ALAGAPPA UNIVERSITY
INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL COMMUNICATION
UNIT IV
Communication and Public opinion: nature, meaning and process - Culture and
Communication: Relationships between Culture and Communication - Global Media – multi
cultural content - impact on Developing countries, Cross-cultural communication: problems
and challenges. Communication as a process: Introduction to semiotics – analysis - aspects of
signs and symbols denotations and connotations - paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of
signs. Message – Meaning – Connotation - Denotation Culture/Codes etc.,
Communication and Public opinion: nature, meaning and process
Culture and Public Opinion
Public opinion is an aggregate of the individual views, attitudes, and beliefs about a particular
topic, expressed by a significant proportion of a community. In 1918, the American sociologist
Charles Horton Cooley emphasized public opinion as a process of interaction and mutual
influence rather than a state of broad agreement. The American political scientist V.O. Key
defined public opinion in 1961 as “opinions held by private persons which governments find it
prudent to heed.” Although the term public opinion was not used until the 18th century,
phenomena that closely resemble public opinion seem to have occurred in many historical
epochs. The prophets of ancient Israel sometimes justified the policies of the government to
the people and sometimes appealed to the people to oppose the government. In both cases,
they were concerned with swaying the opinion of the crowd.By contrast Plato found little of
value in public opinion, since he believed that society should be governed by philosopher-
kings whose wisdom far exceeded the knowledge and intellectual capabilities of the general
population. And while Aristotle stated that “he who loses the support of the people is a king
no longer,” the public he had in mind was a very select group; in the Athens of his time, the
voting population was limited to about one-third of free adult male citizens.
The formation and Change of Public Opinion
No matter how collective views (those held by most members of a defined public) coalesce
into public opinion, the result can be self-perpetuating. In 1993 the German opinion
researcher Elizabeth Noelle - Neumann characterized this phenomenon as a “spiral of silence,”
noting that people who perceive that they hold a minority view will be less inclined to express
it in public.
1
Components of public opinion: attitudes and values
How many people actually form opinions on a given issue, as well as what sorts of opinions
they form, depends partly on their immediate situations, partly on more-general social-
environmental factors, and partly on their preexisting knowledge, attitudes, and values.
Because attitudes and values play such a crucial role in the development of public opinion
Values are “the deep tides of public mood slow to change, but powerful.” Opinions, in
contrast, are “the ripples on the surface of the public’s consciousness—shallow and easily
changed.”
Attitudes are “the currents below the surface, deeper and stronger,” representing a mid
range between values and opinions. the art of understanding public opinion rests not only
on the measurement of people’s views but also on understanding the motivations behind
those views.
Formation of attitudes
Once an issue is generally recognized, some people will begin to form attitudes about it. If an
attitude is expressed to others by sufficient numbers of people, a public opinion on the topic
begins to emerge. Not all people will develop a particular attitude about a public issue; some
may not be interested, and others simply may not hear about it.The attitudes that are formed
may be held for various reasons. Thus, among people who oppose higher property taxes, one
group may be unable to afford them, another may wish to deny additional tax revenues to
welfare recipients, another may disagree with a certain government policy, and another may
wish to protest what it sees as wasteful government spending. A seemingly homogeneous
body of public opinion may therefore be composed of individual opinions that are rooted in
very different interests and values. If an attitude does not serve a function such as one of the
above, it is unlikely to be formed: an attitude must be useful in some way to the person who
holds it.
Culture and communication
What is communication, why do we communication, how do we communicate, and to what
end, are all questions we ask in the study of communication. At its most basic, communication
is the exchange of information and meaning. We are constantly communicating, in a wide
range of different contexts, such as with each other (interpersonal communication), with
different cultural groups or subgroups (intercultural communication), or to large audiences
(mass communication), just to name a few. However, to understand communication, we need
to understand the place of communication in culture.Culture as a term is widely used in
academic as well as in daily speech and discourse, referring to different concepts and
understandings. While the term originally stems from ancient Greek and Roman cultures
(Latin: Cultural) it has various dimensions today built from the different needs and uses of
each field, be it anthropology, sociology or communication studies. For communication
studies, we might start by defining culture as a set of learned behaviors shared by a group of
people through interaction. Cultures are not fixed, monolithic entities, but are fluid, always
changing and responding to pressures and influences, such as the changing experiences of its
2
members, or interaction with other cultures.Culture and society, though similar, are different
things.
Cultures are defined by these learned behaviors and schemas. Societies at their simplest can
be defined as groups of interacting individuals. However, it is through this interaction that
individuals develop and communicate the markers of culture, and so in human societies, it is
very difficult to separate out ‘culture’ and ‘society.’And thus we come back to the role of
communication within culture. The idea of culture as something that is shared means that it is
vital to understand culture and communication in relation to one another.
The relationship between culture and communication, in all its forms, is tightly interwoven
and interlinked. We can see that communication enables the spread and reiteration of culture.
Both communications and the media propagate the values and schemas of a culture through
the repeated interaction and exchange enabled by the communications process.
Notice the emphasis on repeated there: it is not in single instances of communication that
culture is made, but rather in the repeated exchange of information and the reinforcement of
the ideals and values it embodies, all conveyed within a particular moment. One way we can
think about this complex interplay is by looking at du Gay, et al (1997) notion of the circuit of
culture.The circuit of culture is a way of exploring a product of a culture as a complex object
that is affected by and has an impact on a number of different aspects of that culture.
3
GLOBAL MEDIA-MULTICULTURAL CONTENT
Media and communication technologies are engines of globalization, and shape the rapidly
changing social, political, economic and cultural environments in which we live. Global media
and communication affect how we access, share and exchange information, how we work and
how we see the world and our places in it. They transform relations between states and blur
the boundaries (real and imagined) separating people and communities.
The deterritorialized nature of new communication technology generated early idealistic ideas
about the emergence of a “global village” (McLuhan, 1964), and in response to the rapidly
increasing complexity of global communication infrastructures, theories about the rise of a
“network society” (Castells, 1996) followed. Satellite technology has enabled the simultaneous
distribution of news across nation-state borders, and transnational1 media networks such as
CNN have “become emblematic of a world in which place and time mean less and less”
(Harvard, 2001: 18).Transnational news services are believed to offer new styles and formats
for journalistic practices, contributing to the loosening up of national identities, and
arguments about an emerging “global public sphere” have been pursued (e.g. Volkmer, 2003).
4
Thus, the media are allegedly key elements of the compression of time and space, one of the
salient features of globalization (Harvey, 1989), and are viewed as both products of and
significant contributors to the fluidity of globalization (Chalaby, 2003).
Impact on Developing countries
Global broadcasting corporations not only provide people with a better understanding of
global politics (Chalaby, 2003), they also offer new journalistic styles and formats able to
transgress the nation-state outlook and, in a dialectic relationship with national news angles,
give rise to new horizons for political identity and citizenship (Volkmer, 2003).
Accordingly, transnational media have been attributed the potential to constitute a global, or
at least a transnational, public sphere (Chalaby, 2003; Volkmer, 2003). The idea that
transnational media networks are able to move beyond the nation-state paradigm has,
however, not escaped criticism. Hafez (2007) argues that there is not enough empirical
evidence of a media system that could accurately be described as “global” in the sense of
enhancing the possibilities of a global public sphere. On the contrary, the majority of empirical
evidence points in the direction of reinforced stability of the nation-state paradigm.
Information and news may be transnational in character, but the media in fact still are, to a
considerable extent, local and national phenomena. In times of war, Western propaganda is
also present in transnational media, as are polarizing perspectives of “us” and “them” and
stereotypical depictions of the “other” (Hafez, 2007; Thussu, 2003): “Today’s international
exchanges of images and information, it seems, are no guarantee for global intertextuality in
news, for growing awareness of ‘the others stories and perspectives, and for an increased
complexity of world views in the mass media and beyond.” (Hafez, 2009: 329) “Global crises
are principally constituted epistemologically as ‘global crises’ through the news media where
most of us get to know about them and where they are visualized, narrativized, publicly
defended and sometimes challenged and contested.” (Cottle, 2009: 165, emphasis in original)
Admittedly, local or national crises, such as 9/11, the 2010 flooding in Haiti, or the 2011
Egyptian revolution, need the connectivity that a cross-border communication infrastructure
provides in order to become known, more or less simultaneously, to people around the globe.
But, to achieve their global features – to become global crises, involving people and
generating action across the world – they are entirely dependent on discursive constructions
of them as such.
Cross Cultural Communication: Problems and Challenges
Cross cultural communication thus refers to the communication between people who have
differences in any one of the following: styles of working, age, nationality, ethnicity, race,
gender, sexual orientation, etc. Cross cultural communication can also refer to the attempts
that are made to exchange, negotiate and mediate cultural differences by means of language,
gestures and body language. It is how people belonging to different cultures communicate
with each other.Each individual can practice culture at varying levels. There is the culture of
the community he grows up in, there is work culture at his work place and other cultures to
which one becomes an active participant or slowly withdraws from. An individual is constantly
5
confronted with the clash between his original culture and the majority culture that he is
exposed to daily. Cultural clashes occur as a result of individuals believing their culture is
better than others.
Cross cultural communication has been influenced by a variety of academic disciplines. It is
necessary in order to avoid misunderstandings that can lead to conflicts between individuals
or groups. Cross cultural communication creates a feeling of trust and enables cooperation.
The focus is on providing the right response rather than providing the right message.When
two people of different cultures encounter each other, they not only have different cultural
backgrounds but their systems of turn – talking are also different. Cross cultural
communication will be more effective and easier if both the speakers have knowledge of the
turn taking system being used in the conversation (For example: One person should not
monopolize the conversation or only one person should talk at a time).
Laray Barna’s Sources of problems and Challenges
1) Assumption of similarities: This refers to our tendency to think how we behave and act is
the universally accepted rule of behavior. When someone differs, we have a negative view of
them.
2) Language Differences: Problems occur when there is an inability to understand what the
other is saying because different languages are being spoken. Talking the same language itself
can sometimes lead to discrepancies as some words have different meanings in various
contexts, countries or cultures
3) Nonverbal Misinterpretation: The way we dress, the way we express ourselves through our
body language, eye contact and gestures also communicates something. A simple gesture like
nodding the head is considered to be YES in certain cultures and NO in others
4) Preconceptions and Stereotypes: Stereotypes involves putting people into pre - defined
slots based on our image of how we think they are or should be. It may consist of a set of
characteristics that we assume that all members of a group share. This may be true or may be
false. But stereotypes may lead to wrongful expectations and notions. A preconceived opinion
of another can lead to bias and discrimination
5) Tendency to evaluate: Humans tend to make sense of the behavior and communication of
others by analyzing them from one’s own cultural point of view without taking into
consideration why the other person is behaving or communicating a certain way
6) High anxiety : Sometimes being confronted with a different cultural perspective will create
an anxious state in an individual who does not know how to act or behave and what is
considered to be appropriate (For example: A Japanese man and an American having a
business meeting where both are unsure of the others cultural norms)To reduce the above
barriers to cross cultural communication, one can take the effort to develop one’s listening
skills. This will ensure that we start hearing the real meaning of what is being said instead of
understanding at face value. Becoming aware of our perceptions towards others will ensure
6
that we take steps to not prejudge a person or stereotype them. By accepting people and their
differences and acknowledging that we don’t know everything will make us open up to people
and their differences resulting in us using contextual information for better understanding.
Introduction to semiotics
SEMIOTICS - Semiotics is the study of signs. Not road signs, but something more general. It’s
the study of meaning-making and meaningful communication. Semiotics is related to
linguistics, the study of language, but it limits itself to the signs and symbols part of
communication. That’s not to say it’s all visual. Words and numbers are signs along with
photographs, icons, and road signs. Anything that’s capable of representing something else is
a sign. Anything that creates meaning is a sign. The reason for studying semiotics is that is
gives us a useful set of tools for identifying and creating the patterns that lead to meaning in
communication. Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce are the founders of
semiotics, though each worked independently of the other. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–
1913) was a Swiss linguist, who was also the father of modern linguistics. Charles Sanders
Peirce (1839–1914) was an American philosopher and the founder of pragmatism. They’re
names will come up a few times throughout this series.
Signifier and Signified
Saussure said the sign is the basic unit of meaning and he thought signs were made up of two
parts.
Signifier — The form of a sign. The form might be a sound, a word, a photograph, a facial
expression or Magritte’s painting of pipe that’s not a pipe.
Signified — The concept or object that’s represented.
The concept or object might be an actual pipe, the command to stop, or a warning of
radioactivity. Remember that words, as well is pictures, are signs The word “pipe” is a sign for
an actual pipe as much as Magritte’s painting is a sign for an actual pipe. The signified is the
same in both cases, that of a real pipe than can be filled with tobacco, which you can light and
smoke. What’s different in the two signs is the signifier. In Magritte’s case the signifier is a
painting and with the word “pipe” the signifier is the word itself. Both are representations of
an actual pipe.
The Interpretant
Peirce added a third part to signs, the interpreter. He saw signs consisting of The represent
amen (signifier) — the sign’s form.
An Interpretant — what the audience makes of the sign.
An Object (signified) — what the sign refers to.One thing to make clear is the Interpretant is
not the same as an interpreter. It’s not the audience, but what the audience makes of the sign.
For example if someone looked at Magritte’s painting and saw it as a piece of wood rather
7
than a pipe, it’s that sense that it represents a piece of wood that’s the Interpretant and not
the person making the interpretation. That’s probably not very intuitive so let me add another
example. Imagine a street light at an intersection turning red and several cars stopping.
According to Peirce’s model the red light of the traffic light is the representamen (signifier),
the act of cars stopping is the object (signified), and the idea that a red light is a command for
vehicles to stop is the Interpretant. If it’s still not clear, don’t worry. The basic concept should
become clearer as we continue through the series. Peirce said “We only think in signs” and
added that anything is a sign if someone interprets it as meaning something other than itself.
He also added that signs can be defined as belonging to one of three categories, icon, index, or
symbol, which is where I want to pick this up next week.
Formation of Meaning
Cultural and personal experience will curate how people first interpret the sign. It helps us to
understand that reality depends not only on the intentions we put into our work but also the
interpretation of the people who experience our work. These meanings are actively created,
according to a complex interplay of systems and rules of which we are normally unaware.
8
Signified and Signifier
To further elaborate on what is signified and signifier, here’s an example below.
9
Here, the McDonald’s iconic yellow M is the immediately when we see it and the slogan, “i’m
lovin’ it”, which is their tag line is the signifier where people link easily to the famous fast food
Connotation and Denotation are two principal methods of Here, the McDonald’s iconic yellow
M is the signified whereby we can relate to McDonald’s immediately when we see it and the
slogan, “i’m lovin’ it”, which is their tag line is the signifier where people link easily to the
famous fast food chain. In certain cases, the signifier has more than one signified meaning like
the examples above.
In certain cases, the signifier has more than one signified meaning like the examples above.
Connotation and Denotation
Connotation and Denotation are two principal methods describing the sign.
1
0
1
1
1
2
Syntagm and Paradigm:
1
3
A signified can be explained or described using the syntagm and paradigm framework as
explained below.
Paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of signs
1
4
Item of language has a paradigmatic relationship with every other item which can be
substituted for it (such as cat with dog), and a syntagmatic relationship with items which occur
within the same construction (for example, in The cat sat on the mat, cat with the and sat on
the mat). The relationships are like axes, as shown in the accompanying diagram.Paradigmatic
contrasts at the level of sounds allow one to identify the phonemes (minimal distinctive sound
units) of a language: for example, bat, fat, mat contrast with one another on the basis of a
single sound, as do bat, bet, bit, and bat, bap, ban. Stylistically, rhyme is due to the
paradigmatic substitution of sounds at the beginning of syllables or words, as in: ‘Tyger! Tyger!
burning bright / In the forests of the night.’On the lexical level, paradigmatic contrasts indicate
which words are likely to belong to the same word class (part of speech): cat, dog, parrot in
the diagram are all nouns, sat, slept, perched are all verbs. Syntagmatic relations between
words enable one to build up a picture of co-occurrence restrictions within SYNTAX, for
example, the verbs hit, kick have to be followed by a noun (Paul hit the wall, not *Paul hit),
but sleep, doze do not normally do so (Peter slept, not *Peter slept the bed). On the semantic
level, paradigmatic substitutions allow items from a semantic set to be grouped together, for
example Angela came on Tuesday (Wednesday, Thursday, etc.), while syntagmatic
associations indicate compatible combinations: rotten apple, the duck quacked, rather than
*curdled apple, *the duck squeaked.
1
5
