Communication Synergies & Intercultural Communication
Classified in Psychology and Sociology
Written at on 
English with a size of 3.57 KB.
Research Methodologies in Communication
Data Collection Methods
Field Work
Advantages: Rich, deep, flexible insights into real-life situations.
Limitations: Limited generalizability due to small community focus.
Surveys/Polls
Advantages: Large sample sizes, easy quantification and comparison, facilitates data analysis.
Limitations: Limited qualitative information, potential for dishonesty, lack of flexibility and nuance, superficial insights.
Laboratory Experiments
Advantages: Replicable, controlled variables, easy generalization.
Limitations: Artificial setting, difficult extrapolation to real life, potential for experimental bias.
Life Stories/Interviews
Advantages: Rich, in-depth information, allows study of evolving actions and beliefs, close to everyday life.
Limitations: Reliant on subject's memory, potential for biased or distorted information.
Data Analysis Methods
Content Analysis
Advantages: Can handle large corpora, easy replication, quantifiable.
Limitations: Does not account for nuances of speech or context.
Speech Analysis
Advantages: In-depth analysis of speech, allows for multi-level analysis.
Limitations: Requires smaller corpora and detailed study.
Group Decisions
Advantages: Deep insights into real-life situations, flexible, stimulating, high subjective validity, quick results.
Limitations: Less control than life stories, difficult data analysis, requires well-trained interviewers.
Delphi Method
Advantages: Eliminates direct influence, gathers diverse perspectives.
Limitations: Difficulty ensuring question quality, greater commitment required with multiple rounds.
Communication Synergies and Mass Media Effects
Mass communication can reinforce or contradict existing synergies. Messages are influenced by various factors, including emotional responses.
The Role of Emotions in Communication
Thinkers like Hume, Kant, and Dewey held differing views on emotions. Since the 1980s, emotions have been studied across multiple disciplines. As Rodrigo suggests, a multidisciplinary approach is crucial. Emotions are central to understanding society and are thus relevant to communication studies (Rodrigo, Lits, Martin-Barbero).
Two main approaches exist:
- Positivism (e.g., Darwin, James): Focuses on observable facts and laws governing emotions, rather than causes.
- Relativism (e.g., Goffman): Emphasizes the absence of absolute truths.
Communication studies often adopt a phenomenological approach (part of the interactionist, interpretive, constructionist paradigm):
- Emotions are socially constructed, not natural.
- Emotional behaviors are learned.
- Emotions are shaped by cultural patterns and manifest in specific social situations.
In summary, the expression and behavior associated with emotions are constructed within different discourses of mass media. For example, news can foster a sense of trust (what Rodrigo terms a "pragmatic trust contract"), while entertainment programs aim to evoke specific feelings. Reality shows represent a hybrid of these two.