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.

Communication Challenges in Organizational Communication

I always see the organizational communication as an internal communication process in organization. As we know in a large organization like a multinational corporation, its international communication will be so much harder because of its complex system and situation. The leaders in any organization must design its communication based on the type of their organization to make communication process easier either it’s vertically and horizontally.

Nowadays organizations face many challenges in advance. The competition, customer and changing situation enable flattening organization to make organization more effective and efficient. In hyper competition, organizations are demanded to more faster in doing their job and new technology in communication like e-mail, instant message, video call or video conference have helped organization to respond the challenge.

In conclusion, I think all organizations should understand the changing environment in political, economy, social and technology. They need to be proactive to respond to all changing environments. Communication officer in the organization should identify the public issue earlier (defining pre-issue) and preparing the crisis management before the crises occurs in organization.

Language and Social Interaction

Learning about the language and social interaction is never boring for me. Language isn’t just a vehicle to name the things or conveying the information but also I see a language as a form of life. To analyze a language we will interpret it in many ways depend on our culture and the context. For example say hello for greeting purpose and say hello in phone conversation.

In social interaction, language is not just a verbal communication but also as non-verbal communication such as body language or gesture. Something like sign, logo, and icon are also the language that can be interpreted and analyzed in many ways. This is so important when a company or a business creating its brand logo to represent its value and positioning of its product or corporate image. The brand logo should match with its specific target market audience/market to create a parity image.

As we know in mass media like newspapers, we use framing analysis to identify how media try to drive our perception with the journalist writing and the language has important role to drive the readers’ perception. This means language is considered as one of main point of communication study.

Globalization through Popular Communications

In my opinion, Popular Communications has an important role to support the culture integration as a part of a globalization. A borderless world that is created by the development of communication technology and multinational businesses enables the idea of Global Village to make it real. The word of global village refers to the world that has the same of culture or understanding. While this may be seen as a positive step towards unifying the world but in the other hand it’s consider as the threat for cultural diversity.

Popular Communications enhances the process of mass consumer culture in business perspective. It helps the adoption and adaptation of multinational company product/service such as American fast food that we can find anywhere around the world. TV , Radio, Newspaper and Internet contribute the process of making a new market trend that later can be a global consumerism of products/services.

The future of popular communications will take a part in blogosphere where everyone will write/speak about the recent news or trends in their blog. The reason why people tend to read in the blog than in newspaper because of its originality and the objectivity. People will find what’s new and what’s the next thing in their friend’s blog or any blog that people love. The blog as a new media is also considered as a new place for next popular communications practice.

Communication in PR 2.0

The advancement of information and communication technology has made Public Relations field more complex than ever. A conventional PR that everyone calls PR 1.0 has moved into PR 2.0. The birth of many channels of communication in Internet such as Blog, RSS, Forum, Social Media, Instant messaging have made overwhelm information to the people. It also makes the message uncontrolled and it's a PR job to deal this thing.

Recently, many companies begin to start their corporate blog while the others also not ready for doing that. The advantage of having a corporate blog is to identify the pre-issue that may appear in their public. The gap between public expectation and organizational performance is always happens but the corporate blog as a PR tool is expected to be able to deal this problem.

The blog itself has 2 major functions. The first one is “outside in” function which encourages participation to the people into a blog. That first function will lead people to make a comment to start a conversation between public and its organization. A conversation makes the second function which is “inside out”. This second action will influence the people /public perception about organization’s image.

PR today will be fully responsible to maintain issue in electronic communication such as blog that I mention. It also drives organization to be more transparent and accountable to their stakeholder.

Managing Environmental Issues in Hospitality Industry

Being "a Green" is now something that is compulsory for any industry in the world. Being a green means all the business activities should be environmental friendly in order to balance the world ecology system. In hospitality industry, this kind of the big challenge for any owner of the hotels. The customer of the hotel tend to think freely of using the all facilities that they have paid. They don't think to limit using the water and the electricity because they all have already been paid. There should be a guidance on how we face this problems to be the opportunities. The less using of water and electric facilitation will not only reduce the contribution the global warming as now anyone say. However, it can be a cost efficiency to the business then the hotel could manage their expenses into a more add value to the customer.

In my opinion, all palyers in hospitality industry should really consider about this issue. This idea can be communicated to the customer by showing them how "greeny" is the hotel operation. This can be a new selling poin to acquire more new customers in the future. And this could be a news value for any hotel that introduce this green concept to the media.

I know it's not a simple job. There needs a creativity to develop this PR campaign to the audience that may not aware about the global environmnetal issue. That's why we should change the apatism of customer to be more giving attention about how the condition of the world now.

Social Media for Organizational Communication

Social Media Is...

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialmedia enterprise2.0)

An organization now is not enough for just having a static website (Web 1.0). They need a web 2.0 to enable a social interaction to make a conversation between public and its organization. The idea behind of Web 2.0 is about enabling people to participate in an organization. It may only occur in more flatenning organization because they have levels structural/hierarchical levels that allow people to communicate with higher level.

But anyway, what i do like in the presentation above is simply explaining about how important Web 2.0 to enable conversation that leads to a better communication / good will between the organization and its public. A good relation will help to managing issues that always come out.
Issue in organization may be complex, but it can be simplified if we proactively listening to our public/stakeholders to tracking what people think (perception) about the organization itself.

Commuter

Being a commuter like many other people outside Jakarta whether in Tanggerang, Bekasi or Depok is a something that you wish to avoid but you can't. If you enjoy travelling, you may enjoy to go to a place in far away but sure it's not same. you go to the same place, same time, same traffic, same pressure in almost everyday. I feel want to leave this city but i don't think it's the time. You know i've been thinking to have a helicopter so i'll be having a great time to be a commuter. the question is, can i afford it? and where should i land my helicopter? LOL :D