CS0201 lecture notes

Week 1

Communication – systemic process in which people interact with and through symbols to create and
interpret meanings.

Process

- Ongoing and dynamic

- Always in motion, moving forward and changing continually
- Difficult to delineate an event because communication is always in motion

System

- Interrelated parts that affect one another

Characteristics:

- Parts are interdependent and they interact

- Systems are organized wholes
- Vary in openness
- Seeks equilibrium but cannot sustain it

Symbolic

- No direct access to other’s thuoghts and feelings

- We rely on symbols
- Symbols are
o Abstract
 Removed from the primary meaning/source
o Arbitrary
 No inherent connection between thing being described and the symbol
 Rose and the flower itself, only means rose because the English language
says so
o Ambiguous

Meanings

- Meanings are the significance we put on phenomena

- Not inherent

Two levels of meaning

- Content level meaning

- Relationship level meaning
o Body language, causal vs formal speech

Models of communication

- Describes the system and process to approximate reality

o Helps to better understand the process of communication
Linear Models of Communication

- Harold Laswell (1948) focus on mass comm

Who (communicator) -> Says What (Message) -> In Which Channel (Medium) -> To Whom (Receiver)
-> With What Effect? (Effect)

- Typical reactions to Laswell’s model

o No longer relevant
o Conceptually outdated due to linear nature
o Too simplistic
o Primitive
o Presumes that media act as pipes or conduits

- Summary
o Earlier models provided insight, framework for studying communication
o Some models became the basis for Information Theory, and the internet
o Some models laid the foundations of communication
o Both models are often misunderstood
o Limiting as models for general human communication

Interactive models of communication

- Listeners don’t just listen. They…

- Wilbur Schramm (1955)
o Added “feedback” to the model
o Encoding/decoding still there
o “Fields of experience”

Transactional Models of Communication

- Responds to the critique that “dynamism is not captured” (Wood, 1997)

o Argues that communication is a dynamic process
o Linear or sequential – can’t be simultaneous
o Sender v receiver distinction
o Over-time change
Week 2

Perception

Why perception?

- Can result from others’ communicative activities (not always)

- Often perception affects our communicative behavior
- Perceiving properly, avoiding perception errors/biases leads to successful relationships,
careers, personal growth

Fun facts about perception

- Not just for humans

- Starts before we are born
- Different for everyone
- Sensory input is necessary
- But it is not sufficient
- Happens every day, every moment
- How do we even survive?

Perception is….

- Active process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting people, objects, events, situations,
and activities
- How is it active?

Selection

- Information taken in through all five senses

- Perceptual field includes so many stimuli
- Impossible for brain to process everything
- Various factors influence what actually continues on through the perception process
- What we notice; what we don’t
- Definitely quick, but is it conscious?

Selection: External factors

- External factors affect selection:

o Things that “stand out” (larger, intense, unusual, change, moving, etc are more
salient)
o Be mindful of external stimuli that takes attention away from your message

Selection: Internal factors

- Internal factors (needs, interests, motives, desires, expectations)

o Concentration on things that interest you or need to do
o You “see” what you want to see
o You “see” what you expect to see (e.g., typos)
- Take away message:
 o Make sure your messages touch on the needs, motivations, interests of others.
o Have someone else proofread for you

Is perception active?

- Yes, definition says so

- Why? What does it mean to be “active”
- What is “active” (i.e. what is doing the work?)’

Organization

- We are super tidy when it comes to the perception process

- Aided by “cognitive schemata”
o Mental structures that people use to organize and interpret experience
o Four types of cognitive schemata
 Prototypes
 Personal constructs
 Stereotypes
 Scripts

Organization: Prototypes

- An “ideal”, or best example, of a category

o E.g., prototype of a marriage
- We classify things, people by asking which of our prototypes they most closely resemble

Organizations: Personal Constructs

- Individual mental yardsticks that are used to measure a person or situation along a bipolar
dimension of judgment (Kelly, 1955)
- Anything that can be judged on a dimension

Organization: Stereotypes

- Predictive generalization about a person or situation

- “exaggerated beliefs associated with a [social] category.” (Allport, 1954)
- Stereotypes can be accurate or inaccurate
o Usually the generalizes/exaggerated aspect is the marker
- Stereotypes provide us with expectations about the traits and behaviors
- Stereotypes are neither intrinsically “good” nor “bad”

Organization: Scripts

- Sequence of activities that spells out how we and others are expected to act in a situation
- Routine – active scripts about what is going to happen
- Scripts are stereotypes of situation-action routines
- Encounter a familiar routine, activate the relevant script in our memory and comprehend
the new event by applying the structure and content of the script to the new event
- Example: Restaurant script (Bower et al., 1979)
- Going to another country, routines may be different and scripts no longer work
- Remembering something that never happened
o “Gap-filling” (Greenberg et al.,1998)
 o Scripts can affect eye-witness memory
o Use of scripts to fill in gaps in memory

Interpretation

- Subjective process of creative explanations for what we observe and experience

- One common way to interpret is through attribution
o “act of explaining why something happens or why a person acts a particular way”
o An explanation of things you have no knowledge for

Interpretation: Attribution

- Has four dimensions

o Locus (Internal, External)
o Stability (Stable, Unstable)
o Specificity (Global, Specific)
o Responsibility (Within personal control, Beyond personal control)

Interpretation: Self-serving bias

- Attributions are not necessarily accurate.

- We tend to make attributions that serve our personal interest
o Self-serving bias

Week 3

Storytelling

What is storytelling?

- Process of using fact and narrative to communicate something to your audience

- The art of telling stories in order to engage an audience
- The art in which a teller conveys a message, truth, information, knowledge, or wisdom to an
audience
- A narrative technique to communicate insights to an audience

Storytelling vs Journalism

- Dissemination of information to the public

- Educating the public
- A pillar of a democratic society
- Being society’s watchdog
- NOT always hard news
o But follows the news values of being factual, accurate, and truthful
o Not fiction (based on facts!)
- Many different types of stories and writing styles
- Feature articles can be informative, educational, inspiring… but most importantly they
should be entertaining (while being factual)
- Both share the aim to reach an AUDIENCE
Digital storytelling

- More complex process

- A narrative technique using multimedia tools
o To create more emotions (through sound and pictures)
o To let the audience experience the story through more sense
- The art of conveying a message through various digital channels
o Where do you reach your audience?

Data storytelling/journalism

- The process of using data to convey a message to an audience/tell a story

- A narrative technique to simplify complex data information into a story
- The art of using interactive data to engage your audience even more
- E.g. infographics

Storytelling in journalism

- Most newsworthy info

o Who?
o What?
o When?
o Where?
o Why?
o How?
o First paragraph of a story
- Important details
- Other general info, Background info
- Could come in the form of political talk shows aka the daily show

How to tell good stories?

Good stories are

- Relevant
o Relevant in terms of geography, emotions, interests, etc.
o Don’t assume relevance – prove it
 Give an anecdote: specific facts/opinions/experiences the reader can
compare to his own knowledge and beliefs
 Provide statistics and data
- Provide context
o What background would a newcomer need to know so that they might care about
the story?
o What entry points can be created for the reader to feel as though he has a stake in
the story?
- Use detail
o Small but revealing details give the readers more to grab on to
o Observation is key
  Pay attention to your subjects, the situation, and surroundings during
interviews
 Gestures, expressions, emotions that arise might reveal more than words
- Have strong central characters
o Think about what information can make a character in a story come alive
o Give more details about appearance, a person’s life, their surroundings, etc.
 This makes readers feel closer related to the person and the story
o Always probe during your interviews
- Capture emotions
o Emotions command attention, create a relevance of shared feelings between a
character and the reader
o Strive for a balance between emotion and information; avoid hyperbole
 Show, don’t tell
- Explore tensions
o Tensions makes life (and the news) interesting
 Tension between people
 Tension between different points of view
 Inner tensions
- Connect to deeper themes
o The best stories can connect to readers on a fundamental level
 E.g., a mother’s love for her children, the desire to be happy, the fear of
failure…
o Why do things happen the way they do?
o Think about your favourite movies, TV shows, books
- Surprise the reader
o Provide unknown information
o Provide unexpected information
o Plan and place the surprise strategically
- Empower the reader
o View audiences less as passive consumers but as active decision-makers
o Assume the audience will use your information for a future decision or some kind of
activity
o Give people the information they need to make better decisions
 Anticipate how the information might be used and what questions the
audience might have

Where to get ideas for stories?

1. Everywhere!
a. Always keep your eyes and ears open
b. Go out and talk to people
c. Strike up random conversations
d. Pay attention
i. Is there anything that stands out, anything out of the ordinary?
ii. Is there a story that left gaps and could be followed up on?
2. Start from within
 a. What are your personal interests and experience?
i. You are a Singaporean adult, the target audience of the group project
3. Continue with your environment
a. Your family, friends, colleagues, batch mates, hall friends…
i. What are they interested in?
ii. Do they share common issues they find relevant?
iii. Can you identify any trents?
4. Events and dates
a. Public holidays, anniversaries, movements, etc.
b. Timely vs evergreen feature stories
c. Special things that happened this year – e.g., COVID pandemic to endemic
5. Don’t forget your competition
a. Look at other feature publications also targeting Singaporean adults
b. What are they publishing?

Some practical tips

1. Know your audience

a. People don’t have to read your story, so why should they want to?
i. Target audience
ii. How can you find out what they are interested in?
iii. What do they know about the topic you’re covering?
iv. Where do you reach them?
2. Keep in mind readers’ attention
a. People online have a very short attention span
i. What makes them read your story?
ii. What makes them remember your story?
b. How can you use Shorthand’s features to keep readers engaged?
i. Max 2,000 words
c. Go beyond a catchy headline – you want readers to stick to the end
d. Add multimedia components
i. Photos, memes, GIFs, infographics, videos, audio
e. Add interactive elements
i. Polls, sliders, quizzes (think Buzzfeed)
3. Active voice
a. Use active instead of passive voice
i. Active voice adds energy to the narrative and keeps readers engaged
ii. Passive voice slows down the narrative
4. Timeliness
a. Feature writing doesn’t necessarily have to be time-sensitive, but you might want to
consider the deadline for your story

Week 4

Communication – symbols – language (verbal communication) & non-language symbols (nonverbal

communication)

Morse code – verbal communication

Computer code – verbal communication

Language is made up of symbols

- Symbols are arbitrary representations of something else

o No intrinsic connection between the symbol and referent
- Symbols are ambiguous
o Do not have clear-cut, precise meanings
o Associated with a range of meanings
o Some degree of agreement exist within communication communities
- Symbols are also abstract
o They “stand for” things but they are not the things that they represent
o Some more so than others
o E.g., CS0201 students; young adults; citizens

Language creates meaning by

- Defining and evaluating phenomena

o Labels: “a car”, “my car”, “my girlfriend”
o Values: “disabled”, “differently abled”, “physically challenged”, “crippled”
o Totalizing : Responding to a person as if one label totally represents that person
- Organizing experiences
o Classifying things into categories
o This lecture
o Often times as part of the perceptual process
- Inviting higher-level thinking and relection
o Allegory of the cave
o Can we think about the concept of time, future, dreams?
 “Why does time only go forward and not backwards?”
- Defining relationships
o Sends signals about the relationship
o Relationship level meaning
 Responsiveness/care/attention
 Liking/affection
 Power/authority

Practical take-away points

- Engage in person-centered communication

o Adapting to the person helps use language effectively
- Be aware of abstract language
o “Your papers should demonstrate a sophisticated conceptual grasp of material and
its pragmatic implications in your subjective circumstances”
o “Your papers should include definitions of the concepts and specific examples that
show how they apply to your personal life.”
o Abstract language may be necessary or desirable
o But in most cases, more concrete language is more useful
- Qualify language
o So they don’t generalize (e.g., “Politicians are crooked”)
o So they don’t fix things down (e.g., “Ann is selfish”)
- Own your thoughts and feelings
 o Use “I” language for better communication
o More descriptive, honest, empowering; makes others less defensive
 “You made me so worried” to “I was so worried”
 “When you don’t call me, I feel very worried”

Week 4 Part 2

Nonverbal communication, defined

- All aspects of communication that involves things other than words

- Also involved symbols like verbal communication

Fixing one misconception….

- “nonverbal communication accounts for 65~93% of total meaning”

o Based on two experiments in the 1960s (Mehrabian & Ferris, 1967)
o Only in context of the experiment

Nonverbal communication is also symbolic

- Involves encoding and decoding

o Encoding: Using nonverbal symbols to create meaning
o Decoding: Assigning meaning to nonverbal symbols

Some (notable) characteristics

- Interacts with verbal communication

- Regulates interactions
o Nonverbal comm creates “flow” of interaction
o E.g., looking away when conversation is over
- Nonverbal communication is also ambiguous
o Some culturally agreed upon rules, shared meanings exist
o Still, more ambiguous than verbal communication
- Establishes relationship-level meanings
o Nonverbal communication as “the relationship language”
o Responsiveness (to show interest in others)
o Liking (indicate positive feeling towards others)
o Power (asserts dominance and status)
- Less controlled
o Some nonverbal cues harder to control
o E.g., blushing, sweating
- Reflects culture
o E.g., saying hello in Iran

Kinesics

- Movement of face and body

- Body postures and gestures
- Facial expressions
o Eye contact, gaze

Haptics
 - Nonverbal communication involving physical touch
o Positive affect
 Touch used to convey supposed, appreciation, inclusion, sexual attraction,
affection
o Playful
 Touch involves play or playful aggression
o Control
 Touch used to gain compliance, attention, or response
o Ritualistic
 Touch used when greeting someone or when departing
o Task-related
 Touch used to get a task done (e.g., providing a service)
o Accidental
 Touch is unintentional and potentially meaningless

Proxemics

- Involves the use of space and distance

Proxemics: Expectancy Violation Theory (Burgoon, 1993)

- What happens when expectations of proxemics are violated?

o Hall (1959), an anthropologist, had designated proxemics as one of the “hidden
dimensions of culture,” a sort of “silent language” that is used universally across
cultures and expresses well-understood messages within a culture.
- Violations of expectations are sometimes preferable to confirmations of expectations
o Communicator reward valence matters
 Positive vs negative communicator reward valence
 Whether you like the person or not
 Whether this person can give you rewards or not
- EVT proposes that positive violations can produce desirable results

Vocalics (paralanguage)

- Characteristics of vocals (that is not verbal) that provide information

- Types
o Sounds: murmurs, gasps, sigh
o Vocal qualities (volume, rate, pitch, tone): whispering, sarcastic tone
o Silence (lack of communicated sound)

Others

- Artifacts
o Personal objects that announce identities, personalize environments
o E.g., suits, stethoscopes, briefcases, jewelry, tattoo
- Environmental factors
o Elements of a setting that affect how we think, feel, and act
o How formal, comfortable, private, constrained, or warm?
 E.g., dressing up for a date but he brings you to north spine (sends a
message)
- Chronemics
 o Use of time
o E.g., making a person wait; going out on a date for lunch versus dinner
 Meeting up 1 month from now, 1 year from now
- Olfactics
o Use of odors and scents, or our perceptions of them
o e.g., smell of freshly baked bread, smell of cinnamon, perfume

Week 5, Part 1

Definitions and functions of interpersonal communication

Why care about interpersonal communication?

- Keeps us happy and healthy

o Directly related to psychological and physical health
- Helps us build successful relationships and careers
- Not innate. Needs to be learned

Isn’t all communication interpersonal?

- Interpersonal communication is
o Communication that occurs between people and creates a personal bond between
them
o Communication that occurs between two or ore people whose lives are
interdependent and mutually influence one another in unique ways
- Cf. Impersonal communication
o Lack of interpersonal relationship
o Professional relationship
o Transactional relationship
o No meaningful influence with each other

Goals for interpersonal communication

- Instrumental
o “Get things done”
o E.g., getting information we need, asking for help, gaining compliance
- Relationship-maintenance
o “Define and maintain relationships”
o E.g., “checking in” on SNS; “we should just be friends”
- Self-presentation
o “Controlling how self is perceived by others”
o Self-presentation as a performance
o E.g., why did you post that photo as your profile pic?

Key Concept: Communication Competence

- Ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in personal relationships

- The knowledge of effective and appropriate communication patterns and the ability to use
and adapt that knowledge in various contexts (Cooley & Roach, 1984).
- Communicating “well”

Measurement standards
 - Fidelity
o Clarity of a message (hear, understand, interpret)
o “Threats to fidelity are often outside a person’s control; competence is not”
- Appropriateness
o Messages produced match the requirements of situation
o Notice and adhere to social rules
- Satisfaction
o Enjoyable: Feel energized, happy, connected
- Effectiveness
o Meeting the goals
- Efficiency
o Produce desirable outcomes with less effort
- Ethics
o Upholding moral values in communication
o Being true to self and others

Promoting communication competence

- Motivation
o Competent communication takes effort
- Knowledge
o Knowing what communication behaviors are best for a situation
o Knowing the needs and wants of others
- Skills
o Skills to act upon the motivation and knowledge
o Needs practice

Week 5, Part 2

What’s theory?

- Theory is a description of the relationship among concepts that help us to understand a

phenomenon
- Explanation for why something is the way it is
- Some characteristics:
o Focuses on some concepts
o Aims to outline some relationship (e.g., positive, negative)
o Always incomplete
o Needs to be tested and supported by evidence (*cannot “prove”)

What’s research?

- Systematic ways of observing reality with an aim to test theory

o Compare the observations with theory
- Various methods of observation exists
o Interviews
o Ethnography
o Surveys
o Experiments
IC Theory 1: Social Penetration Theory

- The “onion model”

o Social penetration as a process of “peeling”
o Takes time to get to “core self”
 Orientation
 Exploratory-Affective
 Affective
 Stable exchange
- Social penetration is accomplished through self-disclosure
- Self-disclosure
o Purposeful process of revealing information about oneself
o Increases intimacy (to a certain degree)
o Involves rewards and risks
- Some tips
o Take “baby steps” (usually…)
o Go layer by layer
o Be mindful of reciprocation

IC Theory 2: Politeness Theory

- Brown and Levinson (1987)

- Assumption:
o Each individual has “face”
o Rational capacities
- Face, two types:
o Positive face: the positive and consistent image people have of themselves, and
their desire for approval, appreciation
o Negative face: the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, and rights to non-
distraction; freedom from imposition
- Politeness strategies
o Satisfying positive face
o Satisfying negative face
o Mitigating impact of “face threatening acts” (FTAs)
 FTAs very in importance depending on power, distance, rank (subject
sensitivity)

IC Theory 3: Uncertainty Reduction Theory

- The theory
o Berger and Calabrese (1975)
o Initially developed to explain initial interaction among strangers
o Later developed to more established relational contexts
o Charles Berger on URT
- Key concepts
o Uncertainty: “having a number of possible alternative predictions or explanations”
(Berger& Calabrese, 1975)
o Uncertainty reduction: “making sense of something to increase our ability to
accurately predict or explain”
 - Key propositions (theorems)
o Communication between strangers decreases uncertainty
o High levels of uncertainty increases information seeking behaviour
o Low levels of uncertainty increases intimacy
o Similarity between persons reduces uncertainty

Week 6, Mass Communication

Mass communication is

- A special form of human communication characterized by large, anonymous audiences

reached through some media
o Media that allow for mass comm are mass media
 Does not include one-on-one computer-mediated communication
 (email, IM, etc.)
 Social media is a grey area
- The medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964)

Tribal Epoch

- Oral communication
o Face-to-face
o Hearing is the dominant sense
- Through stories and rituals…
o Information, culture passed on
o Form of entertainment
o Fostered cohesive communities

The Literate Epoch

- Invention of the phonetic alphabet

o Direct correspondence between a letter and a sound
o Sight becomes the dominant sense
- New ways of communication possible
o Communication without face-to-face
o Communication can be delayed or repeated
- Written letters allowed us to…
o Rely less on memory or shared stories
o Spread linear thinking
o But access to medium was still restricted

The Print Epoch

- Invention of the printing press

o Johannes Gutenburg (15th century)
o Mass production of printed work
o Still, sight is dominant sense

The Electronic Epoch

 - Invention of the telegraph (1844)
o First in series of electronic communication media (telephone, radio, television,
internet)
o Communication overcomes distance
o Hearing becomes the dominant sense again
- Electronic communication leads to
o Creation of a “global village”
o Intimacy and connection achieved by electronic communication

The Theories of Mass Communication

- The hypodermic Needle Model

- Uses & Gratification Theory
- Agenda Setting
- Cultivation Theory
- Critical/Cultural Tradition

Week 6, part 2

The Hypodermic Needle Model

- Developed in the 1920s and 1930s

o Linear communication theory, suggests that media is injected directly into the brains
of passive audience
o Suggests we are all the same, and that we think of media all in the same way
- Came into prominence due to historical events
o 1930s success of Nazi propaganda (e.g., use of posters)
o Anecdotes about the power of radio (“War of the Worlds”, 1938)
- Discredited by theorists who recognized that audience are not passive receivers

Uses and Gratification Theory

- Assumes that people are active agents, consciously aware of their needs, motivations and
actively choose media to gratify their needs
o Any kind of media use
 Nintendo switch, smart tv etc
- Blumer & Katz (1974), uses for media
o Surveillance
 Using media to survey the world
o Personal relationships
 Using media to fit in
o Personal identity
 Use media to find out who you are
o Diversion
 Using media to divert your attention from the world

Agenda Setting Theory

- “[The news] may not be successful in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly
successful in telling its readers what to think about” (Cohen, 1963)
- Media sets the public agenda by spotlighting some events, issues, people, perspectives
Cultivation Theory

- Television cultivates a worldview that is inaccurate, but that viewers assume reflects real life
(Gerbner & Gross, 1976)
o TV Viewing -> learning -> Incidental Information -> construction -> Social Reality
- More exposure to television, the more distorted perceptions of reality
o (i.e., a “television view” of the world)
- Results in “mean world syndrome”

Critical/Cultural Tradition

- Mass media advance dominant ideology

o Dominant social system is supported by mass media
o Those with money and power benefit from media
o Ideology of privileged groups are portrayed as normal, right, natural
o Inequalities between social groups and co-cultures is reinforced

Media influences our knowledge and perspectives

- Hypodermic needle model (not really accepted anymore)

- Agenda setting
- Cultivation of worldviews
- Defining desirability and normalcy

Week 8 Advertising and PR

Advertising is an ancient tradition

A business model develops…

- Invention of the printing press (1440)

- Newspapers contain advertisements (1600s)
o Beginning of independent press
- Penny press with high circulation (1800s)

We “pay” for what we get…

- We get: Media content and services

o Content: shows, articles, news,…
o Services: Companies and devices we use to access the content
 (.e.g, mobile subscriptions, data plans, cable tv service, internet
subscription, Netflix)
- We pay:
o Some fees (e.g., subscription fees)
o Not enough to cover production costs
- Advertising makes up for that difference

Advertising
 - Activity of explicitly paying for media space or time in order to direct favorable attention to
certain goods or services
- Characteristics
o Transaction: time and space is sold
o Explicit: Not hidden. Product or brand is clearly stated
o Involves persuasion:
 Advances a point of view or a course of action through communication

Advertising Industry: An Overview

- Advertising agencies
o Companies that specialize in the creation of ads for placement in media that accept
payment for exhibiting those ads
o Cf. advertisers
- Advertising/Marketing agency holding companies
o Firms that own full service advertising agencies, marketing consulting agencies,
direct-marketing firms, research companies, PR agencies, etc

Ad agencies are not the same (1)

- B2B agencies versus consumer agencies

o Do work for advertisers interested in persuading personnel in other companies to
buy from them
o Do work for advertisers interested in persuading individual consumers in their
nonwork roles to buy their products
o E.g., B2B Volvo Truck’s “Live Test” Series, Lockheed Martin’s “Field Trip to Mars”
- General versus specialty agencies
o Agencies that do work for all types of advertisers
o Agencies that do specialized work or tackle only certain types of clients (accounts)
 Online specialty agencies: Promote expertise in reaching people online,
creating online-savvy content, web-based analytics etc.
 Agencies specialized in reaching specific target markets (e.g., youth, doctors)
- Traditional versus direct-marketing agencies
o Agencies that create and distributes persuasive messages that creates favorable
impression of the product so that it will lead to buying
o Direct-marketing agencies focus on mailers, telephone marketing, TV commercials
etc to elicit purchase then and there
- Ad agencies are not the same
o Agencies with branch offices in number of different cities worldwide; part of an
integrated network
o Single -location firms; offers more localized expertise

Basic Functions of Ad Work

- Creative persuasion
- Market research
- Media planning and buying

Production in the Ad Industry

 - Production of persuasive messages
- Personnel
o Account executive: Communicates information between advertiser and the agency
o Creative personnel: Works on creating the media content
 Not art!
- Key processes
o Market segmentation
 Dividing society into different categories of consumers
o Sales pitch
 A message that portrays the world of the intended audience, a problem in
that world, and actions that show how the product can solve that problem
o Branding (e.g., Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple)
 Create imagery of product/company

Distribution in the Ad Industry

- Decisions on where and how to distribute ads

- Personnel
o Media planners: Agency personnel making decisions about where to place
advertisements
- Goal: Make media plans
o Which outlets for which audience?
o Outdoor? In-store?
o Cost per thousand (CPM)

Exhibition in the Advertising Industry

- Goal is to put together an ad campaign

o Set of advertisements that go towards a particular theme to promote a product for a
certain period of time
o Efficient media plan + creative branding strategy
- Example: P&G “Thank you, Mom” Campaign
o Promote P&G’s Olympic sponsorship
o Branding P&G itself

Week 9 Culture and Identity

Culture is difficult to talk about…

- Anything said can be a caricature of another’s culture

- So easily judged; easily shrugged off
- Cannot escape cultural influences that we bring
o Any video, photo contains a perspective

Culture, defined

- Culture is the ongoing negotiation of learned and patterned beliefs, attitudes, values, and
behaviors.
- Culture can exist at many levels

Layers of Culture
 - Speech communities
o Culture developed among people who have regular contact with each other and
have shared norms and values (e.g., WKW, family)
- Standpoints
o Culture defined by shared life experiences. Reflects shared “standpoint” (e.g.,
woman, middle-class, poly or JC, NS men, Malay*)
- Cultural institutions
o Culture defined by nationality, religion, ethnicity (e.g., Singaporean, Muslim, Malay)

How cultures form and change

- Culture emerges through selectivity

o Cultures are distinct because cultural groups focus on different things (beliefs,
practices)
o Find meaning in these things
- Culture is shared with new members
o “Socialization”: Process by which newcomers come to understand a culture’s
assumptions and guidelines
- Culture changes over time
o Ways of thinking, feeling, behaving that define a culture evolve overtime
o “Invention”: Development of new cultural practices

Classifying Cultures: Hofstede’s Dimensions

- Power Distance Index (PDI)*

o High: Acceptance of a hierarchical order in which everybody has a place and which
needs no further justification
o Low: People strive to equalize the distribution of power and demand justification for
inequalities of power
- Individualism versus Collectivism (IDV) *
o Individualism: As a preference for a loosely-knit social framework
o Collectivism: Tightly-knit framework in society
- Masculinity versus Femininity (MAS)*
o Masculinity: Preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness, and
material rewards for success
o Femininity: Stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak
and quality of life
- Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI)*
o High: Maintains rigid codes of belief and behavior and are intolerant of unorthodox
behavior and ideas.
o Low: Societies maintain a more relaxed attitude in which practice counts more than
principles
- Long Term Orientation versus Short Term Normative Orientation (LTO)
o High: Pragmatic approach, they encourage thrift and efforts in modern education as
a way to prepare for the future
o Low: Societies prefer to maintain time-honored traditions and norms while viewing
societal change with suspicion
Culture Shapes Communication

- Speech code
o System of symbols, rules, assumptions people create to accomplish communication
(within a culture)
o “Communication as a local practice instilled with and guided by the cultural
particularities of a given speech community.” (Philipsen, 1992)
o E.g., Singlish

Communication Reflects Culture

- Messages people create reveal culture

o Acts of communication reflect a cultural group’s way of thinking, assumptions about
relationships, and strategies for living
o E.g., humor
- Boundary markers
o Messages that signal that an action is inappropriate or off-limits
o What is funny, what is offensive?
o E.g., Alexandra Wallace’s case (racist white girl)
- Myths
o Sacred stories that embed cultural themes
o E.g., Merlion
- Rituals
o Carefully scripted performances that mark culturally significant events

Intercultural Communication

- Interaction that is guided by a person’s membership in a social group rather than his or her
unique qualities as an individual

Barriers to Intercultural Communication

- Ethnocentrism
o Tendency to see one’s own cultural beliefs as more correct appropriate and moral
than other cultures
o Cf. “deviant”, “weird”, “immoral”, “wrong”
- Uncertainty and anxiety
o Uncertainty: Lack of knowledge about others
o Anxiety: negative emotional state when you feel uneasy, worried, or apprehensive
o E.g., Chief Raoni Metuktire
- Marginalization
o The tendency to treat less dominant groups of people in a society as inferior or
unimportant

Identity and culture

- “Who am I” derived from what is reflected back on us from other people

- The multiple layers of culture affect our sense of self
 - Beliefs, attitudes, expectations, values, norms, behaviours…

Week 10 Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)

First, there was a computer, Then came connection, Thus the birth of CMC (and CMC research)

- In 1969, two computers were connected for the first time

- Once connected, people started to communicate – a lot
- Early CMC research (1970s-80s)
o Electronic mails
o Teleconferencing (online collaboration)
o Electronics bulletins (online communities or support groups)
- “Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is text based messages, which filter out most
nonverbal cues” (from the book)

BBS (Bulletin Board System, or the “grandfather” of social media)

Cues-Filtered-Out Perspective of CMC

- Predominant perspective in early CMC research

- Focus was on the technology itself
- Pay attention to the missing cues in CMC
o Social Presence Theory
o Media Richness Theory
o And similar others…

Social Presence Theory (1976)

- “the degree of salience of the other person in the interaction” (Short, Williams, & Christie,
1976)
- Central claims:
o Communication media vary in its capacity to transmit cues
o Less cues transmitted = less presence = less warmth and involvement perceived
 Low Bandwidth
 Low Social Presence
 Impersonal Communication
- “CMC is always impersonal” (Culhan & Markus, 1987)

Media Richness Theory (Daft & Lengel, 1984)

- Centers around the “richness” construct

o Number of cues; Immediacy of feedback; Potential for natural language; Potential
for personalization (tailored specifically)
o E.g., face-to-face (“rich”), telephones, CMC (“lean”)
- Central claim:
o Match between equivocality of message situation and richness of medium produces
best outcomes

A Change in Perspective

- From technology-centered approach to communication-process-centered approach

- Why?
o More complicated use of communication technologies
 o Couldn’t keep up with tech developments
o CMC research moves into the interpersonal, organizational domain

Social Identity/Deindividuation Theory (SIDE)

- Visual anonymity
o Deprive the authentic self
o Stripped of all individual unique qualities
- Deindividuation
- Group identification
o Focus more on group based cues
- Group dynamics
o E.g., WSB
- Consequence
o Only “us” and “them”, but not “me” and “you”, in CMC
o CMC may be good for task-oriented communication; but not for interpersonal
relationship building
o E.g., cyberbullying, ingroup/outgroup mentality
- Dosen’t really help with new social media sites as there is more personalization now

Social Information Processing (SIP) Theory

o Interpersonal information
o Impression formation
o Relational development
- Assumptions (Walther, 1992):
o Nonverbal cues are missing in CMC
o Communicators motivated to develop impressions and affinity (regardless of
medium)
o When nonverbal cues are unavailable, communicators adapt; they focus on available
cues in CMC
- Two components of SIP (Walther, 1992)
o Verbal cues: in CMC, users need to create full impressions of others based on verbal
communication
o Time: Exchange of social information through text-only CMC is slower; thus CMC
needs more time to fully develop (e.g., x4 for CMC)

Hyperpersonal Model (Walther, 1996)

- “Sometimes CMC relationships surpasses FtF”

- Four elements that contribute to this effect
o 1) Sender: Selective self-presentation
o 2) Receiver: Over-attribution of similarity
 More often we make internal attribution about others
 Lack of cues, yet still jump to conclusions (make internal attributions)
 Over-attribute to info on profile -> Idealized image of other
o 3) Channel: On your own time
 CMC is (can be) asynchronous
 “[In CMC] one may play, contemplate, edit one’s comments more mindfully
and deliberately than FtF.”
 o 4) Feedback: Self-fulfilling prophecy
 People want expectations to be confirmed

Warranting Theory (Walther & Parks, 2002)

- Often some disconnection between self and self-presentation

- People know, through some experience, how easily claims can be fabricated in CMC
- “Warrant” (warranting cues)
o A cue that authenticates an online self-presentation
o Provides information about warranting value
 The extent to which information is immune to manipulation by the source
 High warranting value = difficult to manipulate
 Low warranting value = easy to manipulate
- Various factors affect warranting value of information
o Source of information; perceived motivations; valence of information
- Warranting value moderates the degree of impact of the information (self-presentation) on
impressions

What’s Missing?

- CMC theories from the critical/cultural perspective

- Implications of CMC for the self
- The future

Week 11, Human-Computer Interaction

1st Industrial Revolution

- From agarian society to industrial society

2nd Industrial Revolution

- Mass production, electricity, assembly line, division of labor

3rd Industrial Revolution

- Computer/digital revolution

4th Industrial Revolution

- ???
- Year 2000 and onwards
- Ubiquity of internet
- Artificial intelligence

Industry 4.0

- Fusion between the physical and digital world

o Blurred boundaries between the natural and synthetic
o New ways of interacting with people and machines
- Examples
o New ways of doing old things
 Transportation: Grab, Gojek
 Dining: Deliveroo, Grabfood
  Driving: Autonomous vehicles
 Journalism: Automated journalism
o New players
 Ai assistants, doctors, fund managers
 “social bots”

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

- Dominant name for the study of human and intelligent artifact interaction
- A discipline concerned with
o The design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for
human use [-> designers, engineers, computer scientists]
o The study of phenomena surrounding H-C interaction [-> communication,
psychology, sociology, philosophy]

“Old” HCI

- Personal computer
- Micro processors
- Computer code
- Graphical User Interface (GUI) + Mouse
- Smartphones with Internet

Kiousis (2002) on Interactivity

- Interactivity
o Features of technology that enable interaction
o Human perception of the interactive technological features
- Some technological features may be necessary to be seen as interactive
- But not all technologically interactive things will be perceived as such

Affordance

- “Action possibilities that are readily perceived by an actor” (Norman, 1988)

- A function of both
o Technology (environment, product, material)
o People’s perception of the technology
- Perceived affordance is more important!
o What the user understands the affordance to be

Principle #1: Affordances need to be perceptible

- Design of the object must communicate to the user how to use it

- Affordances vs. affordance cues (Gaver, 1991)
o Ways to use something vs. clues that tell us these ways

Principle #2: Affordances need to be intuitive

- Intuitive = no need to learn!

- Signal, instead of explicitly telling the user what to do

Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) Paradigm

 - “Social cues from computers trigger mindless responses from humans as if the computers
were social actors” (Reeves & Nass, 1996)

CASA Research

- Find the literature on social rules governing H2H interaction

o Politeness
o Reciprocity
o Personality (e.g., similarity attraction)
o Gender stereotypes
- Replace a human partner with a technology
- Test the re-written rule
- Draw out implications for theory & design

A new era of HCI comes with…

- Advances in technology (vision, sensing, motion)

- Big data
- Artificial intelligence
o Machine learning; Deep learning
- Natural language processing
- Augmented, virtual reality