is reversed at the receiving end. At 8,000 samples per second and eight digits per sample, the on–off signals are numerous—64,000 each second! Thus, when two lovers are talking on the phone and there is complete (if meaningful) silence on the line, the voltage reading is 0. The corresponding binary number is 00000000. If the lovers begin to quarrel loudly, the voltage reading might jump to the maximum: 11111111. To the couple, it seems that they are talking to each other, but in reality they are listening to computer emulations of their voices. Digital recordings use the same methods, but they employ more numerous samples and allow more volume levels to improve sound quality.

To make computer graphics, a computer stores digital information about the brightness and color of every single point on the computer screen. On many computer screens, there are 1024 points of light (or picture elements, pixels for short) going across and 768 down. Up to 24 bits of information may be required for each point so that millions of colors can each be assigned their own unique digital code.

Similarly, when we type text into a computer, each key corresponds to a unique sequence of eight computer bits (such as 1000001 for A). These sequences are stored inside the computer or transmitted through the Internet, in the form of tiny surges of electricity, flashes of light, or pulses of magnetism. The human senses are purely analog systems, so for humans to receive the message, we must convert back from digital to analog.
CHANGING INDUSTRIES

The convergence of media technologies is propelling changes in media industries as newer media firms like Google, Apple, and Facebook compete with old media companies for dominance (see Figure 1.1, page 7). Apple became the most powerful player in the recorded music industry with iTunes, rocked the telephone industry with the iPhone, and is shaking up print media and video with the iPad. Google has emerged as the largest advertising medium of all as advertisers direct more of their dollars to ads tied to online searches. Meanwhile, Facebook is prospering as an advertising and content distribution platform for its hundreds of millions of social network users worldwide. Apple and Google hope to lead a transition to Internet television that could replace conventional broadcast and cable television, while Amazon, Netflix, and Google’s YouTube are investing in professionally produced original video content.

Convergence is the integration of mass media, computers, and telecommunications.

2004

Facebook is invented
FIGURE 1.2 CONVERTING ANALOG TO DIGITAL

The analog-to-digital conversion process occurs in a variety of media. Here we illustrate the examples of a music CD recording and a telephone call.
INTERNET TELEVISION
The latest TVs are Internet appliances that illustrate the convergence of Web, video, audio, print, games, and interpersonal communication media in a single device.

The Great Recession of 2007–2009 weakened the old media just as digital media were beginning to hit their stride. Businesses tighten their belts and, in doing so, cut back on advertising in media—revenue on which media depended. Advertising revenues declined, and many media firms were saddled with debt-ridden deals they made during more prosperous times. Print media were hit very hard. For example, the Chicago Tribune had three different owners, filed for bankruptcy, went through several rounds of layoffs, and was finally spun off from its parent corporation in a span of 5 years. Although most news organizations continued to operate in the black, they decreased their printed output and ramped up their online publishing. Printed weekly news magazines also suffered as audiences turned to the Internet for news and analysis, sometimes to that same organization online. In 2011 Newsweek merged with an online news organization, The Daily Beast, ceased print publication in 2013, and then tripled its online traffic and resumed printing its paper magazine in 2014.

Conventional media firms are changing their ways and advertising revenues are rebounding to improve their prospects. In 2011, the cable television giant Comcast closed a deal to buy NBCUniversal after revenues from the NBC television network declined. Also the largest Internet service provider in the United States, Comcast was attracted by NBC’s ownership interest in the online video distributor Hulu as well as by NBC’s profitable cable channels. Comcast promptly introduced its own online video service under its Xfinity brand to help maintain the loyalty of its conventional cable television customers. NBC’s old broadcast network rivals, CBS, ABC, and Fox, are staying afloat by learning to live with digital home recorders and discovering new revenue streams in the digital world. Magazine publishers are developing smartphone apps that they hope will revitalize their appeal among young readers.

Old media are also finding it profitable to hire recent college graduates who can advise them how to take advantage of social media. So, changing industries also mean challenging careers for those entering media professions (see Your Media Career: Room at the Bottom, Room at the Top, page 12).
CHANGING LIFESTYLES

When new media enter our lives, media consumption patterns evolve. Each month, for example, more than 189 million U.S. Internet users now watch video online, averaging about 20 hours of viewing monthly (comScore, 2013). During the 2012 election, 47 percent of eligible voters used the Internet as the main source of information, replacing newspapers as the second most cited source, after television (Pew Research, 2013). Top video games like “Call of Duty” make as much money in the first week of their release as top movies like Iron Man make in their entire run.

A lifestyle change among the college-age population makes media executives and advertisers take notice: young adults are no longer easily reached by conventional mass media. They spend so much time juggling their iPods, iPads, iPhones, and video games (often simultaneously) that there is little time or interest left for traditional newspapers or television. They consume media on demand, where and when they please, freeing them from the schedules of television networks, radio DJs, and newspaper deliveries. That’s why the old media run websites to sustain interest in Survivor, create “buzz” for new movies, or add live discussion forums to printed stories. It’s also why media and advertisers look for new ways to recapture the young adult audience, such as making TV shows available online and inserting ads into video games. However, much of the new content created on Facebook and Twitter has to do with favorite movies, TV shows, and songs, as old and new media interact in complex ways.

New media introduce us to alternative ways to live, as millions of people now shop, seek health information, get their news, access government information, and keep up with their friends online (Zickuhr, 2010). Others forge new identities (Turkle, 1995), develop new cultures (Lévy, 2001), and find information to make personal decisions online. However, the new media may also displace close human relationships with superficial ones online (Turkle, 2011), lower the quality of public discourse by substituting Internet rumors for professional journalism, or drag popular culture to new lows.

1996

Telecommunications Act passes Congress
YOUR MEDIA CAREER: ROOM AT THE BOTTOM, ROOM AT THE TOP

The rewards of top-echelon media careers are well publicized: multimillion-dollar salaries, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, globe-hopping lifestyles. From among the tens of thousands who enter the media industry each year from courses like the one you are taking now, only a few make it to the level of Diane Sawyer, Steven Spielberg, Bob Woodward, or Howard Stern. Still, fulfilling professional success can be attained in less visible media occupations, either behind the scenes of global productions or in local markets, where the rewards may come from creative self-expression or from the satisfying feeing of “making a difference.” And today’s media stars have to be replaced someday, so why not you?

The challenges of media careers are many. Some young college graduates never move beyond internships, often unpaid ones, or entry-level “go-for” positions. Making the jump to steady professional employment sometimes depends on things we do not learn in college, such as having family connections or being born with basic creative talent. Those who progress beyond the entry level may leave after “burning out” on the workload or finding that competitive pressure from yet newer waves of eager college graduates keeps both entry- and mid-level salaries relatively low.

Yet, the media want you. Some media industries, notably music, television, advertising, and film, feed on the creative energies of young professionals who give them insights into young consumers and the social media they use. This means positions are continually opening up at all levels, and talented and well-connected graduates can rise rapidly through the ranks. However, it is also possible to be “washed up” at age 30.

Convergence makes media-related careers highly volatile. Whenever you read about a media merger or a new form of digital media production or distribution, it means that some media jobs may disappear, but newly created ones like “social media guru” might appear. In the short term, the challenge will be starting a media career. The Great Recession of 2007–2009 made entry into mass media fields more difficult than usual (Vlad et al., 2009).

Most people entering the workforce today will have four or five different careers regardless of the field they enter, and this is also true of media careers. When we say “different careers,” we don’t mean working your way up through a progression of related jobs inside an industry, say, from the mailroom at NBC television to vice president for network programming at CBS. For many of our readers it will mean starting out in a media industry but retraining to enter health care, education, or computer careers where employment is expected to grow the fastest over the next decade. To assess your options, you can visit the Occupational Outlook Handbook (http://www.bls.gov/OCO/), an authoritative source of information about the training and education needed, earnings, expected job prospects, workers’ responsibilities on the job, and working conditions for a wide variety of media occupations. Or, keep reading. In each chapter you will find features about media careers in related fields.

While in college prepare yourself for the challenging career road ahead by diversifying your skills. Multimedia computer skills not only are in demand in media industries but also will help you leap into other careers if necessary. The abilities to write a coherent paragraph and to produce professional photos, videos, audio, and Web pages are in demand across the information economy. Multimedia creators also have entrepreneurial opportunities outside of the walls of the conventional media institutions—from bloggers to Web page designers to YouTube “producers.” To take advantage of these opportunities, or to prepare for the day when you might meet the limits of your creative talent, learn as much as you can about all facets of the media, including its economic, legal, marketing, and management aspects. Mix in challenging science and liberal arts courses to further diversify your options. Perfecting your production skills might help you land your first media job, but too narrow a focus might relegate you to low-paying, unsteady freelance production work that does not require a college education. Don’t waste yours!
SHIFTING REGULATIONS

With the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress stripped away regulations that protected publishing, broadcasting, cable and satellite television, telephone, and other media companies from competing with one another. Lawmakers had hoped to spark competition, improve service, and lower prices in all communications media. Unfortunately, the flurry of corporate mergers, buyouts, and bankruptcies has outpaced consumer benefits.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is federal legislation that deregulated the communications media.

Recent changes in copyright laws shifted the balance of power between media companies and their audiences. The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 broadened the copyright protection enjoyed by writers, performers, songwriters, and the giant media corporations that own the rights to such valued properties as Bugs Bunny. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act weakened the fair use rights of students and professors to reproduce copyrighted printed works for noncommercial, educational use. It also cracked down on “sharing” music and videos online and made it a crime to tamper with copy protections on music and videos.

1998

Copyright is the legal right to control intellectual property. With it comes the legal privilege to use, sell, or license creative works.

Vital consumer interests are also at stake in the battle over net neutrality. This is the principle that Internet providers should remain neutral in handling information on the Internet to avoid favoring content provided by their affiliates and business partners and charging their competitors—and ultimately the public—excessive fees. To win approval for its purchase of NBCUniversal, Comcast had to promise federal regulators that it would give fair access to its Internet network to competing online video distributors and also offer video content produced by NBCUniversal on an equitable basis to online rivals.

Net neutrality means users are not discriminated against based on the amount or nature of the data they transfer on the Internet.
RISING SOCIAL ISSUES

Social issues are intrinsic to the media. Television is often singled out for the sheer amount of time that impressionable youngsters spend watching it. Children aged 2 to 5 years average 32 hours a week in front of the television screen (McDonough, 2009). Television has been criticized for its impacts on sexual promiscuity, racial and ethnic stereotypes, sexism, economic exploitation, mindless consumption, childhood obesity, smoking, drinking, and political apathy. The impact of television on violence is an enduring concern of parents and policy makers alike. By the time the average child finishes elementary school, he or she has seen 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence, and by the age of 18, has seen 40,000 murders and 200,000 other acts of violence (TV-Free, n.d.).
MEDIA EFFECT
The Egyptian government was concerned about the effects the Internet was having on society after it was used to organize a rebellion, so they shut it down. Here Egyptian reporters protest the shutdown. The rebellion overthrew a dictatorship but ultimately resulted in a new regime that cracked down on press freedom.

New media are fast replacing television as the number one concern about media effects. Some researchers believe that video games have a much greater effect on violent behavior than old media and are nearly as powerful inducements to violence as participation in street gangs (Anderson et al., 2003). Cyberbullying is just as harmful and nearly as prevalent as offline bullying among school children (Kowalski & Limber, 2013), amid highly publicized incidents of teenage suicides associated with online harassment. Does the spread of the Internet create a digital divide that spawns a new underclass of citizens who do not enjoy equal access to the latest technology and the growing array of public services available online? (See Media & Culture: A New Balance of Power?)

The digital divide is the gap in Internet usage between rich and poor, Anglos and minorities.

On a global scale, a wave of pro-democracy rebellions that swept through the Middle East and saw parallels in the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States seemed to feed on Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and cell phone videos. However, the Internet can also be manipulated by dictators and terrorists. The Egyptian authorities turned off the Internet in an unsuccessful effort to end pro-democracy demonstrations there. In Iran, the government used the Internet to track down and punish participants who posted revolutionary messages online (Morozov, 2011).

STOP & REVIEW

1. List four examples of the convergence phenomenon.
2. What is meant by the term information society?
3. What are three conventional types of mass media?
4. What is the difference between analog and digital?
5. Name areas in which communication regulations are shifting.

MEDIA & CULTURE: A NEW BALANCE OF POWER?

Just how powerful are the media? Do they affect the very underpinnings of the social order, by determining who holds power in society and how they keep it?

The new media can put us all at the mercy of “digital robber barons.” The late Steve Jobs was widely praised and much admired upon his death, but he was a prime example of someone who sets out to dominate new media, to create interesting new things, but also to enrich himself at our expense. The dominance of this type of person reduces the diversity of content and raises the cost of information. For example, Apple maintains control over the applications (“apps” for short) that are allowed on its iPhone. Innovative apps developed by entrepreneurs that might save consumers money on music, but that would diminish the profits from Apple’s iTunes, are not allowed. Meanwhile, old media interests like Disney and Time Warner sue peer-to-peer file-sharing services on the Internet like Pirate Bay to protect their property rights. We might well ask, Is the information society just a new way for the rich to get richer?

Or do the new media consign the poor to continuing poverty? The digital divide describes the gap in Internet access that persists between whites and minorities, rich and poor (NTIA, 2013). As the Internet grows into an important source of employment, education, and political participation, that digital divide could translate into widening class division and social upheaval. Equal opportunity in the information economy already lags for both minorities and women, who are underrepresented in both the most visible (i.e., on-camera) and most powerful (i.e., senior executive) positions in the media. And although the gap in Internet access for women has largely closed (except for those who are poor or who are recent immigrants), women are poorly represented in computer-related professions and the proportion of women enrolled in undergraduate computer science majors is now in the low teens, about a third of the peak level in the 1980s (Computing Research Association, 2011). The issue is global. The nations of the world are divided between those with access to advanced communication technology and those without it.

Or could the new media be a catalyst for a shift away from traditional ruling classes? Social media were integral to pro-democracy revolutions in the Middle East and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Blogs raise issues that are ignored by the mainstream press. The diverse and lively communities of the Internet may contribute to the fragmentation of culture and power—for many, identity is defined as much by the Internet communities in which we participate as by the countries we live in or the color of our skin.
CHANGING MEDIA THROUGHOUT HISTORY

Although changes in the media and the accompanying changes in society sometimes appear to be radically new and different, the media and society have always adapted to each other. In this section we examine how the role of the media has evolved as society developed—and vice versa—from the dawn of human civilization (see Figure 1.3) through agricultural, industrial, and information societies (Bell, 1973; Dizard, 1997; Sloan, 2005).
PRE-AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY

Before agricultural societies developed, most people lived in small groups as hunters of animals and gatherers of plants. These cultures depended on the spoken words and songs to transmit ideas among themselves and between generations. Shamans and storytellers spread the news. The oral tradition is an extremely rich one, bringing to us Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and the epic stories, folktales, ritual chants, and songs of many other cultures. These works that originated in oral forms live on today in the fairy tales and campfire stories that we tell our children.
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY

Once agricultural society developed, most work was found on farms or in resource extraction, such as mining, fishing, and logging. Agricultural societies were more settled and more complex than pre-agricultural societies. It was the ancient Sumerian culture, located in what is now modern-day Iraq, that is commonly credited with developing writing in 3100 bce. The Greco–Roman method of writing developed into our present-day alphabet.

In early civilizations literacy was common only among priests and the upper classes. In some cultures literacy was intentionally limited, because the ruling class wanted to keep the masses ignorant of new ideas. Reproduction of printed works was painstaking. Christian monks copied books by hand. The Chinese developed printing with a press that used carved wooden blocks, paper, and ink. With much of the populace still illiterate, couriers skilled at memorizing long oral messages were valuable communications specialists.

3100 bce

Writing is first developed
FIGURE 1.3 STAGES OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
The three basic stages of economic development, from agricultural to industrial to informational.
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
This illustration of life on the farm from the nineteenth century provides an idealized picture of pre-industrial America. The critical reader will note the obvious prominence of the white male farmer in the picture and also the African-American laborer chopping wood at the far right.
INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY

Although the beginning of the Industrial Revolution is often dated to correspond with Thomas Newcomen’s invention of the steam engine in 1712, an important precursor of industrialism is found in the field of communication: the printing of the German Gutenberg Bible in 1455. Johannes Gutenberg used movable metal type—individual letters instead of a complete page plate—that could be used again in different combinations. Eventually, thousands of identical copies of printed works could be printed relatively cheaply. Printed copies of the Bible and other religious works, including copies in the native languages of various Western European cultures, were instrumental in spreading the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, which in turn spurred the further diffusion of literacy.

1455

The Gutenberg Bible is published

The mass production and the spread of literacy to new classes of society helped create a demand for sporadic printed news sheets that eventually evolved into newspapers. In 1690, Benjamin Harris published the first newspaper in America, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, although the British colonial authorities promptly shut it down after one issue because it was printed without their permission. Fourteen years later, John Campbell printed the first continuously published American newspaper, the Boston News-Letter.

1690

The first American newspaper appears
START THE PRESSES!
The advent of the printing press in the late fifteenth century was a precursor of mass literacy and the Industrial Revolution. The Bibles printed by Johannes Gutenberg and others launched a revolution in religious beliefs and culture in the Western world.

In a sense, the Industrial Revolution extended Gutenberg’s methods to the manufacture of not just newsprint, but virtually all types of goods. Industrial production (and higher wages) was centered in large cities, triggering a mass migration from rural areas to cities and from agricultural jobs to manufacturing. Growing urban populations with money to spend on manufactured goods provided ready audiences as newspapers expanded to become the first advertising-supported medium of mass communication.

By 1910 the United States had become an industrial society: manufacturing had outstripped agricultural employment for the first time. Industrialization also encouraged the spread of literacy to cope with more complex job requirements and the demands of urban life. Soon, industrial methods of mass production were applied to speed up the printing process of newspapers and magazines and to invent newer communication technologies for the urban populations. Film, radio, and television, as well as newspapers and magazines, are the characteristic media of industrial societies.

1910

The United States becomes an industrial society
INFORMATION SOCIETY

Today, we live in an information society—our economy depends primarily on the production and consumption of information. When the United States was still an agricultural society, only about 10 percent of the population was employed as information workers. The point at which information work starts to dominate the workforce marks the transition to an information society. This transition happened in the United States in 1960, but relatively few other nations have made the transition so far. The proportion of information workers has reached about three-fifths of the U.S. workforce (Wolff, 2006). Since the media reflect the societies that spawn them, it comes as no surprise that the dominant tool in an information society is one that helps to create, store, and process information: the computer.

1960

The United States transforms to the first information society

Information workers create, process, transform, or store information.
THE WORLD IN YOUR HAND
Smartphones are the endpoint of a digital revolution in telephony that began in the 1960s and has resulted in competition for conventional video, audio, and print channels.

The evolution of media in the information society can be marked by points at which various media first adopted digital technology and the point at which they became complete, end-to-end digital production and distribution channels. Some of these changes predate the invention of the personal computer in 1975 and the advent of the World Wide Web in 1991.

1975

Personal computers are invented

1991

World Wide Web begins

Telephone. The first consumer communications medium to be digitized was the telephone, beginning in 1962 with digital equipment buried deep within AT&T’s network. Today, telephone conversations are converted to digital form in your smartphone handset and travel as computer data along with music and video through advanced telephone networks (see Figure 1.2, page 10). Digital subscriber lines (DSL) make landline phones a practical medium for high-speed Internet access.

1962

Digital communication is deployed Video games are created

Print Media. Digitization first hit the production rooms of print media in the late 1960s. Now it is only in the final printing process that the words and images are converted from computer code to analog print image. Thousands of newspapers and magazines are also available electronically on the Internet and as e-books and smartphone apps.

Film. In Hollywood, the computer movement started with the special effects for Star Wars in 1974. Now most film editing is done on computers, and digital 35-mm cameras are in widespread use. Computer-generated hit films, beginning with Toy Story in 1995, are becoming commonplace. Movie theater sound systems are digital, and Digital Light Projection (DLP) systems use digital technology to project the images as well.

1995

Computer-generated films are introduced

Video Games. Video games were digital from the start. First developed on computers in 1962, they moved to arcades and home consoles in 1971–1972, and later onto personal computers and handhelds. The latest video game consoles display such high-quality graphics that they might be considered interactive movies.

Interactive communication uses feedback to modify a message as it is presented.

Recordings. The first digital compact disc (CD) recordings reached consumers in 1982 and outpaced vinyl record album sales a decade later. The file-sharing craze sparked by Napster in 1999 introduced millions of music lovers to downloading digital music free from the Internet, eventually paving the way for Apple’s iTunes to dominate online digital music distribution.

1982

CDs are introduced to consumers

Cable and Satellite Television. In 1998, cable companies began to convert content to digital form as a way to increase the number of channel offerings on their systems and to compete with digital satellite services like DirecTV. Now many cable subscribers enjoy high-speed Internet access and telephone service as well.

1998

Digital cable first reaches United States homes

Broadcasting. High-definition television (HDTV) replaced conventional television completely in the United States in 2009. Digital audio broadcasting (known as high-definition radio) reached the air in 2004 to compete with digital satellite radio services and with streaming audio on the Internet.

2009

HDTV takes over the airwaves
NOW AT YOUR LOCAL THEATER
Digital Light Projection (DLP) systems using CD-like digital storage media instead of film represent the digital revolution at your local movie theater.

Home Video. Home video was virtually unknown before the introduction of (analog) mass-market video cassette recorders (VCRs) in 1975. Beginning in 1995 they were supplanted by digital video disc (DVD) players and, four years later, by digital video recorders (DVRs). Video streaming also dates back to the 1990s, and now personal computers, tablets, and “smart” TVs are gradually replacing all of the preceding generations of stand-alone home video players.

1975

VCRs first reach consumers

1995

DVDs are first sold to consumers

Thus, the media are becoming an integral part of our information society. Indeed, employees of newspapers, radio and television stations, and film and recording studios now are grouped together with telecommunications workers and computer programmers as part of the information sector of the economy. Thus, to understand the media now, a broad view encompassing telecommunications, consumer computer products, and mass media is required.

STOP & REVIEW

1. What were the media forms in pre-agricultural society?
2. Which media evolved in industrial societies?
3. What changes led to the development of the information society?
4. Which media have become purely digital from end to end?

CHANGING CONCEPTIONS OF THE MEDIA

Reading highly encapsulated accounts of the evolution of the media, such as the above, you might get the mistaken impression that society has always followed a logical, linear progression driven by changes in communication technology. However, many aspects of society—such as economics and politics—must come together for technologies like movable type or computers to develop. This reality raises the fundamental question that we noted earlier and will consider at length in Chapter 2: Do the media determine culture and society, or do culture and society determine the media? Here we will review a conventional model of human communication and then examine how new media challenge that model.
THE SMCR MODEL

The classic SMCR model was first developed by Shannon and Weaver (1949) and later refined by David Berlo (1960) and Wilbur Schramm (1954). They created what is known as the Source-Message-Channel-Receiver (SMCR) model.

1949

The Shannon–Weaver communication theory is propounded

The Source-Message-Channel-Receiver (SMCR) model of mass communication describes the exchange of information as the message passes from the source to the channel to the receiver, with feedback to the source.

The source is the originator of the communication.
The message is the content of the communication, the information that is to be exchanged.
An encoder translates the message into a form that can be communicated—often a form that is not directly interpretable by human senses.
A channel is the medium or transmission system used to convey the message from one place to another.
A decoder reverses the encoding process.
The receiver is the destination of the communication.
A feedback mechanism between the source and the receiver regulates the flow of communication.
Noise is any distortion or errors that may be introduced during the information exchange.

This model can be applied to all forms of human communication, but here we will just illustrate it with a mass communication example, that of television viewing (see Figure 1.4). According to the model, when you are at home watching a television program, the television network (a corporate source) originates the message, which is encoded by the microphones and television cameras in the television studio. The channel is not literally the number on the television dial to which you are tuned, but rather the entire chain of transmitters, satellite links, and cable television equipment required to convey the message to your home. Although we sometimes call a TV set a “receiver,” it is really the decoder, and the viewer is the receiver. Feedback from viewers is via television rating services. Electronic interference with the broadcast and the distractions of the neighbor’s barking dogs are possible noise components in this situation.

In this classic view, mass communication is a one-to-many communication, and the mass media are the various channels through which mass communication is delivered; that is, through newspapers, radio, TV, or film, the message is communicated from a single source to many receivers at about the same time, with limited opportunities for the audience to communicate back to the source.
FIGURE 1.4 SMCR MODEL
The SMCR model is one way of describing the communication process as applied to broadcast media. In this example we apply the model to television and radio broadcasting.

In Wilbur Schramm’s time, from the late 1940s to the early 1980s, mass media were produced by large media corporations. There an elite corps of media commentators and professional producers acted as gatekeepers, deciding what the audience should receive. These editors and producers, recognizing their own power, were aware of themselves as shapers of public opinion and popular tastes (Schramm, 1982).

Gatekeepers decide what will appear in the media.
WOW FACTOR
Filmmakers hope 3-D movies will encourage the masses to lay down their game consoles and return to movie theaters. However, 3-D movies are still examples of conventional mass communication in that they address a mass audience with limited feedback.

Mass media messages were addressed to the widest possible audience. The underlying motive was to homogenize tastes and opinions to further the goals of a mass-market industrial economy. Feedback was largely limited to reports from audience research bureaus, which took days or weeks to compile in those days. Beyond the basic demographic distinctions of gender and age found in research reports, the audience was an undifferentiated mass, anonymous to the source and a passive receptacle for the message. Social critics like Adorno and Horkheimer (1972) called this approach the industrialization of culture.

Other critics, like Carey (1989), criticized the SMCR model for being too linear, seeing media only as a one-way flow from creators to audiences. He and others began to see communication as a more circular, interactive, or even ritual process—one in which audiences not only choose from but also interact with media content, changing its meaning.

1989

Communication as Culture is published

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are social media that challenge the SMCR model, and they embody and even extend the critiques of Carey and others. Social media users continually interact with one another and provide instant feedback not only to their own communication partners but also to the creators of conventional mass media productions that are frequent topics of online commentary. Now we create our own media content, share it with hundreds or thousands of our online “friends,” and contest the power of authoritative mass media sources in ways and on a scale that neither Schramm nor Carey could anticipate. YouTube videos conform in some ways to the conventional mass communication model in that they are one-to-many, but feedback in the form of audience comments is nearly instantaneous and the sources are typically amateur video producers rather than media professionals. So, do social media constitute a fundamentally new type of communication?

Social media are media whose content is created and distributed through social interaction.
TYPES OF COMMUNICATION

Communication is simply the exchange of meaning. This definition covers a lot of ground. It obviously includes talking to your friends, reading a newspaper, watching television, and surfing the Internet. Less obvious examples of communication might include the graphic design on a T-shirt, a fit of laughter, or the wink of an eye. And the meaning exchanged does not have to be profound: a sonnet by Shakespeare and a verse scratched on a bathroom wall both qualify as communication. In terms of the SMCR model, the exchange is between the source of the message and the receiver.

Communication is an exchange of meaning.
FIGURE 1.5 TYPES OF COMMUNICATION
Types of communication may be distinguished according to the number of participants and the nature of the communication process.

Mass communication is a major focus of this book but is only one of the possible modes of communication. Another hallmark of the classical approach is to classify communication according to the number of people communicating and to examine processes that are unique to each mode. In Figure 1.5, the type of communication changes according to the number of people involved: as we move from top to bottom, we move from intrapersonal to interpersonal communication, from small group to large group, and finally to mass media at the bottom of the pyramid. We can also distinguish between analog (on the left) and digital forms of communication (on the right) in each category. An example of each type is found in the corresponding layer of the pyramid.

Intrapersonal communication is an exchange of information we have with ourselves, such as when we think over our next move in a video game or sing to ourselves in the shower. Typing a to-do list into a smartphone is electronically mediated intrapersonal communication.
Interpersonal communication includes exchanges in which two or more people take part, but the term is usually reserved for situations in which just two people are communicating. Sometimes we call that one-to-one communication. Having a face-to-face conversation over lunch and writing a postcard to a friend are everyday examples. When interpersonal communication is electronically mediated, as in a telephone conversation, the term point-to-point communication is sometimes used.

Mediated refers to communication transmitted through an electronic or mechanical channel.
Group communication is a situation in which three or more people communicate with one another. Not all communication that takes place in a group setting is included, however. When pairs of students talk to each other in a classroom before the start of a lecture, for example, they are engaged in interpersonal communication (see above).
Small-group communication usually involves fewer than a dozen people, extending interpersonal communication into situations where group dynamics become important. For example, when students get together to “scope out” an exam, their interaction is likely to follow one of several well-known patterns of small-group interaction as they define a study plan. For example, one person in the group may dominate. Or they may take turns speaking and let everyone have their say; we could call that many-to-many communication. Online, small-group communication happens in chat rooms and in multi-user video conferences.
Large-group communication involves anywhere from a dozen to several thousand participants, and the communication situation restricts active involvement to only a few of the parties. However, large-group communication still involves immediate feedback from the receivers of the message, which is not the case with mass communication. Examples of large-group communication are lectures, concerts, and live theatrical performances. When we update our Facebook profiles or post messages to our Twitter “followers,” we are engaging in large-group communication—provided we have a dozen or more online friends or followers.

Many communication situations do not fit neatly into these categories. Are talk-radio shows, in which audience members provide instant communication back to the source—and even, in a sense, become sources themselves—still true mass media forms? What about TV shows like American Idol that invite viewers to direct the content by voting with their cell phones? We could perhaps call that many-to-one communication. In the social media sphere, wall postings and photo tags are further examples. Other aspects of social media, such as discussion groups in Facebook, might be termed many-to-many communication since audience members are also participants who are themselves also the sources of the content.

Also, the number of participants is not always a reliable indicator of the type of communication involved. A college lecture delivered on the last day before spring break to only six students or a Facebook posting made by someone with only a few online friends would still be a large-group communication (because of the style of presentation), even though the audience is a small group in terms of the number of people involved. Thus, both the nature of the communication setting and the size of the gathering must be considered.

Other classifications of communication reflect the setting for the communication or the nature of the communication process. Organizational communication takes place in formally structured organizations, spans the entire spectrum of communication types as classified by size, and is affected by a person’s position and function within the organization. For example, in certain highly structured organizations, most communication travels in one direction—from the bosses to the workers—with little flowing either back up the chain of command or laterally to workers in other departments. Other organizations use social media to promote horizontal communication between employees and “bottom up” feedback from employees to management. Communication can also be distinguished between one-way communication, in which the flow of information goes from the source exclusively to the receiver, and two-way communication, in which both participants take an active role. Finally, intercultural communication takes place across international or cultural boundaries.
DIGITAL INTERPERSONAL
Cell phones are an example of digital interpersonal communication when used alone, and an example of digital small-group communication if you text messages to your closest friends. Uploading pictures to Facebook from your smartphone is large-group communication while viewing movies on a mobile is mass communication.

So, are social media a fundamentally new type of communication? That is debatable. Social networking sites like Facebook are unique in that their various functions provide examples of virtually every type of communication we have mentioned here. Social media also bring relatively rare types of communication, such as many-to-one and many-to-many, within the reach of millions and make it routine for their users to originate their own large-group communications. Empowering the audience or user to produce media content as well as consume it, sometimes known as Web 2.0, also occurs in social media venues on a very large scale, but is not entirely unprecedented. Letters to the editor and radio call-in programs are time-honored old media examples of audience-produced content as well.

Web 2.0 are Internet applications in which users provide content as well as consume it.
WHAT ARE THE MEDIA NOW?

At one time, media simply meant the mass media of radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and film. We now talk about new media—a term usually associated with interactive media technology, such as the Internet and video games. Although we sometimes use new media in ways that are not so new and different, such as reading news stories online, old media are acquiring new interactive dimensions, such as tweeting or chatting online while watching a broadcast of a college football game. The defining aspects of the new media are that they are digital, interactive, social, asynchronous, multimedia, and narrowcasted. These particular characteristics are important in distinguishing a new, audience-focused conception of the media from the older SMCR model, which emphasized one-way transmission of messages.

New media are digital, interactive, social, asynchronous, multimedia, and narrowcasted.

Asynchronous media are not consumed simultaneously by all members of the audience.

Digital. What differences do digital media make? Digitization improves the quality of transmission because digital signals are less susceptible to interference and distortion. Digital messages also can be compressed by allowing multiple channels to be carried where only one was possible before. Many users can also share the same transmission channel simultaneously by taking turns. The Internet uses this approach: if we cut up the stream of digits for your e-mail into chunks (called “packets”), and cut up the YouTube video file your neighbor is receiving, then both of you can share the same channel. Furthermore, digitization is the key to multimedia—combining text, image, and sound in two-way communication channels—representing an important departure from the old media where each modality was confined to separate channels and was one-way only.

Interactive. Just what is “interactivity”? Sometimes the word is used as a synonym for two-way communication, but few interactive media are truly two-way in the same sense as interpersonal communication. In a conversation, two people not only take turns responding to each other but also modify their interaction on the basis of preceding exchanges (Rafaeli, 1988). Social media like Facebook and Twitter are interactive in that sense, but it is the actions of the people as much as the affordances of the technology, such as the Like button found in Facebook, that make it so.

Affordances are the technical features of communication channels that allow their users to perform useful functions.

The ultimate form of interactivity would pass the so-called Turing test for artificial intelligence, named after the British computer pioneer Alan Turing (1950). To pass the test, a computer would be able to fool you into thinking that you were interacting with a human. Watson, the computer that trounced human champions on Jeopardy! in 2011, would pass that test but only while playing Jeopardy! Watson might not, however, have the answer if you asked directions to the washroom in the Jeopardy! studio. We will narrow the definition of interactive media to mean those where feedback from the receiver is used by the source—whether human or computer—to continually modify the message as it is being delivered to the receiver. By this definition, selecting alternative plots in an online novel is interactive, but TV remote controls and book indexes are not (no real-time feedback to the source). In video games where the game gets harder as you score more points, there are, in effect, real-time interactions with the game developer. The software reacts just as a human player would.

Interactivity is an important departure from mass communication in the conventional SMCR model, where feedback was weak and delayed by days or weeks. When feedback is instantaneous the audience gains new power, not only to select content but also to contest the messages supplied by the media, and even contribute to media content. For example, when Dancing with the Stars viewers vote for contestants who have been humiliated by one of the judges, they are contesting the mass-mediated message. However, to fit our definition of interactivity, the results would be presented in real time and the judges would be reversed on the spot, perhaps with the contestants performing taunting “victory dances.” As much as any other change in the media, this strengthening of the feedback link alters the nature of the mass communication process, making the audience active participants, rather than passive receivers of media content.

Social Media. Another dimension of audience power in the new media world is the ability of audiences to contribute content of their own, not merely selecting it as in our example of Dancing with the Stars, but actually creating it themselves. Since this involves sharing words and images with other users in the course of social interactions, social media have emerged as an umbrella term for this phenomenon.

Behind the scenes, new technologies have made it possible to strip away the middle layers of media organizations and to shrink the minimum size of media enterprises back to that of small cottage industries and even to individual media entrepreneurs. Giant media corporations are still with us, but the number of people required to turn out a media product within them is shrinking. Affordable TV cameras, audio recorders, digital editing technology, and cell phone cameras put people from all walks of life in the producer’s chair.

Perhaps the best-known examples of social media are social networking sites like Facebook, video-sharing sites like YouTube, and photo-sharing sites like Pinterest. Blogs that are filled with personal and professional commentary, content that now often serves as sources for the traditional media, are another example. Twitter is sometimes called a microblog, where the commentary is reduced to 140-character snippets. Wikipedia, reader comments posted on newspaper websites, and consumer-generated product reviews on the Web are other examples of the social media phenomenon.

A blog, short for Web log, is commentary addressed to the Web audience. A blog is similar to an online opinion journal.

The ability of social media to define culture may be eroding the power of the conventional media. Ever-growing amounts of the news and entertainment are generated by those who do not work for established “big media” organizations. This trend liberates the creative energies of millions of people and makes it possible for viewpoints that are not acceptable in mainstream media to find an audience. Still, the conventional media provide a valuable public service by separating fact from fiction and weeding out truly awful and harmful content.
ASYNCHRONOUS HIT
Modem Family is the most watched TV show on DVRs. Its audience grows 40 percent among those aged 18–49 years when delayed viewing is counted over a week’s time.

Asynchronous Communication. Simultaneity, the notion that everyone in the audience receives the message at about the same time (or synchronously), was once another defining characteristic of the mass media. That view made sense before consumer recording technology became commonplace in the 1960s and 1970s. Before then, you had to catch a program the first time it aired or wait for the reruns. However, the notion never applied very well to film, not without stretching “the same time” to cover a period of several weeks.

Situations that lack simultaneity are examples of asynchronous communication. Consumers’ ability to “time shift” programs using DVRs and Internet video renders the notion of simultaneity obsolete, as they can choose when to watch a program regardless of the time and day it originally airs. On-demand options such as cable pay-per-view programs and streaming video services like Netflix are further examples. Postal mail and e-mail are two common examples of asynchronous interpersonal communication.

Narrowcasting. Another sign of the growing power of the audience in the new media is the practice of targeting content to smaller audiences, sometimes called narrowcasting (as opposed to broadcasting). Advanced audience research methods help the media cater to smaller audiences by enhancing the richness and speed of audience feedback. The result is that narrowcasting—dedicating communication channels to specific audience subgroups, or market segments—is now practical. Demographic characteristics, such as sex and age, once the sole means of defining audiences, are being replaced by a focus on lifestyles and user needs, and even individual preferences including purchasing and online surfing behavior. Rather than homogenize audiences, the new communications media cater to specialized groups and define new niches and even customize content for individuals by sifting through vast databases of information that consumers leave behind as they navigate the Internet. Narrowcasting is also sometimes referred to as deliberate segmentation of audiences into small target groups or fragmentation of large audiences into smaller ones.

Narrowcasting targets media to specific segments of the audience.
TIME SHIFTER
Personal digital video recorders (likeTiVo, shown here) allow viewers to record the TV programs they want and then watch at their own leisure instead of at the show’s scheduled airtime. However, they are not interactive in our sense of modifying the content in real time with feedback to the source.

Multimedia. Converging technologies break down conventional distinctions between channels of communication so that we can select between modes of presentation. Consider online newspapers that show us the text of the latest story about scandal in high places, but also include links to additional resources such as animated graphics that “follow the money trail” and live video of the Congressional hearings on the matter, as well as to instant polls and a discussion group where we can express our outrage. This multitude of news components means we can choose to experience the same story in five different ways, including as a conversation with other audience members. The change means that, increasingly, the mass media of radio, television, newspapers, and film as we once knew them are no longer quite the same.

So what are the media now? Older media forms such as newspapers, television, and film and conventional media institutions like the New York Times, CBS Television, and MGM Studios are still with us and will continue to be for a long time. But throughout the media environment, numerous changes in the media, both big and small, are being driven by the continuing evolution of technology, regulation, media ownership, our economy, our culture, our world, and ourselves. As this evolution continues, the old media of generations past are gradually taking on new media forms such as those we’ve discussed here.

STOP & REVIEW

1. What does SMCR stand for?
2. Use the SMCR model to describe what happens when you watch TV.
3. Is an automated teller machine interactive? Explain.
4. Name three examples of social media.
5. How do the “new media” differ from the “old media”?

SUMMARY & REVIEW

WHAT IS THE INFORMATION SOCIETY?

The information society is one in which the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of information are the primary economic and social activities. In an information society, an ever-increasing amount of time is spent with digital communications media. Most people are employed as information workers: people who produce, process, or distribute information as their primary work activity. The information society is a further step in the evolution of society from its former bases in agriculture and manufacturing.

HOW ARE MASS MEDIA AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES CONVERGING?

Increasingly, communication is created and distributed in a computer-readable digital form. This change means that the same basic technologies can be used to transmit all forms of communication—text, audio, or video—in an integrated communication system such as the Internet. Thus, separate channels of communication are no longer needed for each medium. The mass media, telecommunications, Internet, and computer software industries are all part of the same information sector of the economy—they are, in other words, converging. Laws and public policies governing the media, career opportunities in communications industries, social and personal issues arising from media consumption, and even theories of the media and their role in society are all changing.

WHAT ARE THE COMPONENTS OF THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS?

All communication processes can be described in terms of a simple model in which a corporate or individual source encodes a message and transmits it through a physical channel to the person for whom the message is intended—the receiver. We call this the SMCR model. In most communication situations, feedback is also provided between the receiver and the source. Contemporary views of the process stress that it takes place in the context of a culture shared by the source and the receiver and that both source and receiver contribute to the creation of meaning.

WHAT IS MASS COMMUNICATION?

The conventional view is that mass communication involves large professional organizations, audiences of hundreds or thousands or millions of people, and no immediate feedback between source and receiver. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and film are all examples of mass media.

WHAT OTHER TYPES OF COMMUNICATION EXIST?

When the communication channel is an electronic or mechanical device—such as a radio station or a movie projector—we call it mediated communication. Mediated communication may be point-to-point, one-to-many, or multipoint-to-multipoint. Communication can be characterized according to the number of people involved. Intrapersonal communication involves one person, interpersonal communication usually includes only two people, and small-group communication usually encompasses more than two but fewer than a dozen participants. Large-group communication involves dozens or hundreds of people, but feedback is still immediate. Communication can also be characterized according to the setting in which it takes place. For example, organizational communication happens inside a formally structured organization. Social media combine multiple types of communication and empower audiences to contribute content on an unprecedented scale.

WHERE DID THE MASS MEDIA COME FROM?

Although mass media had forerunners in agricultural and pre-agricultural societies, they are generally regarded as creations of the Industrial Age. Mass-production methods coupled with the rise of large urban audiences for media during the Industrial Age led to the rise of print and later mass media.

WHAT IS INTERACTIVITY?

A variety of meanings have been attached to the term interactive, ranging from the simple ability to select content from a large number of options to devices that could pass the Turing test by faithfully mimicking human interaction. The term should be reserved for communication situations in which the user modifies the content by providing feedback to the source in real time.

WHAT ARE THE NEW MEDIA?

The long-term trend is to integrate the many specialized channels of communication into all-purpose digital networks that will provide access at the convenience of the audience. Familiar mass media forms such as newspapers, radio, and television are evolving into, or learning to coexist with, new forms that are all-digital, such as the World Wide Web. Recent interactive capabilities give users a new measure of control over the media channels they consume, where and when they consume the media, and even the content of those channels. Mass media sources are becoming more numerous and also less authoritative and professional. Messages are customized for smaller specialized audience segments, sometimes even tailored to individuals, and are narrowcast to these segments rather than broadcast to a homogeneous audience.
THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT THE MEDIA

1. How would you tell the story of the development of the information society to your parents?
2. Describe what convergence has meant in your life and how it affects you.
3. What will your future life in the information society be like?
4. Explain text messaging using the SMCR model.
5. If you send a text message to your entire “friends circle,” is that mass communication? Explain.
6. Are social media a fundamentally new type of communication or not? Justify.

KEY TERMS

apps (p. 8)

affordances (p. 25)

analog (p. 8)

asynchronous (p. 25)

blog (p. 26)

channel (p. 9)

communication (p. 21)

convergence (p. 9)

digital (p. 6)

digital divide (p. 14)

gatekeepers (p. 21)

information society (p. 6)

information workers (p. 17)

interactive (p. 18)

mass communication (p. 6)

mediated (p. 22)

narrowcasting (p. 26)

net neutrality (p. 13)

new media (p. 24)

smartphone (p. 7)

social media (p. 21)

Source-Message-Channel-Receiver (SMCR) (p. 20)

Telecommunications Act of 1996 (p. 12)

Web 2.0 (p. 24)

Log on to the MindTap for Media Now to access a variety of additional material, including this chapter’s e-book, learning objectives, comprehension quizzes, videos, and more!

MEDIA NOW
CHAPTER 14
14 MEDIA USES AND IMPACTS
VIDEO GAMES ARE FUN, BUT ARE THEY YOU? Why do we spend thousands of hours every year with the media, and what is the cumulative impact on us as individuals and our society at large?
BASHING THE MEDIA

“Media bashing” is a recurring ritual. It starts when critics point to new evidence of harmful effects in the endless stream of violence, sex, and hate that they see pouring forth from the media (see Infographic 14.1, page 429). Talk shows and editorial columns buzz, and congressional hearings are held. The media industry representatives play their part when they criticize the research, blame the parents, say it’s not their job to fix society, retreat behind the First Amendment (see Chapter 15), and promise to regulate themselves. Then the debate simmers down until the next study comes out or the next outrage occurs. What does the research really tell us, and how much can we rely on it?

For example, in 1954 the U.S. Senate held hearings about the impact of television on juvenile delinquency. But despite continuing concerns about the effects of television on children, industry self-regulation remains the norm, including the voluntary parental advisories that appear at the beginning of TV shows. Violent video games are the current case in point. It seems every time we hear about a new shooting or a bullying incident in our schools, the media run stories about violent video games the perpetrator was thought to have played. Researchers are invited on talk shows and quoted in the newspapers about the effects to discuss findings linking violent game play to real-world aggression. Lawmakers threaten regulation. The industry has responded with voluntary content ratings, but the ratings focus on sex, not violence, and video game stores are lax about prohibiting sales to underage customers. California passed a law to prohibit the sale of violent games to minors, but an industry group sued to overturn the law on the grounds that it infringed on their free speech rights. In 2011 the Supreme Court agreed, in part because the justices were skeptical about the research. Meanwhile, children still play violence-packed games like “Call of Duty” and the shooting and bullying continue.

1954

U.S. Senate holds hearings on the relationship between television and juvenile delinquency
MEDIA THEN/MEDIA NOW

CHAPTER 14: MEDIA USES AND IMPACTS

1898

1933–1945

1954

1960

Hearst newspapers summon the United States to war with Spain with sensational headlines

Nazi propaganda inflames the Holocaust and World War II

U.S. Senate holds hearings on the relationship between television and juvenile delinquency

Klapper’s The Effects of Mass Communication argues for weak media effects

1965

1972

1990

2011

Bandura’s bobo doll experiment demonstrates the effects of TV on children

U.S. Surgeon General reports on the relationship between television and violence

Children’s Television Act mandates programs designed specifically for children

U.S. Supreme Court rules that video games are protected speech under the First Amendment
INFOGRAPHIC 14.1 MEDIA IMPACT RISK FACTORS
The content and uses of the media may contribute to crime, inequalty, poor health, and undesirable social behavior.

So, when the next school shooting happens or when we hear about bullying at schools in our own community, we are again likely to hear about the video games the perpetrators played and the social media they used. But how should we regard these stories? Is the problem widespread, or have isolated incidents been magnified by sensational media coverage? Research might tell us if the incidents indicate a serious national problem or if they are merely anecdotal and help us to understand if it is the media content or other factors that provoke them. For example, how many bullies or acts of copycat aggression would there be if violent video games were kept from the eyes of children? Are parents, poverty, or gun ownership laws more to blame than the game publishers?

2011

U.S. Supreme Court rules that video games are protected speech under the First Amendment

Media effects are changes in cognitions, attitudes, emotions, or behavior that result from exposure to the media. The term is often used to denote changes in individuals that are caused by exposure to the media. However, broader impacts on society, as opposed to individual effects, are also of concern to us. And some scholars do not see a cause-and-effect relationship between media use and human behavior. We will use the term media impacts in the broader sense to encompass these varying aspects of the complex relationship between media and society. In this discussion, exposure to the media may itself be considered an impact, since the time we spend with the media affects our daily lives as a decision to engage in media consumption behavior at the expense of time that might be spent on other activities. Indeed, one of the main impacts of television on children found by previous generations of researchers was simply that children spent less time socializing, playing, and reading because of the time they spent with television (Schramm, Lyle, & Parker, 1961).

Media effects are changes in knowledge, attitudes, or behaviors resulting from media exposure.
STUDYING MEDIA IMPACTS

Media impact can be studied in a variety of ways. All the methods have strengths and weaknesses that we need to understand to evaluate their contributions to the debate over media and society. First, we will consider some of the contrasting general approaches to understanding media impacts; then we will consider four systematic methods for obtaining evidence of those impacts: content analyses, experiments, surveys, and ethnographies.
CONTRASTING APPROACHES

Several widely varying basic approaches can be used to interpret media impacts. These include deductive versus inductive reasoning, critical versus administrative research, and qualitative versus quantitative research.

Many social scientists begin with a theory based on the law of cause and effect. They derive, or deduce, predictions about media impacts from their theories of human behavior and culture and then test these predictions through observation. Their results either support the theory or refute it, which leads to new theoretical paradigms. Thus, they follow the scientific method. Mass media exposure is usually viewed as the “cause,” or independent variable. Exposure to media content is seen as the trigger for mental processes and behaviors that are the “effects,” or consequences of what people see and hear in the media. These effects—such as antisocial (e.g., violent) or prosocial (e.g., cooperative) behaviors—are called dependent variables (Wimmer & Dominick, 2011). Of course, if we are interested in the prior question of what causes media use or exposure, then media use becomes the dependent variable and the factors that may cause that use or exposure, such as gender, personality, and beliefs about the benefits of media exposure, become the independent variables.

Independent variables are the causes of media effects.

Dependent variables are the consequences, or effects, of media exposure.

Another paradigm is more inductive. Other scholars observe people’s real-life interactions with media and with each other and then induce, or infer, theories about those interactions. These include most ethnographers and also many critical theorists. Ethnographers worry about existing theories blinding them to seeing people’s behavior as they see it themselves. They prefer to create theories close to the explanations people give for their own behavior, or at least based on their own careful observation. Paul Lazarsfeld (1941), one of the pioneers in communications research, was the first to point out the difference between what he called administrative research, which takes existing media institutions for granted and documents their use and effects, and critical research, which criticizes media institutions themselves from the perspective of the ways they serve dominant social groups. Most of the research described elsewhere in this chapter, even that which results in “criticism” of the media for excessive sex or violence, falls into the administrative research category because it fails to critique the basic foundations of existing media institutions. Instead, critical theorists favor interpretive and inductive methods of inquiry drawn from such fields as history, feminist studies, cultural anthropology, Marxist political economic theory, and literary criticism (see Chapter 2).

Some social scientists use quantitative methods to enumerate their findings and analyze statistical relationships between independent and dependent variables. Other scholars infer the relationships from qualitative methods, such as by studying the symbols in media content or observing behavior in natural settings. Yet others believe it is important to combine both sets of methods and look for insights offered by both approaches and points of agreement between them.
CONTENT ANALYSIS

Content analysis characterizes the content of the media. Researchers begin with systematic samples of media content and apply objective definitions to classify its words, images, and themes. For example, what if researchers want to find out if television has become more violent over the years? They might select a composite week of prime-time programming by drawing programs from different weeks of the year to represent each of the shows in the prime-time schedule. They would develop objective definitions of violence, such as “sequences in which characters are depicted as targets of physical force initiated by another character.” Trained observers would then classify each of the scenes in the sample of shows and compare notes to make sure that their definitions were consistent. Then the researchers would record the number of violent acts per hour and compare the results to those of studies in previous years (Gerbner et al., 1994).

Content analysis is a quantitative description of the content of the media.
NONVIOLENT?
Football games don’t “count” in studies of TV violence, but maybe they should. In this play, Jack Tatum (number 32) broke Darryl Stingley’s back, paralyzing him for life. No penalty was called, but Stingley was definitely targeted by physical force initiated by Tatum.

Content analyses create detailed profiles of media content and identify trends in content over time. However, they cannot be used to draw conclusions about the effects of the media because the audience often perceives media in a different way than the researchers—or the producers of the content.

Content analysis is a time-consuming task, so researchers sometimes take only a limited sample (such as 1 week’s worth of prime-time television shows) from major media outlets. That obviously doesn’t reflect the full range of content that the audience sees. The definitions can be problematic, too. For example, if a character in a situation comedy slaps another character on the back (which might be a sequence in which a character is the target of physical force initiated by another character) and they begin laughing, is that violence? What if a character is hurt by a hurricane instead of another person? What about a football tackle? According to some definitions these are violent acts; according to others they are not. One type of content analysis (quantitative) counts the acts, and another type of content analysis (qualitative) examines how the acts should be regarded. Others draw even further back from the details of content to look at overall themes and narratives, trying to see the big picture that detailed content analysis might miss.

One landmark content analysis of television violence (Federman, 1998) overcame many of these problems. With multimillion-dollar funding provided by the cable television industry, the researchers examined three entire television seasons, rather than a single composite week, and included 23 different cable television and broadcast networks. They also were sophisticated in their definitions of violence, examining the context of violent acts—for example, whether the violent behavior was rewarded or punished—rather than simply counting the number of gunshots and body blows.

The researchers found that television was very violent. In all three TV seasons, three-fifths of all prime-time programs contained violence, and they averaged over six violent incidents per program per hour. They estimated that preschoolers who watch 2 hours of television daily witness 10,000 violent acts each year. Most of these involved “high-risk” portrayals that children are likely to imitate, such as violent acts committed by attractive characters in realistic settings in which no harmful consequences are shown. In contrast, only 1 in 20 programs had antiviolence themes. Those numbers stand true today. By the time you graduated from high school, you probably saw about 200,000 acts of violence on television, including 20,000 murders by a handgun. Most of the time, the bad guys still are not punished.
EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH

Experimental research studies media effects under carefully controlled conditions. Typically, a small group sees a media presentation that emphasizes one particular type of content. For example, preschool children are shown violent cartoon shows, and their responses are compared with those of preschoolers exposed to media that lack the “active ingredient,” for example, nonviolent cartoons.

Experimental research studies the effects of media in carefully controlled situations that manipulate media exposure and content.

Experimental subjects must be randomly divided between these groups—such as by flipping a coin—to minimize the impact of individual differences among subjects. If they were not assigned randomly—if the children were simply asked to pick which kind of cartoon they would like to see—the aggressive children might volunteer for the violent ones, and the results would therefore reflect the nature of the children rather than any effect of the media content. The same goes for sex, age, social status, and other variables that might affect the outcome. The randomization process cancels out their effects by putting equal numbers of boys and girls, rich and poor, in each group.
POTENTIAL EFFECTIVE VIOLENCE?
Routine football plays like this are violent by our definition. They involve attractive role models and reward the perpetrator (here, with credit for a successful tackle), factors that Albert Bandura found to increase the performance of violent behavior among viewers.

Perhaps the most influential media effects experiments were conducted by Albert Bandura (1965) and his colleagues at Stanford University. They showed preschoolers a short film in which an actor behaved aggressively toward a Bobo doll, an inflatable doll the size of a small child with the image of a clown printed on its front and sand in its base so that it rocked back and forth when hit (today’s children sometimes call them “bop dolls”). The actor in the film, whom Bandura called the model, punched the doll in the nose, hit it with a mallet, kicked it around the room, and threw rubber balls at it. This aggressive sequence was repeated twice in the film.

1965

Bandura’s bobo doll experiment demonstrates the effects of TV on children

All of the children saw that part of the action. However, there were three different endings to the film, and the children were randomly divided into groups that each viewed a different one. Children in the “model-rewarded condition” saw an adult actor reward the aggressor with verbal praise, soda, and snack food. In the “model-punished condition,” the adult scolded the model and spanked him. A third group of children, those in the “no-consequences condition,” saw only the opening sequence.

After the show, which the children were told was a TV program, subjects were led to a playroom equipped with a Bobo doll, a mallet, some rubber balls, and assorted other toys. As adult observers watched, many of the children in the model-rewarded and no-consequences conditions imitated the aggressive acts they had seen; those in the model-punished condition tended not to do so. However, even the children in the model-punished condition had learned how to perform the behaviors. When adults offered them candy to imitate what they had seen, they started beating up the Bobo doll, too.

The researchers concluded that the punishment the children experienced vicariously in the model-punished condition inhibited their aggressive behavior. However, the most important finding of the study was that the no-consequences condition also produced imitation. This suggested that mere exposure to television violence—whether or not the violence was visibly rewarded on-screen—could spur aggressive responses in young children.

The value of such a carefully controlled design is that it rules out competing explanations for the results (such as the possibility that subjects who saw the violent endings were more violent children to begin with). Only the endings of the film (also known as the experimental treatments) were varied among groups, so that any subsequent differences among them (such as the beatings the subjects inflicted on their own Bobo dolls) could be attributed to the differences in the media content.

However, the small and unrepresentative samples used in experimental studies, which often consist of college students in introductory classes or the children of university professors, raise questions about generalizability, the degree to which the results apply to other populations and settings. The measures that are used (written responses to a questionnaire or highly structured experimental tasks) and the conditions under which the experiments are conducted do not reflect the real-world situations of ultimate interest, such as behavior in an actual child’s playroom or on a school playground. This is the issue of ecological validity. More generally, validity is the degree to which research findings and methods reflect the true phenomena under study, without distortion. For example, college entrance exams are valid predictors of future performance in college only if those who score high on the exams also perform well in college later on. Or, to assess the validity of a paper-and-pencil measure of aggression, we might compare the results with observations of aggression on the playground.

Generalizability is the degree to which research procedures and samples may be generalized to the real world.

Validity is the degree to which we are actually measuring what we intend to measure.

A related concept is reliability, the degree to which our methods produce stable, consistent results. For example, if we re-administered a college entrance exam or the aggression measure to the same group of students a week after the first administration, we would expect that the individuals with high scores at the time of the first assessment would also have high scores the second time around. Researchers have to provide evidence of both validity and reliability when reporting their results.

Reliability is the extent to which a result is stable and consistent.

The experimental treatments may also be unrealistic in that (1) they often involve much more intense sequences of content than are likely to be encountered in the real world and (2) they are often presented as disjointed segments that do not show the context of the actions. For example, in studies of pornography effects, excerpts from several pornographic films are edited onto a single tape. The edited sequences may have more “action” than the original films, which sometimes intersperse the sex scenes with some token plot and character development. Moreover, experimental subjects, often recruited from first-year college courses, may be exposed to content that they might not normally see, and that might exaggerate the effects. One of the arguments in favor of inductive, observational methods is that they analyze people in their natural contexts and are perhaps more likely to catch the nuances of actual behavior with media.
SURVEY RESEARCH

Survey methods also play an important role in media research. For example, researchers interested in the effects of violent video games might administer a questionnaire to a random sample of U.S. schoolchildren (see Technology Demystified: The Science of Sampling). Media effects are inferred by statistically relating the independent measures of media exposure (“How many violent video games have you played in the last week?”) to the dependent variable of interest (such as self-reports of violent behavior: “how many fights did you have last week?”). If those who play a lot of video games also get in a lot of fights, and those who do not play many video games are relatively nonviolent, we would say that the two variables are correlated.

Correlated means that there is a statistical measure of association between two variables.
TECHNOLOGY DEMYSTIFIED: THE SCIENCE OF SAMPLING

Headline: Survey finds 10 percent hooked on the Web. “How can that be?” you ask yourself, “all the people I know are Facebook junkies.” The answer to this riddle is the key to the science of sampling. Clearly, one’s circle of friends does not adequately represent the opinions of the entire country. Survey researchers could talk to absolutely everyone while conducting a census, but that would be prohibitively expensive. By using probability sampling, researchers can get accurate results with far fewer respondents. Telephone interviews are a popular way to conduct surveys, so let’s see how sampling is done for them.

The ideal is to start from a complete sampling frame, a list that includes all members of the population under study. The other important point is to sample the list randomly, so that everyone on the list has an equal chance of being selected. We could cut up all of the phone books in the country, cull the duplicate listings, pack the individual listings in a giant revolving metal drum, and start picking numbers. That would take a drum the size of a cement mixer and would overlook the many homes with unpublished numbers or who use cell phones exclusively. It also leaves out people who moved since the last phone book came out, and they tend to be young, low-income, and minorities. Researchers, therefore, use random-digit dialing in which a computer generates random telephone numbers so that all telephone subscribers have an equal chance of getting a call. To do so, they start with listed wireline telephone numbers or with cell phone exchanges and replace the last digits selected from tables of random numbers. By following this procedure, researchers can get an accurate response by contacting a relatively small sample, and they can estimate the precision of their findings and also the probability that they are in error. For example, a sample of 400 homes yields a 3 percent margin of error (or standard error as it is more properly known) for a question that 10 percent of the respondents say “yes” to, for example, “Are you addicted to the Internet?” That means the “true” proportion is likely to be somewhere between 7 percent and 13 percent, 10 plus or minus 3. If researchers replicated the survey many times to check its accuracy, the odds are that the results would fall within the range of sampling error 95 percent of the time. The beauty of this approach is its efficiency. A few hundred respondents can represent the opinions of the entire country. However, to cut the margin for error in half in our example (to 1.5 percent), surveyors must quadruple the sample size.

These neat calculations overlook a messy problem with surveys, however: the growing number of people who refuse to cooperate with them. That’s the problem of nonresponse bias. Cooperation rates have plummeted from 80 percent in early phone survey studies in the 1960s to under 15 percent recently, and telephone technology trends (e.g., caller ID and cell-phone-only homes) point toward further problems with nonresponse bias.

Some researchers are turning to mail surveys, door-to-door interviews, and Web surveys instead. However, these techniques have their own sampling problems. Well-designed mail surveys can achieve superior response rates compared to phone interviews, but only by paying respondents monetary incentives that may bias the results. And the sad fact is that 20 percent of the adult population is functionally illiterate and can’t read them. There is no comprehensive list of Web users and no efficient way to randomly generate e-mail addresses, so probability sampling is impossible there. Door-to-door interviewing still yields high response rates but cost 10 times as much as phone interviews. So, researchers have to economize by cutting their sample sizes, and that increases their sampling error.

Survey studies are often more generalizable than experimental studies because their samples may represent larger populations, such as all U.S. schoolchildren in our example. Even if the samples are not strictly representative of a larger population in a statistical sense, they may still add to our understanding of media effects. For example, instead of randomly sampling all U.S. schoolchildren, a very expensive undertaking, we might conduct our survey in several school districts chosen to include children from diverse backgrounds. By extending research to more realistic settings and more diverse populations than in experimental studies, surveys can increase our confidence in the generalizability of the findings. They can also account for a wider range of factors than just media exposure, such as peer pressure to play violent games and religious beliefs that discourage them.

Survey studies make generalizations about a population of people by addressing questions to a sample of that population.

However, survey research provides ambiguous evidence about cause and effect. In our example, it is possible that aggressive children like to play violent video games. In other words, a tendency toward violence causes the playing of video games instead of the other way around. It is also possible that both violent behavior and video game use are caused by some unexamined third variable, such as lax parental supervision. This is the sort of situation in which experimental studies or ethnographic research might help to sort out the ambiguities. In media effects research, the most valid surveys are longitudinal studies that survey the same subjects repeatedly over a number of years. Huesmann et al. (2003) asked the parents of 8-year-olds to identify their children’s favorite TV programs and asked the children’s playmates to rate the children on their antisocial behavior. They recontacted the same families 5 and 10 years later and re-administered the survey. If the youngsters who watched a lot of television are more violent as teens than those who watched relatively little television as children, then we can conclude that childhood television exposure does indeed encourage violent behavior later in life. If some of the teens in the follow-up surveys have subsequently reduced their television viewing but remain violent, we can rule out the competing explanation that “violent people like violent television.” In other words, we can be fairly certain that television causes violent behavior, and rule out the competing explanation that violent people like to watch violence.
JUST A FEW MORE QUESTIONS
Many phone surveys are conducted from call centers like this one, in which survey takers read questions and record answers on a computer screen. That is known as computer assisted telephone interviewing, or CATI for short.

However, very few survey studies are repeated over time; most are just “one-shot” studies that compare media exposure and behavior but ignore the direction of any causal relationship. Even longitudinal studies cannot account for the influence of all the possible variables the researchers might leave out, such as parental supervision, which might explain both violence and television viewing. We should also note that other longitudinal studies of TV violence have found no effects (Milavsky et al., 1982). Still others have yielded rather puzzling results, including one by Huesmann and his associates (Huesmann & Eron, 1986) that showed a violence effect for girls but not for boys, just the reverse of earlier findings. Furthermore, a pattern of inconsistent findings emerged from similar studies in Poland, Finland, Israel, and Australia. This raises the likelihood that media effects may not be generalizable across cultures, since social values as well as media content patterns vary between countries.
ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH

Ethnography is a naturalistic way of looking at the impacts of communications media. It adapts the techniques anthropologists use—participant observation and interviewing—to look at cultures in a holistic way. Ethnography places media in a broad context of media users’ lives and cultures. It emphasizes observation over time, usually at least 6 months, so that researchers can see how people respond to changes in their environment, like the media they use. For example, Danah Boyd (2014) combined years of interviews and visits with teens to examine the life of teens in the age of social media.

Ethnography is a naturalistic research method in which the observer obtains detailed information from personal observation or interviews over extended periods of time.

Focus groups are another way of capturing people “in their own words” through guided group interactions. A group of 6 to 12 people is gathered in a conference room and led by a skilled moderator as they explore a topic of interest to the researcher. Behind a two-way mirror sit researchers equipped with microphones and TV cameras taking in every word. These are free-flowing but guided discussions that produce long transcripts rather than neat statistical tables. Social scientists use them to explore new research topics and to help generate questions for surveys. Ethnographers also use them to produce the raw data needed to formulate inductive theories of media processes, for example, to understand the information needs of minority and low-income Internet users. Media developers use them to see how people react to new programs or new media prototypes.
A HOUSE OF MIRRORS
Focus groups are conducted in front of two-way mirrors that let researchers observe and film the proceedings. Groups are a common tool of both ethnographic and market research where they are valued for letting participants respond in their own words. Their limited samples and group dynamics may produce misleading results.

Like all types of research, focus groups have their flaws and cannot offer a comprehensive answer to every question. With focus groups, it is sometimes hard to find participants, even when recruiters target members of a particular group and offer substantial monetary incentives. The members of the targeted group, for example, fathers with teenage daughters, who show up for the interview in no way represent the general public, but do give some idea about the opinions or behaviors of fathers with teenage daughters. The other problem is group dynamics. A good moderator can generate profound insights and must skillfully steer away from individual participants’ unique concerns that ordinary people would never reach on their own. Sometimes a strongly opinionated individual will dominate a group. Focus groups on the same topic are repeated until the researcher hears the same general comments from the different groups.

Ethnographers use unstructured or semi-structured interviews as an alternative to survey research. Surveys make it possible to compare many people through standardized questions, but they may impose response categories (e.g., multiple-choice answers) on the respondents. That approach yields standardized responses that are easier to tally, but ethnographers value letting people speak in their own words, using their own concepts and categories. Surveys force people to choose among predetermined responses, which raises the issue of validity. Does the forced choice reflect what the respondent really meant to say? Ethnographers let the participants respond in their own words and then they can ask follow-up, in-depth questions of the participants. Sometimes an in-depth interview will draw unexpected causal connections in that one person’s life. All researchers have to select what to report and they interpret what the subjects’ words in an interview or the numbers in survey research mean.

Ethnographies can yield in-depth information about a particular place at a particular time, but they do not permit much generalization. Although ethnographers try to record information so thoroughly and accurately that others would reach the same conclusions from their data, such reliability, or reproducibility, may be hard to achieve.

Looking for patterns of human behavior amid huge databases, referred to variously as Big Data or predictive analytics, is a new twist on ethnography. For example, statisticians might sift through millions of comments about new music in social media spaces to identify commenters who were talking about today’s hot groups several months ago. By analyzing what those same forums are chattering about today, they might predict what bands will be popular several months from now. The computer programs that make recommendations for you in Netflix and Pandora are other examples. These programs compare you with others with similar tastes to see what they like and calculate whether you might like it, too. Social science researchers have begun to examine data stored on Internet servers in depth to discover, for example, exactly which forms of Facebook most affect our psychological well-being (Burke, Marlow, & Lento, 2010).

STOP & REVIEW

1. What are some of the concerns about the impact of media on society that lead to “media bashing”?
2. Contrast the inductive and deductive approaches to studying the effects of the media.
3. What is a media effect?
4. What is the purpose of content analysis?
5. In what ways are experimental studies superior to survey studies? In what ways are they inferior?
6. What do ethnographers do?

Thus, the different types of research methods tell us different things. Content analyses often show that the media are filled with violence and sex, for example, but tell us nothing about the actual effects on the audience. Experimental studies often find evidence of effects, even from extremely short exposures of 15 minutes or less, but cannot assess how other factors may reduce or enhance those effects in the real world. Survey studies use larger, more representative samples than experimental research but seldom reach unambiguous conclusions about the effects of media exposure. Ethnographic studies provide deep insights, but the results are sometimes too subjective and particularistic to duplicate. It is important to explore these issues with a variety of different methods to find “what” happens, but also to find or describe the “how” and “why.” By triangulating (a concept from ethnography) across different forms of evidence, we can see if consistent patterns emerge. Triangulation might give us a more valid sense of how people behave with media and why.
THEORIES OF MEDIA USAGE

What medium will I choose today? A video game, an iPad, or a textbook? Media Now or Introduction to Calculus? You obviously picked Media Now, but why? To understand media impacts, we need to understand how the media work their way into our lives. Are we uncritical consumers of everything big media companies send our way, or do we actively select content? Theories of media exposure and use attempt to explain the processes we use to make our daily media consumption decisions.
USES AND GRATIFICATIONS

The uses and gratifications perspective dominates thinking about media consumption behavior. This theory assumes an active audience (see Media & Culture: The Active Audience, page 440): Users actively seek out media that meet their needs for knowledge, social interaction, and diversion.

Uses and gratifications is the theory that media are actively selected to satisfy our needs.

The various media satisfy differing needs. For example, interpersonal communication is one of the important gratifications that people seek from the Internet (Papacharissi & Rubin, 2000). Websites like Facebook that fulfill these expectations are thus likely to earn long visits and repeat viewings. Entertainment needs are more likely to be addressed by Hollywood films or television situation comedies.

Uses and gratifications theory (Palmgreen & Rayburn, 1985) focuses on the match between the gratifications we seek and those we actually obtain from the media. For example, if we surf over to Facebook seeking to gratify a need for social interaction and find friendly wall postings from our online friends, we have obtained the gratification we sought and we are likely to visit Facebook again. If instead we are met by caustic comments from one of our online “frenemies,” we might seek out other means to gratify our social interaction need, such as a face-to-face meeting with a real-world friend. According to this theory, we arrive at our media consumption decisions by performing a mental calculation in which we compare the gratifications we obtain with those we seek from all of the media alternatives available to us, taking into account all of the needs (e.g., for diversion, information, companionship) that are relevant to us at a given moment.

Our media behavior changes all the time because the gratifications we seek from the media are in a constant state of flux. We encounter new media that address new or different needs. New media provide new gratifications, such as interactivity and navigability (Sundar & Limperos, 2013). Our life situation may change and with it the criteria we use to select media. We also may seek out media to adjust our moods (Zillmann & Bryant, 1985) or to fulfill aesthetic urges to appreciate works of media art (Bartsch & Oliver, 2010). At some stages of our lives we may seek media that entertain; at other times information may be more of a priority. And the different media vary with respect to the gratifications they provide us. For example, television is associated with entertainment, whereas the Internet is more related to information seeking (see Table 14.1).
TABLE 14.1 Uses and Gratifications of Television and the Internet

1 WATCH TV …

1 USE THE INTERNET…

Because it entertains me

Because it’s easier

Because it’s enjoyable

To look for information

Because it relaxes me

To get information for free

Because it is a pleasant rest

Because it is a new way to do research

Because it allows me to unwind

Because it is enjoyable

When 1 have nothing better to do

Because it is entertaining

Source: Rubin, A. (1983). Television uses and gratifications. Journal of Broadcasting, 27, 37–51; Papacharissi, Z., & Rubin, A. M. (2000). Predictors of Internet usage. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 44,175–196.
MEDIA & CULTURE: THE ACTIVE AUDIENCE

Just how powerful are the media relative to their audiences? Some believe that the media have an enormous influence on audiences. For example, Adorno and Horkheimer (1972) saw powerful media propaganda as an explanation for the Holocaust and other brutal acts during World War II. And today, some see the media as powerful carriers of ideology that impose the interests of ruling groups on vulnerable audiences (Chomsky & Herman, 1988), such as by convincing young children that shiny toys are the key to happiness.

However, other scholars think the power of the media is limited by processes of selective exposure, selective attention, and selective perception that have been well studied by social scientists. However, this idea of a selective audience parallels a popular notion in cultural studies that media and audiences are both powerful. The communication process is a reciprocal activity involving the joint creation of meaning between the author or producer and the person who receives the message and makes sense of it (Hoynes, 2002). Stuart Hall (1980) redefined encoding as creating a message with verbal, visual, or written codes or symbols that someone else decodes with her or his own understanding of those codes. From this perspective, communication involves the exchange of meaning through the language and images that compose the shared culture of participants. The receiver of the communication plays an active role, filtering messages through the lens of his or her own social class, culture, significant groups, and personal experiences (Morley, 1992).

One view of the audience reception process builds on the idea of reading. Media producers create texts. Here, “texts” includes radio programs, music, television shows, and films, as well as printed texts. In this context, reading is not literally the reading of words but our interpretations of the media. Creators of media content have a preferred reading that they would like the audience to take out of the text. However, the audience might reject it, or negotiate some compromise interpretation between what they think and what the text is saying, or contest what the text says with an alternative interpretation (Morley, 1992). The audience response depends on what they, their family, and their friends already think about things. For example, a Republican Party member watching a Republican political ad will agree with it, a Democrat will disagree with it, and an independent might agree with part and reject part.

Cultural studies is a branch of scholarship that argues that media and audiences work together to define culture.
LEARNING MEDIA BEHAVIOR

Uses and gratifications theory parallels two general theories of human behavior, social learning theory (Bandura, 1986) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ouellette & Wood, 1998) to some extent, except that our expectations of the media are said to form around outcomes of media consumption behavior rather than the gratification of needs. The outcome could be the feeling of joy we experience after seeing the latest Johnny Depp movie. The next Johnny Depp movie that comes along may attract us, too, because we expect a similar outcome. Likewise, if we find his new movie upsetting, we may pass up the one after that altogether. Uses and gratifications theory would call that enjoyment a gratification; social learning theory calls it an outcome expectation. In social learning theory, our observations of the experiences of others are also important. For example, if we hear “positive buzz” from people who’ve seen a new movie, we may want to see it too. We also learn by listening to what others have to say about the media, including people in our daily lives and media critics.

Social learning theory explains media consumption in terms of its expected outcomes.

Social learning theory adds to the uses and gratifications theory in many other ways. It explains the avoidance of media, as in “I’d better not let Mom catch me playing another video game, or I’ll be grounded.” Here, the expectation of a negative consequence dictates usage. Media behavior is also determined by our own inner self-regulation (LaRose & Eastin, 2004): “I’m not watching The Voice tonight because I am disgusted with how much of a couch potato I am.” Much media behavior is governed by habit, in which we suspend active observation of our own media consumption and just automatically turn to the sports page or begin our day by checking our e-mail. In the extreme, self-control may fail those who repeatedly rely on media to relieve negative feelings (LaRose, 2014). This type of reliance results in what some have called media addictions, such as overindulgence in video games or becoming a virtual resident of “Second Life.”

Another factor is our perception of our own competency to consume the media, or our self-efficacy. If you’ve ever put down a book thinking, “That’s too deep for me,” self-efficacy influenced your media behavior. Self-efficacy strongly influences how computer media are used, especially by new users. What computer user has not had an attack of computer anxiety, or a fear of using computers, after a disastrous attack by a computer virus? Issues of self-efficacy can pre-empt certain kinds of media use, as when older people say they are too old to learn to use a computer.

Media Addiction. Is it possible to become so deeply involved with our favorite media activity that it acts like an addictive drug? Interactive media are especially enticing since they respond to our every move. Sometimes they do what we wish, but other times not, and the results are highly variable. That keeps us coming back for more—the same pattern of reinforcement that prompts pathological gambling. At times they even transport us to an ecstatic state called flow where time seems to disappear (Sherry, 2004). There have been cases of people who were literally dying to play, who suffered heart attacks during marathon sessions with online games. The addictive qualities are sometimes openly touted by game developers who promise a “better high than drugs” and by Webmasters who brag about making their creations more “sticky.” Previously (see Chapter 13) we learned that Internet gaming disorder has been tentatively classified as a mental disease (APA, 2013). Most of us have probably been late to dinner or missed a social engagement at one time or another while absorbed in a game or some other online pastime, a possible symptom of a life-wrecking problem, if it happens consistently. If that is true of you, we recommend thinking about ways of restoring self-control. We will make you a deal: if you spend an extra hour reading Media Now that you would normally spend in social media, then you can treat yourself to an extra dessert tomorrow. Deal?
WHERE DID THE TIME GO?
Deep engagement in video games may induce a flow state in which time seems to disappear. Excessive game play can also steal time from important real-life activities.
COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION

A great deal of the research on mediated interpersonal communication originated in organizational settings, where computer networks were used for all forms of electronic communication long before today’s social media were invented. Hence, this field of study is known as computer-mediated communication and includes media that we may not immediately associate with computer networks, such as video teleconferencing, as well as others that are obviously mediated by computers, such as e-mail.

An important concept in computer-mediated communication is presence, “a psychological state in which virtual [i.e., computer-generated] objects are experienced as actual objects” (Lee, 2004, p. 37). Social presence refers to the experience of social actors through the social cues provided in various communication media. Text messages that consist only of printed words are said to have low social presence, which theoretically makes them suited only for routine exchanges of information. Two-way videoconferences have high social presence since they convey important social cues in voice intonations and facial expressions and live interactions flow in both directions. These features supposedly make them suitable for more sensitive tasks like negotiating business deals and firing employees. However, texting is used for just about everything today despite its low social presence. How can that be? Even a “lean” medium like texting can be used effectively in tasks requiring social cues as parties learn about each other through repeated exchanges. Might social media like Facebook be even richer than real life, a form of hyperpersonal interaction (Walther, 1996)?
THEORIES OF MEDIA IMPACTS

Now that we have considered some theories about why people use the media, we can examine theories of the consequences of media usage for the individual (see Figure 14.1).
FIGURE 14.1 THEORIES OF MEDIA EFFECTS
There are a number of alternative theories about how to understand mass media effects. Over the years, theories of strong effects have contended with theories positing weak effects. Currently we are in a “strong effects” period.
MEDIA AS HYPODERMIC NEEDLE

The United States was seemingly driven into war with Spain in 1898 by sensational coverage concocted by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst (see Chapter 4). His papers trumpeted so loudly the sinking of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana Harbor and alleged atrocities by Spanish soldiers that the thirst for war became unquenchable (the Maine’s sinking was later found not to be the work of Spanish saboteurs as Hearst’s papers implied).

1898

Hearst newspapers summon the United States to war with Spain with sensational headlines

1933–1945

Nazi propaganda inflames the Holocaust and World War II

This event made the mass media seem extremely powerful—capable of swaying minds with the impact of a speeding bullet or a hypodermic injection—images that led to theoretical models of the same names (bullet model, or hypodermic model). Later, radio speeches by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler seemed to play a vital role in sparking the Holocaust of World War II. American film propagandists began the systematic study of the most convincing propaganda techniques. Experimental studies of persuasion begun during World War II identified the types of verbal arguments (one-sided versus two-sided appeals, and fear appeals versus reasoned arguments) that are the most convincing (Hovland, Lumsdane, & Sheffield, 1949).

The bullet model, or hypodermic model, posits powerful, direct effects of the mass media.

Persuasion is the use of convincing arguments to change people’s beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors.
THE MULTISTEP FLOW

Survey studies of social influence conducted in the late 1940s presented a very different model from that of a hypodermic needle in which limited effects were instead perceived. For example, a multistep flow of media effects was evident. That is, most people receive much of their information and are influenced by the media secondhand, through the personal influence of opinion leaders (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). The opinion leaders themselves are influenced by more elite media rather than everyday mass media channels. For example, political opinion leaders might take their cue from the Huffington Post, an online newspaper devoted to political commentary for an elite audience. In the second step, the opinion leaders share their opinions with members of their immediate social circles—say, the “Friday night regulars at the country club”—but only after some modification and adaptation to the norms of that circle. The club members belong to other social groupings (including their families, co-workers, and members of other clubs to which they belong) that are influenced in turn by them, and so on. Eventually, social influence radiates outward in society to people who never heard of the Huffington Post. But at every step in the process, social influence is modified by the norms of each new social circle it enters and by conflicting views that originate from other elite sources as well as popular mass media sources, such as CNN. The point is that although the media have some influence, the process of actual persuasion is primarily a social one. Social media may amplify this impact now that three-quarters of Internet users get news forwarded to them through e-mail or social networking sites (Purcell et al., 2010) and the features of these sites make it easy to recommend content to others. So more of us may be opinion leaders now if we forward or recommend things that others actually view and find interesting.

The multistep flow model assumes that media effects are indirect and are mediated by opinion leaders.
SELECTIVE PROCESSES

Another theme of the media effects studies that followed World War II was that the selective reception reduces media impact. Audiences exercise selective exposure: they avoid messages that are at odds with their existing beliefs. Thus, those who take the “anti” position in debate over the Affordable Healthcare Act are not likely to read a newspaper editorial advocating health insurance for everyone. Even when people expose themselves to discordant content, they distort it with selective perception. Thus, supporters of the healthcare act who watch a TV interview with one of its critics are more likely to find additional “proof” that their position is correct than to be converted to the other side. Selective retention means that people’s memories are also distorted, so that months later someone may remember that her side won a healthcare debate when in fact her side was humiliated (Sears & Freedman, 1972).

In 1960, Joseph Klapper published an influential review of postwar research on the effects of the mass media. Klapper concluded that the media were weak, able to deliver only a few percent of the voters in an election, and able to gain only a few points’ worth of market share for advertisers. Even these limited effects registered only at the margins, he said, primarily among the uninterested and the uninformed (Klapper, 1960).

The theory of limited effects holds that the effects of the mass media on individuals are slight.

1960

Klapper’s The Effects of Mass Communication argues for weak media effects

Social media may facilitate passive selective exposure. For example, Google now personalizes searches based on individual search histories so that the search results conservatives see for the topic “planned parenthood” may differ from those seen by liberals. Social media recommender systems automatically feed us stories that like-minded friends also like. The proliferation of online news sources and social media also make active selective exposure easier, helping us to find sites with the ideological slant we prefer or to click on stories that our social media friends “like” (Mutz & Young, 2011).
SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Within a few years, Klapper’s conclusions seemed unsatisfactory. In the 1960s, social critics cast about for explanations for mounting violence, political unrest, and a decline in public morality, especially among young adults. Television seemed a likely cause, because the young people belonged to the first “TV generation” that had grown up with the medium, and TV was loaded with images of violence and sex.

About the same time, a new theory of mass media effects, social learning theory, lent credence to these claims. Previously, we applied this theory to media consumption behavior, but it originally entered the field of mass communication research to explain the effects of television. The theory explained that viewers imitate what they see on TV through a process known as observational learning. The “rewards” that television characters receive for their antisocial behavior, including not just the loot from their robberies but also their very appearance on a glamorous medium such as television, encourage imitation. On the other hand, when the bad guys on TV get caught and go to jail, this presumably inhibits viewers from imitating them. The more we identify with a character—the more it resembles us or someone we would like to be—the more likely we are to imitate his or her behavior. The Bobo doll experiments we examined previously and many others that followed validated this theory.
CULTIVATION THEORY

Another explanation of media effects is that heavy exposure imparts a world-view that is consistent with the “world” presented in the media (Gerbner et al., 1994). According to cultivation theory, heavy television viewers are likely to be influenced by what is consistently shown in media, such as overestimating their own chances of being victims of violent crime, since it seems so common on television. For example, children who were heavy viewers of stories about child kidnappings were more frightened for their safety than those who watched relatively little television news (Wilson, Martins, & Marske, 2005). Their real-world experiences combine with the television worldview over time in a process called mainstreaming. When real-life experience confirms the media view (e.g., the viewers live in violent neighborhoods), the effect intensifies through the process of resonance. From this analysis, we project media effects. The viewers who adopt this distorted TV worldview might tolerate violence in their communities and families and in their own behavior because they see it as “normal.”

Cultivation theory argues that mass media exposure cultivates a view of the world that is consistent with mediated “reality.”.

Cultivation assumes that media systems like conventional broadcast TV deliver a consistent message to a mass audience. So, how can it apply to new media with their diverse messages and fragmented audiences? Supporters of the theory argue that as Big Media corporations extend their influence to the Internet, the new media will present the same worldview as the old. For example, by using Netflix to push downloads of The Walking Dead, the new media present the same message of unrelenting violence as the old. Video games cultivate perceptions of danger in the real world, although those effects may be limited to the specific situations that are similar to those encountered in the gaming environment rather than generating a generalized fear (Williams, 2006).
PRIMING

Priming theory is another theory (Berkowitz, 1984) in which the activation of one thought triggers related thoughts. Seeing the Roadrunner cartoon character bash the hapless coyote with a hammer makes us more likely to bash our little brother after the show, or so the theory goes. Incidental cues may unleash the aggression. The next time we see a hammer and little brother is standing near—look out! Children may store scripts about how to respond with violence that they learn from the media in long-term memory and then act out those scripts when a real-world event triggers that memory (Van Erva, 1990). The General Aggression Model (GAM; Carnagey, Anderson, & Bushman, 2007) integrates priming theory with social learning theory to describe how previously learned violent behavior may be triggered by thoughts, emotions, or physiological states provoked by media exposure.

Priming theory states that media images stimulate related thoughts in the minds of audience members.
AGENDA SETTING

Agenda setting is a process through which public figures and important events help to shape the content of the media. Agenda setting theory also describes the effects of that process on the media audience: the rank ordering that the audience assigns to important issues of the day tends to match the amount of coverage that the media give those issues (Wanta, 1997). For example, it has been found that political campaign press coverage affects the types of issues discussed in online discussion groups (Roberts, Wanta, & Dzwo, 2002) and that in some circumstances social media may set the agenda for conventional media (Sayre et al., 2010).
CATHARSIS

The catharsis hypothesis argues that media sex and violence have positive effects by allowing people to live out their antisocial desires in a mediated fantasy world instead of the real world (Feshbach & Singer, 1971). This theory was popular in the 1930s and 1940s before it was widely believed that the media were responsible for society’s ills. The catharsis hypothesis resurfaced in a review of the effects of violent video games in which it was found that those who played video games for relatively long periods of time exhibited less aggression than those who played for relatively short periods (Sherry, 2007). However, it could also be that the longer people play, the more skilled and less frustrated and thus the less aggressive they become (Ferguson, 2009).
CRITICAL THEORIES

Critical theorists question the theories used in media effects studies as well as the methods used (see Chapter 2). Critical studies of media impacts focus less on behavioral effects on individuals and more on how individuals and communities interpret media and, to some degree, on large-scale cultural impacts of media. For example, a critical analysis of John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1980 examined the way in which Hinckley “read” (or interpreted) a violent movie (Taxi Driver) and mingled it with his fantasies about actress Jodie Foster and former actor Ronald Reagan (Real, 1989). By noting that Hinckley committed his act of violence on the eve of the Academy Awards ceremony, Real wove an explanation of how the would-be assassin was trying to communicate his unrequited love for Foster. Does Avatar glorify the military or is it a critique of capitalism? The critical theorist is able to examine broad questions such as these about the relationship between culture and society that may elude the social scientist.

Note that in interpretations such as these, the ebb and flow of cause and effect between media and society is not a one-way street. In a sense, the media themselves are the “effects” of class domination or racial prejudice. For example, media might be used by their owners to assert, or make hegemonic, an idea that fits with their interests. People who own factories might want to make unions look bad. And unions may ally with politicians to create media messages that seek to limit owners’ power. So, in this view, the media are a part of broader systems of economic exploitation and cultural interaction.

There is a split in critical theory between those who focus on political economy and ideology, and those who focus on studies of culture. Among the former, researchers often argue for fairly powerful effects, since they assume that powerful media owners can assert their ideological interests in their media’s content. Among the latter, rather than the term selective perception, critical cultural theorists speak of audiences that are active readers of media texts. Some focus on the role of the audience while others focus on a more qualitative, critical approach to media messages (Deacon et al., 2007). Some critical theorists speak of group mediation (Martín-Barbero, 1993) or interpretive communities of groups that are similar in education, occupation, wealth, and family background (Lindlof & Taylor, 2010), whereas other social scientists use the term multistep flow to describe the way in which social interactions affect perceptions of the media. Likewise, critical theorists have relabeled the SMCR model (see Chapter 1) the “linear model” or “transmission paradigm,” in which messages are perceived as flowing in a manner that seems more unidirectional and clear than what critical theorists observe from their own studies.
MEDIA AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Antisocial behavior is contrary to prevailing norms for social conduct. That includes unlawful actions such as murder, hate crimes, rape, and drug abuse, as well as behaviors that many members of society find objectionable even if they are not illegal, such as drunkenness, aggression, and sexual promiscuity.
VIOLENCE

The effects of media violence are one of the most enduring topics in the annals of media effects research (Eastin, 2013). Riots in major cities in the late 1960s triggered national concern about the effects of television on violence, culminating in landmark studies sponsored by the U.S. Surgeon General. Effects on children are a special concern because youngsters have trouble distinguishing between the real world and the world of the small screen. To the child’s mind, if Scooby-Doo recovers instantly from a bash on the head, then the same should be true for little brother. Television is packed with violence—three-fifths of all prime-time shows include it (Signorielli, 2003). Children’s television shows have even more violence than other programs, glamorize it just as much, and trivialize it even more (Wilson et al., 2002).

1972

U.S. Surgeon General reports on the relationship between television and violence

Hundreds of experimental studies, many patterned after Bandura’s Bobo doll study described earlier, demonstrate that children can imitate violence they see. Televised violence prompts children not only to carry out parallel acts of aggression but also to perform other, novel forms of violent behavior; it predisposes them to select violent resolutions to conflicts in their daily lives and even primes them to engage in violent acts (Anderson et al., 2003). The strength of these effects is comparable to those associated with such well-documented public health hazards as lead poisoning and cigarette smoking (Baron et al., 2001).

Some discount experimental studies on the grounds that they are conducted under unrealistic conditions (Milavsky et al., 1982). However, survey studies conducted in real-world settings also tend to show a relationship between violent behavior and viewership of violent television (Paik & Comstock, 1994). In survey studies, adult viewers who watch violent programs are likely to hold worldviews that match the TV portrayals they see (Gerbner et al., 1994), a result consistent with cultivation theory. However, these relationships are relatively weak ones (Morgan & Shanahan, 1997). And possibly violent people also like to watch violent programs, so that it might be said that aggressive behavior causes viewing of TV violence rather than television causes real-world aggressiveness. More convincing are longitudinal panel studies in which television viewing at one time is related to violence exhibited at a second time, that is, days, months, or even years later. Panel studies (e.g., Huesmann, 2013) indicate that television viewing at an early age is related to aggressive behavior as well as to criminal convictions and developing an antisocial personality later in life (Robertson et al., 2013). The effects continue to mount even from viewing in later years of life (Johnson et al., 2002).

Violence on television is not the most important factor contributing to violence in society, however. Family and peer influence, socioeconomic status, and substance abuse are more important (U.S. DHHS, 2001). Still, it is probably safest to conclude that exposure to antisocial television portrayals can have at least short-term effects in promoting aggression. Many researchers would add that there are probably long-term effects as well, especially on children. However, these conclusions remain highly controversial. Significant effects are found in only about half of the experimental studies of television violence, are weak overall, and might be at least partially explained away by genetic factors or exposure to violence in the home (Ferguson, 2009).

If violence on television is a problem, shouldn’t violent video games be even more dangerous to children? After all, video games are packed with violent role models (Lachlan, Smith, & Tamborini, 2005) and games of the first-person shooter genre are nothing but violence without any attempt to show the real-life consequences. In those games the child is the violent perpetrator and presumably can readily imagine gunning down other humans while playing. A number of studies suggest that there are indeed negative effects. For example, in one study, playing violent video games made players insensitive to the pain of others (Bushman & Anderson, 2009). However, some reviews of the studies examining the effects of violent video games find evidence of major effects on aggression (Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014), whereas others find little evidence that such effects exist (Kutner & Olson, 2008). Researchers disagree over the validity of the methods used in the studies and the interpretation of the findings (Ferguson & Kilburn, 2010). For example, many experimental studies focus on aggressive attitudes or use measures of “violence,” such as blasts of loud noise, that have little in common with the real-world violent acts that are the real concern. Survey studies rely on often faulty memories about the amount of exposure to violent games. Also, the studies typically involve children and college students drawn from normal populations that do not frequently engage in violence despite their video game exposure.
CHILD’S PLAY?
The effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior are highly controversial. Some reviews of the research find substantial effects, whereas others find none.

Concerned parents who may wish to err on the side of caution by protecting their children from media violence could benefit from warnings when violence is about to appear. Unfortunately the content labels supplied by television networks underrepresent the amount of violence in program content (Kunkel et al., 2002), and less than a third of parents fully utilize them, in part because they find that the ratings do not provide detailed enough guidance (Gentile et al., 2011). Moreover, the labels may not be effective unless accompanied by improved parental supervision or automatic content filtering. Simply labeling the programs as violent attracts more young viewers to the “forbidden fruit” (Bushman & Cantor, 2003). Parental intervention can make a difference. Providing brief negative evaluations of violent characters (Nathanson, 2004) or enlisting parents and schools in campaigns to reduce exposure to media (Robinson & Borzekowski, 2006) can reduce violent effects. However, parental interaction may be ineffective in relationship to online risk factors that are more influenced by peers than by parents (Livingstone & Helsper, 2008).
PREJUDICE

The media may also promote sexism, racism, and other forms of intolerance. Media portrayals encourage stereotyping, the formation of generalizations about a group of people on the basis of limited information. Stereotypes are harmful when they become rationalizations for treating others unfairly. Furthermore, members of the groups to which they are applied may internalize negative stereotypes, thereby undermining their own self-respect. Media are very effective at creating stereotypes because they are sometimes the only source of information we have about other groups and because they often present a distorted view of those groups.

Stereotyping is the making of generalizations about groups of people on the basis of limited information.

Gender stereotypes are an example. Since the 1970s, women have begun appearing in higher-status jobs and in somewhat fewer stereotypically female occupations on television. Still, they are more likely to be unemployed and less likely to have professional occupations than men (e.g., secretary and nurse; Signorielli, 2009; Signorielli & Bacue, 1999). Sex-role stereotypes are rampant in video games as well: women are seldom seen in general, and usually appear scantily clad in sexy clothing when present (Downs & Smith, 2010). The reinforcement of stereotypes begins with programs aimed at toddlers: Barney and Friends and Teletubbies portrayed the few female characters as caregivers and followers, whereas male roles included a wider range of possibilities (Powell & Abels, 2002). And the reinforcement continues through film and video game characterizations as toddlers grow into tweens and teens (Okorafor & Davenport, 2001; Williamson, 2007).

To the male viewer, this might make it seem acceptable to treat women as inferior. For their part, women may feel diminished because of their underrepresentation on TV. They may internalize the common media stereotypes that beautiful women are more valued and that women should sacrifice their careers for their families (Signorielli, 1989). Women who adopt sexualized characters in video games may view themselves as sex objects as a result (Fox, Bailenson, & Tricase, 2013). Sex-role stereotypes in the media may have an effect on a wide range of outcomes including attitudes toward women and perceptions of the appropriateness of personality traits, occupations, and activities stereotypically associated more with one sex than with the other (Oppliger, 2007). Gender stereotypes can also make us dissatisfied with our own bodies. Exposure to media images that consistently portray slender female models and actresses may encourage unrealistic body images and lead to eating disorders among females (Tiggemann, 2014). As with violence effects, the impact of sex-role stereotyping can be counteracted by parental interventions that provide contradictory information, for example, pointing out that “lots of girls do things besides paint their nails and put on make-up” (Nathanson et al., 2002, p. 928).

The life aspirations of minority children are also affected by the limited media portrayals of minorities (Clark, 1972). The level of representation of minority characters on network television now matches and even exceeds their numbers in the general population (Glascock, 2001). But racially stereotyped portrayals persist; for example, African Americans are still more often portrayed as lazy, and Latinos as flashy dressers compared to whites (Mastro, 2008). Racially stereotyped television portrayals of minorities may lead white viewers to see minorities in more negative ways, such as making them more willing to see African Americans as criminals (Ford, 1997) or to vote against public policies aimed at ending racial inequality (Mastro, 2008).

Media stereotyping affects all groups in society. Adults over 60 years are relatively invisible on television, and when they do appear, they are portrayed as relatively powerless and sexless compared to younger characters (Lauzen, Dozier, & Reyes, 2007). Blue-collar families are under-represented and are often portrayed in a way that denigrates their lifestyles (consider The Simpsons). The same is true of homosexuals, persons with disabilities, the homeless, the mentally ill, and seemingly any group that deviates from a mainstream society dominated by professional, “straight,” healthy, and wealthy white males. We can easily summon to mind stock images of serious college students (“nerds” in media lexicon), billionaires, lawyers, and police that have little in common with their real-world counterparts. To some extent, the media cannot function without stereotypes. They are the “pictures in our heads” (Lippmann, 1922) that stories are made of, a type of conceptual shorthand that allows viewers to recognize characters immediately and connect with their situations.
UNDOING STEREOTYPES
The success of female role models like 2010 Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow may hold the key to reducing gender stereotypes in front of the camera as well as behind it.

It is when the negative stereotypes spill over from the flickering screen into our daily lives that they become a concern. In the midst of a continuing war on terrorism, there is the danger that we may be unduly influenced by media images of Muslims and Arabs as terrorists and warmongers. Arab stereotypes have long been present in popular media (Shaheen, 2003) and U.S. media contain many negative images of Muslims (Nacos & Torres-Reyna, 2007). This might lead us to be prejudiced against Muslims or to back policies that punish them unfairly. Indeed, this situation is one in which the media images could be especially powerful. They highlight serious intergroup conflict in the starkest terms and strengthen stereotypes (Huesmann et al., 2012). These are conditions in which media stereotypes can have very corrosive effects.
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

Sex in the media erupted as an issue in the 1920s, in the aftermath of a wave of Hollywood sex scandals. Hollywood imposed strict self-censorship standards that now seem ludicrous in retrospect: no cleavage, no navels, separate beds for married couples, no kisses longer than 4 seconds, cut to the clouds overhead if sex is imminent. When Elizabeth Taylor said the word virgin in a 1954 movie, it caused a sensation. Since then, producers and publishers have continually pushed the limits to reap financial benefits at the box office and the newsstand.
DANGEROUS PORNOGRAPHY?
The mix of sex and violence on the HBO hit series Game of Thrones may encourage male viewers to commit acts of sexual aggression.

The past decades have seen a dramatic increase in highly explicit pornographic material through magazines, home video, movies, and cable television. Today, online sex is a growing concern. In a recent national study, about a fourth of children aged 10–15 years intentionally exposed themselves to X-rated material on the Internet, and exposure to violent pornography (although not exposure to nonviolent pornography) greatly increased the chances of engaging in sexually related aggression over time (Ybarra et al., 2012). Among adults, the consumption of pornography is related to participation in extramarital sex and sex for hire (Wright, 2012). The latest cause for concern is “sexting,” in which teens make their own pornography by taking pictures of themselves in various states of undress and share them via social media or cell phones. Although only about 2 percent of youth between the ages of 10 and 17 have sent pictures of that nature (Mitchell et al., 2012), the numbers are still alarming because parents, schools, and law enforcement officials treat the incidents as child pornography cases.

In nationwide surveys conducted in the United States over the past 40 years, consumption of pornography was found to be positively correlated with liberal sexual attitudes, extramarital sex, promiscuity, and prostitution (Wright, 2013). Experimental studies show that when males are exposed to explicit pornography, they are more likely to express negative attitudes toward women, to think that relatively uncommon sexual practices (such as fellatio and anal intercourse) are widespread, and to be more lenient with rape offenders in hypothetical court cases. In experiments that examine the combined impacts of pornography and violence, male subjects are more likely to administer simulated electric shocks (sometimes even supposedly lethal ones!) to females after exposure to pornography (Harris & Barlett, 2008).

Is there a relationship between pornography and sex crimes in the real world? Early exposure to X-rated material by adolescent males has been found to be related to more stereotyped attitudes toward women, more permissive sexuality, and more participation in sexual harassment later in life (Brown & L’Engle, 2009). Sex offenders are likely to consume pornography before engaging in sex and are highly aroused by material that matches the nature of their criminal sexual activities. Among those who are at “high risk” for sexual aggression (e.g., men who are impulsive or hostile by nature), pornography exposure greatly adds to that risk. However, a link between the availability of pornography in a community and the incidence of sex crimes has not been established conclusively. The example of Japan is often cited, a culture in which sexual images in the media, including violent ones, are much more common than in the United States but sex crimes are far less frequent. That could be because of strict social norms against rape that inhibit the effects of pornography but also make victims reluctant to report it (Harris & Barlett, 2008).

The relatively mild sexual portrayals on broadcast television, in which sexual intercourse is at most strongly implied by showing “after” pictures of actors between the sheets, also pose a threat to society. Exposure to sexual content on television was found to be related to pregnancy rates during a study that followed a national sample of teens over 3 years (Chandra et al., 2008).
DRUG ABUSE

A lifetime ago there was concern that movies such as Easy Rider glorified the drug scene and contributed to illegal drug use among college students. The media generally bowed to these concerns, although perhaps only because drug films were not as profitable as those featuring violence and sex, and because distributors of illegal drugs cannot buy advertisements for them!

The abuse of legal drugs is quite another story. Cigarette ads have long been banished from television by law. Print ads can no longer glorify smoking by showing happy, glamorous people (or cuddly cartoon characters) puffing away; the Surgeon General’s warnings about the hazards of smoking must be displayed; and there can be no imagery that obviously is designed to appeal to children. Hard-liquor distillers long avoided television (although this is now changing), but beer and wine commercials are one of the leading sources of advertising revenue for television, as are ads for over-the-counter drugs. Restrictions on prescription drug ads have been relaxed so that they, too, can appear on television.

Advertisers claim that these ads do not boost overall consumption levels and affect only the relative market share the various brands enjoy. However, a comprehensive review of research about the effects of cigarette advertising concluded that cigarette ads may prompt both the initiation and the continuation of smoking (Capella et al., 2011). Public health officials are concerned that ads for the new “smokeless” e-cigarettes (see Chapter 11) will re-glamorize smoking and reverse the impact of bans on cigarette advertising on television (Fairchild, Bayer, & Colgrove, 2014). Advertising also plays a role in the initiation of alcohol consumption (Smith & Foxcroft, 2009). Critics have long contended that some of the ads are secretly targeted to young viewers through characters (such as the dashing Captain Morgan pirate character and Joe Camel) that are carefully crafted to appeal to impressionable young viewers at an age when they are vulnerable to initiating lifelong addictions. Revelations of secret cigarette industry marketing studies on children have shown that the critics were right.

Attention has turned to antismoking campaigns directed at teens and children. Campaigns from the national “truth” antismoking campaign that attack the motives of the tobacco industry have proven effective, but antismoking ads produced by the industry itself actually increase intentions to smoke (Davis et al., 2009). And ads that are highly critical of the industry are prohibited under the terms of a settlement with the tobacco industry that set aside billions of dollars for smoking prevention.

Tobacco and alcohol industry apologists like to argue that their products are legal and they have a right to advertise, even if some children get in the way. After all, fast food may be harmful. Why don’t we ban hamburger commercials aimed at children? Maybe we should. Now some critics have begun to argue that like drugs, fatty foods are indeed addictive. There is a relationship between television viewing and obesity in children (Caroli et al., 2004). Video game play is also associated with childhood obesity (Vandewater, Shim, & Caplovitz, 2004) although “active” video games with motion-sensing controllers that force players off the couch may be effective in attacking the child obesity epidemic (Lu et al., 2013).
COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

Prosocial behavior is in a sense the opposite of antisocial behavior. It includes behaviors and positive qualities that we want to encourage in our children and our society: cooperation, altruism, sharing, love, tolerance, respect, balanced nutrition, contraceptive use, personal hygiene, safe driving, improved reading skills, and so on. We can also include in this list the discontinuing of antisocial behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, reckless driving, or unsafe sex. Prosocial media fall along a continuum based on the relative mixture of entertainment and informational content. They range from transmitting heavily sugar-coated, subtle messages to explicit, direct educational efforts.

Prosocial behaviors are those that a society values and encourages.

Efforts to promote prosocial media are the flip side of “media bashing” that we outlined earlier. Instead of criticizing the media for sex and violence, only to have them retreat behind the First Amendment, why not encourage them to produce more wholesome and educational programs? The Children’s Television Act of 1990 does just that. It mandates that programs designed specifically for children be aired as a condition for broadcast license renewals (see Chapter 15). After years of wrangling over just how much children’s programming is enough, what “specifically designed for children” means, and even who children are, meaningful guidelines were finally passed in 1996 (Kunkel, 1998).

1990

Children’s Television Act mandates programs designed specifically for children
INFORMATION CAMPAIGNS

Information campaigns use the techniques of public relations and advertising to “sell” people on prosocial behaviors. They seek to achieve specific changes in their audience, such as heightening public awareness of a health or social problem and changing related attitudes and behaviors. They usually adopt an informal and entertaining style to attract an audience. Perhaps the most familiar manifestations of information campaigns are public service announcements, such as the recent campaign against texting while driving.

Information campaigns use the techniques of advertising in an attempt to convince people to adopt prosocial behaviors.

Information campaigns have a spotty record of success. Experimental studies show, however, that some campaigns do affect the awareness, attitudes, and behaviors of their audiences. Campaigns can succeed if they have clear objectives and sharply defined target audiences and if they find relevant ways to overcome indifference (Rice & Atkin, 2000). Social marketing, an integrated marketing communication approach to behavior change (see Chapter 11), combines media, interpersonal influence, and carefully managed efforts to introduce recommended products directly into the lives of the target audience. This approach has achieved considerable success in the health communication field (Wakefield et al., 2010). For example, in a safe-sex campaign, public service ads might be combined with posters in nightclubs and with volunteers who circulate on dance floors to distribute condoms. Success can also depend upon striking just the right chord with their intended audiences. For example, antismoking ads that emphasize the personal stories of the effects of smoking are more effective than others (Durkin, Biener, & Wakefield, 2009). However, habitual behaviors like smoking are generally harder to change through information campaigns than infrequent behaviors such as obtaining flu vaccinations.

Even when well designed, some information campaigns face too many obstacles to have much impact. Many rely on free advertising space (hence their appearance late at night) and consequently have difficulty reaching their audiences. The public interest groups that produce information campaigns too often expend all their resources in developing the media materials, leaving little for paid media placements directed to their target audience.

And not all information campaigns are effective to begin with. Advertising professionals who contribute their time in exchange for a chance to showcase their skills may not be familiar with scientific evidence about what works and what is needed to create successful campaigns. For example, health campaigns that emphasize social consequences and feature female sources tend to be effective, whereas those featuring emotional appeals or that rely on credibility of the sources tend not to be. It is important to tailor messages according to the involvement level of audiences as well as their age, gender, and race (Keller & Lehmann, 2008).

Other campaigns are worse than ineffective, and can have unintended effects. For example, informing children about the risks of drugs can unintentionally make drug use seem more prevalent and therefore more socially acceptable. One widely touted drug education program, Project D.A.R.E., was found to be ineffective at best (Lynam et al., 1999) and at worst may have encouraged drug use; it had to be redesigned.
WE DARE YOU TO USE DRUGS
Well-intentioned but poorly designed information campaigns sometimes unintentionally encourage the behaviors they hope to prevent. The D.A.R.E. antidrug program increased drug use when students learned that drugs were more prevalent than they had thought. The program had to be revised as a result of these findings.

In other cases, campaigns may have foggy objectives or uncertain target audiences, or they may have too many objectives, trying to satisfy multiple agendas (“We want users to stop using, potential users to stop thinking about it, and their parents to drum both messages into their children’s heads”). Campaign developers seldom have the resources to fund the detailed research that goes into successful product commercials. Also they try to achieve much more than product advertisements, which merely aim to increase awareness of a brand name or a new product. Information campaigns often target deeply ingrained habitual behaviors, a goal that is generally unattainable through advertising alone.
INFORMAL EDUCATION

Without a “captive audience” of classroom students, informal education efforts must artfully combine the elements of education and entertainment. The best-known example is Sesame Street. Since its inception in 1969, Sesame Street has proved to be a popular and effective means of readying children for school (Fisch & Truglio, 2001). However, Sesame Street is also an example of a phenomenon that plagues prosocial media—the unintended effect. Sesame Street was originally designed to close the gap in school readiness between minority and majority children. Unfortunately, it did just the opposite. Middle-class white children who watched the show learned more about “words that begin with b” than low-income minority children, and the knowledge gap (see page 462) between the two widened as a result (Cook et al., 1975).

What about the prosocial effects of entertainment media? Do couch potatoes soak up valuable information from TV quiz shows? Do children learn about cooperation by watching SpongeBob Square Pants? We call these effects incidental learning because they are side effects of exposure to entertainment. For example, in areas where the MTV show 16 and Pregnant was heavily viewed and stimulated online discussion and information seeking, teen pregnancy rates dropped more than in areas where viewership was relatively light (Kearney & Levine, 2014). Internationally, a number of studies in Brazil, Mexico, India, and South Africa have shown that deliberate placement of plotlines in some operas and other serial entertainment encouraging smaller family sizes has had considerable impact over time—this approach has developed an entire approach to prosocial media called entertainment education (Singhal & Rogers, 2012).

Interactive media provide new venues for incidental learning. Prosocial video games can be effective in promoting desirable behaviors, such as cooperation, among children (Greitemeyer & Mügge, 2014). Many young Internet users engage in self-directed online research to learn about topics that interest them, often stimulated by their participation in online social media like Facebook (Ito et al., 2009).
FORMAL EDUCATION

The delivery of courses through the media is formally known as distance education. The new trend in distance education is putting courses on the World Wide Web, the virtual university. Overall, Web courses are at least as effective as classroom instruction and possibly more effective (Means et al., 2009).

However, there is wide variability in the effectiveness of distance education relative to classroom instruction: some online courses are more effective than the classroom, others far less so. With so many courses going online, either all or in part, the question becomes which forms of online coursework are most effective. For example, it appears that asynchronous courses that can be consumed at the convenience of the learner are more effective than synchronous courses even though the latter permit live interactions with the instructor (Bernard et al., 2009).

Online instruction could have a transformative effect on higher education that might someday eliminate many of our beloved alma maters as elite universities post online courses that are arguably “the best” and are also free. Stanford University offered a free online course about artificial intelligence that drew over 100,000 students. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are generating massive interest in higher education circles, and consortia of major universities like Coursera, edX, and Udacity have formed to provide them. Research on their effectiveness is in its early stages. Initial enthusiasm dimmed considerably when it turned out that less than 10 percent of students complete the courses, which too often have involved little more than viewing recordings of lectures with limited interaction.

There is growing interest in so-called “serious games” (see Chapter 13) that embed educational objectives in video games. Given the popularity of video games with learners of all ages and the ability of games to simulate real-world environments outside the classroom, this approach holds promise. It remains to be seen how effective and costly serious games are compared to other forms of instruction (Vandercruysse, Vandewaetere, & Clarebout, 2012).
THE IMPACTS OF ADVERTISING

If the media have such mixed success in influencing behavior, why is there so much advertising? (For more on advertising, see Chapter 11.) The answer is that advertisers are happy to achieve rather limited impacts, at least when using conventional mass media. Most advertisers take our consumption behavior as a given. They merely seek to strengthen our brand awareness so that we think of their product when we are in the store and maintain brand loyalty so that we will keep coming back for more. At best, they hope to provide information that will sway the attitudes and purchase behavior among a small percentage of consumers and that those impacts will build slowly with repeated exposures to an ad campaign. However, conventional market research tools provide limited insight into the success of mass media advertising campaigns based on the demographic characteristics of audiences and the media and products they consume (Stewart & Pavlou, 2008).

Does advertising work? Even with these relatively modest goals, many mass media advertising campaigns are a flop. Sometimes they are outgunned by more powerful campaigns from competitors. Many other factors influence consumer purchases, including special promotional offers, the price of the product, its availability, the way it is packaged, and—let us not forget—consumer needs and the actual merits of the product. Any of these can negate the effects of the most polished advertising campaign. Sometimes the campaign is simply ineffective. Part of the problem lies with the way ads are tested. If they are highly memorable, they are deemed successful. Only much later do the advertisers find out whether they sold more hamburgers or athletic shoes.

It is unclear exactly how advertising works even when it is successful. The hierarchy of effect is a common notion in advertising research that states that purchase decisions follow a set series of steps: first comes awareness, then interest, then decision, followed by the action of actually buying the product. But there are many competing hierarchies, including some in which action comes first, as in the case of an impulse buy. One review of the literature concluded that none of the proposed hierarchies is especially compelling (Vakratsas & Ambler, 1999).

The impact of television advertising on young children is of great concern because most children first come into contact with the consumer society through TV. Young children have a difficult time understanding commercials. They confuse the commercials with the programs and react uncritically to advertising messages (Liebert & Sprafkin, 1988). Advertisers can exploit young viewers by using the hosts of children’s shows to hawk their products, selecting deceptive camera angles to make tiny toys appear child-size. Sometimes, a new television show is really a big advertisement—part of a marketing campaign—where the characters of children’s programs are dolls already on the store shelves waiting to be purchased. These shows prompt children to parrot advertising slogans to wear down their parents (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2013). As we saw previously, advertising also plays a role in introducing children to harmful habits such as smoking and alcohol consumption.
OLD JOE
Cigarette advertising often influences impressionable minds and may encourage young children to acquire an unhealthy lifelong habit. The tobacco industry secretly marketed to children before the practice was uncovered and its effects on children were documented, resulting in new restrictions on cigarette advertising (which marked the end of Joe Camel’s life).

Is advertising good for consumers in an economic sense? Overall, about 7 percent of what we spend on consumer goods goes into advertising (Shonfeld & Associates, 2012). In some product categories—cigarettes, beer, and soft drinks, for example—the advertising expenditures are considerably higher. When manufacturers establish brand loyalty, they can charge more for their products. However, advertising also makes consumers aware of alternative products and special offers, and it generally promotes competition, which helps to keep consumer prices down. However, ads are less of a bargain for advertisers than they used to be. The increase in sales stemming from increases in advertising is small, about 12 cents for every dollar spent on advertising, and has fallen to about half of what it was in the 1980s (Sethuraman et al., 2011). In the critical view, many researchers are concerned about the larger social impact of advertising in locking people into a consumerist point of view and a lifestyle that has them spending money they don’t have for things they don’t really need (Jhally, 2000).

Online advertising and marketing forces a rethinking of basic questions about advertising effectiveness (Stewart & Pavlou, 2008). In favor of advertisers, online search word advertising popularized by Google makes it possible to target ads to consumers who are in the market for a specific product, eliminating waste in advertising budgets. It is also possible to precisely determine the effectiveness of an ad by tracking the number of purchases completed as a result of clicking through to the advertiser’s Web page instead of hoping that an impression of a television ad will come to mind during the next trip to the store. On the other hand, advertisers are losing control of the message as consumers turn to blogs, social media, product review sites, and other sources of online word of mouth (or word of mouse at is sometimes called) that may deflate the claims made by advertisers.

STOP & REVIEW

1. Name three theories that contend that mass media have strong effects.
2. What are some of the factors that weaken media effects?
3. Do video games cause violence, or don’t they? Explain your answer.
4. Name some examples of prosocial effects of the media.

THE IMPACTS OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

Like it or not, political campaigns have largely evolved into advertising campaigns, the candidate being the “product.” The techniques of market research and mass persuasion have been applied with a vengeance to politics. The political caucus has given way to the focus group.

What is the net effect of the political ads that glut the airwaves just before an election? The ads are most likely to impact those who are relatively unaware of an election and its issues, but are also likely to discourage highly aware voters from seeking other types of information (Valentino, Hutchings, & Williams, 2004). However, since unaware voters are also unlikely to vote, the overall impact may be minimal.

Until recently, political communication researchers had largely given up trying to understand how to sway massive blocs of votes through persuasive argumentation, concentrating instead on more complex interactions between voters, the media, and political systems. For example, newspaper readership (although not television news viewership) and engagement in political discussion foster involvement with local political issues (Scheufele, Shanahan, & Kim, 2002). Political practitioners have turned to negative ads in the hope of cutting through voter apathy, but overall these are ineffective and may stimulate a lack of trust in government (Lau et al., 2007). Negative ads probably do not diminish voter turnout as once thought (Franz et al., 2008). Political advertising also has the positive effect of stimulating discussion and civic participation (Cho, 2011).

The campaign coverage that appears in the media, including news stories, opinion polls, public appearances by the candidates, debates, and editorial endorsements, is inherently more effective than political advertisements. That is because authoritative media sources are generally more credible, or believable, than politicians, and credible sources are more persuasive. Also, recall an earlier discussion (in Chapter 2) of the gatekeeping, framing, and agenda-setting functions of the mass media: their ability to define not only what the important issues are but also how to think about those issues. For example, in the 2008 presidential election, the media set the agenda for an Obama victory by emphasizing the economic failures of the preceding administration (Kenski et al., 2010). Debates have some impact on perceptions of the candidate’s character, but tend to only strengthen confidence in preexisting voting choices rather than change votes (Benoit & Hansen, 2004). However, the “spin” that the media place on the outcome of debates may affect voter attitudes (Fridkin et al., 2008).
KENNEDY WINS
The first-ever televised presidential debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon are often credited as a decisive factor in Kennedy’s 1960 election victory. However, debate performances seldom change votes.

Social science research is gaining new prominence in the political arena as attention turns from mass media advertising and conventional public opinion polling to data mining and highly targeted campaign pitches tested through rigorous experimentation (Issenberg, 2012). For example, researchers systematically vary the scripts used by campaign workers who go door-to-door before elections to see which versions result in higher voter turnout by a candidate’s supporters. Detailed information provided by data brokers (see Chapter 11) makes it possible to identify potential swing voters and target them with just the right pitch over the telephone or in online ads.

The less important the election is, the more important the political coverage becomes. This is because voters are unlikely to be aware of candidates or issues outside of the presidential race and one or two other high-profile contests. Most Americans cannot name their own member of the House of Representatives, let alone the name of the challenger or the positions either candidate takes on the issues. Because people are naturally unwilling to vote for an unknown quantity, this often gives incumbents and candidates with names such as “Kennedy” and “Trueheart” a natural advantage. Issues have turned into TV “sound bites.” In this vacuum, advertising can be effective in establishing name recognition. However, the effects of political ads in major campaigns may be obscured by the impact of other campaign activities. A study examining voters in media markets in “battleground” states in the 2004 presidential election but who lived in (non-battleground) neighboring states, and were able to see the commercials but not subjected to other campaign activities, revealed that campaign commercials are persuasive when considered in isolation from other campaign activities (Huber & Arceneaux, 2007).

The commonly held beliefs, attitudes, and misconceptions about the issues of the day are what we call public opinion. Like candidate preferences, public opinion is also shaped through interpersonal influence. The publicity attached to polls may help mold public opinion through a process called the spiral of silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1984). That is, when we believe that our opinions match the rising tide of public opinion—for example, when we see poll results that support our own opinions—our beliefs are strengthened. Conversely, when we sense that we hold an unpopular belief, a “red” voter in a “blue” state for example, we remain silent. Because one of the ways we gauge how popular our own opinions are is by hearing the same opinions voiced by others, a self-perpetuating cycle begins that eventually suppresses the less popular view.

Changes in the media landscape perhaps call for a reassessment of the effects of political communication. The power of the mass media to set the political agenda and frame the issues of the day (see Chapter 2) is perhaps diminishing. The popularity of partisan “red” media like Fox News (on the right) and “blue” MSNBC (on the left) and the accessibility of political forums of all political color shades in between may make it easier to maintain divergent views. This appears to foster political polarization by creating “echo chambers” as voters can immerse themselves in media environments that share only their own views (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008; 2010). However, many people do seek out political views that differ from their own in an effort to obtain understanding as well as consistency in their political world views (Holbert, Weeks, & Esralew, 2013). Social media make it possible to seek out social groups that will support and even amplify unpopular opinions (Mutz & Young, 2011). Online political participation extends beyond the older, wealthier participants who take part in offline political activities (Jensen, Danziger, & Venkatesh, 2007). Social media use is related to civic and political participation offline as well as online (De Zuniga, Jung, & Valenzuela, 2012). The number of tweets a candidate gets are also related to the number of votes they get (DiGrazia et al., 2013), although it is uncertain whether the tweets lead or follow the formation of voting decisions. However, the Internet is still not accessible to all; the digital divide (see Chapter 9) still persists among low-income and minority citizens. That limits its value as a medium of political communication or as an electronic voting booth in an egalitarian society.
UNDERSTANDING SOCIETAL IMPACTS

Societal effects could be viewed as the aggregate of individual effects across large groups of people, the whole being equal to the sum of its parts. However, individual effects do not translate directly into broad social impacts. For example, although many studies have found that video games and television are related to aggression at the individual level, there is no consistent evidence that the availability of these media affect community-level rates of violent crime (Ferguson, 2009), and indeed different theories have been proposed to explain the broader implications of the media (see Chapter 2). The important issues related to media and society reflect problems that confront society at large. They are at the root of many of the controversies that swirl around the media and underlie many of the political debates in a free society. Indeed, we abandon the use of the term media effects at this point, since that is closely associated with social science research on the media and the individual, and instead consider broad “social impacts.”
COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY

One of the thorniest issues confronting society is inequality between social groups as defined by wealth, race, and gender. What are the roots of social inequality in society? As societies become more complex, they become more stratified—more divided into unequal social groups or classes (Braudel, 1994).

People may be categorized both in terms of their monetary wealth, or economic capital, and in terms of differences in their education and family backgrounds—their cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984). Differences in both economic and cultural capital help perpetuate social inequality. As we saw in Chapter 9, gaps in Internet access still remain between income, racial, and education groups over time, a phenomenon known as the digital divide. We have seen that efforts to close the divide focus primarily on making up differences in economic capital by subsidizing computers and Internet connections in poor neighborhoods. Now there is growing concern about a second-level digital divide based on differential skill levels between better- and less-educated users (Hargittai & Hinnant, 2008). Low-income communities are also disadvantaged by lack of access to broadband connections that are necessary to take online courses and apply for jobs and social programs online (Dailey et al., 2010).

Equal access does not necessarily translate into social equality according to the knowledge gap hypothesis. The gap is between the information “haves” and the “have-nots.” The information-rich “haves” are those with superior levels of education and access to libraries and home computers. The “have-nots” are the information-poor who have inferior levels of education and resource access and tend to be the economically poor as well (see Figure 14.2). The knowledge gap hypothesis states that the dissemination of information benefits both groups but that it will benefit the information-rich more, thereby widening the disparity between the two. Many studies have documented that information gaps are widened by the media (Hwang & Jeong, 2009), even by such well-intentioned efforts as Sesame Street that are specifically designed to close the gap. The gap is evident in disparities in Internet use between well-educated and less-educated Internet users. Those with a college education are twice as likely to search the Internet for information about health insurance or health providers or to obtain online job training as those with a high school education or less (NTIA, 2013).
FIGURE 14.2 THE INFORMATION GAP
According to the knowledge gap hypothesis, the introduction of new information technologies will help both the information-rich and the information-poor get richer, in terms of the information they possess, but the rich get richer faster, causing the knowledge gap to widen.

The knowledge gap hypothesis suggests that efforts to close the digital divide (e.g., by placing computers in the schools, or making e-mail available to all) will be at least partially self-defeating. That said, it will be difficult to close the knowledge gap short of changing the fundamental inequalities in society. One approach is community networking, which offers Internet access and content to disadvantaged groups through government agencies, schools, libraries, churches, or residential communities (Straubhaar et al., 2012). The premise is that community-based resources tailored to local needs by community members themselves will close the gap. The website www.digitalliteracy.gov has success stories and links to educational resources that can jump-start digital literacy education in your community. However, the substitution of Internet services for “real” public services may help justify cuts in public services while making the poor more reliant on a technology that they have difficulty accessing (Virnoche, 1998).
MEDIA AND COMMUNITY

What impact do media have on meaningful relationships? Television usage may lower community involvement (Brody, 1990), and virtual communities on the Internet may displace face-to-face relationships (Stepanikova, Nie, & He, 2010). People tend to humanize media—talking back to their television sets and giving their computers affectionate nicknames (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Online relationships are perhaps a poor substitute for interpersonal relationships, lacking intimacy and the risks of real interactions (Turkle, 2011).

Early research suggested that the Internet caused depression among excessive users (Kraut et al., 1998). The researchers carried out a field experiment in which they introduced Internet access into homes and found that teenagers who were heavy Internet users exhibited more signs of depression than light users and also showed increased stress and loneliness. They called this finding the Internet paradox, meaning that a social technology such as the Internet—that is used mainly to communicate with others—could reduce social involvement and lead to loneliness and depression. However, later research on the same group found that the negative effects disappeared as users became better acquainted with the Internet, although community involvement still declined (Kraut et al., 2002). Among college students, Facebook use was positively related to measures of psychological well-being (Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2007) and children use the Internet to perfect their social skills (Ito et al., 2009). However, not all the effects are positive, since uncontrolled use can also disrupt important real-life activities (LaRose, Kim, & Peng, 2010). Also, online forms of harassment, including cyberstalking and cyberbullying, that are perpetrated through social media (Kiriakidis & Kavoura, 2010) inflict psychological pain on millions of children, sometimes with tragic consequences.

How can these conflicting findings be resolved? Researchers must formulate new variables and new explanations that might resolve the apparent contradictions. One possibility is that online communication strengthens and complements real-world communication rather than replaces it. People with adequate preexisting levels of social support are likely to benefit from online interaction, whereas those lacking adequate social support may become more socially isolated as a result of indulging heavily in online social interaction (Bessiere et al., 2008). That means that excessive online interaction could be harmful for some and is not a cure for social isolation.
HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT

Communications media affect physical health as well as mental health. We previously noted that television viewing is associated with obesity in children, for example. There is also evidence that television viewing by children may cause attention disorders (Swing et al., 2010). And the harmful effects are not limited to children. Adults who limit their television viewing to a couple of hours a day suffer less from depression and other psychological maladies compared to those with normal levels of viewing (Hammermeister et al., 2005).

Very low-frequency (VLF) radiation, the kind that electrical power lines emit, also poses a threat. At one point, EPA scientists concluded that VLF was as dangerous as chemical cancer-inducing agents, although this finding was overruled by EPA administrators. Computer video display terminals (VDTs) emit the same type of radiation, and some scientists suspect that this radiation causes cancer and miscarriages in heavy users. Overall the research is inconclusive on this point (Lim, Sauter, & Schnorr, 1998). Television sets emit the same magnetic fields, by the way, but not many people watch with the television in their laps.

Cell phones have been implicated in brain cancer as well, and health authorities in many countries advise against their use by young children. But, again, the evidence is inconclusive, although the question of damage from long-term exposure is still open (Ahlbom et al., 2009). It has been established that cell phone radiation alters brain activity and brain chemistry (Volkow et al., 2011) but the link to cancer has not been established. When selecting your next cell phone you might wish to compare its radiation to others and in the meantime learn about ways to reduce your exposure, such as using a headset (http://www.ewg.org/cellphone-radiation).

There is clearer evidence of another public health hazard stemming from mobile phone and mobile texting. Drivers who use mobile phones in their cars have the same degree of impairment as someone who is legally drunk, and hands-free phones are just as much of a problem as hand-held ones (Strayer et al., 2013). It has been estimated that texting while driving causes thousands of highway fatalities each year (Wilson & Stimpson, 2010). As a result, in most states it is illegal to text while driving.

Up to a quarter of all computer users suffer repetitive stress injuries, mostly a result of poor posture, bad workstation design, and repetitive tasks, but also a function of work demands and psychological stress (Lim, Sauter, & Schnorr, 1998). Others get stress injuries from surfing the Web, playing video games, or flipping the TV remote control. Extreme cases force sufferers to resort to medication, surgery, and career changes. Computer labs run by high schools and universities combine many of the factors known to increase the risk of injury: nonadjustable work surfaces, chairs with no armrests or footrests, displays perched too high, and instructors applying stressful grade pressure.
MEDIA AND THE ECONOMY

New media technologies in the workplace are impacting the economy. They are affecting both the quantity and the quality of work.

The Quantity of Work. Information technology improves productivity by eliminating employees. For example, nonlinear editing systems are a common productivity-enhancing feature wherever video is edited. Clips are stored and edited from computer disks, eliminating the time-consuming drudgery of moving forward and backward to particular sequences on a long spool of tape. So, more shows are edited per day with fewer editors—that’s productivity.

That also means that we do not need as many video editors as we once did. This phenomenon is euphemistically called job displacement by labor economists. The United States has seen almost complete elimination of a blue-collar middle class in a single generation, and nearly a third of U.S. workers are now “contingent employees” without long-term employment agreements. Beware of offshoring—the use of advanced communication networks to link Americans to customer service agents and loan officers located in developing countries. These people generally work for a fraction of the salaries paid for comparable jobs in the United States. Many media-related jobs, including animation and documentary film production, are starting to move offshore. A new trend is in-sourcing that brings jobs back from overseas, but that also has a downside. To offset the higher labor costs in North America, the in-sourcers first redesign the production process so that it requires far fewer workers than when it was last based on our shores.

In the process, the old corporate pyramid, in which a few top executives command platoons of middle managers who in turn direct legions of rank-and-file workers, has toppled (see Figure 14.3). Information technologies have made it possible for top management to coordinate activities with far fewer middle managers, the flattened pyramid. Another model is the core and ring, in which the middle management is eliminated and rank-and-file workers are all contingent employees who are added or subtracted as conditions warrant. Then there is the virtual corporation, in which even top management is in constant flux, with networks of workers organized for particular tasks and disbanded when no longer needed. Hollywood production companies have long followed this model, but it is spreading to many sectors of the professional service economy populated by artists, writers, Web designers, and computer consultants.

However, if information technology reduces costs and increases product quality, then there should be demand for more products and thus higher employment (Kilborn, 1993). For example, if super-high-definition television catches on (see Chapter 8), their costs will drop. Then Hollywood could fill hundreds of new channels with enticing super HD entertainment, and we would watch TV more and see more ads, creating demand for yet more channels and generating new employment in the television industry. Historically, fears about higher unemployment resulting from automation have proved unfounded, whether the “new technology” was the textile machinery of the 1790s or computers of the 1990s. However, information technology could disrupt the future as computer programs displace white-collar workers in law, health care, and finance (Brynjolfsson & McAfee, 2011). For example, if computerized recommender systems like Netflix are better at predicting what we like than humans are, why would there still be a need for network television programing executives?
FIGURE 14.3 EVOLVING CORPORATE STRUCTURES
The traditional corporate pyramid is being replaced by the flattened pyramid and the core-and-ring structure. In the process, layers of middle-management positions have been stripped away. New structures are more flexible but also dim prospects for job security.

But it isn’t clear that all the investment in information technology actually improves productivity (Maes, De Haes, & Van Grembergen, 2011). Many high-tech investments never work quite right or incur hidden costs that sap their profitability. Economists call this the productivity paradox. Across the economy it looks as if the benefits of information technologies used in businesses have been found mainly in the high-tech industries themselves.

Work Gets Worse. What will work be like for those who still have it? Today’s college students will have several different careers in their lives, not just several different jobs in the same career path with different employers, which was once the normal pattern. And lifelong employment with one employer is a relic of the past. All of this insecurity could place downward pressure on benefits and wages, except perhaps for the highly skilled elite.

Information technology could reduce skill requirements, a process known as de-skilling. For example, if we wanted to increase the productivity of sports reporters, we might specify a set of standard lead sentences: “Things looked extremely [pick adjective] for the [city name] nine that day. The score stood [home team score] to [visiting team score] with but an inning left to play.” Fire the writer, and hire a college intern to fill in the blanks using reports transmitted on the Associated Press newswire. Then we would hold a stopwatch on the intern to see how many game summaries she could write in an hour and replace her if she fell below the standard for the job. And this example is by no means far-fetched. StatSheet uses an artificial intelligence program to write sports stories for the Web and smartphones. This process is also known as Taylorism, after Frederick Winslow Taylor, the early twentieth-century efficiency expert.

Fordism, named after Henry Ford, introduced the assembly-line system, in which each employee performs a single, narrowly defined task over and over again. Taylorized and Fordized workers do not know how to “make” anything (such as a good sports story). Their knowledge is limited to one small task, so that upward mobility is impossible. Only the owners and their white-collar managers (here, the sports editor) know how to organize those tasks to produce goods and services.

De-skilled workers can be paid less and replaced at will, a practice known as post-Fordism. Henry Ford was the first to pay rank-and-file factory workers a decent wage so that they could purchase the products that they assembled. Post-Fordism cuts pay to the point that workers can no longer participate in the consumer economy. In our example, the college intern might be paid so little (or perhaps be paid nothing—it’s a media internship, after all!) that she could not afford an Internet connection to read her own sports stories on the Web.

Another dismal possibility is that skill requirements will be upgraded to the point that the current workforce does not possess them. This process is known as up-skilling. For example, many TV and film production specialists trained on analog technology cannot easily become a part of digital production teams because they lack the necessary computer skills.

Work Gets Better. But there are rays of hope, too, such as work decentralization. Computer networks make it possible to integrate the work of distant suppliers and far-flung backroom (or back lot) operations, moving them farther into the suburbs and rural areas. More employees can work where they want to live and avoid the stress of commuting and relocating at intervals. For example, the global nature of today’s TV and film production industry, combined with traffic congestion, air pollution, and sky-high real estate costs in the Los Angeles basin, has prompted substitution of computer networks for travel in the industry. Telecommuting, defined as performing work tasks at home, involves about a quarter of U.S. workers. Climbing gasoline costs and environmental concerns about the “carbon footprints” of commuters encourage the practice. Telecommuting can potentially benefit workers by providing more flexible work hours that relieve the stress of child care and elder care responsibilities. However, telecommuting has not reduced work-family conflicts and instead has mainly expanded the number of working hours of salaried employees (Noonan & Glass, 2012) who do not get extra pay for overtime.

STOP & REVIEW

1. What is the difference between individual effects and social effects?
2. What does the knowledge gap hypothesis predict about the effects of new information technologies?
3. What impact do social media have on personal relationships?
4. What are the health benefits of communications media?
5. How do Taylorism, Fordism, and post-Fordism differ?
6. Give examples of jobs that have been de-skilled, jobs that have been up-skilled, and jobs that have been re-skilled.

Re-skilling is another challenge. Overall unemployment remains high while openings for highly skilled workers in science and technology fields go unfilled, leading to calls to retrain workers for twenty-first-century jobs. However, retraining video producers to create digital special effects, for example, is not easily done. And the problem runs deeper than that in the United States. American workers, even college educated ones, lag behind those in other developed countries in basic literacy and math skills (OECD, 2013).

Re-skilling has an upside, too: reassigning to current employees tasks that were formerly parceled out to specialized workers. The employee reclaims the role of the preindustrial craftsperson (Zuboff, 1984) as knowledge becomes the cornerstone for business and social relations (Bell, 1973). For example, desktop publishing puts print publication back within the scope of a single person sitting at a personal computer. Garage bands who produce their own recordings on their laptops and amateur YouTube channels are other examples. It hasn’t been that way since the days of the medieval manuscript copyists. These changes rock the very foundations of industrial mass media by restoring control to the workers themselves. It is ironic that information technologies, the crowning achievement of industrial capitalism, may yet fulfill Karl Marx’s prophecy. It was he, after all, who pointed out that capitalism creates the contradictions that inevitably lead to its own destruction!
SUMMARY & REVIEW

WHY DOESN’T SOMEONE “CLEAN UP” THE MEDIA?

Government control conflicts with the rights of the media to free speech. Media spokespersons question the validity of research that suggests the media’s negative effects, and they argue that society’s ills have deeper causes than mass media exposure. The media sometimes adopt their own guidelines. However, these are voluntary standards that are usually eroded by commercial pressures.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN APPROACHES TO MEDIA EFFECTS?

Media effects are changes in knowledge, attitude, or behavior that result from exposure to the mass media. In the deductive approach, predictions about media effects are derived from theory, and exposure to media content is treated as the causal, or independent, variable that leads to the effects, or the dependent variable. The inductive approach infers the impacts of the media, and theories that explain them are inferred from detailed observations in real-world environments.

WHAT ARE BASIC METHODS OF MEDIA EFFECTS RESEARCH?

Content analysis is used to characterize the content of media systems by enumerating the types of behaviors, themes, and actors that appear in the media, though such analysis cannot be used to make inferences about the actual effects of the media. Experimental research examines the relationship between exposure to media content and audience effects under tightly controlled laboratory conditions that make it possible to rule out competing explanations for the effects that are observed. Survey studies administer questionnaires to large representative samples of subjects to examine relationships between media exposure and media effects; they take into account a wider range of factors than experimental studies. In ethnographic studies, researchers maintain extended contact with subjects so that they can gain insight into social processes involving media systems. Their results, however, may not be generalizable beyond the specific communities they study. Big Data research analyzes large databases to identify patterns of human behavior related to media use.

WHY DO PEOPLE USE THE MEDIA?

People attend to media that best meet their needs and expectations. Through their interactions with the media and their observations of others, people learn expectations about the consequences of media use that shape their media behavior. Positive outcomes include learning new things, diversion, and social interaction. People may also wish to avoid media that they find boring or offensive or that they cannot enjoy because they lack the required skills. Media habits form when media are consumed without conscious intent.

HOW HAVE THEORIES OF MEDIA EFFECTS CHANGED?

Theories of mass media effects have evolved over the years. Early scholars believed the mass media could have immediate and profound effects on their audiences, after the fashion of a speeding bullet or a hypodermic injection. Later, researchers learned that the influence of the mass media is weakened by the intervention of social groups, via a multistep flow process, and by the audience’s ability to selectively avoid, misinterpret, or forget content with which they disagree. Social learning theory describes how people can learn behavior from visual media, and cultivation theory shows how people’s understanding of the world around them is shaped by media images. Priming theory focuses on the power of media images to activate related thoughts in our own minds. Critical theorists ask broader questions about the mutual relationship between media and society.

WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF MEDIA ON ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR?

Experimental studies have shown that even relatively short exposure to TV programs and video games featuring violence can provoke violent behavior in viewers, particularly young children. However, the long-term effects are still a matter of debate. Men exposed to violent pornography harbor more negative feelings toward women. Media also can reinforce sex-role and racial stereotypes that lead to sexism and racism.

WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF MEDIA ON PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR?

Prosocial behaviors are socially desirable acts, such as cooperation, sharing, and racial tolerance. Information campaigns seek to convince mass audiences to adopt socially desirable behaviors. Although such campaigns are sometimes effective, they often suffer from poor planning and execution and from limited audience exposure. Furthermore, they must contend with resistance arising from social influence and selective perception among their audiences. Other varieties of prosocial media combine varying degrees of entertainment and educational content, ranging from distance-learning classes to incidental learning from entertainment programs.

WHAT ARE THE IMPACTS OF ADVERTISING AND POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS?

Despite the huge sums of money spent on commercial and political advertisements, their effects are relatively modest; they directly affect perhaps only a few percent of the audience. Those who are affected by advertisements are likely to be those who are relatively uninformed about or uninterested in the product or candidate to begin with. Interpersonal influence and selective perception act to reduce the impact of advertisements on most audiences. Still, that small percentage that is influenced can translate into millions of dollars in a successful advertising campaign or into crucial deciding votes in a political race. Social media afford new avenues for impacting attitudes toward consumer products and political candidates.

HOW DO MEDIA AFFECT SOCIAL EQUALITY?

Information technologies do not benefit all groups in society equally. Minorities may be left behind in the transition to the information economy as the digital divide widens. The knowledge gap hypothesis predicts that efforts to improve the plight of the disadvantaged through improved access to communications media will instead result in widening the gap between rich and poor.

HOW DO MEDIA AFFECT SOCIAL RELATIONS?

The advent of the Internet has the potential for bringing about a situation in which everyone is our neighbor in a small, electronically mediated global village. The virtual communities that have formed on the Internet are an initial indication that new types of human relationships may be created and many can and do benefit from participating in social media. However, not all benefit equally. Some users may become more socially isolated by withdrawing from real-world interactions while social media primarily benefit those with strong offline social relationships.

DO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES CAUSE UNEMPLOYMENT?

Improvements in productivity brought about by applications of information technology have the potential to displace large numbers of jobs. Historically, new waves of industrial technology have increased employment in the long term, but the same might not hold true today. In the short term, entire categories of workers will be eliminated or see their jobs moved offshore, and workers with useless skills may be forced to seek unstable contingent employment.

DO COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA MAKE WORK LESS SATISFYING?

In some applications, information technologies increase the twin tendencies of Taylorism and Fordism, de-skilling work to meaningless, repetitive, assembly-line tasks. In the extreme, jobs become so degraded that workers no longer command a decent living wage, a condition called post-Fordism. In other instances, information technology up-skills jobs, displacing workers whose skills no longer match job requirements. However, information technologies can also be applied in ways that re-skill jobs, restoring work to a meaningful and dignified pursuit.
THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT THE MEDIA

1. What were the uses and gratifications of each of the media you consumed yesterday?
2. What would you say is the most important effect the media have had on your life?
3. Using the media effects theory of your choice, explain the likely effects of your favorite video game or TV program.
4. Does political advertising have a positive or negative effect on elections? Why is that?
5. What career path do you expect to have in the information society?

KEY TERMS

bullet model (p. 443)

content analysis (p. 431)

correlated (p. 435)

cultivation theory (p. 445)

cultural studies (p. 440)

dependent variable (p. 430)

ethnography (p. 437)

experimental research (p. 432)

generalizability (p. 434)

independent variable (p. 430)

information campaign (p. 454)

limited effects (p. 444)

media effects (p. 430)

multistep flow (p. 444)

persuasion (p. 443)

priming theory (p. 446)

prosocial behavior (p. 454)

reliability (p. 434)

social learning theory (p. 441)

stereotyping (p. 450)

survey studies (p. 436)

uses and gratifications (p. 439)

validity (p. 434)

Log on to the MindTap for Media Now to access a variety of additional material, including this chapter’s e-book, learning objectives, comprehension quizzes, videos, and more!
Cultural and Language Communication Barriers: Solutions (SEGMENT) (02:58)
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Learn six strategies for overcoming communication barriers and ways to manage cross-cultural communication.
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06/05/2015
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We’re texting multiple people at once, we’re multitasking, and we’re really not making communication our first priority.
We don’t want to sacrifice accuracy for a quick communication.
Effective communication is a key to success whether in the workplace, at school, in our lives, or at home. Unfortunately, there are many barriers to communication that lead to misunderstandings. Barriers to communication are often referred to as noise. Noise means anything that gets in the way of effective communication. Noise that blocks or distorts a message creates a barrier. Barriers can be physical, organizational, emotional, nonverbal, cultural, language related, or written.
You can hear things on the street. Cars, ambulances, alarms, signals that garage doors are coming and going. You hear all of the environmental noise on the street too that you feel a need to jump up and check to see what’s going on elsewhere. It’s very difficult to stay focused and to maintain concentration.
The distortion occurs when you are trying to force a communication through that challenge, through that obstacle. The distortion can occur because you are trying to make a point but someone or something is distracting you in another way.
Physical barriers are pretty obvious, such as closed doors, operating from different company buildings or sites, different time zones, or poor communications technology.
Organizational structure can also result in barriers if there’s only top down communication or a culture that doesn’t promote open communication.
Well, it becomes an us versus them type of environment where you don’t feel like you’re treated right. You don’t feel like you have a future in a place. You don’t feel like your needs are met. And that’s not the ideal environment for any kind of a company or an institution to run.
Not having an open communication with employees can cause a lot of problems because that’s where your gossip starts. That’s where speculation begins.
Barriers can be emotional especially if someone is angry, resentful, fearful, worried, or stressed. Nonverbal communication can also confuse the message. Poor body language sends mixed signals such as a lack of interest.
It’s kind of the silent language that allows us to reinforce what it is that we’re saying with our vocalics, with our face, with our non-verbals, with the way that we’re dressed.
So you really need to pay attention to every single twitch, every single gesture, eye blink, eye roll. Take it all in because they’re trying to tell you something without words.
Sometimes it’s in the nonverbal gestures that we can see more of the truth than we can by just getting their approval verbally.
Cultural barriers stem from different perspectives, experiences, behaviors, and ideologies that can lead to different interpretations of a message. Language barriers aren’t just about language differences. Jargon and over complicated or highly technical terms can also lead to confusion.
If I reach out my hand to shake your hand in the American culture that is showing you that I’m interested in friendship. Yet in another culture, that may be perceived as a form of aggression or violence.
One of the bigger barriers typically tends to be accents. I’ve understood from clients and from students over the years that being able to actually hear the words that people are saying to them can be frustrating. Your responsibility is to be patient and take your time.
There are also barriers in written communications through emails, texts, and instant messages. Written messages that contain too much information are disorganized or full of errors can be misunderstood.
It’s very important to think of business communication as an academic exercise. You need to have an introduction that tells them what you’re going to tell them, you need to have a body that explains all of those main ideas and key points, and you need to have a summary that reinforces the parts that you want them to take away.
While there are many barriers to communication, there are also many solutions to either prevent or overcome them. In this program, we’ll give you a roadmap to boost communication and lower the noise. Some physical barriers are obvious. A closed door, for example, discourages communication. Companies may have multiple sites that are geographically apart and may be even in different time zones. Employees can’t have face-to-face time, considered the most effective form of communication.
Naturally when you’re on the other side of the world you have to be mindful that they might be three hours or six hours behind or ahead. Someone could be really tired at 7:00 in the morning when you’re in the afternoon or vice versa. Also, if you don’t know they’re economic situation you might suggest a means for communicating that could be expensive for them.
There may also be inadequate technology for effective communication. Although noise is a common term for any kind of barrier to communication, sometimes the noise is, in fact, actual noise. People chatting, construction, mechanical or industrial sounds. These can easily affect our ability to communicate.
An example of noise such as physical noise would be coughing, sneezing, or even using verbal fillers, like or as. Many people inflect up on their words and they don’t realize that what that does is that it undermines their credibility when they inflected up at the end of a word.
Organizational structure can also cause barriers. If there’s a culture of one way communication or one that doesn’t foster open communication, messages can lead to misunderstandings. For example, an over-worked employee may resent a requirement for additional training while the manager’s intent is only to make the employee more productive. If there’s no two-way communication, the manager won’t understand why the employee is resentful about this training.
It is incumbent upon senior management– any leadership grou– to make sure that their thoughts are conveyed clearly to staff. In an environment that doesn’t permit that or it doesn’t pay attention to that, you are really asking for problems, because you will have resistance to any suggestion of change, any suggestion of improvement. It will make staff feel as though they’re left out.
There are numerous solutions to physical and organizational barriers. Open office spaces encourage greater communication and bonding as well as an open door policy. Two-way communication is also critical for ensuring messages aren’t misunderstood.
An important part of two-way communication is training yourself to stop, to listen, to take it all in, to pause, and not react or not respondent in the heat of the moment or with so much emotion that we can’t formulate an intelligent or a practical response to what other people have said.
It’s important to use adequate technology. This isn’t always in your control, but if a message is unclear, follow up or ask for the information to be re-sent a different way. Distracting noises can’t always be eliminated, but you can work around them. If you need to communicate under these circumstances, get away from the noise. Find a quiet place where you can hear and be clearly heard. If you work in a consistently noisy area and it’s affecting your ability to communicate, ask your manager for a change of location or for the use of a quiet area when it’s most important.
My favorite tip is pick the right time of day to do what you need to do. Doing it at lunch time when you’re out and about, doing it as you’re walking along the street, doing it as you’re racing between appointments in the car, that is not the best time to initiate a phone call either with someone new or with a client or someone you’re working with on an ongoing basis. It will appear to the person receiving the call or the communique that they are not quite good enough to have your full attention so you’re just getting to them on the fly. If it’s really important to you then make the time to find a quiet place, compose your thoughts, and then have that meaningful discussion.
Physical and organizational barriers are common. But with the right strategies and mindset for open communication, they can be overcome.
If you realize that communication is always challenging and that there will always be barriers, take a deep breath, maybe even find a little humor in it, and refocus yourself. Try to be very clear in your communication.
Hello? She has a fever? Oh no. I’ve just got a really important meeting, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell her mommy’s on the way. Thank you.
Ready for the meeting?
I’m so sorry. I won’t be able to make it.
I hope you’re pulling my leg. We’ve been working on this project launch for months. Everybody’s going to be there. I can’t do this alone.
Well, you don’t have a choice. Stuff happens. Just deal with it.
As much as we try to control them, especially in a professional environment, negative emotions can get the best of us. You may be angry, afraid, or upset, and it may not have anything to do with the person you’re communicating with. If that person isn’t aware of your emotional state, it could be surprising or awkward, breaking down the process of communication. Anger hinders the ability to communicate. It can make you lash out and say things you’ll later regret.
Personal pride can also be a hindrance. Know-it-alls are terrible listeners as they only believe in their point of view. They try to win every disagreement or get the last word rather than participate in healthy two-way communication. Depression tends to isolate people and cut off the communication process altogether. Anxiety or worry also has a negative impact on our ability to concentrate and can affect our ability to listen or communicate. People have many emotions and all of them have an impact on the way we engage with others.
When we’re happy, when we’re sad, the tone of our voice is greatly affected by our moods. How do you feel if I continue to talk to you like this and not look at you at all because I’m distracted by some issue of the day? That’s not very pleasant. Wouldn’t you much rather see my full face, hopefully a slight smile, some expression or interest in my eyes? That’s the better way to communicate.
Non-verbal barriers result from the way we physically behave. There’s a tremendous power in body language. It’s one of the primary ways that people perceive us. If someone sits up straight and makes eye contact, we can assume they’re a lot more interested in what’s being said then if they’re looking at their cell phone or slumped in a chair. Understanding body language and ways to use it to your advantage can shape every facet of your life. The way others perceive your body language can be the difference between success and failure.
Body language can often tell us more than verbal language. People might say one thing, but they feel something else. If you’re thinking about something else or they’re not sure of themselves and they’re saying something that leaves them in doubt. So often by their movement of their hands or by the gestures in their face or however we may interpret it, they’re telling us more by the way they move than by the way they speak.
Overcoming emotional and nonverbal barriers is challenging as they’re often so very personal and instinctive. Overcoming emotional responses means recognizing the emotion and getting calm before speaking or responding. It also helps to be aware of other people’s point of view. If you’re on the other end of an emotional response, consider that the person may be going through a difficult time. Don’t take it personally.
So if I’m dealing with something that’s not very comfortable, I use the “I” language. I feel, I believe, I think, I have noticed, in my experience I. When I switch gears and say you have done XYZ, when you said, blah, blah, blah that creates tension, an emotional reaction that can stop conversation in its tracks.
Physical fitness has a lot to do with how well we communicate. If you’re rested, you feel fine. If you’re not, then your ability to speak well and be attentive starts to diminish.
Being conscious of your body language is very important in all aspects of your life. Simple things like making eye contact, smiling, or sitting upright demonstrates interest, confidence, and enthusiasm, attributes that work in your favor.
A good way to start any level of communication is to greet somebody. How are you, my name is so and so, and maybe a little bit of small talk, especially if you have some time. And that always allows you to open the doors to understanding somebody and also to bring down barriers.
Our body language is so important because it speaks volumes, but it also encourages, it can shut down, it can encourage or deflate. It can also prompt conversation or it can lead to those questions that you wish someone would ask or conversation that you wish would take place. But we have to give someone some type of body action to let them know where you want this communication to go.
Communication between people from different cultures is often difficult. Our culture influences the way we think and perceive the world. It can also affect our behavior. For example, making eye contact can be a positive action in one culture and insulting in another.
Extending of hands as opposed to waiting for a person of a higher stature to extend the hand to you. Handing a business card to a superior instead of waiting to be asked. There are all sorts of cultural nuances and the more you know, the more you know you need to know that cultural communication is very important.
I’ve understood from some European friends that Americans smile way too much. They prefer a more subtle form of smiling to imply joy or that you’re pleasantly enjoying something. So it is really great, and I think it’s a fun exploration opportunity that if you know in advance that you’re speaking to people who are from another country, from a different culture, that it’s so easy these days to Google it and look it up and find what works for them and what doesn’t.
Emotions are also displayed differently between cultures. In some areas of the world, people openly exhibit emotions while in others, they tend to keep them hidden.
Because communication is contextual, I suggest looking at your audience, seeing how that individual communicates with others. Does that individual stand close? Does that individual stand far away? Does that individual touch others? Does that individual emote a lot of feelings, expression? And then determine what it is that you are comfortable doing when communicating.
Unfortunately, differences can lead to stereotyping, which sets up more barriers. Making assumptions about whole groups of people based on their culture results in many misconceptions.
Stereotyping is a two-way street. We are examining the person we’re speaking with or the group of people we’re speaking with, but they’re doing the same thing to us. So obviously somebody of a different gender, someone coming from a different part of the world, someone who worships differently, we look at each other and we try to size each other up.
It is important to remember that we all come to the table with preconceived notions of what experiences should be like and how people should be. And they’re not always correct.
Language differences can create difficult barriers to communication. Language is very complex, and it’s easy to lose or misunderstand meaning in translation. Emotional language is particularly difficult as expressions vary across different countries and cultures.
I was in a meeting down in Colombia, South America, and it was a serious meeting about trying to sign an agreement with a university there and the president was there. And it was sort of a stiff procedure. At one point and then I went to the restroom and I saw something that was posted on the wall that it was in Spanish and I found to be humorous and I just came back, I was laughing. And what’s so funny? And I told them and we all started busting out, laughing, and then we just went into a whole different level of communication, which was a lot more enjoyable, lot more authentic. So sometimes it can backfire on you. But in this case, it worked in my favor.
Language barriers also exist amongst people who speak the same language.
Warren.
Hey. Good morning.
So I’m going to send Bob out with you today. He’s great at troubleshooting. Be able to look at the breaker box. See if there’s maybe something underrated in it. Could be a broken neutral, could just be a busted receptacle.
Jargon, highly technical terms, acronyms, and overly complex language, they can all seem like great communication shortcuts or a way to show off how smart you are. But they can also easily result in misinterpretation or lack of understanding.
Many people around the world who speak English as a primary language will be confused often in the jargon of our industry, of our friends, of our ilk.
It’s really important that you be clear without talking down to an individual. It’s really important that you be able to explain yourself and make it easier for the receiver to understand you.
Cultural and language barriers can be overcome with the right approaches. Limiting or avoiding the use of jargon or complicated language will help make your message clearer. Paraphrasing is a useful way for listeners to ensure they understood a message correctly.
OK, so what I hear you saying is Bob’s going to go out on a call with me to help identify the problem and make sure we get the job done right.
That’s it.
There are specific strategies you can use to address language differences. First, it’s important to speak slowly and ask for clarification if communication is unclear.
Do you understand?
[SPEAKING FRENCH] You know what, let me just show you the new. Here it is.
[SPEAKING FRENCH] OK. [SPEAKING FRENCH] Perfect.
Perfect? Great, thank you.
Merci.
It’s important to avoid jargon and culture specific idioms. For example, hit it out of the ballpark would lose its meaning in most cultures outside of the United States. It helps to choose your mode of communication carefully. If translation is needed, communicating by email may be the most efficient way. Any messages should be specific and direct using simple language that’s easy to translate while retaining its meaning.
If you know the individual and you know that the individual is comfortable reading the language perhaps that may be the ideal way to communicate with someone from another language. It gives that individual an opportunity to reflect, to read your message at leisure, and to take time and look up words that perhaps the individual might not know.
There are also effective ways to manage cross cultural communication. If you gain an understanding of other cultures, you will have a better sense of other people’s perspectives. Many companies promote cross cultural training and activities to help with communication and bonding. It’s important to have respect for people from other cultures including their values and beliefs even if they’re different than yours. If you show respect, you’ll likely receive it back.
The more we learn about other cultures, the more respectful we will be one of these differences, because we’ll appreciate what’s different about them and where the beauty is in these cultures.
Probably the most important way to cope with language and cross cultural barriers is to be patient. You can’t expect to communicate at the same pace or with the same ease as someone from your own culture or language. The point of communication is to convey a message and have that message understood. Culture and language barriers can hamper effective communication so taking steps toward removing them is important.
A lot of communication is written such as the exchange of emails, texts, and instant messages. While these modes of communication are easy and convenient, barriers often arise.
I have received text messages that struck me as curious and odd and because of the distance and the time factor involved, I could not immediately call that person and say, what did you mean by that? And so you find yourself in a lot of situations that occur like that frequently, especially in business with messages flying back and forth throughout the day. If it really is that troublesome or if it’s a completely different sense of what you anticipated it to be, it is best not necessarily to reply with another written communique, which will just complicate the matter. It’s best to pick up the phone and call someone.
A lack of body language and vocal intonation makes it easy to misinterpret a written comment. Emojis can help convey feelings but are not always appropriate, especially in the workplace.
In a business setting, in business communication, I cannot stand to see an emoji or an emoticon at the end of a message, because it is a casual form. It is animation. It is some type of little cartoon character that’s supposed to tell us how we’re supposed to feel about whatever we’ve written or received. I don’t recommend it in business settings. But that just goes to show how written communication can be misunderstood. We can’t hear tone. We can’t hear personality. We don’t know rate of speaking or level of excitement. We might misunderstood the written word so we add these little images to let someone know, I’m kidding. I’m smiling. I’m sad. Or whatever the emoji or emoticon might be.
Emails can be fraught with communication issues. Information overload is one of the most common. Lengthy or disorganized emails are draining to read, especially with a busy schedule. Often they’ll remain unread or only briefly scanned.
Part of the problem with really lengthy emails is interpretation. These days, emails are used, of course, abundantly for everything from quick messages to friends about meeting for lunch to important documentation about functions in the office. It is really, really critical to understand that short is better, succinct is better. I tend to use bullet points in a lot of my emails so people understand my top of mind thoughts and what I want to accomplish.
Emails and texts are often written quickly and can be full of errors. Some may be insignificant, but others can be more serious. Spelling mistakes and incorrect grammar also reflects poorly on the writer. It implies you’re careless or too lazy to review what you’ve written before hitting the send button. Fortunately, there are specific actions and techniques you can use to eliminate barriers in written communication. The first is to keep your written messages concise and targeted. If you’re sending an email, make sure the subject line is specific about the contents. Keep the body of your email short and to the point without unnecessary details. The easier a message is to read, the more likely it will be clearly received.
So when you are targeted, you can figure who am I writing to? Is it Katherine Brown, is Miss Brown, is it Katie? How do we get to know this person? Then we open with a very targeted message on how that particular campaign applies or appeals to them. So there’s an emotional hook early on. There’s a reason they should continue reading.
Think about the mode of your message including the format. Is an email appropriate for formal communication or is a letter printed on business stationary better? Is your font style or email signature appropriate for the receiver?
As a new employee, there is a style guide that most organizations have. It tells you about the font, the size of the font, and exactly what type of written communication you need to be using.
Whenever you have serious news to share, I always recommend, suggest, if not demand that you send a formal letter such as a letter accepting a job or a letter resigning from one. Anytime you have news that change of status or shares breaking news of any type, then you need to treat that in a very formal, respectful way.
Today, it is very acceptable to send thank yous for interviews or for meetings via email, but the occasional handwritten letter never goes out of style, or handwritten note. Because it shows you took the time to sit down to put thoughts on paper, compose them, grammatically, correctly, and send it off. And that’s very meaningful.
When interpreting written communications, a reader will tend to see it in a more negative light than it was intended. Consider how others might interpret your message. Does it possibly come across as cold, brash, sarcastic, accusatory, or belittling? Skillful writing and an understanding of how people respond to words leads to effective communication.
So you really have to know how to write effectively. And if you aren’t that strong of a writer then you need to find someone who is and humble yourself and let them correct your work. With respect to word choice, I always say know your audience, know who you’re writing to. If you’re writing to someone of a different generation then you need to speak formally, much more respectfully. You may want to use some bigger words than you’re used to. If you’re writing to a colleague or people of your own generation or your own work base, then you might be able to get away with more casual things. But I would say leave all the cliches and expressions and the street talk, leave that out of business correspondence, because it certainly doesn’t have any place.
To avoid errors in spelling and grammar and to keep your message clear, follow these three R’s. Review, reflect, and revise. Although it takes some time, reviewing what you’ve written will help you catch errors and will reflect better on you as a skilled communicator. Reflecting means looking at the key points of your message to make sure they’re clear. Have you covered the essential points? Is there redundant or unnecessary information that can be removed? If you found errors or content that is unclear, the last step is to make the necessary revisions. To overcome barriers to written communication, you need to make sure that your message is targeted and concise. Ensure the wording won’t be negatively interpreted. Consider the most appropriate mode for your message and take time to review, reflect, and revise.
In order to be an excellent writer, you need to be an excellent reader. And I suggest going into bookstores and picking up newspapers and magazines that aren’t from this region, getting into different topics or subjects that you don’t have exposure to in this particular footprint and just widen your circle so that you have influences from some really good writers. You cannot strengthen your writing skills unless you pick up a book or magazine or a newspaper and read.
There are many barriers to communication known as noise as it distracts from the message. Barriers can cause your message to become distorted and lead to confusion or misunderstandings. Effective communication involves overcoming these barriers to convey a clear message that will be understood. To do this, you need to know what barriers exist and how to cope with them. Physical barriers can include closed doors, operating from different sites or time zones, noise distractions, and one-way communication from the top down. Physical barriers can be overcome in various ways, such as utilizing an open office space environment, having an open door policy, and fostering two-way communication. You also need to use adequate technology that allows your message to get across clearly. If there are distractions due to sound, find a quiet place or ask for support to manage the noisy environment.
Emotional barriers can’t hinder the ability to communicate rationally. Non-verbal behavior, such as body language, can affect the way others perceive the way we are responding to them. If you are in a negative emotional state, it’s important to recognize it and get calm before interacting with others. If you were the target of an emotional response, be understanding and don’t take it personally. It’s also important to be conscious of your body language as it’s critical to how others perceive you.
Cultural barriers stem from experiences, behaviors, and beliefs that differ between cultures and can lead to misunderstandings. Language barriers, whether the use of a different language, jargon, or highly complex terms are also a major hindrance to communication. The best way to communicate in most settings is to avoid jargon or highly complex language. It also helps to paraphrase what has been said to ensure mutual understanding. When communicating to someone who speaks a different language, it’s important to speak slowly, ask for clarification if you don’t understand, and check his or her understanding of your messages. You should also avoid culture specific idioms that can confuse a message.
Cultures have their own behaviors, belief systems, and style of communication so it’s important to have an understanding of other cultures. Being respectful and patient also helps break down culture and language barriers. When you’re communicating in written form, there’s no body language or tone of voice to help you interpret how something is meant. Information overload and errors in spelling and grammar also lead to misinterpretations. To overcome written barriers, keep messages concise and targeted. Since it’s easy for written messages to be misunderstood, check your wording to make sure it won’t be negatively interpreted.
Also, consider what is the best mode of communication depending on the level of formality. And finally, review, reflect, and revise your correspondence to make sure it’s clear, concise, and free of errors. Communication plays a major role in our lives, personally and professionally. It’s critical for developing relationships, building trust, and gaining respect. Communication can determine whether we succeed or fail and it affects our reputation. There are many barriers to communication but if you understand how to overcome them, there are also many opportunities for success.
ELECTRONIC READINGS

COM/PA523 Communications for Public Administrators
Week 1
Uniquensess of Public Sector Communication
Readings:
• Garnett, J. L., Marlowe, J., & Pandey, S. K. (2008). Penetrating the performance predicament: Communication as a mediator or moderator of organizational culture’s impact on public organizational performance. Public Administration Review, 68(2), 266-281.
• Houston D. & Harding L. (2013). Public trust in government administrators. Public Integrity, 16(1), 53-76.
• Moustafa-Leonard, K., Wellington, J. F., & Gaydos, E. (2008). Ethical values in the workplace: Individual values and organizational culture. Proceedings Of The Business, Society & Government Consortium Of The Midwest Business Administration Association, 90-102.

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