Communications and Media: Compare/Contrast Prospectus

Communications and Media: Compare/Contrast Prospectus

The communication phenomenon comes from a personal experience regarding daily interactions with people. Building good interpersonal relationships is being open about issues and listening well. Unfortunately, some interpersonal relationships between friends or romantic partners can become strained because of choosing silence over solving a conflict. This includes a person who, instead of opening up about a problem, keeps quiet about it and lets it affect how they emotionally and physically respond negatively to their partner’s communication. While these actions and silence might communicate a problem, a lack of indication of what the problem is and communicating with the intention of fact-finding and developing a solution can lead to strained relationships and communications. Besides, some people may act in anger by keeping quiet about a problem which can be a misunderstanding or misinformation that can lead to punishing the person for what they did not do in the first place leading to toxicity in relationships.

An excellent example of this communication phenomenon is what a friend, Brian, experienced. One day, a friend (male gender) visited Brian and hooked up with a girl named Faith. Surprisingly, the girl knew Brian’s girlfriend. One day, Brian asked the girlfriend if she knew Faith. Although the girlfriend denied knowing her, she silently became angry at Brian and started distancing herself from the relationship. She went on to break up with Brian, thinking Faith was another girlfriend. Later, Brian confronted her with the other friend who had come with Faith and explained the situation, only to realize the real girl’s name was not Faith but Mercy, and the two girls had known each other since childhood. The girlfriend, who had kept quiet and never communicated the issue, felt embarrassed. Still, it was too late to salvage the relationship as such silence and assumptions without opening up had led to the escalation of the conflict. Unfortunately, this happens in many relationships, especially where some partners do not speak up and instead tend to keep quiet and form assumptions, some of which could be wrong and result in poor communication and conflicts.

The theories applied to this communication phenomenon entail the predicted outcome value theory and relational dialectics theory. First, the predicted outcome theory entails that the initial interactions between two individuals, primarily those romantically involved or friends, are evaluated to measure the rewards and costs of future interactions and friendships. If the interactions predict a positive outcome in the future, it could lead to attraction and lasting friendships (Ramirez et al., 2015). In this case, this theory will be applied to analyze the importance of ensuring that an individual forms relationships based on the initial interactions between individuals to avoid toxicity or poor communication between partners where partners choose silence and assumptions over openly discussing an issue to find a solution. While most people tend to ignore these initial interactions and hope that a person can change In the future, being able to establish grounds for a friendship is critical to leading to the right group of friends that can help and build each other in the long term. The second theory includes the relational dialectics theory, which entails that tensions are typical in relationships and keep changing between people (Baxter & Scharp, 2015). In this case, communicating the issues and being willing to accommodate and accept each other’s needs can lead to positive and productive interpersonal relationships. Therefore, the theory applies to discussing the importance of communicating and raising issues in time without basing decisions and silence on assumptions and biased thinking that could lead to conflicts that were not there in the first place.

References

Baxter, L. A., & Scharp, K. M. (2015). Dialectical tensions in relationships. The international encyclopedia of interpersonal communication, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118540190.wbeic017

Ramirez, A., Sumner, E. M., Fleuriet, C., & Cole, M. (2015). When online dating partners meet offline: The effect of modality switching on relational communication between online daters. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 20(1), 99-114. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12101