Concept Mapping of Social Communication and Its Historical Contexts - Essay Example

CONCEPT MAPPING OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION AND ITS HISTORICAL, CULTURAL, POLITICAL, AND ETHNI GENDER CONTEXTS 2005 CONCEPTMAPPING OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATION AND ITS HISTORICAL, CULTURAL, POLITICAL, AND ETHNICITY/GENDER CONTEXTS Introduction In times of increasing complexity of informational society and rapidly changing technologies social communication and nets of its spread have not however, lost their vitality. Social and organizational scientists, psychologists, educationalists and anthropologists are furthermore concerned with communication within communities and other human groups. However, communication being a complex social phenomenon relies on a number of related phenomena and processes, particularly history and traditions in communities or human groups, cultural determinants in a certain society, political context in which a community or group exists, yet, gender and ethnical variables that also play significant role in the processes of information exchange. There is no doubt that a researcher attempting not only to define the nets of informational exchange in a social group (whether it is community of organizational environment) but also to provide a solid analysis of communication, needs to evaluate all of the above outlined variables. Knowledge and past experience, for example, determine both the quality of information and the ways it is shared. Beliefs and values (what organizational theorists call "organizational climate") not only affect the nature of communication but also shape people's attitudes to information. Generally speaking, these factors play crucial role in understanding community or human group, evaluating complex social-psychological process that take place within and, eventually, to bring changes to the environment: The frame of analysis for the present paper will be as following: Identification of the role of historical, cultural, political and ethnicity/gender variables in communication processes within communities or human groups, discuss the theories; Evaluation of researches and findings in the area; Assessment of existing methodology of concept mapping, its strong and weak points, areas of practical use, etc. Theoretical analysis of the issue The process of communication in communities and organizations itself as well as related variables that mediate this process has a long theory of research in social science and psychology (Abrams et al, 2005). Obviously the first to discuss the nature of communicational processes in organizations was American sociologist Jacob Moreno. Moreno examined implicit social structure of community (orphan's asylum) and came to the conclusion that these groups determine the patterns of communication within the community. Moreno's sociometry methodology was based on asking people about their friends and exploring the structure of relationships in a community and the ways of informational flows (Schein, 1979). Moreno's sociometry may be regarded as the first "map" of organizational processes, that also helped visualizing communicational flows. Moreno was also among the first to define that communication is significantly determined by such phenomena as friendship, relationships, affects, etc. The sociograms (diagrams of points and lines representing relations between community members) also served the first prototype of further "concept mapping" of communities (Schein, 1979). Kurt Lewin as well believed that communication in communities is mediated by different social-psychological processes and phenomena. Perception, experience and history were pivotal in Lewin's model of social communication. Later Lewin's followers designed influential models of group cohesion, social pressure, cooperation, power and leadership and developed the methods for their graphical plotting (Schein, 1979). Cartwright and Harary (1956) developed major idea of Moreno and represented groups and group processes as the collections of points connected by lines. This illustrative construction of "signed and directed" scatterplots, the "social network analysis" as Cartwright and Harary titled it, let the researchers observe group structure from the standpoint of its members. A milestone project dedicated to the point of our analysis was Elton Mayo's classic Hawthorne's experiment. In his longitudinal survey Mayo discovered a number of social-psychological phenomena that determine social communication, particularly existence of informal groups and leadership and group moral (beliefs and values shared by the members of a certain social groups), group identity and sociability as well as channels of communication transmitting (Schein, 1979). Important contribution to the issue was a series of anthropological studies, particularly ones of Bronislaw Malinowski (Malinowski, 1927), Margaret Mead (Mead, 1935) and Claude Levi-Stross. The value of anthropological studies is that they explained the nature of complex communicational process on wider communities and nations. They described social nets existing in society, role of history and historical precedence on communication, group dynamics, moral and beliefs and their role in communication. These and other methods contributed to contemporary understanding of communication and other processes in organizations and provided a solid methodology for concept mapping. The important contribution of all mentioned findings lied in possibility of plotting of social-psychological processes within organizations and communities. Concept maps (cluster analysis) of communicational processes Concepts mapping or clusterization of concepts is now one of the most important methods in social sciences. Concept map is a specific form of a diagram necessary to explore concepts and knowledge of community members as well as the processes of gathering and sharing information. Traditionally, a concept map includes three major variables: a concept or a node, item or question and links that explain the relationship between the nodes. Thus, concept maps have many in commons with the methods of sociometry designed by J. Moreno and group dynamics developed by K. Lewin. Concepts maps help researchers generalize the information which exists among the group members, e.g.: ideas they share, common beliefs and attitudes, outlooks, spread of knowledge, etc. This summarized data then helps analyze other complex processes within communities and organizations. In the other words, concept maps literally "make the knowledge explicit and require the learner to pay attention to the relationship between concepts" (Jonassen and Marra, 1996). Concept maps are not recently invented methods. The prototypes of modern concept maps have been used quite a long time ago when scholars were attempting to describe the causalities and linkages between different issues. However, only since 1980s when statistical packages and other special programs were invented, concept mapping has become accessible to a wide number of scholars. The original concept and methodology of concept mapping was developed by American researcher. Joseph D. Novack (1983). The graphic representation of existing concepts provides easier understanding and analysis of the processes which occur within communities and organizations. Concepts maps help researchers in two major areas. On the one hand they help grouping people's common ideas in clusters (groups which possess the same meaning). On the other hand, they also assist developing the nets of communication in community, including the nets of formal and informal communication. An example of circulogram concept map is on the following chart (Chart 1). Chart 1. A specimen of circulogram concept map It is important to mention that concept maps may be visualized in different forms, particularly in forms of circulagrams ("spider" concept maps), hierarchy concept maps, flowcharts maps, picture/landscape maps, multidimensional maps, etc. Some of them are presented on the following chart (Chart 2): Chart 1. The examples of concept maps (Source: Kinds of Concept Maps, 2005) Another advantage of concept mapping lies in their ability to provide an insight into the patterns of informational flows. Through development of concept maps a researcher receives complex information concerning the hierarchical social structure of a community/organization, the relationships between these groups and the ways information is incepted and transmitted. Concept maps help identifying a source of information, define opinion leaders, assess the channels of information transmitting, define the stages of informational flow, analyze groups of people who share common believes and knowledge or oppose it, etc (Ahlberg, 1993). The method of concept mapping is often used by organizational scientists, sociologists and social-psychologists who reveal and analyze the above mentioned complex social processes. In general, concept maps help researchers identify the following: The body of knowledge in organization New information, its originating, spread and relationships Prior knowledge in the community Share of knowledge Structures of complex social-psychological processes within communities/organi-zation and the methods of their influence (Abrams et al, 2005). Also concept maps are visually simple methods they do require both certain knowledge and practical experience. First of all, concept mapping not only provides researchers visual information of the processes within communities, but they also relies on a complex mathematical and statistical analysis. Besides, concept mapping is rather a set of complex techniques a researcher needs to apply prior to receive the maps. The most complicated of these techniques are data gathering through interviewing of community members, "digitalizing" of retrieved data, its further computerization and, eventually, interpretation. At the same time the advantage of concept maps is that it may be designed even by those who lack profound expertise in the area. The reason is that concept maps may also be developed without applied programs of statistical packages. Drawing concept maps by hand may be a good beginning of a brainstorming session and flow of ideas. Besides, very often concept maps are designed directly after interviewing people and assessing existing knowledge or believes and the ways they are transmitted in communities literally "the way a researcher sees these processes". In this case, nevertheless, a researcher also needs to be aware of fundamentals of the method, and particularly of interviewing and designing charts. It is necessary to underline that almost all methods of concept mapping, as probably other methods of statistical analysis, require the same level of technology. It is like factor or cluster analysis: a researcher may choose different options of analysis but the "visual" result will generally be the same. One must not forget that any applied analysis only reflects original state of affairs within communities. Therewith, different analyses will give researchers almost the same result. The only thing which may be taken into consideration is the type of a map. Some of them are more appropriate for analysis of social processes (e.g.: "spider maps" or hierarchy map) while some appear much more difficult to analyze (e.g.: 3-D maps). As mentioned above, development of concept maps literally requires "group assessment", i.e.: development of questionnaires and interviewing of people. Interviewing and asking questions is the best way to identify implicit processes and phenomena within communities/organizations. As different methods are generally based on the same methodology, instructional strategies also have much in common. The most conventional instruction strategy has the following frame: 1. Select: Focus on a theme and then identify its key issues 2. Rank: Rank the concepts from the most abstract to the most concrete 3. Cluster: Cluster (group) concepts that have a same level of abstraction, interrelate closely and are shared by the same group of people. 4. Arrange: Arrange concepts into a chart representation. 5. Link and add linkages: Link concepts with lines and label each of them with a certain meaning (Instructional strategies, 2005). Each of these strategies is not only successive but actually reinforces the others. Where the methods of concept mapping are used Concept methods are now one of the most frequently tools in a number of social sciences. Originally developed as education assessment methods they are now furthermore utilized in the following areas: Anthropology (to examine the origins of knowledge and believes in communities; assess the ways of their spreads, etc); Social studies (to examine multiple communities-related problems, particularly ethnical and racial minorities, their way of living, spread of knowledge, prejudices, sources of harmful attitudes, patterns of communications, etc.); Pedagogical sciences (to assess educational problems, particularly patterns of communications at schools or classes, sources of rumors and believes, informal leaders, etc); Social psychology and organizational science (to assess such group parameters as leadership, communication nets, methods of effective influence on people, etc.); Other sciences and approaches (Making key concepts, 2005) Bibliography: 1. Abrams, R., Kothe, D., & Iuli, R. (2005). Meaningful learning: A collaborative literature review of concept mapping [Online]. Retrieved October 31, 2005 from http://132.236.243.86/MLRG/CLR-ConceptMapping.htm (visited 1996, February 1) 2. Ahlberg, M. (1993). Concept maps, Vee diagrams and rhetorical argumentation analysis (RAA): Three educational theory-based tools to facilitate meaningful learning. Paper presented at the Third International Seminar on Misconceptions and Educational Strategies in Science and Mathematics, Ithaca, NY. 3. B. Malinowski. Sex and Repression in Savage Society, New-York, 1927 4. Cartwright, D. & Frank Harary (1956) Structural balance: A generalization of Heider's theory. Psychological Review, 63 : 277-292. 5. Instructional strategies online (2005). [Online]. Retrieved October 31, 2005 from http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/conceptmap/ 6. Jonassen, D.H., Beissner, K., & Yacci, M.A. (1993). Structural knowledge: Techniques for conveying, assessing, and acquiring structural knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 7. Jonassen, D. H., & Marra, R. M. (1996) Concept mapping and other formalisms as mindtools for representing knowledge [Online]. Retrieved October 31, 2005 from http://www.icbl.ac.uk/%7egranum/class/altdocs/dav_alt.htm 8. Kinds of Concept Maps, (2005) [Online]. Retrieved October 31, 2005 from http://classes.aces.uiuc.edu/ACES100/Mind/c-m2.html 9. M. Mead. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, New-York, 1935 10. Making key concepts in cultural anthropology and other sciences (2005). [Online]. Retrieved October 31, 2005 from cmc.ihmc.us/papers/cmc2004-029.pdf 11. Novak, J.D. (1991). Clarify with concept maps: Atool for students and teachers alike. The Science Teacher, 58 (7), 45-49. 12. Schein, E. H. (1979). Organizational Psychology (3d edition). Prentice Hall Read More