Leomar Christian G. Nielo June 16, 2015

BsDevCom 2A Interpersonal Communication and Participatory Development Communication

Assignment 1

What is interpersonal communication?

Wikipedia defines Interpersonal communication as “the process that we use to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and feelings to another person.” Though I agree with this definition, I find it vague.  I define Interpersonal Communication as the process we use to build relationships with others through communication by effectively doing the following: Understanding the other’s situation  – in order to build a relationship with someone, we need

to be aware of where the other person is coming from. Communicating in the right manner  – it’s not just what we say that matters but also the tone

we use and how we say it.  Additionally, by considering our understanding of the other person, we figure out how to best our intentions and ideas to that particular individual.

Influencing them to listen and/or take action as needed -  People are more likely to listen to us when we listen first to them and make efforts to establish common grounds.  When we approach any communication with the intention to create a win-win situation, that’s when we will maximize our influence on others and inspire them to action.

At the end of the day, the purpose of communication is to reach a common understanding, build a better relationship, and/or agree on what to do next if action is required.

 Interpersonal means that you treat a person as a unique individual as oppose to impersonal meaning treating a person as an object or you respond to them based on their role in society. So when you think of interpersonal communication think about you having a conversation with a person, responding naturally and with great interest and responsiveness, showing emotions, body language response and non-verbal responses. While impersonal is the opposite, its like the relationship between you and your boss, you respond to him based on his role as your boss, if that makes sense.

Four Principles of Interpersonal Communication

These principles underlie the workings in real life of interpersonal communication. They are basic to communication. We can't ignore them

Interpersonal communication is inescapable

We can't not communicate. The very attempt not to communicate communicates something. Through not only words, but through tone of voice and through gesture, posture, facial expression, etc., we constantly communicate to those around us. Through these channels, we

constantly receive communication from others. Even when you sleep, you communicate. Remember a basic principle of communication in general: people are not mind readers. Another way to put this is: people judge you by your behavior, not your intent.

Interpersonal communication is irreversible

You can't really take back something once it has been said. The effect must inevitably remain. Despite the instructions from a judge to a jury to "disregard that last statement the witness made," the lawyer knows that it can't help but make an impression on the jury. A Russian proverb says, "Once a word goes out of your mouth, you can never swallow it again."

Interpersonal communication is complicated

No form of communication is simple. Because of the number of variables involved, even simple requests are extremely complex. Theorists note that whenever we communicate there are really at least six "people" involved: 1) who you think you are; 2) who you think the other person is; 30 who you think the other person thinks you are; 4) who the other person thinks /she is; 5) who the other person thinks you are; and 6) who the other person thinks you think s/he is.

We don't actually swap ideas, we swap symbols that stand for ideas. This also complicates communication. Words (symbols) do not have inherent meaning; we simply use them in certain ways, and no two people use the same word exactly alike.

OsmoWiio gives us some communication maxims similar to Murphy's law (OsmoWiio, Wiio's Laws--and Some Others (Espoo, Finland: Welin-Goos, 1978):

If communication can fail, it will. If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way

which does the most harm. There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message. The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.

These tongue-in-cheek maxims are not real principles; they simply humorously remind us of the difficulty of accurate communication. (See also A commentary of Wiio's laws by JukkaKorpela.)

Interpersonal communication is contextual

In other words, communication does not happen in isolation. There is:

Psychological context, which is who you are and what you bring to the interaction. Your needs, desires, values, personality, etc., all form the psychological context. ("You" here refers to both participants in the interaction.)

Relational context, which concerns your reactions to the other person--the "mix." Situational context deals with the psycho-social "where" you are communicating. An

interaction that takes place in a classroom will be very different from one that takes place in a bar.

Environmental context deals with the physical "where" you are communicating. Furniture, location, noise level, temperature, season, time of day, all are examples of factors in the environmental context.

Cultural context includes all the learned behaviors and rules that affect the interaction. If you come from a culture (foreign or within your own country) where it is considered rude to make long, direct eye contact, you will out of politeness avoid eye contact. If the other person comes from a culture where long, direct eye contact signals trustworthiness, then we have in the cultural context a basis for misunderstanding.

3 Most Common Myths about Interpersonal Communication It’s immensely difficult to improve your interpersonal communication if you still believe in some common myths.  Here are three of the most common myths:

1. Myth #1: Focus just on the facts :  Facts are important in a conversation but can’t be the only focus.  Often we spend too much time figuring out what facts we want to communicate and too little time on how we want to communicate them.  Every person we speak to is human with insecurities, ambitions, and biases.   So remember the common adage: “It’s not what you say, but how you make people feel that matters.”

2. Myth #2: If I am right, I can say so :  It’s never a good idea to kick someone when they are down.  If someone on your team makes a mistake, communicate that but focus the conversation more on where to go from there and allow them to recover.  If your customer over-billed you, you still don’t want to over-step in your communication.  Approach the situation gently and patiently.  It’s always better for the relationship if you give others the benefit of the doubt.

3. Myth #3: Sugar coat bad news :  Bad news like a layoff message or a message to your boss about a mistake you made at work is difficult to deliver.  It’s important to deliver the message tactfully, but this is not the same as sugar coating.  Sugar coating implies being not direct or clear about the gravity of the message.  While sugar coating a message may make you feel more comfortable, it could confuse the other person or make the listener feel patronized.  Sincerity and a focus on moving forward will help more.   Whatever happened already happened.  So be straightforward and focus on next steps.

https://bemycareercoach.com/soft-skills/communication-skills/interpersonal-communication-definition.html

http://www.pstcc.edu/facstaff/dking/interpr.htm

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130201104310AAMw1RR

What is development communication?

Development communication refers to the use of communication to facilitate social

development.[1] Development communication engages stakeholders and policy makers,

establishes conducive environments, assesses risks and opportunities and promotes information

exchanges to bring about positive social change via sustainable development.[2]Development

communication techniques include information dissemination and education, behavior change,

social marketing, social mobilization, media advocacy, communication for social change and

community participation.

Development communication has been labeled the "Fifth Theory of the Press," with "social

transformation and development," and "the fulfillment of basic needs" as its primary purposes.[3] Jamias articulated the philosophy of development communication which is anchored on three

main ideas, namely: purposive, value-laden and pragmatic.[4] Nora C. Quebral expanded the

definition, calling it "the art and science of human communication applied to the speedy

transformation of a country and the mass of its people from poverty to a dynamic state of

economic growth that makes possible greater social equality and the larger fulfilment of the

human potential."[5] Melcote and Steeves saw it as "emancipation communication", aimed at

combating injustice and oppression.[6]

Example: I’d like to tell a simple story back in the 60’s when the miracle rice was discovered. That time, Secretary Rafael Salas and I went to Los Ba?os to find out what this miracle rice was all about. We went from a doctor in biology, to a doctor in physiology, to so many other learned people sitting around the table, all rice experts from different nations, to find out about miracle rice, etc. I got a few mimeographed papers with some data on miracle rice. Then I said: “Yeah, but what is miracle rice?” I stayed to interview the staff members for a couple of days.

Development Communication Theory

The underlying fact behind the genesis of this theory was that there can be no development without communication. Under the four classical theories, capitalism was legitimized, but under the Development communication theory, or Development Support Communication as it is otherwise called, the media undertook the role of carrying out positive developmental programmes, accepting restrictions and instructions from the State. The media subordinated themselves to political, economic, social and cultural needs. Hence the stress on "development communication" and "development journalism". There was tacit support from the UNESCO for this theory. The weakness of this theory is that "development" is often equated with government propaganda.

A theory of development communication

By Genaro V. Ong, Jr.Managing Director of CFA, 1973-78(From the book “From the Village to the Medium”, published by the Communication Foundation for Asia: Manila, 1976)THE IDEA BEHIND ITDevelopment communication is founded on an idea. The idea is, to put the modern media of social communication at the service of development. That sounds simple enough, but it needs some explaining.ABOUT DEVELOPMENTDevelopment is the big thing these days. Everybody’s talking about it. Big chunks of money are spent in its name. But what is it?Discussions of development are usually couched in economic terms. The economic goal is often described in terms of an increase in the Gross National Product or GNP, the sum total of goods and services produced by the country annually.

The goal has already been criticized as inadequate. One of the big problems of underdeveloped countries is the maldistribution of available goods and services.

It doesn’t help much to increase the size of the “economic pie” if 90 per cent of it still goes to only 10 per cent of the people while the remaining 90 per cent of the people whose total number increases more rapidly, continue to share in only 10 per cent of the wealth produced. Their condition will not improve, but can only grow worse.

Responsible economists point out that the development goal should be not only to increase the production of wealth but also to improve its distribution. In other words, an increase in GNP, plus social justice, GNP alone won’t do it.

Seen in this light, the problem immediately goes beyond mere economics. And the point we want to make here is precisely that development means more than economic development.

Even plain economic development involves more than economics. It requires an improved social organization. You need better social structures, relative peace and order, disciplined (and highly motivated) people, a skilled labor force, a dedicated civil service, a minimum of graft and corruption, a sensible tax structure, a wise government, etc.

Actually, for real economic development, you also need social justice, because this is what will provide people with their motivation. If people can have a decent share of what they produce, they will work harder.

When you talk about justice, however, you’re talking about moral values, not just economics. In other words, just to achieve economic development, you also need moral development.

To achieve economic development with social justice – without which development won’t make sense to the common people – you need to change a lot of attitudes. People have to add a moral dimension to the way they operate their business, for instance. And workers may need a new attitude towards work, since social justice also requires that workers do justice to their employers, not only the other way around.

A TOTAL APPROACHIn short, development really means developing people. Then the people will change their environment, including their social and economic environment.We need a total human development approach, even if our immediate goal might be economic development. The latter, of course, is not the end in itself, but only a means to enable human beings to live more humanly. For a man may be rich and still live like a pig. Economic development doesn’t help him.

SOCIAL VERSUS MASSNow, let’s talk about social communication. First, the word social. We say social communication advisedly. The more commonly accepted term is mass communication. In this book, the terms are used almost interchangeably. But there is really a difference in connotation.The Social Communicator is interested in “mass communication” not for its own sake, but as a means of serving the development of people.

Mass communication is a technique of reaching a large number of people with a message, all at once. Like many other techniques, it can be used for a-social, even anti-social, purposes. We are for its social use.

One of the banes of modern mass production techniques — despite their obvious benefits — is that they tend to dehumanize people and turn them into “masses”.

Mass communication, as commonly understood, tends to treat people in same way. Thus it is often used as a tool for manipulating “public opinion” as if people were things to be manipulated. There is also a certain cynicism about “the masses” in the entertainment media industry.

People, however, do not develop by being manipulated. They develop by becoming conscious of what they can be and what they can do – and by being helped to be and do what they ought.

With people, the impetus for development must come from within themselves. But the stimulus must come from without. Mass communication can, but does not necessarily, provide stimulus for development. It must be programmed to do so.

DEVELOPMENT COMMUNICATIONMass communication at the service of development — or “development communication” – should seek to elicit a human, and ultimately a social response in the people whom it seeks to serve. Serve, not “mold” or manipulate, as if people were putty in the hands of the communicatorA human response is one that is conscious and voluntary, not merely a conditioned reflex to the controlled and sophisticated use of media. A communication that cultivates rather than smothers this free human response is what we’re talking about.

Propaganda is a form of mass communication. Not all propaganda is reprehensible, but it is not — or at least not yet — development communication.

Development communication is an educational process. It aims at developing social consciousness, personal responsibility towards one’s fellowmen, one’s community and country. In other words, a social conscience.Hence, the term “conscientization”, a sensitizing of the conscience.

Development communication implies respect for the human person, respect for his intelligence and his right to self-determination.

The role of mass communication is to help, not to take over or substitute for, his thinking. It serves him by providing the facts on which to base a sound judgment, and the inspiration to carry out his resolve.

Thus, development communication is a social process. Social because it seeks the human response of people in society, not exactly to be compared with the reaction to stimulus of a mass of ants in an anthill.

The term “social communication”, therefore, suggests the primacy of human values and human dignity over mere technique, better than “mass communication”. It is the mark of human beings to be social, whereas the concept of mass is derived from an obvious quality of brute matter.

ABOUT COMMUNICATIONCommunication is an art. But not all practitioners of art, alas, are good communicators. Young writers – especially the creative literary types – often equate expression with communication. It is one thing to have something to say; another thing to express it. But it is still another thing to express it in a way that will be accepted and understood by the specific audience to whom the message is addressed.Too much preoccupation with style and technique can be a hindrance to communication, not to call attention to itself.

The task of communicator is to be like a clear glass window through which people can see (we do not really create anything, we help people to see that is there); not a stained glass window that invites attention to itself but blocks the view. This holds whether we communicate by writing, photography, design or artwork, etc.

LISTENING TO THE AUDIENCEThe first concern of a communicator – assuming he has something worthwhile to communicate (which does not necessarily follow from knowing the techniques of communication) – is to know his audience.You talk one way to a grade school child, another way to a university professor. You talk differently to an adult who has not gone beyond grade school, than you would be one who has been to college ( although, considering the quality of instruction in some colleges, the difference might be very subtle).

You write one way for reading, another way for talking. Even for reading, there is a way of writing for readability. Some writing is easy to read; others cause wrinkled brows, not necessarily because the subject is difficult but because the language is abstruse. The language of the man in the street is not the language of the academe.

As mass communicators, we are usually talking to the man on the street – or in his home. We must visualize him in his camiseta, watching TV after a hard day’s work, or his wife, listening to the radio. The more intimately we know our audience, the better we can communicate. (In the editorial offices of some popular magazines in Europe, they have pictures on the wall of the type of people they’re writing for. They know the ages, range of income, educational attainment, their vocabulary, the way they live, etc.)

Communication is not a one-way street. The first thing a communicator must do is “listen” to his audience with a sharp ear; then there is chance that his audience might listen to him. All this is elementary, but easily forgotten.

COMPETING FOR ATTENTIONThe point is that in mass communication, nobody has to read what we write, or listen to our radio programs, or watch our TV shows, or go to see our movie.It’s a highly competitive field. Our audience has a dozen other magazines or papers to choose from, many other programs and shows competing for their attention. This is especially true in the cities.

Unless we catch and hold our audience from the start, we’re lost. Restless hands reach for something else to read, or turn dials to another station or channel. In other words, we don’t necessarily communicate because we’re in print or on the air. We must go on in there to win.

People don’t have to read or listen to, or watch, development-oriented mass communications. They generally turn to media for entertainment, not for lectures. Our problem is how to make that entertainment more meaningful.

Entertainment can be escapist; it can be inane. Our task is to make entertainment contribute to human improvement.

We have two ways of approaching our task. We can make entertainment educational. Or, if we must use a more direct approach, we can make education entertaining. But we can’t educate without being interesting in one way or another. This is true even of classroom instruction.

FORMAL AND INFORMAL EDUCATIONDevelopment communication is an educational process. It is a type of informal education, as distinguished from the formal education of the classroom. In the long run, the reform of society depends a great deal on what goes on in the classroom.But for more immediate development needs, it is necessary to reach the decision-makers of today. These are mostly out of school. They are out of school because they have finished schooling, or have interrupted their schooling, or have never been to school. But it is they – not the children in the classrooms – who make today’s decisions. They decide whether there will be another baby in the family. They decide whether to use fertilizer in their fields or not. They decide what kind of food will be on the family table. They form the character of children more than any school can do. Their tastes, their habits of saving and consumption can make or break the economy.

A lot of preparation goes into the subjects taught in the classroom. A lot of preparation must go into teaching informally through mass media.

As much as classroom teaching must be organized and programmed, informal teaching through media must be organized and programmed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_communication

http://cfamedia.org/main/?p=2417

http://www.peoi.org/Courses/Coursesen/mass/mass2.html

What is participatory development communication?

Participatory Development Communication (PDC) involves the use of communication processes, techniques and media to engage stakeholders in social change. Stakeholders can include individuals, groups and institutions involved in social change processes. PDC implies the use of purposefully designed communication platforms and mechanisms to facilitate engagement in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of change processes. Work in this area involves the design and application of such mechanisms, and critical analysis of the institutional structures, conditions and capacities required for participatory communication processes to result in more sustainable development impacts. This thematic area explores:

Processes and capacities supporting participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation for development

Communication functions and applications in conflict resolution Communication functions and applications in institutional change

 An example of the latter was provided by a group of villagers living on a mountain side threatened by serious land-slides which were robbing the farmers of scarce arable land. The solution learnt from neighbouring villages was the building of retaining walls with large boulders-- back-breaking and long term project. Photographs of the progress of "rock-walling" and the accumulating amounts of rich top-soil trapped by the walls convinced the villagers that the walls must be built and motivated them to complete their daunting task.

Participatory development communication is the use of mass media and traditional, inter-

personal means of communication that empowers communities to visualise aspirations and

discover solutions to their development problems and issues.

Participatory Communication "Participatory communication is the theory and practices of

communication used to involve people in the decision-making of the development process. It

intends to return to the roots of its meaning, which, similarly to the term community, originate

from the Latin word 'communis', i.e. common (Mody, 1991). Therefore, the purpose of

communication should be to make something common, or to share...meanings, perceptions,

worldviews or knowledge. In this context, sharing implies an equitable division of what is being

shared, which is why communication should almost be naturally associated with a balanced, two-

way flow of information."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_development_communication

http://www.uq.edu.au/ccsc/participatory-development-communication

Leomar Christian G. Nielo June 16, 2015

BsDevCom 2A Fundamentals of Science of Communication

Assignment 1

Definition of science and technology

Science is a systematic way of acquiring knowledge about a particular field of study. According to Science Made Simple, a leading website in scientific eduction, science helps us to gain knowledge, through an organized system of observation and experimentation. This system is used to describe different natural phenomena. The aforementioned description is that of pure science, and biology, chemistry, physics and Earth science are the basic fields of pure science.

Technology can be defined as the products, tools and processes used to accomplish tasks in daily life. According to Use of Technology, technology is the application of science to solve a problem. Technology involves the application of engineering and applied sciences to solve the practical problems of human lives. Technology is basically human knowledge that is used to create products and artifacts with the help of innovative tools, systems and materials. Technology is used for communication, manufacturing, learning, securing data and transportation; it is often a consequence of science and engineering, but technology as a human activity precedes the other two fields.

Science is a systematic enterprise of gathering knowledge about the world and organizing and condensing that knowledge into testable laws and theories.[1] As knowledge has increased, some methods have proved more reliable than others, and today the scientific method is the standard for science. It includes the use of careful observation, experimentation, measurement, mathematics, and replication — to be considered a science, a body of knowledge must stand up to repeated testing by independent observers. The use of the scientific method to make new discoveries is called scientific research, and the people who carry out this research are called scientists.[2][3] This article focuses on science in the more restricted sense, what is sometimes called experimental science. Applied science, or engineering, is the practical application of scientific knowledge. 

Technology- Technology is the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, and crafts, or is systems or methods of organization, or is a material product (such as clothing) of these things. the study of something, or the branch of knowledge of a discipline.[1] The term can either be applied generally or to specific areas: examples include "construction technology", "medical technology", or "state-of-the-art technology". 

http://www.ask.com/technology/meaning-science-technology-afc82b0b03a960eb

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100617043840AAY2ztU

History of Science and Technology

The history of Science and Technology (HST) is a field of history which examines how

humanity's understanding of the natural world (science) and ability to manipulate it

(Technology) have changed over the centuries. This academic discipline also studies the cultural,

economic, and political impacts of scientific innovation.

Histories of science were originally written by practicing and retired scientists, starting primarily

with William Whewell, as a way to communicate the virtues of science to the public. In the early

1930s, after a famous paper given by the Soviet historian Boris Hessen, was focused into looking

at the ways in which scientific practices were allied with the needs and motivations of their

context. After World War II, extensive resources were put into teaching and researching the

discipline, with the hopes that it would help the public better understand both Science and

Technology as they came to play an exceedingly prominent role in the world. In the 1960s,

especially in the wake of the work done by Thomas Kuhn, the discipline began to serve a very

different function, and began to be used as a way to critically examine the scientific enterprise.

At the present time it is often closely aligned with the field of Science studies.

In the Beginning There was RevolutionLots of intro STS books (there’s really only three of them 1, 2 and 3) say that STS began with Thomas Kuhn although the new editions of these books (if and when they ever come out) will probably revisit the work of Ludwik Fleck. Prior to Kuhn was what Sergio Sismondo describes as the “prehistory of STS” and is largely composed of philosophers and social scientists concerned with the nature of knowledge and the societal implications of handing off authority and power to machines. Names commonly associated with this history include Robert Merton, Michael Polanyi, Lewis Mumford, and more well known thinkers who had a lot to say about science and/or technology like Martin Heidegger, Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Pytor Kropotkin.Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolution, published in 1962 argued that scientific progress wasn’t only driven by the discovery of facts: science is a social process that fluctuates between periods of “normal science” and revolution. During periods of ‘normal science” every scientist subscribes to a particular paradigm and all work seeks to refine and elaborate the basic premises of the paradigm. Revolution occurs when a sizeable contingent of scientist challenge the paradigm itself. The revolution, according to Kuhn, isn’t resolved and normal science reinstated until the adherents to the old paradigm die off or become so marginalized that they are incapable of marshaling resources to continue their research. Even more controversial was the idea that these revolutions didn’t necessarily produce better accounts of the natural world, just different ones. Sometimes the newer paradigms were able to explain more, or they afforded new applications, but most importantly they structured who could do science and lay claim to “how the world works.”

Ludwik Fleck took a slightly different approach, describing something closer to Foucault’s episteme. Fleck taught that various “thought collectives”  existed at any one time and vied for adherents through persuasive demonstrations and publications of experiments and remained coherent through a common vocabulary and method. Unlike Kuhn, which still has an essence of

linearity to it (normal science -> revolution -> new normal science – new revolution), Fleck showed that scientific discovery was always working in multiple “directions” with each having relatively equal chances of achieving dominance.

Several turns to Technology, Social Construction, Representation, and the NonmodernFleck was writing in the 20s and 30s up until his eventual incarceration in a Nazi concentration camp (where he was forced to work on and eventually invented a typhus vaccine in a German army hospital through experimentation on prisoners). He survived but his work on epistemology in this later period is not as widely cited. Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions was originally published in 1962 and, while the discipline has moved and improved beyond the theory of Kuhnian revolutions, it is still a foundational text in STS.

The STS work of the 70s and 80s laid the groundwork for the established field it is today. Much of what was written in this time was the result of a symbiotic relationship between counterculture and critical thought applied to science and technology. Langdon Winner’sAutonomous Technology (1977), Evelyn Fox Keller’s Reflections on Gender and Science (1985) and Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s Laboratory Life (1979) are indicative of this period of writing. These texts, along with dozens of articles, essays, and books by (in no particular order) Donald MacKenzie, Sal Restivo, David Noble, Sandra Harding, Donna Haraway, Andrew Pickering, Michel Callon, WiebeBijker, Thomas Hughes, and Trevor Pinch began to develop a coherent rebuttal to the dominant idea that technologies are apolitical tools and science merely observes and records objective facts.

Winner’s two books in this period aforementioned Autonomous Technologies and his 1986 bookThe Whale and the Reactor built off of previous work by Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford and showed that technological artifacts have their own politics. (I summarize that argument here.) Keller’s work began one of STS’s longest-standing projects: revealing how the history of science and technology buries the contributions of women and even defines contributions to science as activities typically performed by men. Latour and Woolgar’s ethnography of the Jonas Salk laboratory was the first study to use the tools of anthropology on a thoroughly modern field site. This launched a long-standing tradition of seeing scientific objects and theoretical models as cultural artifacts as well.By the end of the 80s and into the first half of the 90s several major projects had solidified into recognizable schools of thought and theories: The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) and Social Construction of Technology (SCoT) continued where Fleck left off and produced dense and elaborate accounts of technological invention and scientific discovery. Everything from the design of 13th century Portuguese ships of war (Law, 1987) to Bakelite plastic and fluorescent lighting (Bijker 1997) was gone over with a fine tooth comb. These authors were after two very big ideas. The first was that all science and technology was socially constructed, meaning that everything “could have been otherwise” but wasn’t due to historical, social, and cultural factors. Second, these authors wanted to know what made a technology “stabilize” into the general form we come to recognize. This usually involved investigating the working definitions of technoscientific concepts like accuracy and precision. How accurate is accurate enough? Does accuracy work the same way in nuclear missile design and furniture construction? The answers

were always extremely qualified and usually involved the phrase, “it’s more complicated than that.”

Latour and Woolgar’s ethnography of a laboratory began a tradition of studying the scientific process and how it came to develop representations of our world. Scientific instruments, Latour and Woolgar argued, inscribed invisible forces onto tangible and exchangeable documents and it was this process of inscription that was the over-looked but crucial process (along with high social standing) that made it possible to form arguments about the world. A sizeable portion of STS literature is devoted to articulating just how technoscientific objects mediate and represent the world around us. Obviously there’s a lot of overlap here with the work founded by Winner, who reminds us that this representation can have political consequences and/or motivations.

Bruno Latour, probably one of the most cited STS scholars, produced several foundational texts about representation, social constructivism, and the politics of technology but his most popular work sought to dismantle the nature/society dualism all-together. His book We Have Never Been Modern (1993) argued that modernity, more than anything else, relied on a conceptual separation between knowledge pertaining to nature and society. That is, the way we construct causality and ontology was unnecessarily bifurcated by a deeply and widely held belief that the laws governing society and nature were completely different. The titular argument of the book was a massive critique of the post-modern project as well, since the collapsing of boundaries was predicated on those boundaries beginning in the first place.

Only recently [PDF] has Latour tried to articulate what we have been this whole time, if not modern. In the mean time, he described the nonmodern as an infinitely complex network of human and nonhuman actors (or actants) that could be studied through his well-known Actor-Network theory developed with fellow ANT adherents Michel Callon and John Law. There are lots of good critiques of ANT, most of which point out that even if the fundamental ontology between society and nature is arbitrary, the way ANT repositions actors’ relationships to one-another erases or obscures inequalities of power among humans.

Cyborgs, The Public, and Making ThingsOf course, another major project of 90s STS was Donna Haraway’s work and what is probably her best-known Cyborg Manifesto which was actually first written almost 10 years before the version everyone cites in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (1990). The manifesto cites the later 20th century’s breakdown of barriers between humans, animals, machines, physical and nonphysical phenomena as a reason to de-center identity in favor of affinity. It was specifically a call for socialist feminists to reassess their identity-centered politics and recognize the power of affinities. The thesis is, and this is where this history definitely becomes my telling, does essentially the same work that Latour does. It is, at least for me, what We Have Never Been Modern should have been, at least in terms of its applicability to race, class and gender politics. (More on Latour’s approach to power here.)Another boundary STS interrogates is that of lay and expert knowledge. Going as far back as the 70s, in some Scandinavian work (See Bødker’s work cited below) STS scholars have sought to understand what “counts” as legitimate science and what is considered either quackery or too amateur to be reproducible or generalizable. Much of this work relies on case studies of scientific controversy surrounding environmental disasters and faulty technologies. Popular topics in this

area include: publics’ understanding of scientific facts and processes, legitimacy to make scientific claims or show scientific proof, the diagnostic process (e.g. why something works or doesn’t work and how “working” is defined in the first place), and the boundary formation of disciplines.

Its also worth point out here that there’s a smaller but parallel track of STS (that I really like) that dates back to SCoT and SSK that focuses more on the microsociology of performing science instead of focusing on the representational aspects of science. In other words, authors like Andrew Pickering look at what decisions scientists and engineers make in the moment so as to better understand how science works as a practice, not a profession or a collection of facts.

This sort of work is getting particularly useful now that STS scholars have also taken it upon themselves to collaborate with scientist and engineers themselves and engage in the making process. The last decade or so has seen a massive increase in methods and frameworks that help engineers and scientists develop a kind of “sociological imagination” while at the same time give social scientists a much richer picture of how humans think with and through material objects.

The future of STS, if current publications are any indication of future progress, will be in making as well as writing. Critical Making (Matt Ratto), Reflective Design (Phoebe Sengers), Adversarial Design (Carl DiSalvo), Feminist Technologies (Linda Layne), Critical Technical Practice (Phil Agre), Appropriate Design (Dean Nieusma), and the work of Public Lab (Sarah Wylie) are interventions meant to democratize science and engineering or in some other way imbue these practices with the kinds of concerns and problems that have been the subject of the social sciences for over a century.

http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2014/07/30/an-extremely-brief-history-of-science-technology-studies/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology

Role of a science for a communicator

Science can help communicator by providing a stronger understanding of current research, its trials, tribulations and, most importantly, its wider relevance to society. Relevance builds support and at a practical level such support leads to better funding. Knowingly or not, everyone in the country has a vested interest in the direction research moves in. Good science communication will make people aware of this.

It can help communicators by: Excellent science communication can capture the imagination: sparking meaningful debate and discussion that grants science a stronger presence in our society. We see this already with the rise of the celebrity scientist and the growing success of science festivals. While some of the more venerable academics I know cringe at the term ‘popular science’ it has brought our research into the public sphere in a way unseen since the moon landings. The uncomfortable realisation that I cannot look at a starry sky without seeing a Brian Cox shaped constellation has helped to convince me of this.

At its most aspirational, science communication has the potential to kick start a stronger fusion of public and scientific values, locking our field into the public conscious in a manner similar to the omnipresent tech giants Google and Apple. This will certainly lead to better scientists, research, funding and hopefully better science articles in the newspapers. Change such as this cannot happen overnight. It would require a radical shift in attitudes towards science communication. Researchers would need the capability and the willingness to explain their work to others and there must be a push to make science consistently open and accessible to the public. Then, at the very least, science and society could regain the respect they’re currently lacking for each other.

Lastly, science can help communicator because it deals with an issue that is important not only, or even mainly, for the scientific community but also for the nation as a whole and for each individual within it. More than ever, people need some understanding of science, whether they are involved in decision-making at a national or local level, in managing industrial companies, in skilled or semi-skilled employment, in voting as private citizens or in making a wide range of personal decisions.

http://blogs.nature.com/soapboxscience/2013/02/27/why-we-need-science-communication

http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2014/09/04/the-importance-of-science-communication

Definition/elaborate of professional scientific communication

Science communication generally refers to public communication presenting science-related

topics to non-experts. This often involves professional scientists (called "outreach" or

"popularization"), but has also evolved into a professional field in its own right. It

includes scienceexhibitions, journalism, policy or media production.

Science communication can aim to generate support for scientific research or study, or to

inform decision making, including political andethical thinking. There is increasing emphasis on

explaining methods rather than simply findings of science. This may be especially critical in

addressing scientific misinformation, which spreads easily because it is not subject to the

constraints of scientific method.[1][2][3][4]

Science communicators can

use entertainment and persuasion including humor, storytelling and metaphors.[3][4] Scientists can

be trained in some of the techniques used by actors to improve their communication.[5]

Science communication can also simply describe communication between scientists (e.g.

through scientific journals), as well as between non-scientists.

Science communication has the potential to kick start a stronger fusion of public and scientific values, locking our field into the public conscious in a manner similar to the omnipresent tech giants Google and Apple. This will certainly lead to better scientists, research, funding and hopefully better science articles in the newspapers. Change such as this cannot happen overnight. It would require a radical shift in attitudes towards science communication. Researchers would need the capability and the willingness to explain their work to others and there must be a push to make science consistently open and accessible to the public. Then, at the very least, science and society could regain the respect they’re currently lacking for each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_communication

http://blogs.nature.com/naturejobs/2014/09/04/the-importance-of-science-communication

Presidency an unforgiving position, says DuterteBy Ben O. Tesiorna, for CNN Philippines

Updated 16:05 PM PHT Sun, June 7, 2015

Davao City (CNN Philippines) — Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte once again denied plans

of running for president in the 2016 elections, saying the presidency is an unforgiving position.

In a statement made over his weekly TV program Sunday (June 7), Duterte said all he wants to

do right now is travel the world and enjoy the remaining years of his life.

He added the presidency is almost like an assurance that a person will go to prison after his term,

referring to former Presidents Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who were jailed

due to plunder charges, which is a non-bailable offense in the Philippines.

Duterte likewise denied that he was keen on getting Batangas Gov. Vilma Santons as his running

mate because he is not gunning for the top position.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol earlier bared that during a recent trip to Davao with the

feisty mayor, Duterte spoke about the possibiity of running for office in 2016 and who his dream

running mate would be.

He said it took Duterte sometime to answer the question but when he did, he candidly replied, "It

can’t be Grace Poe because I think she has decided to run for President. Vilma Santos would be a

good choice."

It was also during the said trip that Duterte intimated his cabinet 'wish list,' which include the

following:

former Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro (Defense)

former Agriculture Secretary Carlos "Sonny" Dominguez III (Finance)

former Interior Secretary Rafael Alunan III (Interior and Local Government)

lawyer Vitaliano Aguirre (Justice)

Camarines Sur Rep. Leni Robredo (Social Welfare)

Duterte confirmed the conversation with Piñol, but clarified it was merely just small talk and

nothing serious.

Duterte's son clarifies post referring to his father as 'president'

By Rosette Adel (philstar.com) | Updated June 11, 2015 - 6:49pm

MANILA, Philippines –Davao City Mayor Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte’s son Vice-Mayor Paolo "Pulong" Duterte on Wednesday said he wants to get spared from politics and issues on his father’s presidential candidacy.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the younger Duterte said that he wants to be spared from political issues following reactions on his status post where he referred to his father as his president.

“Spare me from all these. I am only his son. I'm not his campaign manager or political strategist,” he said.

The younger Duterte clarified that he only pertained to his father as his president since he listened to his forum on federalism and found the mayor fitting as a president.

“In a status I posted few days ago I referred to Mayor Rody Duterte as "my President". I referred to him as such because I listened to his forum on federalism and deep in my heart and personally the mayor can be my president,” he said in his statement on Facebook.

The younger Duterte also claimed that the media took his post out of context.

Lacson on tandem with Duterte: Baka umusok kami

ABS-CBNnews.com

Posted at 06/12/2015 1:26 PM | Updated as of 06/12/2015 4:07 PM

MANILA – Former Senator Panfilo Lacson is cool to the idea of running with Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte in the 2016 elections.

Speaking to dzMM, Lacson said a tandem with Duterte may not be ideal since they the have the same core competence.

''[Una] baka umusok kaming dalawa...Pangalawa, eh parang isa lang ang dimension, ang core competence namin, parang nalilinya sa iisang aspeto lamang – ito ay sa larangan ng peace and order,'' he said.

''Baka sa ibang aspeto, eh baka magkaroon ng maraming kwestyon."

Both Lacson and Duterte have built a reputation of taking a hardline stance against criminality.

Lacson is being credited for the reforms he pushed while he was chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) under the Estrada administration.

Duterte, on the other hand, has managed to make Davao City one of the most peaceful cities in the world, although some groups say this came at the expense of respect for human rights.

Despite the growing calls for him to run for president, Duterte has repeatedly rejected the idea of running for president.

Lacson, meanwhile, said one factor holding him back from launching another presidential bid is his low score   in the most recent presidential preference surveys.

''Kasi ang tinitignan ko lang sa ngayon eh kung tataas ang numbers ko. Kung tataas magkakaroon ng significant improvement, then I will continue pursuing ang aking advocacy,'' he said.

Lacson said running once again for a Senate seat is the most viable option for him. The former senator emerged on top of the latest Pulse Asia survey on potential Senate bets in the 2016 elections.

FIX BUREAUCRACY

Lacson said in case he pushes through with his presidential bid, he would prioritize cleaning up the bureaucracy.

He said the government leadership must show no tolerance to incompetence and corruption in the bureaucracy because government agencies deal directly with the people.

''Ang number 1 problem of our country is bad government. Walang ibang paraan para mai-correct ang problema ng bansa, kung 'di i-correct ang bad government,'' he said.

''Kung ang 1.5 million Filipinos employed by government eh masama ang ginagawa, what can you expect from the 100 million Filipinos?"

The former senator said while he acknowledges his poor showing in the recent pre-election surveys, he still aspires to show his supporters and the public that he can serve the country well.

''I want to make a difference. I want to show our people - I want to prove to myself - that I can do it and turn things around and make a difference,'' he said.

''Nakita ko ang kakayanan ko nung namuno ako sa PNP. Gusto ko namang subukan sa isang mataas na antas ng paglilingkod, iyun ang nasasa loob ko."