1. Technology
2. Industrialization
3. Literacy

1. Propoganda
2. Public opnion
3. Media

• American studies emphasize scientific, objective studies
• European studies have been more interpretive, historical, cultural, and critical (shaped by Marxism)

Currently, the two are beginning to mingle

• Eastern focus on wholeness and unity of the human experience as unplanned and natural outcomes that emphasize feeling/sprituality; mistrust in verbal language/speech study; based on role & status
• Western focus is analytical with bias on individual, purpose and thought; verbal symbols (language/speech); based on interactions between separate individuals

The systematic study of experience that leads to understanding, knowledge & theory:

1. Ask questions of definition, fact, or value
2. Observe with various methods
3. Construct answers (theory building)
4. Iterative theory construction—circular where each stage affects and is affected by the other

1. Science: objectivity, standardization & replication
2. Humanities: subjectivity seeking creative interpretations
3. Social Science: curious blend of the two focusing on humans as objects of study

1. Interpersonal
2. Group
3. Public
4. Organizational
5. Mass comm

1. Rhetorical
2. Semiotic
3. Phenomenological
4. Cybernetic
5. Sociopsychological
6. Sociocultural
7. Critical

• Objectivitiy, standardization & generalizability
• Goal is not to change things, but minimize bias
• Data=accuracy

• Humans cannot be free of bias
• Accept subjectivity as part of data
• Deep and thoughful description of a particular group
• Value is what we do with it

• Ideas from both scientific and human scholarship
• Humans are the objects of study
• Inquiry uses a range of methods

• Communication Theory
• Human Communiciton Research
• Communication Monographs
• Critical Studies in Media Communication

• See the world in an organized and synthesized way (patterns & connections)
• Guide us in what and how we observe
• Enable us to predict & explain outcomes and effects
• Help us communicate knowledge

1. Philosophical assumptions behind the theory (about the nature of knowledge, how it is obtained, what constitutes existence and what is valuable)
2. Concepts (the building blocks of theory)
3. Explanations (describing patterns and accounts for why things occur, e.g. causal and practical)
4. Principles (concrete details enabling a connection between actions and consequences)

1. Epistomology
2. Ontology
3. Axiology

1. To what extent does knowledge exist before experience?
2. To what extent can knowledge be certain?
3. By what process does knowledge arise?
4. Is knowledge best conceived in parts or wholes?
5. To what extent can knowledge be explicit? (tacit vs. explicit)

Which is wiser?

Questioning a theory's usefulness

or its truthfulness

• Explicit: what you can "get out"
• Tacit: what is in your mind

1. To what extent do humans make real choices
2. Is human behavior best understood in terms of states or traits?
3. Is human experience primarily individual or social?
4. To what extent is communication contextual?

Traits are static and stable.

States are dynamic and temporary.

Individual researchers focuses on behavior as an individualistic experience.

Society researchers believe humans cannot be understood apart from their social relationships

1. Can theory be value free?
2. To what extent does the practice of inquiry influence what is studied?
3. What is the aim of scholarship?
4. To what extent for social change?

• Classical science... that there is an intrinsic value of knowledge to ascertain Truth; that the application does not drive research.
• Scholarship is neutral

• Identify situation or event
• Includes a set of norms or values
• Asserts a conncection between a range of actions and possible consequences

• That which seeks universal or general laws to predict (traditional scientific)
• Dominant approach in experimental natural sciences

What are the 4 processes of the hypothetico-deductive method (or variable-analytic tradition)?

i.e. "explanation and prediction" = knowledge claim that is BROAD

1. Develop questions
2. Form falsifiable hypothesis
3. Test hypothesis
4. Formulate theory

• Epistemologically—Empiricist and Rational, i.e. reality is separate from researcher, privilieging objectivity
• Ontologically—Behavior is determined by biology and environment
• Axiologically—Value-free stance

1. Action is voluntary, i.e. humans are self-motiviating
2. Knowlegde is socially created, i.e. communication theories are created by processes they are designed to explain
3. Theories are historically tied to setting and time (concrete variables) and will change over time
4. Theories affect reality of researcher
5. Theories are never neutral

• Epistemologicially—people take an active role in creating knowledge, i.e., not out of discovery but from interaction,thus are Humanistic and subjective and NOT universal laws
• Ontologically—Individuals create meanings, have intentions and make choices in deliberate ways
• Axiologically—Value-conscious
• Concepts organize a framework for classifying dynamic interpretations in real situations

Practical theories offer a guidelines/prescriptions for reflection and action, i.e., provides "principles" to improve life, for a particular grup or situation

Example: a KM audit of a particular organizaiton

1. Theoretical scope (breadth of a theory)
2. Appropriateness (how consistent its assumptions are with its methods and questions)
3. Heuristic value (use for generating research and ideas)
4. Validty (pragmiatic, fit between theory & reality, generalizabiltiy)
5. Parsimony (simplicity)
6. Openness (open to dialogue with other approaches)

The conceptual domain or extent of coverage

Example: E=MC² has a BIG scope

What is Heuristic Value?

1. Value or worth in practical theory
2. Corrspondence or fit with the way it can be observed
3. Generalizability or scope

Especially in practical theory... admits to diversity and perspective.

Even nomonthetic can be open in acknolwedging the possibility of growth and change in the future.

What are simple definitions for 

Epistomology

Ontology

Axiology? 

Being

Knowledge

Value

1. Semantics (dictionaries, what the sign stands for)
2. Syntactics (relationship among signs, or part of a larger code with rules)
3. Pragmatics (practical use and effects of signs

Knowing through direct experience;

lived experience is the basic data of reality

1. Knowledge is conscious
2. How one relates to a thing determines ints meaning for that person
3. Language is the vehicle for meaning

• Interpretation forms what is real for the person
• hermeneutic circle of back and forth between experience and assigning meaning 

(In semiotic tradition interpretation is separate from reality?

1. Classical (Husseri)—highly objective through bracketing, i.e. putting aside bias
2. Perception (Merleau-Ponty)—contemporary through out person, subjective relationships to things
3. Hermeneutic—adds that communication is the vehicle by which you assign meaning to your experience

Interacting components that together form something more than the sum of the parts:

• unique, interdependent wholes
• input>environment>output>environment
• self-regulation and control
• embedded in one another
• network fedback loops

1. Basic with interdependent component parts, self-regulation, and networks
2. Cybernetics focuses on circular feedback loops and control processess
3. General System Theory (GST) recognizes universal nature of all types and points to commonalities in all
4. Second-order (or cybernetics of knowing) says observers are always engaged cybernetically with in the system being observed.

Common approach in communication, the behavioral sciences and social sciences, at large—focuses on individual in social interaction with others as the "communicator"

• Emphasizes psychological variables, individual effects, personalities, perceptions and cognition
• Message processing, strategies, reception and effects

1. Behavioral—stimulus-response and how people actually behave in communication
2. Cognitive—mental operations to manage info leads to behavior
3. Communibiology—biological perspective

• Addresses the ways our understadnings, meanings, norms, roles and rules work interactively
• Reality is not objective outside us, but constructed THROUGH communication in groups, societies & cultures
• Focuses on patterns of interactions
• Knowledge is intpretive and constructed

1. Symbolic interactionism (Mead)—social structures and meaning is created within social interaction
2. Social constructivism—human knowledge is constructed through social interaction; nature of the world is less important than language used to name it
3. Sociolinguistics—study of language and culture
4. Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language—meaning of language depends on its use
5. Language game—people follow rules
6. Ethnography—observing social groups to build meaning in their language (verbal and nonverbal)
7. Ethnomethodology—microbehaviors in real situations

• Seek to understand taken-for-granted systems
• Interested in uncovering oppressive social conditions
• Attempt to fuse theory and action

• Classical Marxism (or critique of political economy)—the means of production in a society determines the nature of the society
• Contemporary Marxism (neomarxist)—social process is caused by multiple sources
• Frankfurt School—mass communication and media as structures of oppression in capitalistic societies

1. Postmodernism—via information age with manipulation of knowledge, associated with cultural studies (ideologies that dominate a culture and how social change is inhibted by group relations)
2. Postconstructuralism—deconstruct the study of signs rather than generate a unified theory; instability of texts
3. Postcolonial—all cultures affected by imperial process
4. Feminist—challenges and assumptions about gender affects on life