This course is about communication on various levels. Over these 9 weeks we will cover a number of theories, cases and applications in the field of communication science. We will start with the foundational concepts of communication theory, defining what the theory is and going through a number of approaches to communication itself. Each week you will have a test to check on your progress and understanding. We also have a final text in the end of the course and a little bit of writing. As Oscar Wilde said, if you cannot write, you cannot think. If you cannot think, others will do thinking for you. So we find writing and reflecting pretty important for our classes. Along the course we provide you with in-class materials: lecture presentations, articles and additional readings. If you really want to get into the topic, don’t avoid this extra work. Although a substantial part of this course is theory-based, communication theory has a very practical application. Communication is an underlying process which creates and develops relationships, communities, societies. We communicative on a daily basis via a variety of means and channels. In our globalised and increasingly interconnected world, communication skills are essential in both the personal and professional spheres. It is our goal to leave you with a contextualisation and conceptualisation of communicative processes that will poise you to hone your own communicative skills — in other words, to put theory into practice.
Situational Theory of Problem-Solving
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来自 National Research University Higher School of Economics 的课程
Communication theory: bridging academia and practice
2 个评分
National Research University Higher School of Economics
2 个评分
从本节课中
Theories of PR
This lecture introduces students to the field of Public Relations, we discuss the main theories explaining and describing approaches to maintain relationships between organisations and strategic publics.
与讲师见面
Olga SolovyevaLecturer
Integrated Communications Department, Faculty of Communication, Media and Design
Maria MordvinovaHead of BA Program in PR and Advertising
Integrated Communications Department, Faculty of Communication, Media and Design
The next theory we're going to discuss,
is the Situational theory of problem-solving.
Well, Grunig was also the author of that theory,
but Kim also helped him out.
And if you really look at the theory of
public relations and the science of public relations,
you'll see that Grunig is one of
the major brains in developing the public relations theory.
Key questions of that theory,
how publics solve problems?
Who are the publics of the organization that we need to build a relationship with?
This theory explains when and why individuals
become active in communication behaviors and decision-making,
and this theory is applicable for basically all problem-solving in your life.
Let's define publics first.
Publics arise when individuals face a similar problem,
recognize the problem, and organize to resolve the problem.
The key idea is that the more one commits to problem resolution,
the more one become acquisitive of information pertaining to the problem,
selective in dealing with information,
and transmissive in giving it to others.
It's a little bit different,
a little bit shaky,
maybe a little bit difficult to understand at first,
but let's just go and step-by-step discuss what it is.
Here's the scheme of the theory.
Again, right? A little bit too many variables over there,
but don't get scared.
Well, we are going to go from the backwards.
First, we're going to discuss the communication action of problem solving.
We're going to see what it is,
what are the various kinds,
how we can communicate to solve the problem.
So, and from that,
we are going to build all the way up and really
define what defines our communication actions.
So, how we communicate to solve the problem?
Really, you can look at yourself and see for yourself how you communicate.
What you do if your face the problem,
what you do first?
There are three different things: Information selectivity, information transmission,
information acquisition, and each one of them can be passive and can be active.
Let's go and discuss each of them.
First, information selectivity.
Well, this is an extent of
a problem solver's directness in acquiring and sharing information either to
economize his or her cognitive resources in problem solving or
to optimize his or her preferred solution and end states.
There is Information forefending,
this is active selectivity
and there's Information permitting, this is passive selectivity.
In forefending, we don't let information that we don't feel relevant to come to us.
We really close.
We close ourselves from this information.
We get only relevant stuff.
While Information permitting, it's okay.
The information can come to us,
we're permitted to come.
We're relaxed, we don't really look at the relevance,
we're okay if the information is going to come to us.
As information forefending increases,
problem solvers become more specific,
systematic in pursuing of relevance and delinquent information to
reduce information overload or information inconsistency.
So basically, the more we care,
the more specific and systematic we become.
Information transmission.
This is the next option for us,
the next way for us to solve the problem.
This is an extent of
a problem solver's directedness in transmitting and forwarding information.
There could be active information forwarding and
there could be passive information sharing.
When we forward information, we want the whole world to know about it.
We don't care if the world asked.
We just do it, we forward.
While information sharing, well,
we are not going to force information because we want to.
If someone asks, then we might share it with him,
but we're not going to try to persuade
anyone and share and forward this information to anyone.
Now, this is passive,
I share it when someone asks.
Information acquisition, there is an extent of
a problem solver's directness in gaining information.
And again, you can look at your own behavior that can be Information seeking,
which is active, and there can be Information attending, which is passive.
When we seek information,
we go and we scan and we plan
and we look for those resources and we will look for those books.
And now, you're going to be interested in public relations,
we are going to go and look for those public relations books
and those public relations theories and articles.
Well, I believe in this.
While in informational attending, this is a passive.
It's okay when it comes, right?
It's like how we're scanning our social media.
Well, it came, I liked it.
Okay. It went further.
So, this is just attending.
This is not active seeking, this is attending.
Now, let's see what defines our communication behavior, right?
So, how we behave? Why we behave the way we're going to behave?
What are our independent variables?
So, what defines our communication action?
There are actually two things:
The Referent Criterion and Situational, Motivation in problem-solving.
Let's discuss the referenR Criterion first.
It is any knowledge or
subjective judgmental system that
influences the way in which one approaches problem solving.
It can be decisional guidelines.
You know how to do it because you have an instruction how to solve it.
It can be an experience in the past,
you already solved those problems.
It can be your improvisation skills.
You have the skills to improvise in solving the problems.
It can be, "this must-be-solved" attitude.
"I don't care but I am going to solve it."
Basically, if you think about it right now, with our theories,
we provide you with the Referent Criterion on how to solve public relations problems.
Those are instructions very often.
The second thing is Situational Motivation in problem solving.
It is a state of situation-specific readiness to make efforts to solve the problem.
It's when you care about the problem.
Do you really care about it?
It is defined by three things: Problem recognition,
Involvement recognition, and Constraint recognition. Here they are.
Problem recognition.
One's perception that something is missing
and there is no immediately applicable solution to it.
That could be perceptual problem.
That could be cognitive problem.
Perceptual problem is a discrepancy
between expected and experienced states, a badness-of-fit.
This experience may be easily and
quickly resolved by a preconscious problem solving effort.
For example, you drove and you saw the traffic light changed.
You haven't really thought too much about it,
you just changed the lights and you just put the stop,
change the gears in your car.
So, you solve the problem. That's it.
You encountered the badness-of-fit.
There was a discrepancy between expected and experienced states,
but you solved it very quickly.
You haven't thought much about it.
However, a cognitive problem is
the absence of the ready-made solution to a perceptual problem.
So you see that something is not right, something is missing,
but you don't actually know how to solve it right now,
and it requires an assessment of the situation.
You have to answer the question,
what caused the problem?
How close is it connected to me?
How it can be approached?
What types of obstacles are on my path of solving it?
A cognitive problem always follows a perceptual problem.
So you have to first identify what's missing, and then really,
if you haven't found the solution to it right away,
you have to think about it,
how are you going to solve it, right?
The next one, a characteristic that define situational motivation is involvement.
It is a perceived connection between the self and the problem situation.
Basically, if you perceive that this is important to you,
that if it's really relevant to you,
it happens in your own community,
it happens on your street,
it happened to your family,
then, you are involved.
It's important, it's relevant for you.
It touches you. It touches your emotions.
It maybe, touches you physically.
When the perceived connection is low,
people are likely to be passive in communication behavior.
However, when you really care,
you are going to be active, right?
Because you will want to solve the problem.
Next one, constraint recognition.
Constraint recognition is an extent to
which people perceive there are obstacles to their ability to act.
The greater their perception of obstacles,
the less likely they are to seek information or to act on information.
Basically, how you perceive
the constraints is going to define how you're going to behave.
If you feel that, "There is nothing I can do. "
you're not going to do anything, right?
Because you feel like you are tied.
You feel like someone put chains on your hands.
So because of that, you won't act.
So those are your perceptions of constraints, recognition of constraints.
So now, right? If you look at it one more time,
it's not that scary anymore, right?
We have independent variables,
and we have the dependent variable, our communication action,
which can be, we actively select,
or we basically select information,
we transmits information, or we acquire information that we want.
As one perceived a problematic state,
its connection to him or to her,
the absence of constraints in doing something about it,
the motivation to solve the problem increases,
and even if motivation is high and the person has experience of solving the problem,
he or she will be more active in communication behavior.
In other words, he or she will purposefully fulfill information, forwarded, and acquire.
So, by your motivation and by your communication,
you're going to be divided into different publics.
There are actually five of them, nonpublic, latent,
aware, active, and activists.
Nonpublic, those people, they don't really face the problem in question.
They have no social, economic, political,
ideological, philosophical, or geographical ties to the problem or issue.
They're not touched by this problem.
The problem doesn't influence them.
So if an earthquake happens somewhere else,
those people might not really care about it because well,
it didn't happened to them.
Latent public, those are the people who face the problem but are not aware of it.
The problem is not relevant for them,
or they do not have an option about it.
For example, those are the people who are
sick but they don't know they have this illness.
So they should have faced the problem,
and they suffer from this problem, but they don't know about it.
Aware, people who are aware of an issue,
but they don't care about the issue to become involved.
They don't have time or mental energy to become more active,
perceive constraints in solving,
or they also may perceived constraints,
in solving the problem.
For example, a person, he's sick.
He knows about it that he is sick,
but well whatever, "I don't have energy. I don't have money.
I don't have time to solve it.
I can live like that,
maybe a little less,
but I'll live like that."
Or they may be perceived constraints, right?
"There's no way you can fix me.
There's no way I can be healed.
So why would I spend my time and energy to do something about it."
Active publics, those are the people who started working for solving the problem.
They create an issue and they perceive no constraints against solving the problem.
So they know that they're sick and they're actively trying to get better.
They go to look for doctors,
to look for information.
They're doing this themselves.
But activists public, that's the next step, right?
They also know the problem,
they also tried to do something about it,
but they actually do it altogether.
They collect into associations,
into all sorts of unions,
join others to solve that problem,
that are many of them already.
These publics, right?
The difference of this, the different motivation,
the different communication behavior will require different public relations practices.
For nonpublic, well, no problem touches them.
Why would they care?
Why we will spend money on communicating with them if they don't needed as well?
So no communication needed.
For latent public, they don't seek communication but they actually have the problem.
So what we need to do,
we need to be really creative in attention-getting.
Have you come up with cool content,
something very flashy to get those people see us and get their attention.
We also have to communicate that
there is a problem and there are ways to solve this problem.
Aware publics, they know about the problem.
They may or may not process your communication,
but you need to tell them that there are no constraints.
You need to communicate that there are ways to solve
the problem to those people because they know their problem.
They suffer from it.
It's just that they don't have this mental energy to do something about it.
So you have to help them out to solve it.
You have to motivate them to solve it.
Active and activists, those are active people, okay?
Those people are going to go and they're going to create troubles for
you if you don't maintain high public profile,
if you don't give more details.
Those are the most active people.
They're going to ask more and more,
more information from you.
So you have to be very active in meeting
their needs and even exceeding their needs and expectations.
