Communication Models and Theories Flashcards
What does communication/public relations models and theories demonstrate?
Demonstrates familiarity with social science theories and research that guide planning, prioritizing audiences, developing messages, selecting spokespersons, establishing credibility and trust.
What does barriers to communication understand?
Understands how messages and messengers are interpreted by different audiences. Understands barriers that prevent changes to knowledge, attitude and behavior. Understands how semantics, cultural norms, timing, context and related factors impact the practice.
How does knowledge of the field define public relations?
It defines public relations and differentiates among related concepts (e.g., publicity, advertising, marketing, press agentry, public affairs, lobbying, investor relations, social networking and branding).
It also identifies key figures who influenced the field and major trends in the development of public relations as it is practiced today.
Transmission/media-effects theories
Magic bullet/ hypodermic needle
This theory says media messages directly affect human behavior. The theory reflects stimulus-response thinking (behaviorism). The “atomized,” passive audience can’t resist the message effect. Lasswell’s 1948 statement reflects bullet thinking: Who said what to whom through what channel with what effect?
Example: I saw an ad for an iPhone,
and I just had to have one!
Transmission/media-effects theories
Two-step flow
Media messages indirectly affect human behavior. “Opinion leaders” mediate message effects. Everyone in the audience can receive the message, but opinion leaders influence how individuals understand and respond to messages. Paul Lazarsfeld first hypothesized two-step flow in 1944 after studying the 1940 presidential election. Elihu Katz and Lazarsfeld refined the theory in 1955 (Personal Influence).
Example: I’ve seen lots of information online about hybrid cars. I’m interested in buying one, but I won’t until I talk to my father. He knows lots about cars.
Transmission/media-effects theories
Agenda setting
Media messages can have a direct cognitive effect but not necessarily a behavioral effect. Repeated news reports about an issue can make it important to readers (transfer of issue salience from media agenda to public agenda). Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw first demonstrated agenda setting during the 1968 presidential election (1972 publication).
Example: I know reducing unemployment is important. I’ve been seeing things in the news about it for weeks.
Transmission/media-effects theories
Framing/second-level agenda setting
As a media-effects theory, framing involves transfer of attributes (or frames) describing a person, issue or topic from media to audience. News stories, for example, describe a political candidate in a certain way. News consumers begin to use those attributes
to describe the candidate.
Example: I trust the governor. Everything I’ve read about him makes me think he’s an honest, straight-talking politician (attributes). He has middle-class values and is concerned about people like me (more attributes). OR I won’t vote for that candidate. From what I’ve seen, I don’t think he’s qualified for office.
Transmission/media-effects theories
Organizational theory of public relations
Organizations are more likely to give information than to seek information. Information flow is generally one way (James Grunig, 1976).
Example: The Colombian agricultural agency had trouble informing farmers. The agency was more likely to give information than to seek information. The agency was unlikely to listen to or engage in dialogue with its publics (Grunig, 1976, 2006).
Transmission/media-effects theories
Cultivation
Mass media (particularly television) shapes (cultivates) people’s view of social reality. Secondhand experience through media content can distort what people think of the world. George Gerbner, who began this line of thinking, found that people who watched lots of TV tended to be fearful of the world, suspicious of others and susceptible to social paranoia or conspiracy theories
(“mean or scary world effect”).
Example: I won’t go downtown after 6 p.m. I don’t want to get mugged. I know from watching the TV news each evening that crime is rampant downtown at night.
Audience theories
Diffusion of innovation
Everett Rogers’ theory describes how people adopt new products or ideas. Personality traits influence how people approach new things. The theory proposes five personality categories: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. Five factors influence how soon people adopt a new idea: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trainability, observability.
Example: In June 1995 only 14% of Americans used the internet. By August 2011 that number had climbed to nearly 80%.
Audience theories
Uses and gratifications
People seek out communication media to satisfy specific needs. Audience members are actively involved in the communication process and make goal-oriented
media choices.
Example: College students prefer to get news through social networks rather than through traditional mass news media (newspapers, radio, TV).
Audience theories
Third-person effect
When a person lacks information about other people’s opinions, he/she thinks others will think and behave as he/she would. W. Phillips Davison (1982) said people expect mass media messages to affect others (them: third person) more than themselves (us: first person). That belief may lead the first persons to act in mistaken anticipation of the media effect.
Example: Comments on Twitter about our product are ridiculous. Any thinking person can see these statements are baseless. Nevertheless, we better reduce the price to prevent a drop in sales.
Audience theories
Spiral of silence
Elisabeth Nolle-Neumann (1974) said people constantly monitor the opinion climate around them. They perceive the majority viewpoint. Those who disagree keep silent. They are afraid of social isolation if they buck the majority view. This theory helps explain “bandwagon effect.”
Example: I know people don’t agree with me. Therefore, I’m keeping my opinions to myself.
Audience theories
Situational theory of publics
Context influences relationships. Publics are active or passive. People are more likely to seek information related to a decision they are making than to reinforce their attitudes (James Grunig, 1966). Those publics are active.
Example: Elected church decision makers are more likely to seek information about church issues from church newspapers than are rank and file church members (Cannon, 2007).
Audience theories
Social learning
Albert Bandura says people can learn by watching others. People adopt opinions and behaviors they see modeled and rewarded.
Example: Children watched adults treat dolls violently. Later, those children replicated the violent behavior.
Audience theories
Social exchange
Perceived costs and rewards (effort) of an action predict group behavior.
Example: My church and most of my friends favor green [sustainable] burials. We won’t join the effort to make the practice legal in my state, however. The effort would take too much work and probably wouldn’t succeed. The funeral lobby [politics] is too strong.
Audience theories
Social judgment
People accept or reject messages to the extent that message content corresponds to each individual’s attitudes and beliefs and influences his or her self-concept. Carl Hovland helped develop this theory
(Sherif & Hovland, 1961).
Example: I won’t support same-sex marriage. A same-sex couple doesn’t fit my idea of what “marriage” means. If same-sex couples can “marry,” then my marriage isn’t the special union I always thought it was.
Audience theories
Cognitive consistency theories (Balance, symmetry theory of interpersonal action, congruity, cognitive dissonance)
Inconsistencies between attitudes and actions drive (motivate) people to change what they think/believe. The goal is to achieve consistency between expressed opinions and actions. Major theorists: Heider, Newcomb, Osgood, Festinger.
Example: I’ve never liked people from that group. After working with some of them, however, I now don’t think they are so bad.
Audience theories
Attribution theory
To understand or explain circumstances, events or phenomenon, communicators assign (attribute) cause(s) to events. Internal attribution (personal factors), external attribution (situational factors) and attribution error (wrongly assigning cause) are important considerations with attribution theory.
Audience theories
Identification
Identification theory examines how communication helps people seek to identify with individuals, groups or causes. The goal of identification is to overcome separateness. Identification occurs when individuals are made aware of the common ground they share with others.
Example: To encourage more Hispanic voters to identify with Republicans, the party created ads in Spanish with Latino characters.
Audience theories
Reasoned action
A person’s attitude toward a behavior consists of (1) a belief that that particular behavior leads to a certain outcome, and (2) an evaluation of the outcome of that behavior. If the outcome seems beneficial to the individual, he or she may participate in a particular behavior. Included in a person’s attitude toward a behavior is his/her concept of the subjective norm. Central concepts include attitude, intent and behavior. Knowing people’s attitudes and intents helps predict people’s behaviors.
7 Cs of Communication
Clarity
Credibility
Content
Context
Continuity
Capability
Channels
Audience theories
Inoculation
William McGuire found that people are more likely to resist persuasive messages if those people have been exposed to counterarguments in advance. People are less likely to change opinions they have already formed and tested.
Example: Our first ad shows that our candidate is an upstanding family man who has been active in the local community. We don’t want our opponent to paint him as a “Washington insider.”
Audience theories
Cognitive dual processing
People use different strategies for processing messages or making decisions. These strategies are based on how important the topic is (motivation), or the individual’s cognitive capacity (time to think about the topic, knowledge of the topic or general intelligence). People generally try to use as little cognitive energy as possible to make decisions. Three models illustrate cognitive dual processing: The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (1979), The Heuristic-Systematic Model of Cognitive Processing (1980), and Motivation Determines Processing (MODE Model, 1990). Each model presents two paths or roots to decision making.
Audience theories
Framing
As a message-focused theory, framing describes how content elements (frames) prompt audience members to recall certain already established, shared and persistent stereotypes, metaphors or social qualities. These predispositions shape how audience members interpret messages and respond to narratives and events.
Audience theories
Rhetoric
Rhetoric represents a category of communication concepts that trace their roots to Aristotle. Rhetorical elements are ethos, logos and pathos. The rhetorical approach uses information about the communicator, the logic of the message and the emotional appeal of the message to describe and predict how effective a message will be. Organizations use language/messages to build consensus (organizations and publics co-create meaning). The process may involve advocacy and counter-advocacy. People are adjusted to ideas, and ideas are adjusted to people.
Audience theories
Sleeper Effect
In propaganda research Carl Hovland found a decreased tendency over time to reject the material presented by an untrustworthy source (Hovland & Weiss, 1951). People may initially reject a message because the source isn’t credible. But after about six weeks, people may forget the source but remember — and begin to believe — the message.
Example: I won’t go to that coffee shop anymore. I read someplace that the pumpkin spice latte contains dangerous toxins.
Public-relations-specific theories
Agenda building
Often described as a subset of agenda-setting theory, agenda building describes how organizations can use “information subsidies” to news outlets to influence the media agenda. (Information subsidies include news releases, blog posts and interview opportunities with policymakers or advocates.) The thinking behind agenda-building theory is that news coverage doesn’t just reflect reality.
Public-relations-specific theories
Competence
A PR practitioner’s knowledge and skills determine his/her role in an organization. Perception of competence depends on work context and the measurement method management uses. Competent practitioners balance concerns for what’s effective with what’s appropriate. They base judgments on social impressions of how actions and messages work to reach strategic goals.
Public-relations-specific theories
Excellence
James Grunig, Larissa Grunig and David Dozier first published this general theory of public relations in 1992.
Example: If an organization makes public relations a distinct senior-management function, lets the PR executive fill both management and administrative roles, considers public relations outcomes in policymaking, fosters an open corporate culture, generally practices two-way symmetrical communication and engages activist publics, the organization meets standards of “excellence.”
Public-relations-specific theories
Relationship management
Mary Ann Ferguson (1984) asserted that relationships between organizations and their key publics should be the focus of PR research.
Example: Major banking institutions aim to score favorably on the six theoretical dimensions to ensure customers continue to bank with the institution and are satisfied with the relationship.
The Shannon-Weaver Model
Communication Barriers
- Fuzzy language
- Misalignment of messages with culture and values
- History of distrust
- Distractions
- Negative influencers
- Sources or spokespersons with no credibility
- Unreliable media
- Media with which people are not comfortable, e.g., blogs, social networks, high, printed material
- Captive audiences
- Gatekeepers
The Shannon-Weaver Model
Ways to Overcome Communication Barriers
Design and deliver the message so that it gets the attention of the intended public.
Employ signs, images and symbols that relate to experiences common to senders and receivers.
Arouse personality needs in the receiver; appeal to the self-interests of receivers.
Offer ways to meet those personality needs that are appropriate to the group situation the receiver is in at the time you want that receiver to respond.
Communication barriers
By Walter Lippmann
- Artificial censorship
- Limitation of social contact
- Meager time available for paying attention
- Distortion from compressing events into short messages (sound bites in today’s terms)
- Difficulty expressing a big, complicated world in short messages
- Fear of facing facts perceived to threaten established routines
