Week 2: Communication on SNS and research methods

Different communication views and New Media

James W. Carey, in a Cultural Approach to Communication (2009), introduces two ways to look at communication with reference to John Dewey: A transmission view and a ritual view. The transmission view focuses on transmitting information across time and space, while the ritual view emphasizes on representing shared beliefs.

Social Network Sites (SNSs) are newly emerged media but the way people use it to communicate doesn’t go beyond Carey’s observation. People primarily use SNS to share information and to bond with family and friends. Using SNS to share news articles and multimedia contents coincides with a transmission view. Some, on the other hand, use SNS to play a certain role. Teenagers creating a fake persona on SNS to seek approval of the peer groups can be a good example of the dramatic ritual view.

Traditional media such as television and newspapers also had two use of communication, to inform people and to give them a world of drama. In the eyes of the beholder, television and newspaper contents became mere information or a dramatic show that invites views and readers as an active player. SNS is based on different set of technology but the essence of communication still remains. The platforms and technology of medium change, but the way people use it to communicate will not change, even when another medium emerges after SNS.

Different communication views and Research Method

If SNSs were just an information imparting media like the transmission view argues, researching SNS would be fairly easy. The quantitative method will be frequently used in the study of SNS to analyze the number of shared content, the number of users and the types of content. To approach SNS and its participants in the perspective of the ritual view, however, is very complex. Under ritual view, everyone is an active leader of his or her reality, and the numbers of such realities are uncountable. Thus, as with Danah Boyd did in her research of teen life and SNS (2013), qualitative research method such as in-depth interview is significant.

In Carey’s article, he argued American culture is mostly based on transmission view but other cultures may have ritual view as their founding stone. Carey’s two views are later developed into rational and emotional approach, and are practiced intercultural settings. The transmission view, which is the rational approach, is common in the western culture like Carey argued. The ritual view, which is the emotional approach, is usually practiced in eastern culture where long history of communal experience has set a shared belief for the people in the community. As a person born and raised in the eastern country where communitarian thought prevails, I agree with the ritual view of communication and argue that SNS research should go beyond collecting numbers. Especially the SNS users in the groups of different race, gender, religion and teens, which may share an unique set of common beliefs, need more thorough qualitative research.

SNS research, with questions of fake persona, users of different culture and beliefs, and colliding contexts, is such a difficult task. Quantitative research is significant, but because of such complexity SNS environment has, qualitative research must take place to genuinely understand SNS and its participants. 

Reference:

Boyd, D. (2013). Making sense of teen life: Strategies for capturing ethnographic data in a networked era. Digital Research Confidential: The Secrets of Studying Behavior Online. Cambridge Ma: the Mit Press, viewed, 5.

Carey, J. (2002). A cultural approach to communication. McQuail’s reader in mass communication theory, 36-45.