Social Approaches to Communication

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For all in the communication industry, the passing of information from one point to the other is always at the heart of the matter. Thus, for a person entering the social world for the first time, the passing of information marks the entry into the social arena, one that is ridden with many unexpected twists and turns that the person might get lost in the unending maze. To “find one’s feet” in such terrain, the person has to learn the various cultures that are involved in the various social settings, becoming sufficiently intelligent and competent in their manner of handling the social world entered. To do this, the person must be able to communicate with others to gain the necessary knowledge to perform the basic tasks (Shegloff, 1995). Until recently, field research on communication has been based on the fact that interpersonal communication is dominated by the behavioral sciences and practices which are intimately entwined with the study of social psychology (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990). Working under the assumption of a working thesis such that the traditional, theoretical assumptions that are made during the study and implementation of new communication methodologies are still valid and appropriate, it is important to identify the various social approaches that impact the cultural differences of those involved in the communication (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990). This involves an ethnographic study of the test population, involving the observation and immersion of the researcher into the population for a given period, to determine how their everyday activities affect the performance of the organization or community.

The task of developing and implementing an interactive system involves not only a close look at the most viable requirements and components of the system but also an inclusion of the operative part of the said system-the users. According to Christian Heath and Paul Luff in their in their 1991 article, Collaborative Activity and Technological Design: Task Coordination in London Underground Control Rooms, it has become increasingly important for system developers to consider the social factors that are involved in the creation of a system, as well as the purported users of the technology, on a day-to-day basis. According to Heath and Luff, there is a close order of study for the natural occurrence of the interaction between one or two people, describing the methods and techniques that are used by the interactants to gain social order of some control room. According to their argument, this is the kind of technology, technique, and methodology that should be adapted in any communicating environment to make the everyday passing of information from one person to the other count.

In relation to this argument, Leeds-Hurwittz (1990) argue that the supply of information in any setting, whether professional or not, should be done in a manner that it is social: it should be carried out to describe the passing of information from one person to the other, describing the relationship between these two conflicting parties rather than their respective interactions, whether official or social. According to this argument, there is generally the emphasis of the visible behaviors of the cognition of the people involved in the communication, each of them following the rules that have been set for the interaction. Like many of the previous methods of qualitative evaluation on communication and social responses, the traditional methods of communication are found to mesh easily with the current, media-oriented structures, built primarily on structure design and software engineering (Heath and Luff, 1991). However, this information is sometimes very discursive and hard to interpret into tangible design specifications. Additionally, it is often difficult to determine whether allowing the ethnographic, social approaches researchers’ access into the every day working activities of the workers in an organization is acceptable, without unnecessarily obstructing their normal operations.

According to Heath and Luff, from the study of ethnographies, it is necessary for the subway control room technicians to be in a position to effectively supervise and scrutinize the communication channels that they and others working in the subway use, on the panels that each one of them were assigned to (Heath and Luff, 1991).

Formal methodologies of design evaluation, such as those involved with Task Analysis, are basically devoid of the particular areas in which ethnography is most proficient. Data collected form this ethnographic study is useful in the design phase of the system, taking into account that the system will be used in a social setting, facing constant interactions with the “real” world (Heath and Luff, 1991). By allowing the social approaches researcher to have access to the subtleties that the atmosphere of the everyday worker is presented with, giving the interactive systems designer a chance to be more perspective on the general outlook of the product. With this information, the ethnographic researcher can be able to gain an understanding of how a prospective user of the said system interacts with the system and with one another in order to perform the various tasks that are required of them (Shegloff, 1995). In this respect, the main tasks of this ethnographic researcher is to discover the synergy that exists between the interactive system components and the manner in which the various uses are ordered in the organization, so as to ease the performance of their tasks.

This approach is based on the assumption that the behavior of people is based and shaped by the many environmental subsystems that are available in their surroundings, including any traditional and cultural beliefs that they may hold with regards to their work or social relationships. The promotion of these beliefs must thus be comprehensive, effectively addressing the issues that adversely affect the individual capacity to perform their work at full capacity. Though the individual’s personal predispositions may be different for different situations, the creation of favorable environments for task completion as well as the use of methods that are familiar to the subjects has a positive effect on the outcome of a particular implementation.

References

Heath, C. and Luff, P. (1991). Collaborative activity and technological design: Task coordination in London Underground control rooms. Orlando, FL: ACM Press.

Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. (1990). Introducing Social Approaches, Quarterly Journal of Speech. Portland, Oregon: Addison-Wesley.

Shegloff, E.A. (1995). Discourse as an International Achievement III: The Omni-relevance of Action. Los Angeles, CA: University of California.

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