New Media Technology and Studying Abroad

How more important is communicating when with your friends and loved ones when you are in a foreign country than when you are in your home country? I’d say pretty important. With the advances in technology, such as Skype and Face Time, we are now able to have face to face communication although there are great distances between us. The combination of new media technology along with the study abroad experience is what Adrianne Stoner discussed in her lecture. Her focus was on the cultural shock you experience while studying abroad and if your ability to use new media to connect with your family and friends back home would lessen that experience.

I found her subject of research very intriguing because you don’t normally think about the cultural shock you will experience if you decide to study abroad. When you consider studying abroad you usually are in the honeymoon phase before you even arrive in your new country and once you’re there you never think it will end. The U-curve graph that Adrianne showed really highlighted the fluctuations in emotions that you will feel once you experience cultural shock. I also think it highlights the importance between interpersonal communication and impersonal communication.

Through interpersonal communication you continue to develop bonds and closeness and this type of communication usually takes place with people you know, people who you have a close relationship with. You feel more at ease and you’re comfortable and you usually trust the person that you are speaking with. New media technology allows you to maintain that interpersonal communication with your family and friends back at home. Once the honeymoon phase ends and you begin to experience cultural shock, you really start to feel isolated and you begin to thank the high heavens that someone thought of Skype and Face Time so you can connect with you loved ones back home. Due to the fact that you don’t personally know anyone abroad mostly all of the communication you have will be very generic and impersonal.

Impersonal communication is the conversation you have with the cashier at the gas station, a coworker, even a distant relative. These people don’t really know you, you barely speak, and when you do it’s usually serving a purpose to move you from point A to point B. So when you’re abroad, it can be very hard to deal with the fact you don’t have anyone to connect to personally. And if you can only speak and understand a tiny amount of their language, then your impersonal communication is definitely being used for functional purposes.

The last question Adrianne asked is if your constant connection to your family and friends at home thru new media technology takes away from your study abroad experience, especially if your “cultural shock” is lessened? I would love to know what her research proves, but I think that it could possibly take away from your study abroad experience. If you will only be abroad for maybe six months to a year and you spend half of that time home sick and talking with your family on Skype, your experience will definitely be limited. You would be inhibiting yourself from learning the new culture, interacting with the citizens and enjoying your time in another country. However, if your time abroad is longer than a year, as Adrianne’s U-curve model displayed you will eventually adjust to your new surroundings and then master them. Although, I still think any large amount of time spent experiencing cultural shock will have an impact on your experience abroad you will have more time to make up for it because of your longer duration in the country.

The Study of Television Audiences

With the advancement of technology also came the advancement in television programming. Instead of the big three networks which dominated most television viewers’ homes for years, we are all now grateful to have cable which provides us with hundreds of channels and programs to choose from. How often do we watch TV and what are our perceptions of the shows we watch are just some of the questions Professor Yuan answered when conducting her research on the study of television audiences on the macro level.

In Prof. Yuan’s lecture she mentioned how her research showed people who watched TV the most developed this distorted view of the world as a violent and dangerous place and this is better known as the scary world theory. In class we learned about the Pygmalion effect, which is when one person’s expectation of another person’s behavior can become that person’s reality, and the scary world theory is an example of that self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, if an individual watches enough violent shows and every program they watch tends to portray minorities as the criminals or bad guys, whenever you leave your home and you encounter a minority, you will associate them with the criminals in the program you watched on TV and believe they are or will commit some act of violence. Viewers that fall under the category of the scary world theory tend to have a problem distinguishing between what happens in the real world and what happens on the television shows they watch. This is also one of the many ways that people develop stereotypes about groups of individuals. Some people will tend to associate what they see on TV as a representation of that group as a whole, and begin to act on those beliefs.

The scary world theory is a pretty fascinating one to me. If as Prof. Yuan stated, television viewers are free agents and the shows they watch are their preference, then why continue to view programs that affect your perception of reality. One might think that if the viewers insist on watching a certain program, even if it leads them to having a distorted view of real life, that it’s a result of audience loyalty and they love watching the show. Yet audience loyalty seems to be a result of framing by the networks. If ratings show that these types of programs result in the highest percentage of viewers, you would reasonably expect that networks would center their programming on this, thus creating a ripple effect in audiences viewing that leads to them developing the “scary world” mentality. In studying television audiences I think that it would be interesting to see how much of a role network framing contributes to the idea of audience loyalty and the scary world theory.

The Evolution of Technology

In the early 1980s very few people had cell phones, car phones were the hot item then and smart phones were a dream. Even fewer people could boast of owning a computer, nowadays almost every household has one. Access to the internet has progressed from dial-up to wireless and we no longer listen to music from a cassette tape but through mp3 devices and the iPod. These are only a few examples of the wonders of technology or should I say the evolution of technology. As Professor Steven Jones discussed in his lecture technology is constantly changing and the evolution of technology will only continue to improve.

One of the things Prof. Jones discussed was the research project that he and his team are working called Project Lifelike which I thought was extremely interesting. Project Lifelike is developing “technology to archive people instead of things” (PowerPoint slide, Prof. Jones). Basically they are creating lifelike representations of people as 3D avatars. This is definitely an advancement in technology, however in order for this to be successful and properly done the avatars would have to encompass more than just a basic carbon copy/model of a human and our verbal communication skills. As we learned communication is more than verbal and a lifelike representation of a human would need to be comprised of our nonverbal skills as well. Our body movements, gestures, and facial expressions are all integral parts of nonverbal communication. They are visual cues that help to relay our emotions, be it happiness, anger, or uncertainty to another individual. The avatar would also need to embody vocal cues, such as our ability to cry, laugh, and sigh, which are all channels we use to express our feelings. The researchers who are working on this project would have to take the necessary amount of time needed studying kinesics and paralanguage to create an avatar that would contain these human traits.

However, with improvements in technology, problems are bound to occur. There could be a problem in trying to create something lifelike that will be “capable of reacting to speech input with naturalistic facial and gestural responses” (PowerPoint slide, Prof. Jones). The avatar might be incapable of comprehending proxemics with an actual person and will be completely void of olfactics and haptics. Therefore it can be only lifelike to a point. Some of the new advancements in communication such as Skype and Face Time can also present communication problems. Both are examples of face to face communication through modern technology and the primary channels of hearing and sight are still used. However unlike face to face communication done in person, communication through the use of these mediums can experience interference which can lead to distorted and misinterpreted messages. The same issues can occur with IM and emails, although these are examples of nonverbal communication, the low amount of characters given to create a message can lead to misinterpreted communication by using equivocal language and vagueness of words. We all know these communication issues are not exclusive to modern communication technology, since the same issues can occur even when you’re right in front of the individual you’re speaking with. However, they seem to occur more often to me when using these mediums and I sometimes find myself preferring a good old chit chat in person as opposed to any other way.

Professor Deirdre McCloskey’s lecture focused on her theory that the majority of communication/ language is persuasion. According to McCloskey not only is her theory of persuasion relative to the communication field but it is also applicable to the fields of science which is normally associated with qualitative and quantitative works of study and not persuasion. I found her theory of persuasion as the primary function not only in the communication field and our everyday lives but also in the fields of science interesting.

In chapter 1 we learned that rhetoric was used in the pre modern era as a craft of persuasion. We also learned that in the communication studies of today, the studies of humanities focuses on a historical and critical approach while social science focuses on qualitative and quantitative reasoning. According to Prof. McCloskey this split doesn't exist and is nonsense. Now if we take the unconventional approach of Prof. McCloskey, then everything we are taught regarding the studies of communication, humanities, sciences, etc. all boils down to being taught how to be an excellent persuader. The more Prof. McCloskey stated the reasons for her theory of persuasion, the more I found myself agreeing with her. Maybe I help to validate her theory because her lecture was persuasive enough for me to agree with her, but as I apply her theory to my everyday encounters I couldn’t help but to agree with her.

Prof. McCloskey stated that economist would much rather be referred to as scientist when in actuality the majority of what they do involves persuasion. They try to persuade people to believe their theories, views, ideas, etc. about any given subject. How many of us do that today? At some point in our lives we always find ourselves having to persuade someone about something, and sometimes we succeed in our persuasions and sometimes we fail.

I remember when I was younger my dad told me that when I turned 16 I could have a boyfriend. When that day came I was so excited, although I didn’t date anyone right away I knew that I could if I wanted to. One day a senior asked me to be his prom date and of course I was happy and couldn’t wait to remind my dad of his promise to allow me to date when I turned 16. As I told my father about the senior and prom, he told me NO before I could even finish my sentence. Upset, I decided to remind him of his promise and the fact that I am a great daughter and great student high GPA, etc. My dad told me that all of what I said was nice and I still can’t go to prom with a senior, and added that the only time I will be buying a prom dress will be for my senior prom. Needless to say, that attempt at persuasion was a complete failure. Yet, other times have been a total success.

 When I applied to college my personal statement was written in a way to persuade the admissions board to accept me at their school because we will be a perfect fit. When applying for a specific job I want, I use the interview to persuade the interviewer to hire me, because I’m what their company is missing. As I said before we have all tried to persuade someone at some point, and as time progresses we usually become better skilled in the art of persuasion, that’s just a few examples of how it was used in my life. I agree with Prof. McCloskey’s theory that communication and the sciences and humanities are basically creating skilled persuaders, however I also feel that it shouldn't be trivialized to just that since there is more to the studies of each field than just persuading someone to agree with you.

Tameshia M.