Motivation (ch. 36)

Motivation is a very important aspect when it comes to communication. It helps us to fulfill basic needs of affiliation, achievement, control, and reducing our uncertainty and anxiety. The need for affiliation is a good example of our motivation in communication. We always have a need to form close relationships with others and we force ourselves to do this. This theory can kind of tie in with group communication, and how we sometimes adapt to the beliefs and attitudes of the groups we associate ourselves with. It almost makes me think that because we have a need for affiliation, we may adapt to the beliefs and attitudes of others simply so that we may feel that we belong to a group. I like this idea because not only are we fulfilling a need that we have, we also learn new things from the people around us. If we surround ourselves with people who are different from us, we learn things about different beliefs and how other people think. Knowing things like this helps the communication between others. This idea ties in with the need to reduce uncertainty, and how we motivate ourselves to communicate so that we may gain knowledge and create understanding. We communicate with others so that we may be able to learn new things, understand them, thus creating a nice flow of communication.

Credibility (Ch. 36)

Aristotle believed that it was important for a speaker to clearly show their competence on the topics they speak about. The audience has to be able to relate to the speaker in order for the speaker to grasp their attention. This kind of helps the speaker build a relationship with the audience, building trust between the speaker and the audience. When the speaker, or really any communication source, proves to be invalid and untrustworthy, the audience will no longer listen to that source, and find another source to get their information from. In politics, when the public finds out that the government lied, or rather didn't give all of the information about a certain issue, you can see how the public start to not trust the information they provide to them. They see this as a violation of the trust that they had for the government. With any communicator, if they are not seen as a credible source of information, they are not going to be taken seriously. Once the credibility is put into question, the source will always be viewed in scrutiny because at one point or another, it was seen as dishonest.

Unfulfilled promise of the internet (ch. 35)

Kramarae believes that with the coming of the internet, women still are closed off from certain forms of communication. By the year 2000, while half of the Internet users were female, those within the technological circle predominantly male. While there are still opportunities for women to be able to communicate freely with each other all over the world, many of the websites, search engines, even content appeals to a large male audience. She goes further to discuss four metaphoes (new frontier, democracy, global community, and information superhighway) to explain how women are continuously muted as a gender group. Although Kramarae brings up many interesting points, I do not feel that I can completely agree with what she says. I think that a lot of her theories are too personal and make it seem like men have ultimate control no matter where we go. I think I am more of an individualistic thinker, and I feel that if a person wants to enhance their intelligence beyond what society says they're supposed to, or play the specific role that society gives them, then it is their fault and not the fault of another gender. True, there are times when women feel that men have to be the dominating force, and allow them to be such, yet at the same time I feel that it is mainly up to the person to decide how they want to live in their life.

Men as Gatekeepers (ch. 35)

Women have been excluded from society for many many years. Feminist Dorothy Smith blames this on men's "closed-circuit scholarship." She claims that the reason why men have kept women out of the loop was because for the longest time they only talked to men about things men would only either understand or care about. Because of women's long-term role as the housewife, they assumed they just automatically cut women out because what they discussed never fell under the umbrella of what women were supposed to care about. Obviously nowadays, things are rapidly changing in our society. Women are no longer kept out of the loop (well not as much) because you now see them taking more high profile jobs, more masculine responsibilities on top of their feminine responsibilities. I think because of our rapidly changing society, a lot of the theories presented within this chapter are either outdated or finding a way to adapt to this rapid change. Men are no longer the "gatekeepers of comunication." Communication between genders is now open for everyone.

Women being marginalized (ch. 34)

Standpoint theorists see the differences in communication between both men and women. They notice how men's communication is mainly used for accomplishing tasks, being assertive, and gaining power, while women's communication is used to build relationships, include others and show responsiveness. I started to wonder if these communication differences blend a littlle bit. I know that in the business world, both men and women use communication as a way to build relationships between other people and their companies. A connection is still made regardless of the sex. I know for mothers use more assertive forms of communication when deal with misbehaving children. It kind of makes me think that the idea of there being differences between communicative styles of the different genders is not entirely black and white. There are many times when they blend together. Even whhen the text talked about how these differences were seen not from a biology standpoint, but from a cultural one, it still has changed because women aren't seen as the ones staying home with the children and looking out for the house (as much), and men aren't always seen as the ones working and "bringing home the bacon." A lot of things have changed, and I think the point I'm trying to make is that this theory might be a tad outdated.

Pluralistic ignorance (Ch. 29)

Professor Noelle-Neumann brings up an interesting point about pluralistic ignorance. Although many of us say that we are all individuals within our society, and that we all think differently, when I actually sat down and thought about it, I realized that I did not think the same as many other people. This is probably why sometimes we say or do things that we think is okay, however, may offend others. This is simply because we assumed that others had the same sense of humor as us, or the same opinion on a topic and so we do things without realizing that this is very unlikely. I like how Noelle-Neumann puts the blame on the fact that the media picks and chooses what to present to society. It is not a very well-rounded view of the news, which causes print media's ability to change attitudes to be very limited. Even though this occurs frequently, I still wonder how we can avoid this with the media. How can the media cater to the individual thinkers of our society and present the news catering to this individuality?

Spiral of Silence (Ch. 29)

I found the spiral of silence theory to be completely accurate. Society's views are forever changing. We don't really notice this until the media brings up a particular issue. An example of this could easily be the debate on gay marriage. One minute it wasn't something people thought about, and then the next minute it's all over the news. In opinion, I only really year the negative aspects of the issue more than the positive ones. I know that because of this, I personally do not share my opinions on the issue simply because sometimes I feel as if I am in the minority. This is a problem for people within society, simply because we are based on the idea of freedom of speech. People should be able to say and think what they choose, and have the freedom to voice their opinions. If they cannot do this, then they are only allowing themselves to be bullied by the media as well as others. It is either this idea, or the idea that people feel that because they are in the minority, they feel their opinions don't matter, so they conform and think like the majority. This only concerns me in the height of the upcoming election. When it comes to voting, or expressing any form of opinion, people should not feel as if they are the minority simply based on what the media feeds them. It only leads to people being silenced and their voices not being heard.