Week 17, Question 3: More Focus on Organizational Communication

The one concept that I feel needs further discussion is the Organizational Communication. There are so many corporations and organizations out there that us students are going to be involved with such as school and work. Therefore with organizations being so prevalent in our lives, it is important to focus on better understand its function and its communication methods. With better understanding organizations, we can be prepared when going into interviews or approaching our supervisors to solve a conflict. During that week's discussion, we talked about how the organizations is dependent and connected to its environment. But I feel we should also be talking about how we are dependent on them as well as how to effectively communicate with them to get what we need. After all, organizations are a big part of our lives.

Understand how to better manage organizational communication will help all of us students to get achieve higher positions in the organizations we are a part of. For an example, I could use what I learned about the information flow to my advantage my getting my publishing my work for my job. I could also use this concept to take advantage of the informal structures to learn more about the company and to get recognized by the company. This concept is really useful to me in terms of better understanding my organizations. Therefore, more focus should be on this concept of organizational communication.

Signing out,
Events Dreamer

Week 17, Question 2: Communication is interesting

Sarah Trenholm does a great job with explaining communication concepts through her book. She address the positive impacts and methods of communication as well as the negative impacts of miscommunication. Throughout this class, I found many concepts interesting such as the concept of listening, nonverbal communication, public communication etc.

But if I must choose one to talk about, I will discuss the nonverbal communication concept where your physical appearance does affect other people's impression of you and how they communicate with you. For an example, one of the physical appearance concept is how people prefer to communicate with people based on their body type. For an example, some people prefer to only talk to thin and frail people, also known as ectomorph. Also, the way you dress can affect the way people view and talk to you. Desmond Morris (as cited in Trenholm 2008) clothing or the way you dress serves 3 major function: comfort protection, modesty, and cultural display. I find this to be really true. People will dress to be comfortable and be modest with their body. Some may not dress that way because they are portraying a side of their culture. I watching the movie Mean Girls and found dress and body type truly does have an affect on other people's perception and communication with you, especially in grade school. Kids have a certain perception and favor towards what is "cool" therefore they choose to only hang out with other people who dress "cool" and ignore those who are not. Then those are not as "cool" become isolates or outcast in their own community. It's strange really. But then this gets me thinking, who defines what is "cool?" I believe that it is the mass media that defines what is cool and what is not through their television shows and their advertisements. Getting into that topic is another post, so I'll leave I'll leave it at that.


Signing out

Events Dreamer

Week 17 Question 1: Survey Research Method

The research method that I found interesting on Chapter 13's Table 13.3 is the survey research. Trenholm writes that the survey research method are used by researchers to survey groups of people through written questionnaires or face-to-face interviews. I like this method because it is direct and straightforward. With the survey research method, I can talk to people directly and be able to receive an honest answer.


Assuming that I am doing a study regarding deception, my main research question would be "What are the main causes of Deception?" To conduct this research question, I would use the survey research method to find out what the general public believe to be the cause of deception. This survey method will allow me come up with a series of questions (questionnaire) that will help me determine what the causes of deception are. These questions can range from multiple choices or even open-ended. Even though survey methods do not have extremely high response and accuracy rate, surveys are useful when researchers want to know the truth about how people fee about certain things. With surveys, researchers can make it convenient for the participants by allowing them to take it at home and turn it in at their earliest convenience.

Week 15, Question 3: Interactivity

The concept of interactivity is interesting to me because it is only recently that mass media have employed this way of communication. Sarah Trenholm defines interactivity as an opportunity where receivers get the chance to engage with the senders by responding to polls, posting comments, sending e-mails etc. Our communication class is actually participating in interactivity at this very moment. Every week each student publishes posts about the week's topic and each student must also respond to those posts. Well, the responses that we do describes interactivity. Because of interactivity, the traditional mass media is not a one-way channel of communication any more, it allows communication through mass media to be two-way where anyone can respond to an article or a television show. Another example of interactivity would be how viewers can respond to MTV shows. If you visit MTV.com, you can view full episodes of their shows and type or comments clip by clip. This is a neat thing because MTV producers get to read how their viewers are responding to their shows and make necessary changes to get better viewing ratings. Another example of interactivity that I see in today's society is Facebook. Facebook allows their users to pose updates about their daily life and viewers, such as friends, can respond to those posts.

Sarah Trenholm also mentions the concept of "wiki". Wiki is a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or edit and change all the content. Sites like Wikipedia, or Wikianswers are good examples of those sites. Before reading this chapter, I never understood why those sites have "Wiki" in the beginning, but now I understand the meaning of the word "wiki". Haha very interesting.

Signing out,
Events Dreamer

Week 15, Question 2: "Cool" and "Hot" are Subjective

I agree with Marshall McLuhan when he stated that, "the medium is the message." McLuhan believed the channel of delivery is just as important as the message and that the channel determines the content that will be delivered. I agree some channel or form of delivery is compatible with certain kinds of messages. For an example, newspapers can only deliver messages that can be reported in words, like world events, history, information about people etc. Newspapers can't really describe concerts very well. Those just have to be seen. But with television, there's so many messages that can be delivered, not just news. With television, we can see moving pictures, moving words, moving emotions etc. Everything on television is like as if we are right there experiencing those moments broadcasted. It's best to broadcast a concert rather than write about it.

McLuhan also refers to television as a "cool medium." When I think of "cool" and television, I think of those people who are on reality shows such as "Real World," "America's Next Top Model," etc. Those people are willing to broadcast their life is "cool." But the word "cool" is also very subjective. The meaning of cool is defined for the whole society by people who own television. So "cool" is not so much how society defines but rather how television makes society perceive "coolness". Over the years of watching television and the types of characters they portray, it seems like the "cool" are people who are out there in terms of being talkative, outspoken, partiers, wild cats, and every now and then they actually do have a character who is "goody-two-shoes." Shows like Gossip Girls or 90210 is a good example of how television define the word "cool." The characters on these shows are rich, beautiful, skinny, Caucasian etc. I feel that television broadcast certain people to guarantee good "drama" that people can enjoy and good television ratings. Sometimes, a "cool" television can refer to how people see the characters on TV. People can view those characters as how they want to be in real life but can't because their real life situations limit their ability to fully express themselves.

McLuhan also says that characters who are "hot" are more suitable for radio. When I first heard of "hot" and radio, I think of characters who create controversy or can say statements in such a way that arouses emotions of all kinds. I listen to the radio sometimes and mostly I just hear talk show hosts who can verbally express statements that gets people thinking or active about something.

The concept of "cool television" or "hot radio" is very new to me, but it makes sense in today's society.

Signing out,
Events Dreamer

Week 15, Question 1: Cyberspace friendships vs. Real Life Friends

I have been using the internet for more 9 years now for multiple occasions: e-mail, networking sites, and for school. I have made friendships that existed exclusively in cyberspace. For an example, San Jose State University has a website called Blackboard, made exclusively for students taking online classes. I am currently enrolled in 2 online classes so I am on Blackboard more than 4 times a week for my classes. Because I and other online students, are required to be on Blackboard, I have made friends with some of my classmates. These "friends" are more like acquaintances; we are there to support each other academically. I have never made "friends" with someone in cyberspace in such a way where I feel comfortable sharing my personal information with. The relationship that I do have with my classmates on Blackboard is a combination of professional and casual interactions. We are formal with one another when it comes to discussing class work, but we are informal when we are talking about school, life, future, etc. To be honest, I don't trust my classmates enough to truly share how I feel about our classes and other information.

The cyberspace relationship is really different in that we don't get to see the facial or physical reactions of the other person. All we see is the words typed and we can only feel the emotions of the words through the context of our conversation. Sometimes it is hard to tell if someone is being sarcastic of serious with their statements. I feel that face-to-face friendships are more valuable than cyberspace relationships. With face-to-face, it is more personal because you get to see, feel, touch, and smell the other person. They are real to you. Whereas with cyberspace, you never really know who you are talking to. Also with face-to-face relationship, there is also that immediate reaction that can seen right away. But with internet conversations, you can't tell how the other person received your message, you can only hope that they received it correctly.


I would much rather make friends in person than through cyberspace only because they are more tangible and plus I love face-to-face interactions. By the way, touch is my love language. I tend to touch people a lot because that is how I connect with people. So if I can't touch them or see them, the relationship is not connecting with me and it is not as valuable.

Signing Out,
Events Dreamer

Week 14 Question 3: Always so formal!

Reading through organizational communication was intriguing to me because we've all, at some point in our lives, have been a part of some kind of organizations. We've all contributed to the journal to reaching their missions and goals as well as been a part of the communication.

I used to work at a technology company and everything was so formal. To apply to this experienced, I was mainly interested in the formal and informal channels of communication within the organization.
The formal communication channels follow the organization structure or hierarchy. I have experienced this in my work experiences at several companies. To get things approved, an individual has to go through their supervisor, who has to report to their department manager, who then reports to the general manager etc. I understand that there needs to be structure but I feel that this sometimes can slow down the information flow -- the path information takes as it passes through the org. But in the over all picture, it is preferable to have a formal communication channel to prevent chaos.

When compared the information communication channels, the formal way is much more structured for success. The informal communication deviates from the planned communication structure when can cause gossip, clutter, and chaos. I still sometimes like a little bit of information to relieve the stress and the tension of always being so proper.

Signing out,
Events Dreamer