Areas of Communications

Introduction
Communication is the process of sharing our ideas, thoughts, and feelings with other people and having those ideas, thoughts, and feelings understood by the people we are talking with. When we communicate we speak, listen, and observe. The way we communicate is a learned style. As children we learn from watching our parents and other adults communicate. As an adult we can learn to improve the way we communicate by observing others who communicate effectively, learning new skills, and practicing those skills.

Communication Model
Sender Message (information) is sent by the sender Receiver Receives the message and responds to message (feedback)

Areas/Levels of Communications
Interpersonal communication Group Communications Organizational Communication Mass communication Intrapersonal communication

Areas of Communication

1. Interpersonal communication
It is usually defined by communication scholars in numerous ways, usually describing participants who are dependent upon one another. It can involve one on one conversations or individuals interacting with many people within a society. It helps us understand how and why people behave and communicate in different ways to construct and negotiate a social reality. While interpersonal communication can be defined as its own area of study, it also occurs within other contexts like groups and organizations. Interpersonal communication is the process that we use to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings to another person. Our interpersonal communication skills are learned behaviors that can be improved through knowledge, practice, feedback, and reflection. Interpersonal communication includes message sending and message reception between two or more individuals. This can include all aspects of communication such as listening, persuading, asserting, nonverbal communication, and more. A primary concept of interpersonal communication looks at communicative acts when there are few individuals involved unlike areas of communication such as group interaction, where there may be a large number of individuals involved in a communicative act. Individuals also communicate on different interpersonal levels depending on who they are engaging in communication with. For example, if an individual is communicating with a family member, that communication will more than likely differ from the type of communication used when engaged in a communicative act with a friend or significant other. Overall, interpersonal communication can be conducted using both direct and indirect mediums of communication such as face-to-face interaction, as well as computer-mediatedcommunication. Successful interpersonal communication assumes that both the message senders and the message receivers will interpret and understand the messages being sent on a level of understood meanings and implications.

2. Group Communication
Group communication basically implies a many-to-many communication style in a group; this goes beyond both one-to-one communication (i.e., unicast) and one-to-many communication (i.e., multicast). Apart from the distinction in communication style, group communication, in most cases, requires certain reliability guarantees in terms of the messages sent from source(s) to members of a group. Or Small Group communication is any kind of communication within a group or a team. The key to small group communication is that everyone is participating in the discussion. Examples of small group communication are a family dinner, hanging out with your friends, a class discussion, or a football huddle. Group communication refers to communication between 3 or more individuals. Small group communication includes numbers from 3 to about 20 people, and
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Areas of Communication

large group communication includes numbers larger than that (i.e., a lecture hall of 300 students or a theatrical production with an audience of 3,000

3. Organizational Communication
Organizational communication has increasingly focused on the meso level of communication (group, organizational, and inter-organizational communication). This review similarly focuses on the meso, as opposed to the micro, level. Moving beyond the micro to the meso level introduces further distinctions, such as formal/informal, vertical/horizontal/diagonal, and internally versus externally directed. Managers have traditionally spent the majority of their time communicating in one form or another (meetings, face-to-face discussions, memos, letters, e-mails, reports, etc.). Today, however, more and more employees find that an important part of their work is communication, especially now that service workers outnumber production workers and research as well as production processes emphasize greater collaboration and teamwork among workers in different functional groups. Moreover, a sea-change in communication technologies has contributed to the transformation of both work and organizational structure. For these reasons, communication practices and technologies have become more important in all organizations, but they are perhaps most important in knowledge-intensive organizations and sectors and, as such, are of great significance to science organizations and to public science management. The study of organizational communication is not new, but it has only recently achieved some degree of recognition as a field of academic study. It has largely grown in response to the needs and concerns of business. The first communication programs were typically located in speech departments, but most business schools now include organizational communication as a key element of study. The study of organizational communication recognizes that communication in organizations goes far beyond training managers to be effective speakers and to have good interpersonal communication skills. Moreover, it recognizes that all organizations, not just business organizations, have communication needs and challenges Miller (1995) concludes: Studying organizational communication requires looking at how communication processes contribute to the coordination of behavior in working toward organization and individual goals.

4. Mass communication
Mass communication is communication directed toward a large audience simultaneously, usually electronically. This would be television, radio, the internet, newspapers, the PHS morning announcements, etc. The term used to describe the academic study of the various means by which individuals and entities relay information through mass media to large segments of the population at the same
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Areas of Communication

time. It is usually understood to relate to newspaper and magazine publishing, radio, television and film, as these are used both for disseminating news and for advertising. It technically refers to the process of transferring or transmitting a message to a large group of people typically, this requires the use of some form of media such as newspapers, television, or the Internet. Another definition of the term, and perhaps the most common one, refers to an academic study of how messages are relayed to large groups of people instantaneously. This area of study, most often referred to as mass communication, is offered at many colleges and universities worldwide as an area of study, and some colleges teach nothing but mass comm. Due to its pertinence to all people around the world, mass communication is becoming more popular and may offer graduates careers in various countries worldwide.

5. Intrapersonal communication
This is mental conversation or communication with yourself. Anytime you communicate with yourself, it is considered intrapersonal communication. Examples of intrapersonal communication are to-do lists, journals, assignment notebooks, and calendars, any kind of reminder to do something later, congratulating yourself on a job well done, or any kind of thinking to yourself. Intrapersonal communication is language use or thought internal to the communicator. It can be useful to envision intrapersonal communication occurring in the mind of the individual in a model which contains a sender, receiver, and feedback loop. Intrapersonal communication can encompass:

Day-dreaming Speaking aloud (talking to oneself), reading aloud, repeating what one hears; the additional activities of speaking and hearing (in the third case of hearing again) what one thinks, reads or hears may increase concentration and retention. This is considered normal, and the extent to which it occurs varies from person to person. The time when there should be concern is when talking to oneself occurs outside of socially acceptable situations. Writing (by hand, or with a word processor, etc.) one's thoughts or observations: the additional activities, on top of thinking, of writing and reading back may again increase self-understanding ("How do I know what I mean until I see what I say?") and concentration. It aids ordering one's thoughts; in addition it produces a record that can be used later again. Copying text to aid memorizing also falls in this category. Making gestures while thinking: the additional activity, on top of thinking, of body motions, may again increase concentration, assist in problem solving, and assist memory.

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