Reconciliation through communication in intercultural encounters: potential or peril?

As we reflect on the events of September 11th and their aftermath, there is strong motivation in many places to improve intercultural and international relations through communication. This laudable aim implicates the long history of research into intercultural encounters, which has always bad this goal. To achieve it, researchers and trainers must go beyond conceptualizing intercultural encounters as like interpersonal ones, except that participants have different and sometimes conflicting cultural rules and values. We must develop programs to train metaskills in analyzing miscommunication and its negative consequences. This requires the recognition that, in many interethnic and intercultural contexts, participants are not. motivated to communicate well. In such cases, the larger sociopolitical situation must be addressed, or skills training may even exacerbate the conflict. It is also crucial to understand intercultural communication as simultaneously intergroup and interpersonal, to incorporate both aspects into interventions, and to advocate for such training to improve intercultural relations.

An examination of the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes

This study draws upon cultivation theory, acculturation theory, and works on intergroup relations to examine the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes of Chinese immigrants in Australia. Data was gathered via a survey administered to 265 respondents with Chinese origin. Results indicate that exposure to mainstream newspapers is only positively related to one indicator of subjective reality, namely, outgroup perception whereas exposure to ethnic newspapers was not significantly related to any of the indicators of subjective reality. Acculturation attitudes, on the other hand, are more closely related to group perception and contact but not closely associated with exposure to print media. These findings have again challenged the direct effect assumption of cultivation theory, paved the ground for combining mediated communication variables with interpersonal communication variables in acculturation research and suggested policy implications for interethnic coexistence. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.