Coordinate Management of Meaning

Theories in interpersonal communication have been evolved into many forms and it becomes deeper from macro-social context into micro-social context. It starts from social influence, relationship development and recently interpersonal theories using cognitive psychology approaches to explain how humans process the information flow and the construction of meaning in interaction.

In Coordinate Management of Meaning theory, it is said that the communication is about a meaning. In daily interaction, people try to prepare/ coordinate their meaning when start communicating with other people. It looks at how individuals within a society create their own realities through communication. With that being said, realities are made, not found, meaning that communication interactions dictate what realities are created within a society and how they are affected by others. This reality is constantly evolving and adapts itself due to interactions. This theory also sees a conversation as process in which each participant affects and is affected by the other

Today, the Web 2.0 technology offers the social media/networking that enable human-computer interaction more entertaining and educating. I understand if computer-mediated communication is less socio-emotionally than face-to-face communication, but now as the internet user is increasing, the computer-mediated communication becomes a routine social interaction.

New Wave of Political Communication

It has been 10 years of reformation era since 1998 where Soeharto resigned his position as the President of Indonesia. In Soeharto regime, we had a non-democratic political system that affected the political communication system in Indonesia. At that time the citizens were really districted to criticize the government performance. Instead of their role as the watchdog of government, the media was used as a tool of government to inform its policy that may only benefit the government.

Nowadays, the political communicator whether they are journalist, opinion leader, or any political party now can freely communicate about their opinions and ideas or even criticize the current government performance. The democracy process in Indonesia is getting better where people now has more attention about the political issue and participates into political communication.

This situation is also supported with the advancement of information and communication technology that enable people to share their ideas and opinions about the current political situation. The information is democratized, many information about the political actor in government or any issue about politic can be found in Internet. The information is spread in blog, web portal, forum, social networking, mailing list and influence the perception of public that may lead into next political activities.