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7 TRADITIONS OF COMMUNICATION THEORY
1. Socio-psychological Tradition
2. Cybernetic Tradition
3. Rhetorical Tradition
4. Semiotic Tradition
5. Socio-cultural Tradition
6. Critical Tradition
7. Phenomenological Tradition
SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL TRADITION
• Emphasizes the scientific perspective.
• Scholars believe that communication truths can be discovered by
careful, systematic observation that predict cause-and-effect
relationships.
• Researchers focus on what is without their personal bias of what ought
to be.
• Theorists check data through surveys or controlled experiments, often
calling for longitudinal empirical studies.
SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL TRADITION
• Focuses on the individual as a socialized entity, a part of a network of
people, but still independent in their actions
• Focus on individual social behaviour, psychological
variables, individual effects, personalities and traits, perception and
cognition
• Share a common concern for behaviour and for the personal traits and
cognitive processes that produce behaviour
COMMUNICATION FOCUS
Persuasion and attitude change
Message processing
How individuals plan message strategies
How receivers process message information
Effects of messages on individuals
Questions about communication process
Can we predict individual communication behaviour?
How does an individual take into account, accommodate, and adapt to different
communication situations?
By what logic do people make decisions about the types of messages they wish
to use?
VARIATIONS IN SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL
1. Behavioural – How people behave in communication situations
2. Cognitive – How individuals acquire, store and process information
in a way that leads to behavioural outputs
3. Biological – Our traits, ways of thinking, and behaviours are wired in
biologically and derive not from learning or situational factors, but
from inborn neurobiological influences
CYBERNETIC TRADITION
• Cybernetics: Tradition of complex systems in which interacting
elements influence one another.
• Any part of a system is always constrained by its dependence on other
parts, and this pattern of interdependence organises the system itself.
• System cannot remain alive without importing new resources in the
form of inputs. Takes inputs from the environment, processes the,, and
creates outputs that are put back into the environment.
• In addition to interdependence, systems involve self-regulation and
control. Systems monitor, regulate and control their own outputs to
achieve goals.
COMMUNICATION FOCUS
• Within cybernetics, communication is understood as a system of
parts, or variables, that influence one another, shape and control the
character of the overall system, and achieve balance and change.
• The study of information processing, feedback and control in
communication systems
• Theorists seek to answer the questions:
How does the system work?
What could change it?
How can we get the bugs out?
5 VARIATIONS IN CYBERNETIC TRADITION
1. Basic System Theory
2. Cybernetics
3. Information Theory
4. General System Theory
5. Second-order Cybernetics
BASIC SYSTEM THEORY
• Depicts systems as structures that can be analysed from the outside.
You can manipulate the system by tinkering with the inputs
CYBERNETICS
• Contrary to idea that one thing causes another in a linear fashion. How
things impact one another in circular way, how systems maintain
control, how balance is achieved and how feedback loops can maintain
balance and create change
INFORMATION THEORY
• Originates in the work of Claude Shannon in telecommunications
research
• Transmission of signals from one part of a system to others through
networks.
• Quantifies the uncertainty in messages and calculates the amount of
redundancy necessary to counteract noise and make possible the
accurate flow of messages through a system.
GENERAL SYSTEM THEORY
• Biologist, Ludwig von Bertalanffy
• Broad, multidisciplinary approach to knowledge
• Shows how things in many different fields are similar to one another
because of shared system principles
• Recognises the universal nature of all types and deals with
commonalities among systems as seemingly diverse as economic
growth, biolgical development and social movement
SECOND-ORDER CYBERNETICS
• Observers can never see how a system will work by standing outside
the system itself because the observer is always engaged cybernetically
with the system being observed.
• You affect and are affected by a system whenever you observe it.
• Also known as Cybernetics of Knowing – Knowledge is a product of
feedback loops
• between the knower and the known.
• What we observe in a system is determined in part by the categories
and methods of
• observation, which in turn are affected by what is seen.
6 FEATURES OF RHETORICAL TRADITION
1. A conviction that speech distinguishes humans from other animals.
2. A confidence in the efficacy of public address.
3. A setting of one speaker addressing a large audience with the
intention to persuade.
4. Oratorical training as the cornerstone of a leader’s education.
5. An emphasis on the power and beauty of language to move people
emotionally and stir them to action.
6. Rhetoric was the province of males.
RHETORIC IN ANCIENT TIMES
• Intentional
• Oral with no technology
• to achieve purposive ends (passing laws, making judicial decisions)
• Done in formal settings for particular purposes, not seen as occurring
in everyday communication
• Audience immediately present
5 CANONS OF RHETORIC
Canon Definition
Invention Development of the substance of the speech
Arrangement Structure of the speech/ordering of rhetorical
text
Style Verbal ornamentation of speech using
techniques such as rhetorical figures
Delivery Vocal qualities and physical movements used
by the Rhetor
Memory Used to recall information for a speech
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