LONDON SCHOOL of PUBLIC RELATION

COMMUNICATION STUDIES

WEEKLY DISCUSSION
SESSION 4

Oleh:

Joshua Boanerges Tampi

21072140019

POSTGRADUATE PROGRAM

MARKETING COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT

JAKARTA

2021
 STATEMENT LETTER

I certify that the attached assignment is my own work and that any material obtained from other
sources has been acknowledged following the latest version of APA style. I declare that I know what
plagiarism is and I confirm I have not plagiarized any part of this assignment.
I grant permission to the London School of Public Relations to make copies of assignments for
assessment, review and/or record keeping purposes. I note that the London School of Public Relations
reserves the right to check my assignment for plagiarism anytime even on mid and/or the final exam. I am
ready to bear any consequences including a fail grade in the subject, ineligibility to proceed to thesis
defense, and/or graduate in the given year without any complaint or dispute.

Name : Joshua Boanerges Tampi

Signed : Date : 8th April 2021

Saya menyatakan dengan ini bahwa tugas yang dibuat ini adalah pekerjaan saya sendiri dan semua
materi yang ada sudah dituliskan sumber referensinya dengan mengikuti APA style versi yang terbaru. Saya
menyatakan bahwa saya memahami tentang plagiarism dan tidak ada satu bagian pun dari tugas ini yang
mengandung plagiarisme.
Saya mengizinkan The London School of Public Relations untuk menilai, mengevaluasi, dan/atau
menyimpan tugas ini. Saya mengizinkan pemeriksaan untuk mendeteksi plagiarism ini dilakukan setiap
saat baik saat Mid maupun Final Exam. Saya menyanggupi untuk menanggung segala akibat dari
plagiarisme yang dilakukan baik jika tidak lulus dari mata kuliah, tidak dapat mengikuti sidang thesis/non
thesis, maupun tidak dapat mengikuti wisuda tanpa melakukan protes dalam bentuk apapun.

Name : Joshua Boanerges Tampi

Tanda Tangan : Date : 8th April 2021

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 CONTENTS

COVER PAGE ............................................................................................................................................... 1

STATEMENT LETTER ................................................................................................................................... 2
CONTENTS .................................................................................................................................................. 3
CHAPTER 1 OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................... 4
1.1. Sociopsychological Tradition.................................................................................................... 4
1.2. Sociocultural Tradition ............................................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER 2 ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................................. 6
2.1. Social in Sociopsychological & Sociocultural Tradition ......................................................... 6
2.2. The Difference Between These Two Traditions ...................................................................... 6
2.3. Sociopsychological Tradition From Images ............................................................................ 7
CHAPTER 3 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 10
3.1. The Importance of Sociopsychological and Sociocultural Traditions ................................. 10
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................................... 11

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 CHAPTER 1
OVERVIEW

1.1. Sociopsychological Tradition

According to Berger and Chaffee, communication is a process of expression,
interaction, and influence. Humans have behaviors that show psychological
mechanisms, states and traits. Interaction of an individual with others will produce a
range of cognitive, emotional and behavioral effects (Berger & Chaffee, 1987).
Communication in the perspective of sociopsychological tradition is about how
individuals interact and influence each other. Communication may happen face-to-face
or using technological media and may flow one to one, one to many, or many to many.
However, the formats use interposed elements that mediate between individuals (Craig,
1999).

In sociopsychological tradition, scholars learn about the unique personality traits,

perception and learning, emotions, attitudes, prejudice, aggression, and social behavior
of an individual (Littlejohn & Foss, 2008). Scholars have strong focus on learning the
individual’s characteristic using sociopsychological approach to theorize aspects such as
behavior and cognitive processes through the use of empirical, scientific observation,
and experiments (Craig & Muller, 2007). Sociopsychological tradition involves
empiricism as the distinguishing element of this tradition. Empiricism helps scholars to
understand numerous cause-and-effect relationship that successfully predict human
behaviors, including communication (Griffin et al., 2015).

Communication in the perspective of sociopsychological tradition regards

communication as a social process in which expression, interaction and influence are
involved in cause and effect. Scholars can discover the relationship between cause and
effect through careful observation (Maguire, 2006). However, the psychological
variables that influence behavior are dependent on the individual. The psychological
cause and effect patterns in each individual differ from person to person (West &
Turner, 2010). Therefore, sociopsychological tradition can be defined as the study

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 aimed at understanding an individual's social behaviors, which involve personality,
emotion, perception, cognition, and many related things.

1.2. Sociocultural Tradition

The sociocultural tradition is a mix of several theoretical academic disciplines such
as social psychology, sociology, anthropology, and semiotics (Craig, 1999). The
difference between this tradition and sociopsychological tradition is that interaction is
about society's standpoint and not the individual (Craig & Muller, 2007). The
sociocultural tradition's influence states the importance of society that is expressed
through conflict and culture in human interaction (Craig, 1999). Society in this
perspective is regarded as patterns of interaction which meanings, roles, rules and
cultural values are determined and communicated (Littlejohn & Foss, 2008).

Reality is a social construction is the premise of sociocultural tradition (Garcia-

Jimenez, 2014). In the micro-level of the interactional process, the reality is produced
and reproduced (Garcia-Jimenez, 2014; Littlejohn & Foss, 2008). The communication
concept in sociocultural tradition is the involvement of symbols to interact between
members of society and create unique sociocultural patterns (Craig & Muller, 2007).
Social order and reality are constructed and reconstructed by constant creation and
recreation of sociocultural patterns (Maguire, 2006; Griffin et al., 2015).

Human interaction in sociocultural conception is symbolic, and reality is

constructed by symbols related to the semiotic tradition. However, the meaning of signs
is not inherent in human but constructed socially during communication between
individuals in society. The focus of sociocultural tradition is examining many social
realities that lends itself to the critical tradition. A critical perspective is adopted to point
out injustices or inequalities in society’s communication problems (Craig, 1999).

Cultural values, roles, meaning are the sociocultural aspect of the interaction
process. This tradition focuses on how people construct the reality in their social group,
culture or organization. Sociocultural tradition explains how meaning can be different
depending on the context. Symbols can also convey meaning where the change of
communication situation can inflict different interpretation. Meaning and symbol have
their pivotal role in social and cultural groups when it comes to creating reality.

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 CHAPTER 2
ANALYSIS

2.1. Social in Sociopsychological & Sociocultural Tradition

The meaning of social in the sociopsychological tradition perspective is how
humans involve various aspects to interact with other people. This tradition will explain
the cause and effect of a person's relationship in interacting by observing various
aspects. Some of them are expression, interaction, influence. Then individual's unique
personality traits, perception and learning, emotions, attitudes, prejudice, aggression,
and social behavior can affect how humans interact with others. So, the conclusion that
the social notion in this tradition is about a person's relationship with each other forms
an interaction in which the interaction process involves various psychological aspects.

Social in sociocultural tradition is about the interaction inside society. People

interact based on the culture they hold. Interpretation plays its part in constructing the
way people interact with each other. Symbols and meanings are the media to construct
interpretation. A symbol’s meaning in a culture can be different compared to the
meaning based on another culture. Cultural values, meanings, roles and rules are the
factors that form the way of interaction (West & Turner, 2010). People are not born
with knowledge of culture. However, people can learn culture during the process of
socialization, and this becomes the material used by people to view the world (Samovar
et al., 2007).

2.2. The Difference Between These Two Traditions

The obvious distinction between these two is how researcher analyze the tradition.
Sociopsychological tradition is the way to understand an individual’s behavior as social
being. The concept focuses on behavior of social individual by looking at several
variables. Scholars obtain information by analyzing an individual in sociopsychological
tradition while sociocultural tradition focuses on studying society, not only an
individual.

According to Craig and Muller, sociocultural tradition voices criticism to other

traditions, including socio-psychological tradition. For instance, socio-psychological

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 tradition is criticized for being too excessive in individualism, insensitivity to cultural
differences, and inattention to macro-social influences (Craig & Muller, 2007).
Therefore, the above statement justifies that socio-psychological focuses on studying
individuals' interaction while sociocultural mainly focuses on groups.

Sociocultural explains the meaning of symbols based on the culture. For example,
beauty standards are constructed by the culture where the culture defines beauty in the
form of a thin, slender body, tall, white skin, long hair, big eyes, and a pointed nose.
However, this standard can be different in another culture. People who live in a culture
where those standards above are applied shall hold that paradigm. In Thailand, beauty is
defined when their women wear iron necklace. This necklace will extend the neck's
length, and the longer the neck, the more beautiful the woman will be (Aprilita &
Listyani, 2016).

Therefore, in sociocultural tradition, the reality is produced by individuals’

construction in their minds based on what they see from the outside, such as their
culture. People follow philosophies, live, and do things based on the thoughts of others.
Similar to the beauty standard, where women follow the view of their society regarding
beauty standards. On the other hand, sociopsychological tradition views individuals as a
being with free behavior, meaning they do things based on their own experience and
cognitive view.

Sociopsychological tradition does not reject the involvement of things outside the
individual to influence how individuals interact with others. However, the main
emphasis in this tradition is the individual itself, not the groups or society.
Sociocultural, on the contrary, emphasize how construction of reality is based on the
process of interaction within groups, communities and cultures.

2.3. Sociopsychological Tradition From Images

Based on what I learned through the image on the Youtube channel’s video, many
pictures imply a set of individuals’ behavior. For example, the first picture saying about
a woman who forgets to socialize her kids. When I searched this picture on the internet,
I found out that the picture was about homeschooling socializing myths. The writer
emphasizes the point where kids can still socialize well even though they are

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homeschooling (Minismallholding, 2019). This greatly represents how people can
interpret something differently regardless of their cultures.

Homeschooling has been a culture for Western people. However, it turns out not
everyone agrees to homeschool. The website tells us about how kids can still socialize,
meaning some people still worry that their kids are unable to socialize if they are
homeschooled. While sociocultural defines individuals follow others' perspective that
dominates in their society, sociopsychological says that individuals behave according to
their own experience. Therefore, interpretation regarding something might be different
per individuals because of their own experience.

Also, there are many pictures on that video that can be interpreted differently.
Many pictures are expressions of the creators to convey their messages. The messages
they want people to know are intended only for people who have the same perspective.
For me personally, I cannot fully comprehend the meaning or the hidden meaning
behind those memes precisely. However, I guess those pictures are memes intended
only for people who can get them, meaning for those who cannot fathom the messages,
those pictures, and their messages are not for them.

Those messages on the pictures are constructed based on the creators mental
process when it comes to getting knowledge. For example, if the creators behavior is
creating memes, then they tend to convey messages using memes. Also, if they have
experience in politics, they will share messages using political memes. We can also see
some oration from Christians that shows their religion does not kill. I don’t know the
exact situation since I didn’t conduct any research on that picture.

However, this implies that those people have experience and behavioral tradition
that follows the value they regarded as a Christian value. Since they believe according
to their experience, either by listening to the sermon or experiencing the Christian value
by themselves, they showed that Christianity does not permit killing. The video says
that this is part of the sociopsychological tradition. Therefore we can assume that
religion also has involvement in the interaction of individuals.

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 I cannot explain all the pictures because I guess many are memes that I cannot
comprehend. In my opinion, memes are related to culture, and I am not living in the
creators’ culture, then I cannot fully understand the whole message unless I do my
research on those pictures one by one.

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 CHAPTER 3
CONCLUSION

3.1. The Importance of Sociopsychological and Sociocultural Traditions

Sociopsychological and socio-cultural traditions are part of seven traditions by
Robert T. Craig. These two traditions are important for scholars to understand social
interactions in the world. Different perspectives give different knowledge regarding
social interactions, including communications. We cannot say only one tradition is
better because both have their own advantages. These two approaches can be effective if
used in suitable conditions. For example, if scholars want to understand how individuals
interact with others, then sociopsychological tradition with its various psychological
aspects is applied. However, if trying to research how society defines a symbol, how its
people interact and behave, then socio-cultural tradition is appropriated. In other words,
these two traditions are utterly important. A different situation requires a different
approach to understand social interaction.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aprilita, D., & Listyani, R. H. (2016). Representasi Kecantikan Perempuan dalam Media Sosial
Instagram (Analisis Semiotika Roland Barthes pada Akun @mostbeautyindo,
@Bidadarisurga, dan @papuan_girl). Paradigma, 4(3), 2.
Berger, C. R., & Chaffee, S. H. (1987). Handbook of Communication Science. Newbury Park: CA:
Sage.
Craig, R. T. (1999). Communication Theory as a Field. International Communication Association,
9(2), 143.
Craig, R. T., & Muller, H. L. (2007). Theorizing Communication: Reading Across Traditions.
London: Sage Publications.
Garcia-Jimenez, L. (2014). The Pragmatic Metamodel of Communication: A Cultural Approach
to Interaction. Studies in Communication Sciences, 14(1), 91.
Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., & Sparks, G. (2015). A First Look at Communication Theory. New York:
McGraw-Hill.
Littlejohn, S. W., & Foss, K. A. (2008). Theories of Human Communication . Wadsworth
Cengage: USA.
Maguire, K. C. (2006). Making Sense of the Seven Communication Traditions. Communication
Teacher, 20(4), 89.
Minismallholding. (2019, June 3). Homeschooling Socialising Myths. Retrieved from Steempeak:
https://steempeak.com/homeschooling/@minismallholding/homeschooling-socialising-
myths-awwbwvcb
Samovar, L. A., Porter, R. E., & McDaniel, E. (2007). Communication Between Cultures.
Belmont: CA: Wadsworth.
West, R., & Turner, L. H. (2010). Introducing Communication Theory: Analysis and Application.
New York: McGraw-Hill.

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