Professor Stoner

Professor Stoner talked about how study abroad programs are influenced with our new technology and media. She talked about how ten years ago, people had very different experiences with study abroad programs.  Professor Stoner talked about the stages of going to a different country, which included honeymoon phase, culture shock, adjustment, and mastery. This lecture really interested me, because I agree on her outlook on the situation completely. I believe that when you study abroad, you should immerse yourself in the culture. If a person keeps calling and messaging people at home, I believe they are missing out on the experience. I believe that all the communicating back at home would distract a person from really getting all the benefits, skills, and life lessons they would get with concentrating on the new people and the new country they are in.

Professor Stoner talks about the phases in adapting to a new place. I have experienced these phases. I had to move from Germany to America when I was about five years old. I don’t really remember being in the honeymoon phase and being excited and looking forward to a new place. But I definitely remember experiencing the culture shock, adjustment, and mastery phases. I remember crying and telling my parents that everyone in my kindergarten class knew English and I couldn’t talk to anyone. I felt a culture shock, I felt disorientated and I had no idea what I was doing whatsoever. Next, the adjustment phase came. Professor Stoner said it sometimes takes a long period of time to adjust, and it took me a while, it was not a quick process. When I was about in second grade, I finally felt like I was a part of the American culture. I heard my classmates talk about things, and I could actually relate back to them.  After a couple more years, I was in the mastery phase. In this phase, I really felt that I was becoming more and more accustomed to the American lifestyle, and even the Chicago lifestyle.

            She also talked about her method of finding her research results. She talked about how she was going to use qualitative and quantitative methods to find the best results. We talked about these concepts in class a couple times. I think it is really great that she wants to research using both methods. In class, we talked about how using both methods is the most effective way and best way to find out your results.

Professor Barnhurst

Professor’s Barnhurst lecture focused on how humans share patterns in storytelling.  He started his lecture with an activity with the class. He told two people to get together and tell a story to each other. Professor Barnhurst told the class it had to be a story that means something to them or has some significance to them. Then he told them to get together with two more people, to make a group of four. He also told them to write down notes while hearing the person’s story. At the end there were four people per group, and the professor asked them what similitaries were present in the stories that they told.

Professor Barnhurst says that there are specific parts to storytelling, which include announcing that you are telling a story (the abstract), the setting (who, what, when), complicating action, and the resolution. He says the interpretation is a separate part that is essentially the most important. Professor Barnhurst says that everything we say is interpreted. Everything that comes out of our mouth can be interpreted by our tone or the way we say things. I can relate to this, whenever I talk to people, I always interpret messages by the way they’re said, more so than what is actually said. Then after the interpretation comes the response part.

            His lecture reminded me of some concepts we talked about in class. We talked about the basic model of communication and also the more detailed model, Schramm’s model. In Schramm’s model, we have the message, encoder, decoder, and interpreter. This model represents essentially the storytelling concept that Professor Barnhurst talked about. We have the sender/receiver, and then there are messages that have to be encoded and decoded to interpret the message.

            Also, we talked about the three step process of perception. The last step of the process was interpretation. Professor Barnhurst said this was the most important step in storytelling. We learned in class that interpretation is when you attach meaning to someone’s words and messages. Going along with interpretation, we also learned about paralanguage. In our class lecture, we discussed that paralanguage could be characterized with vocal characteristics and the vocal qualifiers (intensity, pitch, extent, etc.) You can interpret someone’s messages by paying attention to their paralanguage, which is a type of non-verbal message code.

            Professor Branhurst lecture was really interesting. I found the group activity really fascinating because I never knew that we all told stories in such a similar fashion and followed certain steps without actually realizing it.

             

Professor Andrew Rojecki

Professor Andrew Rojecki starts his lecture by asking students if they care about politics. Most of the students said they simply did not care, and others said they get too anxious watching the news. He talks about “political discourse” which he says is a way of thinking about something. Professor Rojecki says his interest lies in the study of the origins and the effects of political discourse. Also, he speaks of the tea party and its views on government.   

I found the most interesting segment of his lecture was when he talks about people’s concerns for the job market. The reason he gives for America’s loss of jobs is because of globalization. Globalization is pulling jobs away from Americans. I know I am very pessimistic when it comes to this recession. I am also so worried about finding a job after college. It feels like the recession is never ending, but I was still shocked at how many Americans felt the same way I do. His graph displayed that less than ¼ of Americans think we’ve had improvements with our economy. I knew people were worried, but I didn’t think that it was such a big amount of people that were worried. Also, I can relate to the professor’s lecture when he says people get their ideas off of other people. I am guilty of this, I don’t watch the news, but my father does and he tells me what’s going on and keeps me up to date, but he has different way of perceiving things, and if I initially watched, I might perceive them differently and have different opinions. The professor also says we are so distracted by many things and do not have time to watch the news due to all these distractions, and I completely think this is true.

Another thing I found interesting was when the professor said that people watch a news channel like FOX news to reinforce their beliefs already. They already have their views and they are going to select what sounds good to them. This concept relates back to our own class lecture, because we as well talked about framing and salience. This is where you take certain aspects of what you hear and make some things more “salient” then others. This is where you make some messages more noticeable to you and you’d only pay attention to those messages.

The last part of his lecture, he talks about how political discourse works. Professor Rojecki describes people being manipulated by all the stereotypes of politics and uses the term “dog whistle”, which he describes as something being said, without it really being said. This reminded me of our unit, when we talked about nonverbal communication. In lecture, we discussed the functions of non-verbal communication. One of the functions of non-verbal communication is replacing the spoken message and also sending uncomfortable messages that do not want to be verbally spoken.

Professor Sharon Meraz

Professor Sharon Meraz’s lecture focused on the decreasing number of women in the computer science field and women’s struggles on being taken seriously in the technology world. She says there are less and less women in the computer science field, which she calls the incredible shrinking pipeline. Also, she talks about how there are male bloggers and female bloggers. The female bloggers are not given the same value as the male bloggers.  According to Sharon Meraz, men are taken seriously when talking about politics, etc. on their blogs, but women are expected to write about cooking and cleaning. She talks about the struggles that women have to go through, and how some have to use sexual appeal to be taken seriously and to get people to view their blogs. I found her lecture very interesting and I can relate to her lecture through some of my personal experiences.

The most interesting aspect of her lecture was when she talked about how women who are in the technology business are not expected to do the coding, or the “hard stuff”, but the design aspect of the websites. In our class lectures and Chapter 2 of our book, we discussed person perception, schemas, and stereotyping. This chapter and our class lectures corresponded to what Sharon Meraz was lecturing about. When the professor talked about how girls are expected to do the design, immediately I thought it was a stereotype. We grow up in a culture and society where it teaches us how to be feminine and masculine. For example, in class we talked about the nurture approach which states the way we communicate verbally is learned, and we had the example of girls being told to cross their legs when they sit. We, as humans learn these behaviors from society, and this contributes to our personal perception. We have our personal perception and we organize and perceive our messages according to our schemas. Girls are taught to play with barbies, and boys are thought to play videogames. When Sharon Meraz was talking about how men are more expected to work in the field of technology, it made me realize that this was a type of schema. We expect that men are more likely to work in that field, just because they are men and it is seen widely as a male occupation.

I can relate to the shrinking pipeline approach, because one of my best friends was an example of this pipeline. My friend was going to college for computer science. I recall her telling me almost all the people in her class were males. She felt uncomfortable and like she did not belong. She barely had any female teachers. Unfortunately, she switched her major because she felt she could not make it in the industry. Also, she said she felt that she would be treated less than males, and would have a harder time finding a job then a male graduating with a computer science degree.

Another aspect of Sharon Meraz’s lecture that got my attention was when she talked about the game Diner Dash, which I have played a couple of times. I thought it was interesting that she states that it is a girl cooking, cleaning, multi-tasking, etc. Games intended for males are more violent, there is a lot of shooting and blowing things up. She says that women are expected to always be working and not have that leisure time. But males do have that leisure time. This made me relate to my own culture, because in Bosnia (where I’m from), this virtual diner dash game is in some form a reality. In Bosnian culture, the girl is supposed to work, do laundry, do the cooking, and do the cleaning, while the male only has to work a job, and enjoy his time when he gets off work.

Sharon Meraz also talked about how op-ed blogs are viewed differently when written by females and males. When females write an op-ed, they are seen generally as bitches she says. That stuck out to me, because I was watching MTV, and there was a segment on Nicki Minaj’s life. Both, Nicki Minaj and the professor said a very similar thing. Nicki Minaj’s statement was when a man acts like a boss and tries to get things done, he is seen just as that- a boss, but when a woman tries to act like a boss and get things done, she’s seen as a bitch. This is a perfect example of how both sexes can do the same thing, but people perceive what they do and say in different aspects because of their gender, and because of the way they were brought up in their culture and society.