Seven......

Hi everyone!!

We're going to talk about another type of communication, organisational communication......

It is a system of a large number of people working together to achieve multiple goals. We can find it around us, maybe some of you are part of it....

People inside an organisation will become interdependent with each other. Usually, there is a hierarchical structure (different level within) in it.

For example:

By looking on the structure of the hierarchy, people inside that organisation should know how to communicate with each other. If you are in Corporate Planning Office, you should know how to communicate with your president and people below you such as Sales Department. The way to communicate with those 2 people may differ...............

People who work in an organisation may need to put aside individuals' goals, they need to prioritize organisational goals. They should know what to say and what not to say, they need to consider other people too.

Usually, information within an organisation is enclosed to outsiders. An organisation should know how to create, analyse, store, and retrieve information properly in order to protect it.

Organisation Structure has 2 types, formal and informal............

Information flow inside a formal organisation has 3 types:

1) Downward flow...... (e.g. from boss to staff)

2) Upward flow..... (e.g. from staff to boss)

3) Horizontal flow..... (e.g. from staff to staff)

Each of them may has its own flaw, the communication may be ineffective in some conditions.....

In downward flow, the information may not be received by the staff as expected, information may be inadequate and incomplete. This condition may becomes worse if serial transmission occurs, it occurs when information is distributed from one person to another and so on. Details may be missed out, only important points are received.

In upward flow, the boss may neglect negative feedbacks or messages from the staff. Sometimes, the staff does not want to talk about problem with the boss, so he/she keeps it. If the boss has a secretary, the secretary may be a gatekeeper. She will separate the information, she decides which one is important and which one is not. She will only give important information to the boss.

In horizontal flow, each staff may has different view of a problem. Each of them may want to protect his/her department. Conflicts may occur.

Now, let's move on to informal organisation.............

This is more about personal relationship with other members of the organisation. Information such as gossip and rumour may be shared, usually the accuracy is quite high inside an organisation.

Relationship with other members may be differentiate by degree of connectedness.

There are 7 types of network roles:

1) Cosmopolite, a member who has connection with people outside the organisation.

2) Bridge, a member of a clique and has a connection with another clique.

3) Clique, a group of similar interests

4) Isolate, a member which does not belong to any cliques

5) Liaison, a member who connects 2 cliques but not a member of either clique

6) Opinion Leader, an influential member of a clique

7) Star, a member who has a lot of connections with other members (a favourite member)

All of these types can be found near us, maybe we are one of them. We can apply these types to our relationship with friends and relatives.

Which one is your role? (please give your answer/feedback in the comment's box.... Thanks)

*FYI, this is my last entry, thank you for your contribution...................*

Have a nice day....... :D

Bye2.........

Six....

Let's finish the media theory,,,,,

We receive messages from the media through medium, so we can say that medium holds important role as the messages. This theory is called media determinism.....

Sometimes we have different opinions and views about one thing but we do not want to express our thoughts because everyone's opinions are different from us. In addition, the media supports the most popular views, we feel anxiety to speak up. It's better to keep silence, this theory is known as spiral of silence....

The last one is cultivation theory, TV supports this theory. Media such as TV can influence the way we look at the world around us. Media creates a common way to look at a certain aspect which is called mainstreaming. Another aspect from this theory is resonance or mean world hypothesis, as we watch too much TV everyday, we see a lot of criminalities going on in the world. Double dose effect happens, we perceive that the world is more dangerous, in fact it is not that dangerous as we thought.... Be careful in receiving messages from the media!!!

I still want to show you some interesting advertisements for your pleasure.............

This is a creative ad by Mini Cooper placed at the Zurich, Switzerland train station. It gives the perception that the Mini Cooper has a large space.

The main topic for this entry is Communication and Technology......

In 21st century, many technologies are introduced. We are living in a world full of technology. One of the uses of technology is to communicate. The equipments may include computer, internet, telephone, radio, etc. Many people prefer to communicate through these equipments provided by technology in order to get the faster and cheaper way.

Not all people can afford the cost required to buy those equipments, so they may remain to communicate with the equipments that they have. They still can survive in the digitalization period.

As young people, we always use of internet and computer everyday to do many things such as communicate, play games, etc. Any forms of communication using the computer are called as computer mediated communication (CMC). Computer and internet are friends for some people, they cannot live without them.

One thing which is really common for us is chatting, we chat with people everday through internet. We are addicted to its fun and simplicity. In fact, I am addicted to web chat too. I always chat with my families and friends in my hometown, it is cheap and fast. I also can use web-cam to see my families and friends.

Different people have different uses of web chat, some people may use it to find friends and boyfriend/girlfriend. They often feel more confidence when they chat in virtual world rather than in the real world. They share personal experiences to strangers, sometimes they ask suggestions from them. They can hide their "real" identity, it seems scary but this is the reality.

Many people, including me, use internet to read news from different countries. We want to update our knowledge to the most current and happening news. As I go overseas, electronic news are very helpful for me to know what is going on in my country.

How about you? What is your primary need for using the internet?

Have a nice day........... :D

Five...

Hi everyone!!

This time, I will post an entry about MASS COMMUNICATION............

What is that?

Mass Communication is a form of communication through which institutional sources address relatively large, heterogenous and anynomous audiences physically separated from one another...

Institutional sources are the media sources such as newspapers, magazines, radio, TVs, etc. We are familiar with these, we see and use them everyday. For most of us, media is essential, we cannot live without it. I agree with this.... :D

Media adresses its contents to everyone, to any level of the society. That's why we are called as invisible receivers. We do not have direct relationship with the media sources, they do not know us, the same with us. Therefore, the messages must fulfil the needs of the public, cannot be addressed to a specific person or group.

The medium to transmit the message is different in each media source. Every media has its own way to send the message to public. Some medias may require the receivers to have a technology skill, such as electronic equipments. Books, newspapers, magazines are the easiest medias to be used. They only require us to have the ability to read.............

Media messages will change overtime, one message will replace another one and so on. It will move on as time goes by.........

Why do you use media? (please give your answers in the comment's box,, thx)

There are some theories in mass media.....................

The first one is Powerful Effects Theory (Magic Bullet Theory), this was used in the 20s/30s era. It was popular after the second world war. In this theory, the media is powerful while the audiences are powerless. Audiences will do or eact on desired behaviours expected by the media. We're controlled by the media.

The second theory is Limited Effects Theory (Uses and Gratification Theory). It was introduced in 1950s/60s. This theory is the opposite of the first one. The media is powerless while the audiences are powerful. The audiences have the "strength" to resist the media messages. They use media for some reasons, to gain more information, to improve personal identity, build stronger relationship, to escape from something,etc. They use media according to their needs.

The third theory is Moderate Effects Theory. The strength of the media and the audiences are almost the same. The media has the power to influence the audiences and the audiences have the power to select or resist the media.

What media messages can do to the public?

There is a term called "Agenda Setting Function", it is the ability of the media to raise the importance of an issue in public's mind. Media tells us what to talk about in daily life. The power of the media to influence us depends on our experiences too. If they are talking about something that we do not related to, we tend to ignore that message.

Media messages are hegemonic, media favour people with economic and political power. The powerless group can do nothing, they just keep silent. They influence public's mind to bring benefit to them. The powerless groups may feel discriminated and not comfortable.

Here are some advertisements that I found interesting.............................

'Make the internet a safe place’. That’s the message launched by IG to aware the public about the importance of parental control in the internet. Created by Brazilian advertising agency Neogama in Brazil.

This persuades you to buy this brand of ketchup.

This is an anti-smoking advertisement, it is sticked in the upper part of a public smoking area..

I will update the continuation of this in the next entry......... Enjoy your weekend........

Please leave some comments,, thank you.......:D

Four..................

Communication can be applied in all aspects including in group, it is called GROUP COMMUNICATION.............

You must be familiar with group communication as most of you have been involved in one of any groups. What is the purpose of making a group? To interact and know each other better? To share information? To come up with the best result? The answer depends on you, everbody has different views.............

The first group that I have was in my primary school, with some of my friends, we discussed a topic given by the teacher. We decided what factors are important regarding that topic. After some times, the teacher asked each group to speak about that topic. Seems familiar??

I beleive that all of you have been in that situation too, am I right?

We decide something in group if the topic is complicated, hard to do by individual, has a big risk, etc. In order to come up with the best result, every individual in a group needs to interact and give opinion. Unspoken messages may cause a problem in a group..............

Usually, there are some people in group who come from different cultures and backgrounds, therefore the characteristics may differ too. Everyone is unique. Let's see the picture below.......


This is a picture of basketball team/group. As we can observe that most of them may come from the same country but their characteristics may not be the same. Among them, there must be a captain or a leader. Usually a leader has a characteristic to lead his/her group to achieve the goal. In this case for example, the goal is to win a competition in sport week. The leader should encourage the group members to work and practice together in order to win that competition.

In order to maintain a good relationship in a group, there are some characteristics needed, such as harmonizer (bring peace, decrease tension in a group), group observer (observe and give feedbacks), encourager (accept others' contributions), etc.

As far as possible, try to prevent these negative roles in a group.......................
Being a dominator (dominates the group, does not give chance to others to give opinions),
Being a recognition seeker (wants to be a centre of attention),
Being a self-confessor (disturb the group by sharing personal stories), etc.....

Here are the formulas to become a good leader according to Stephen .R. Covey.....................

The four imperatives of leadership..............

The first is to inspire trust. You build relationships of trust through both your character and competence and you also extend trust to others. You show others that you believe in their capacity to live up to certain expectations, to deliver on promises, and to achieve clarity on key goals. You don’t inspire trust by micromanaging and second guessing every step people make.

The second is to clarify purpose. Great leaders involve their people in the communication process to create the goals to be achieved. If people are involved in the process, they psychologically own it and you create a situation where people are on the same page about what is really important—mission, vision, values, and goals.

The third is to align systems. This means that you don’t allow there to be conflict between what you say is important and what you measure. For instance, many times organizations claim that people are important but in fact the structures and systems, including accounting, make them an expense or cost center rather than an asset and the most significant resource.

The fourth is the fruit of the other three—unleashed talent. When you inspire trust and share a common purpose with aligned systems, you empower people. Their talent is unleashed so that their capacity, their intelligence, their creativity, and their resourcefulness is utilized.

If you want to test whether you are a good leader or not, here is a link to the quiz............
http://money.cnn.com/quizzes/2007/fortune/leadership_annie/index.html
Enjoy..............

Now, let's move on to INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION.....................

Different places have different cultures. Our culture depends on where we live or stay. We share cultures with different people from different places. For example, if we migrate to another country, we meet people in that country, as time goes by, we share our culture with the local people and vice versa. We learn new cultures.

There are individualist cultures which are common in Western area (e.g. America, German) and collectivist cultures which are common in Eastern area (e.g. China, Japan).

Someone who is individualist will strongly decide something by personal needs and goals. Not easily influenced by ingroup (e.g. family). Individualism belongs to low-context culture which is very well organized, on time, direct in communication, etc.

Different with collectivism, group is very important in here. Decision making is based on the group, therefore harmony can be seen in this culture. Collectivism belongs to high context culture which is the opposite of low context culture. People in this culture like to build a good relationship with others, very polite, do not want to hurt others, etc.


However, different cultures make each one of us unique, which one is yours?
Please give comments, feedbacks or critics, just write them in comment's box...................

Thank you..........................................

Hv a nice day everyone!!

three.......

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!!!

As today is a valentine's day, let's talk about relationship............

As a human, no matter a boy or a girl, we build a relationship with people around us because we want to know them. When we grow up, there is something inside our body that makes us attracted to our opposite sexes (maybe, some of them not but majority yes). We start to concern about our appearance, style, etc. We fall in love......................

When we build a relationship, we go step-by-step, starting from the introduction until the last result..... I introduce you the Knapp Model of Relational Development......

Here are the steps.....
Initiating.............
In this stage, we introduce ourself to someone who we like. We start a small discussion that is more likely to be general, let's say we are still in "safe conversation area". In this stage, our appearance may counts as this is the first time we meet each other. Some people really prepare their appearance but some do not. It depends on individuals.

As we passed through initiating stage, we move on to experimenting stage............................
We become braver, we want to know more about our partner. We ask more questions as we spend time together with that person. Sometimes, we find some similarities and we feel so excited about it. There is something that is indescribable going on in our body, all that we know is we are very happy.........

We get closer and closer to our partner, we feel comfortable when we are together. We show how care we are to our partner, we become more concern with his/her ccondition. When the right time comes, we express our feeling to that person, then if everything goes well, we become a couple. This is one of the happiest times for most of people, this stage is called intensifying...........

Next, we go to integrating stage, we announce to our social networks (e.g. family, friends) that we are in the relationship. As we are still in the beginning of being a couple, usually we will spend a lot of times together. We always together, it feels like we cannot be separated from one another. This is the "warmest stage" for our relationship as we have been successful to have him/her.

If we are really serious about our relationship, we bring it to the last stage which is called bonding..... We decided to spend the rest of our life with "the chosen one", we marry that person and become husband and wife. As time goes by, we have children and grand children and so on....
Isn't it beautiful to see the smooth and easy way to build a relationship until the last stage?
In reality, it is not always like that, there must be a "roller coaster" time in our life.

According to Knapp Model, there are 5 stages of becoming apart from each other, let's take a look.......

Differentiating, we do not feel comfortable in our relationship anymore. Conflicts come in and make our relationship in the unstable stage.

We feel that we are not interested to have a relationship with our partner anymore. We show that we do not want to know more about our partner. We are bored with that person. If we are in this time, it is called circumscribing stage........

We are in stagnation stage when we have lost that feeling to our partner. We do not love that person anymore. Sometimes, we have to sacrifice our feeling for something important (e.g. children, parents). Although we look like that we are still together in the outside, actually it is not in the inside.

Let's say, we break up. There must be a time that we want to avoid one another for a period of time. We talk as little as possible to our ex-partner. This stage is called avoiding............

Terminating.............
After we recover from break up's syndrome, we will try to move on as we still have future life. We may find another partner in the future. Life is still going on............

In order to build or break the relationship, you do not need to follow these steps from the beginning until the end. You can jump from one stage to another stage, depends on you..........

Here is 2 links to videos about a relationship..............................
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeQUbtmJkSo&feature=related (Lion King)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPrak2WrkSU&feature=channel (Short Movies-interesting)

Some tips from me to you........
Try to understand your partner and accept all the positive and negative things that he/she has. Be there when your partner need you.......

Happy valentine's Day......
If you have any experiences about relationship,,,, feel free to share......:D
Leave some comments, please.... :D

two......

Hi everyone,,,,,,

Let's talk about perception.......

Everyone has different perception, it may depends on our past experiences, environment, media, likeness, etc. We often prefer something which suits us the best...........

When we percept something, we select, organize, and interpret..........

Let's see these 2 coffee shops, which one do you prefer?

OR

Your choice depends on your perception about these different coffee shops. Have you tried both of them? Which one do you like the most?

Most of us depend on technology, including mobile phone. It's a rare thing to see people without mobile phone, everyone has it. Different people have different choices of mobile phone. Some of them like to use touch screen while some of them do not. The size does matter too.

Here are 3 choices of different kinds and brands of mobile phone.........

Each mobile phone has its positive and negative factors. If you are about to choose one of those mobile phones, which one is you choice? Why?

Let's move on to verbal and non-verbal communication........
Since we're young, we learned verbal and non-verbal communication. For the first time we said "mommy" or "daddy", that's is the first time we use verbal communication. Non-verbal communication may come before that, when we cried, we express our feeling through non-verbal communication.

As we grow older, we use verbal and non-verbal communication more often. Sometimes, we talk to each other using both kinds of communication.

Verbal communication is as important as non-verbal communication. Some people may prefer only one of those communications' type, it depends on their personality and condition.

For example, when we want to say "I Love You" to someone, not all of us will say it directly. Some people choose to express it through their behaviour (it's kind a hard to say those 3 words)to that person while some choose to say it directly.

I belong to the first group, I'm not a person who like to express my feeling by verbal communication, for me, our action counts.

Thank you for reading, don't forget to leave comments. If you have suggetions or critics, just say it to me........

Hv a great day...... :D

one...

What is Communication?

I have found the meaning for you in http://www.dictionary.reference.com/, it is the act or process of communicating. We communicate with other people to share information, thoughts, opinions, feelings, etc.

We can communicate in many ways, such as talking which is known as verbal communication and body gestures/expressions which is known as non-verbal communication. I have watched a video from http://www.youtube.com/ that tell me more about non-verbal communication.
If you're interested, you can follow the link below......
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W6s1h4DUPRw

I have another video from a movie called "Silence", maybe some of you have watched this movie before. It's about a girl who cannot speak,, so she always use her hands to communicate with other people.
Here is the link to the video.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM_LK3ZarJs&feature=related

There are 3 models of communication:
Linear Communication
This model is more likely to be one-way communication. I think this model is not really suitable nowadays although some people still use this model in their life.

Interactive Communication
This is the two ways communication, the receiver can give feedbacks to the sender. Sometimes, the message and the feedback overlap each other, therefore miscomunication has a quite big opportunity to happen.

Transactional Communication
This is the latest form of communication, many people said that this is the most accurate model that represent communication in daily life. Both of the sender and receiver act as communicators, so they can communicate directly. It is more to face-to-face communication.

This week, we are also talking about perspective. Everybody has different perspectives of one thing. Usually our perspectives are based on our experiences, environment, knowledges, etc.

Let's see your perspections on this picture below...




Some people may say "Those children suppose to go to school, what are they doing in the field?"
while the other may say "Those children are very smart, they know how to make money."
What is yours? (Please write it in comment's box) =)

Let's see another one..........



Look at those kids, kids on the left like to touch the snake while 2 kids on the right are afraid on the snake. Those kids have different perspections when they see the snake.
How about you? Are you afraid of snake?

P.S. Please leave some comments when you drop by my blog...........
Thank you very much......

Hv a nice day....... :D