During the examination process, whether it is Professional Course 1 or Professional Course 2, part of the content in the test paper must come from the basic knowledge in the reference book. This part of the content requires us to master it proficiently. Only in this way can we save time in the examination room to the greatest extent and leave enough time for answering other difficult questions. This part of the content is also the direction in which we usually work harder. Only by mastering the most basic theories can we improve our knowledge and continuously expand our knowledge.
Let’s take a look at the five basic communication theories that students in Xinchuan postgraduate entrance exams must memorize.
The concept and characteristics of communication
01The concept of communication
(1) Cooley: Communication refers to the mechanism on which relationships between people are established and developed. Cooley emphasized the social relational nature of communication.
(2) Peirce: Emphasis on the special role of communication symbols as the carrier of spiritual content in communication.
(3) Schramm: Communication has at least three elements: source, message and destination.
(4) Hu Zhengrong: Communication is the flow process of information. Communication contains two elements – information (material for communication) and flow.
(5) Gold: Communication is the process of changing uniqueness into commonality.
(6) Guo Qingguang: Communication is the transmission of social information or the operation of social information systems.
02Characteristics of communication
(1) Social communication is an information sharing activity;
(2) Social communication takes place within certain social relationships and is a manifestation of certain social relationships;
(3) From the perspective of the social relationship of communication, it is a two-way social interaction behavior;
(4) One of the important prerequisites for the establishment of communication is that both the transmitter and the receiver must have a common space of meaning;
(5) Communication is a behavior, a process, and a system.
Mead-I theory of subject and object
It was proposed by American social psychologist Mead. When Mead studied people's introspective activities, he found that self-awareness has an important impact on people's behavioral decision-making.
The main points of the subject-object-I theory
(1) The self can be decomposed into two interconnected and interactive aspects: one is the "I" (I) as the subject of will and behavior, which is embodied through the individual's actions and reactions around objects; the other is the "object" (me) as the representative of others' social evaluation and social expectations, which is the embodiment of the social relationality of self-awareness. In other words, the human self is formed in the interaction between the "subject self" and the "object self" and is the embodiment of this interactive relationship.
(2) Human self-awareness is formed, developed and changed in the process of dialectical interaction between the "subject self" and the "object self". The "subject self" is the form (expressed by behavior), and the "object self" is the content (reflecting the influence of all aspects of social relations).
(3) The social process of two-way interaction between "subject self" and "guest self". The medium of interaction is information. The subject-object-me theory is of great significance to understanding the social, two-way and interactive nature of intra-personal communication.
McLuhan media theory
01McLuhan’s main points
1. The medium is the message
This is McLuhan's high-level summary of the status and role of communication media in the development of human society. The meaning is that the medium itself is the truly meaningful message, that is, only with a certain medium can humans engage in communication and other social activities that are suitable for it. Therefore, the truly meaningful and valuable "message" is not the communication content of each era, but the nature of the communication tools used in this era, the possibilities it creates and the social changes it brings.
In McLuhan's view, media is the basic driving force for social development. Every new media created creates a way for people to perceive and understand the world. Changes in communication change human feelings, also change the relationship between people, and create new types of social behavior.
2. The media is an extension of people
Any medium is nothing more than an expansion and extension of human senses and organs. Writing and print media are extensions of human visual abilities, radio is an extension of human hearing abilities, and television is a comprehensive extension of human visual, auditory, and tactile abilities. McLuhan's point of view is to illustrate the impact of communication media on human sensory centers. Therefore, in his eyes, the development history of media and society is also the consciousness of human sensory abilities from "synthesis" to "differentiation" to "resynthesis". The use of each medium will change people's sensory balance, produce different psychological effects and perceptions and reflections of the external world.
3. Hot media and cold media
The information conveyed by hot media is relatively clear and clear, and the recipient does not need to mobilize more sensory and associative activities to understand it. (books, newspapers, radio, silent films, photographs).
The information conveyed by cold media is small and vague, and understanding requires the cooperation of multiple senses and rich imagination. (Comics, talkies, television, etc.). The disadvantage is that there is no consistent standard for this classification and there are logical contradictions.
4.Global village
It is believed that the communication revolution has changed the scale of human senses. Oral communication corresponds to a tribalized society—printed media corresponds to a detribalized society—and electronic media corresponds to a retribalized society, that is, the global village.
02The significance of McLuhan’s media theory
It opens up the perspective of observing human and social development from the perspective of media technology, and emphasizes the role of media technology in social history. In addition, McLuhan's view that "media is an extension of human beings" is very enlightening for us to understand the working mechanisms of different media. His assertion about the "global village" is also in line with the development trend of the contemporary world.
03 Limitations of McLuhan’s media theory
McLuhan was a technical naturalist, so his theory was extreme and one-sided. This is reflected in: McLuhan regards media technology as the only determinant of social development and change, and ignores the role of various complex social factors such as production relations and social relations; in McLuhan's theory, human subjectivity and initiative cannot be seen, and human beings seem to be completely influenced by the media technology invented by themselves. The entire basis of McLuhan's theory focuses on the impact of media tools on the central sensory system, and the explanation of all human behaviors based on this is also one-sided; McLuhan's theory cannot see people engaged in active social practice, nor can it see the social relationships between people.
uses and gratifications theory
01Definition of Uses and Gratifications Theory
The concept of "uses and gratifications" was proposed by communication scientist Katz in his 1974 article "Individual Use of Mass Communication".
That is, the audience is regarded as individuals with specific needs, and their media contact activities are regarded as the process of using media based on specific needs and motivations to satisfy these needs. The "uses and gratifications" theory takes the audience's perspective and examines the psychological and behavioral effects of mass communication on humans by analyzing the audience's motivations for using media and obtaining need satisfaction. This theory believes that the audience restricts the process of media communication through active use of media, and points out that the use of media is entirely based on personal needs and desires.
02Evaluation of Uses and Gratifications Theory
(1) This theory believes that the audience's media contact is an activity of selecting media content based on their own needs. This choice has a certain "agency", which helps to correct the view of "the audience is absolutely passive" in mass society.
(2) It reveals the diversity of audience media usage forms, emphasizes the restrictive effect of audience needs on communication effects, and plays an important role in denying the early "bullet theory" or "hypodermic injection theory" view of effects.
(3) It points out that mass communication has some basic effects on the audience, which is also a useful correction to the "limited effect theory" that overemphasized the powerlessness of mass communication from the 1940s to the 1960s.
03Limitations of Uses and Gratifications Theory
(1) Too much emphasis on personal and psychological factors, with a strong color of behaviorism and functionalism.
(2) Being separated from the production and provision process of media content and simply examining the media contact behavior of the audience cannot fully reveal the social relationship between the audience and the media.
(3) It points out a certain kind of agency of the audience, but this kind of agency is limited and is limited to the scope of "selective contact" with the content provided by the media. It cannot reflect the agency of the audience as the subject of social practice, the subject with communication needs and communication rights.
mimetic environment theory
In 1922, the famous American newspaper columnist Lippmann first proposed the concept of "mimetic environment" in his book "Public Opinion".
01Definition of mimetic environment theory
The mimetic environment is not a "mirror" reproduction of the real environment, but an environment that the communication media prompts people to by selecting, processing, and re-structuring symbolic events or information.
02Evaluation of the mimetic environment theory
As the main way for people to understand the world, the mimetic environment plays a key role in the understanding and development of people's ideas, reflecting the social influence of mass communication. But it will also restrict people's cognition and behavior, affecting the objective reality environment. Due to the limited scope, energy and attention of people's actual activities, it is impossible for people to maintain experiential contact with the entire external environment and numerous things related to them. For things beyond their own personal perception, people can only understand and cognize things through various "news supply agencies".
In addition to the basic theories of communication mentioned in the "Course of Communication" that will be covered in the exam, we also need to be familiar with some unexplained theories, which will also be covered during the exam. Here are six unexplained theories.
1. Spectacle Society
01The definition and perspective of landscape society
(1) Definition
Spectacle society is a one-dimensional society that uses visual communication methods to maintain its social status quo.
(2) Viewpoint
① In a society where modern production conditions prevail, all aspects of life present themselves in the form of an infinite accumulation of landscapes.
② Everything that once existed directly and vividly has been transformed into representation.
③In the age of images, landscape has become the main production content of today’s society.
④ It is even a certain realistic and material world view. (Internalization, environmentalization of mimetic environment)
⑤Rebuked McLuhan, who proposed "the medium is the message", as "the first apologist of landscape".
02The current situation of spectacle society
(1) In the spectacle society of consumerism, separate and illusory media images replace direct life experience and various relationships in life.
(2) "Spectacle" makes people stay away from society and lose interest in creative social practices. People passively consume artificial commodity spectacles and the services they provide, are excited by television, and consume time in their obsession with the influence of media. "Modern people have completely become viewers." (container man)
2. Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
Proposed by linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf, it is a psychological and linguistic hypothesis about human language.
The main points of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The theory, which holds that people's thinking patterns are affected by their use of language and may have different views on the same thing, has caused some controversy and attracted some criticism.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis believes that the cultural concepts and classifications contained in different languages will affect language users' perception of the real world. In other words, users of different languages will have different ways of thinking and behavior due to language differences.
This statement that "language structure affects the speaker's cognitive structure" involves many fields such as human linguistics, psychology, linguistic psychology, neurolinguistics, cognitive science, linguistic anthropology, sociology of language, and philosophy of language, and has been widely studied in these fields.
3. Uncertainty Reduction Theory
Uncertainty reduction theory, also known as first interaction theory, was first proposed by Charles Berger and Richard Calabrezi in 1975.
Main points of uncertainty reduction theory
The theory is used to explain how strangers use communication to reduce uncertainty between people during their first interactions. When we first meet, we anticipate and interpret the motivations for each other's actions.
Among them, prediction can be defined as the ability to predict one's own and the other party's behavior to the extent possible; explanation refers to trying to explain the meaning of past actions in a certain relationship. With the development of theory, cognitive uncertainty and behavioral uncertainty are proposed. Among them, cognitive uncertainty refers to the uncertainty related to beliefs and attitudes, and behavioral uncertainty refers to the degree of prediction of behavior in a certain situation. In interaction, we may generate two kinds of uncertainty at the same time.
4. Compensatory media
Proposed by communication scholar Paul Levinson.
Main ideas about compensatory media
This theory holds that any subsequent media is a remedy and compensation for a certain past medium or a certain innately deficient function, but new media will bring new problems; the evolution of media is the result of human choice, and media that better meet human needs are retained.
In terms of theoretical contribution, the "compensatory media" theory provides a new and convincing explanation for the progress of media technology, believing that humans determine the evolutionary direction of media; it proposes that humans can refine and control media technology, and preserve and develop the media environment we like. The shortcoming of this theory is that Levinson is a technological optimist. All his writings are filled with the confidence of human beings in technology, but the important impact of media on people has not received enough attention.
5. Cognitive dissonance theory
It was proposed by American social psychologist Festinger in "Cognitive Dissonance Theory" published in 1957.
Main ideas of cognitive dissonance theory
This theory holds that everyone strives to make their inner world free of contradictions, but all people are unable to achieve a state of no contradiction.
Festinger believes that human cognition is composed of many cognitive elements, and there are coordinated, discordant and irrelevant relationships between these cognitive elements. A state of dissonance occurs when an individual finds that he or she holds two or more conflicting cognitive factors. When cognitive dissonance occurs, individuals will feel psychologically unhappy and nervous, and will be motivated to resolve the dissonance, and their attitudes will change accordingly. This theory studies the relationship between any cognition, especially focusing on the problem of dissonance between behavior and attitude. It expands the previous "consistency theory" and emphasizes the antecedent effect of human behavior on attitude change or persistence. Previously, people emphasized that attitude precedes behavior. This is a theoretical contribution to the discipline of psychology, and this view also has guiding significance for communication practice.
6. Social Penetration Theory
Social penetration theory was proposed by American communication scholars Altman and Taylor in 1973.
The main points of social penetration theory
Unlike the "uncertainty reduction" theory, which focuses on the initial stage of interpersonal communication, the social penetration theory focuses on the entire process of how two strangers go from raw to mature, from shallow to deep. Its most distinctive feature is that it emphasizes the role of "self-disclosure" in it.
Altman and Taylor believe that the development of interpersonal relationships can be divided into four stages: finding direction, tentative emotional communication, emotional communication, and stable communication. In this process, the "self-disclosure" of both parties is like peeling an onion, layer by layer, gradually deepening, from the surface to the middle and then to the core.
