A Reflection Paper on Sociology of Communication
Back to my earlier education and formations, I had been, just like most of us, bombarded with so many answers to so many questions. Upon knowing these and that, we would feel so smart. But when we go to the community and when we are being faced with complicated true-to-life circumstances, we would hear others asking us questions we’ve never heard before, and even arrive at the crossroads of our lives that we began asking ourselves confusing questions and we don’t know how to respond. From there we found ourselves searching for meaning.
Sociology is also being viewed as a study of relationship among systems and entities in our society. Communication is relationship too. The best graphics are created not by the mind alone but with the heart. The graphics have emotions on them.
Sociology of Communication is made up of images created by the mind as influenced by the heart’s emotions. According to Fr. Francis Lucas, old books would traditionally define it to be process of using signs and symbols. Sign indicates something else. It points to a particular concept or idea but it is not the thing itself. Meanwhile, symbol has meaning of its self. Sound is a sign. The notes and g-clef are symbols. However, what would be the most appropriate word is “image.” Image implies something bigger and deeper. It goes beyond signs and symbols. It involves even feelings and imagination.
Social Communication is anything we say. Mass media refers to instruments, means, technologies and programs as diffusion channels of communication. It is the amplification of bits and pieces of reality.
Academics are just part and parcel of what we are doing in action. We study communication and when we really start immersing ourselves into it, we found ourselves realizing that everything is communication. Sociology of Communication is conveying the reality of life. We had been given by the academe so many technical ways of defining communication but basically communication is sharing. We are senders and receivers at the same time. This is not about information alone. The power is actually experienced from having the right information in the right time for the right purpose.
One of the things that struck me was the discussion about self-talk. It is the inner speech that includes the questions and comments we made to ourselves. It is a powerful influence that we can use in thinking things through, in interpreting events and messages of others, and in responding to experience.
In studying about communication, it is important and life-changing to include the concept of self-talk. Positive self-talk increases focus, concentration and performance. When you stay encouraged and positive, your body will feel good. But if you believe you cannot do something, your brain will tell your body and it will shut down.
In communicating, knowing the factor of double image is also important. It depends on where our focus is. It is part of our perception. The angle that we see depends on where we are coming from. In media, it is known as the spin. Perception process is the process we use to assign meaning to data about ourselves and the world around us. Our perception is actually influenced by intensity, repetition, uniqueness, and relevance which are affected by interest, needs and motivations.
Mass media controls the mind and the heart. It can be very effective teacher and preacher. It has massive reach, deep impact and can attack the psyche. It can easily change the social behavior. In the negative side of it, it can be a very effective ‘rapist.’ It can corrupt the mind. It can promote negative values. Our mirror neurons can lead us to imitate and to be engaged in the feelings and actions of what we are watching. The web and the internet expert can use our mirror neurons to lead us to the way where they would want us to go.
But what is the key to any communication media is its soul. Man’s disposition should be expressed. For the soul to be committed to something, for it not to be empty and be rattled easily, it should have its purpose. What do we communicate? What do we give to the society? The global trends now are modern slavery, destruction of the natural resources and biodiversity, cancerous growth of urban centers of power and prestige and disintegration of families and community. It is a generation without parents, the third wave generation of digital age but a world with losing of much spiritual values. Inequity and disunity enhance moral crisis. It is the bankruptcy of morality that creates so much violence, pain and death. It happens when people start to misunderstand, and resort to war and conflict and turned lives into nothing but just collateral damage. It’s about time that we communicate for the purpose of building faith communities, authentic relationship, sustainable development and collective successes.
The world today has become richer than any other time. But we have so many poor compared to any other period of our history too. It seemed that we live in a world of contradiction. What do we say about poverty? We call it a state, and we try to compute it, but our problem is that we just define poverty and not really feel it. Have we asked how the poor feel, and really see them and understand them? Social communication is going beyond defining what’s going on with our society. It is not just making reports, statistics, and action plan. Social Participation is empowering the people how to decide and not just giving choices. On a personal level, I should get more into the habit of analyzing not only what to decide but how to decide. We should look at the reality and listen and feel the situation of others so that it will penetrate in our hearts too and make our communication a part of the solution to the problems of the world.
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| Communication for Development Summer Class 2013 Asian Social Institute |
Part 1 (my comment goes over the number of charaters allowed!)
ReplyDeleteThank you for this, Richelle. Pope Benedict's message for the 43rd World Communications Day, 2009, 'New Technologies, New Relationships.
Promoting a Culture of Respect, Dialogue and Friendship', is related to what you wrote. [http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/communications/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20090124_43rd-world-communications-day_en.html]. Pope Benedict's subsequent messages for World Communications Day also deal with what he calls this 'digital continent'.
While it is possible for individuals to develop genuine relationships without having yet met in person, something the new means of communication makes more possible, I think that the latter are much more effective when there is already a relationship based on having met in person.
On one occasion I found myself dealing 'chatting' online with a person whom I already knew, in a crisis situation and who was living in a different continent. I was able to help that person get through the immediate crisis because the person trusted me, since we had known each other person-to-person for some years. But I was also able to arrange for my friend to meet a counselor in the area where that friend lived. I did this by email, with the help of someone I had 'met' only through email, not in person, but someone I knew to be responsible.
Though urban myths have been with us for a long time, the new - and old - media can create new ones, not always malicious, but nevertheless misleading. We sometimes, for example, get online petitions to sing in order to protest against something awful that, in reality, has never happened and never will. These chain-emails develop a life of their own.
Your questions 'What do we communicate? What do we give to the society?' are very important. In the incident above the internet enabled me to communicate hope to and a practical way forward for my friend. A priest-blogger whom I read wrote on one occasion that after he had been blogging for some time - he got into blogging early - he realized that this was't just a recreation but an activity that should be backed by - or founded on - prayer. He was, in effect, responding to your questions.
At times we may wonder if anyone is reading us, especially if we get very few or even no comments. But we never know who gets encouragement from something we have put online, encouragement that they wouldn't have had if we hadn't put the particular post online or wherever. I took some courses in communications - journalism, radio, etc - in 1976 while at home in Ireland. One of the staff told us about an American broadcaster who later became nationally known, who was on the 'graveyard shift', midnight till early morning, on a local radio station. He often wondered if anyone listened to his program. But one night the heating went off in the studio. It was winter and he was feeling very cold. He mentioned this on air and said that he'd give anything for a hot cup of coffee and a sandwich. Within thirty minutes there was a traffic-jam caused by listeners bringing him coffee and sandwiches! (That has the touch of an urban myth, I know, but he went on to bigger things both on nationwide radio and TV).
Part 2.
ReplyDeleteI remember a distinguished Irish journalist who died some years ago, Nuala O'Faolain, writing about an incident when she went to buy meat one day in Dublin. There were two women in front of her, one clearly affluent and buying lots of meat, the other an older woman clearly not affluent and buying only a little. But the man serving them gave as much attention to the poorer woman as he did to the one who was better off. Her analysis was that he, a middle-aged man, was familiar with poverty either first- or second-hand as were most Irish people of his generation. The generation after him would, on the whole, have been affluent, though now many of those same people in Ireland today and in other parts of Europe are not affluent anymore.
I was reminded of this by what you wrote in your final paragraph, 'What do we say about poverty? We call it a state, and we try to compute it, but our problem is that we just define poverty and not really feel it'.
Most of the social workers I have met in the Philippines are not from affluent backgrounds. This should be an advantage to them, unless they now define themselves, as some do, as 'successful professionals' a step above those they are serving.
And finally on a theological note: This weekend Catholics, and many other Christians, celebrate Trinity Sunday. We can never comprehend the mystery of the Trinity, One God, Three Persons. But theologians speak of the eternal and perfect communication between the Father and the Son eternally generating the Holy Spirit. Being made in the image of God we are made to be persons in relationships, to be persons who communicate.
May the Holy Trinity continue to bless your work in this 'digital continent'.