Coping with Criticism

Brainstorming Session

1.  What is the meaning of the term, Criticism? 
2. How do you respond to criticism in life?
3.  Are “criticism” and “satire” similar in meaning?
4.  Have you ever criticized anyone/ anything/ anyplace? (eg.how you criticize the present govt. regarding the demonetisation of rs.500 & rs1000 notes)
5.  Are you sensitive to criticism?
6. What is the difference between ‘critic’ and ‘being criticized’?
7. How far criticism affects our life?
8. What do you mean by constructive criticism?
9.  How do we look at others who criticize us?

Objectives

1. To introduce the students to the sensitive area of criticism in their lives.
2. To respond to it positively and adequately.
3. To have an evaluation of criticism itself.

Definition:

1. 1. Criticism is defined as the part of evaluating or analyzing with knowledge and decorum.
2. 2. “Criticism is disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world”- Matthew Arnold.
3. 3. Criticism is the art of interpretation.

Various aspects of Criticism-

10 points

 4. Check whether criticism is valid or invalid 

1. Beliefs about criticism

  Negative- rejection of yourself &   stagnate

  Positive- less stressful & vehicle of         learning

Key terms: 1.Self-Table

   2. Positive self talk vs   Negative self-talk

2.Handling Criticism

1. Build Self confidence

None can make you feel inferior without your consent.

2. ABC method:

1. A-Activating event/ Situation
2. B-Belief about that event
3. C-consequences/outcome

3. Types of Criticism

• 1.Valid/Bonafide criticism (objective)
• 2.Invalid/unjustified criticism
• (subjective)
• 3.Vague criticism (subjective)

1.Do I hear the same criticism from more than one person?

2.Does the critic know a great deal about the subject?

3.Are the critic’s standards humorous and reasonable?

4. Is the criticism really about me?

5. Is it important for me to resound to the critcism?

Note: yes-Valid

    No-invalid

5.Our response to criticism- 3 As

1.Awareness- ( What we do?)counter attacking/ silent victim

2.Assessment- valid/ invalid

3.Action (dealing assertively)-

          i) Fogging

ii) Admitting the truth (no apology)

& iii) Asking for feed back

Key term: Fogging

     

6. Our shortcomings in coping with criticism

• 1. Avoiding criticism( eg. I just don’t know what I am doing wrong)
• 2. Taking unfair criticism to heart.
• 3. Reacting aggressively to criticism

7. Self-Criticism

• *. We – tool (aware of our faults)

8. Giving Criticism

• Be specific
• Acknowledge the positive
• Keep calm
• Keep to the point
• Focus on behaviour, not on person
• Don’t use labels or stereotypes

9. Receiving Criticism

• Negative Assertion
• Fogging
• Negative Enquiry

10. Overcoming Formula

1. To overcome difficult situation=
2. Self esteem + Feed back+ ready to receive the criticism.
3. Activity based teaching
4. Teacher presentation:

Student’s Assignments:

Outcome of this unit

1. self esteem + self evaluation= to overcome criticism

2.Your views about ideal life ≫ What will other people think.

3. Recap the key terms-self table, Fogging negative Assertion, negative enquiry.

4. Transformation in our mindset.

(from unacceptable mindset to acceptable mindset)

Life Skills Diary

• Q.1 Are you put down by criticism? What were your reactions? Share your feeling with one/two incidents?
• Q.2 Have you corrected your mistakes after receiving criticism in your life?
• Q.3 Have you criticized others in a humorous and reasonable way? Explain with your experience?
• Q.4. Have you lost any of your behaviour because of your sensitive approach towards criticism?

Source : S.SUBADHRA,Assistant Professor of English,St.Xavier’s College, Palayamkottai

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Fears to Manage

Fear is: An anxious feeling, caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience.

Fear is an emotion that protects us from the threats in our surroundings, and which has evolved to become more complex; with our fears extending from the weird to the plain absurd, there are certain fears that the great majority of human beings share. I was searching around and found a lot of lists with common phobias and their explanations, but none where these types of fears were discussed. This is a list of 10 of the human fears that every member of a society deals with throughout their life

There are only five basic fears, out of which almost all of our other so-called fears are manufactured. These are:

1.  Extinction—the fear of annihilation, of ceasing to exist. This is a more fundamental way to express it than just calling it "fear of death."

2.  Mutilation—the fear of losing any part of our of any organ, body part, or natural function. Anxiety about animals, such as bugs, spiders, snakes, and other creepy things arises from fear of mutilation.

3.  Loss of Autonomy—the fear of being immobilized, paralyzed, restricted, enveloped, overwhelmed, entrapped, imprisoned, smothered, or otherwise controlled by circumstances beyond our control..

4.  Separation—the fear of abandonment, rejection, and loss of connectedness; of becoming a non-person—not wanted, respected, or valued by anyone else

5.  Ego-death—the fear of humiliation, shame, or any other mechanism of profound self-disapproval that threatens the loss of integrity of the Self; the fear of the shattering or disintegration of one's constructed sense of lovability, capability, and worthiness.

6.  Disappointment : The fear of disappointment is part of the reason we avoid the unknown, disappointment is that feeling of dissatisfaction when our expectations do not match what actually happened. It is obvious that we make our best effort to avoid that, and, like pain, disappointment is a negative feeling

Fear of pain

Pain hurts and extreme pain is excruciating. Pain is designed to protect the body by making us take care of physical damage to ourselves. This can become unhelpful when we have got the message yet the pain continues. We might also consider that high levels of pain are unnecessary.

7.  Pain can be psychological as well as physical.. Most fear is felt this way, which is why we may fear fear itself.  that sometimes is followed by regret, in which a person wonders if their choices contributed to the outcome

Fear of failure

A worry is that we will react unthinkingly, getting angry or excited and do things we will later regret. Failing to have sufficient self-control is a big issue for some people. A more common fear is that we will fail at a task due to a lack of skills, making silly mistakes, being unable to influence others, or any of the many other reasons that things go wrong for us.

But with more than 100,000 commercial flights around the world each day, the chances of being struck by lightning are higher than dying in a plane crash.

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Online publication-Blog

What is blog?

Weblogs or blogs can be described as a form of personal, Web sites with content presented in reverse chronological order.  Blogs are  forms of online publication. Blogs are often seen as a genre of computer mediated communication that can be evaluated in content and structure terms

Blogger

Blogger, the blogging tool/hosting flatform  was unveiled by Pyra Labs in 1999 to make it easier for people to create blogs. 
Bloggers are one who write blog. They are act as   agenda setters  of politics as well as facilitating communication among individuals .

How to Write a Blog Post  ?

1. Create a blog site 
2. Choosing a topic, creating an outline, conducting research, and checking facts.
3. Craft a headline that is both informative and will capture readers’ attentions.
4. Use images to enhance your post.
5.  Edit your blog post. Make sure to avoid repetition, read your post aloud to check its flow, keep sentences and paragraphs short, 
6.  Before  start to write, have a clear understanding of our target audience
7. Tags are specific, public-facing keywords that describe a post. 
8. Allow readers to browse for more content in the same category on your blog. 

Differences between Blog Posts and Articles 

Blog writing is Casual writing style while more sophisticated writing style. In blog mostly your own opinion in article our own  opinion not allowed Blog writing No editor involved; self-published, but in print media an editor cleans it up for you; published by a print magazine. Blog post more over Short but articles Longer than 300 words. 

Purpose of blogging?

1.  To express our thoughts and opinions.  
2. To promote your business and build your brand. 
3. To create a more connection with your readers.
4. To enhance in creative  instincts. 

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Kani Tribal

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SKILLS FOR EMPLOYABILITY

-Soft Skill-

Regarding Assignment 

1.      Coping with Fear-

What are the fears affected You?

2.       Coping with failure-

Differentiate Success and Failure?

3.       Coping with Depression-

What is the reason for Depression?

4.       Team Work-

How to help team work get your success?

5.       Leadership-

What is the meaning of leadership?

6.       Attitudinal Change-

How the attitudes help us to reach our goal?

7.       Emotional intelligence-

What are the steps to emotional intelligence ?

8.       Group Discussion-

How do we participate in Group discussion?

9.       Interview Skills –

What the needed skills are for attend an interview?

10.   Career Guidance-

What is the importance of Career guidance?

What is the difference between careers& Job?

Watch Movie 

The Pursuit of Happyness  Submit the review

Read the book : Rich Dad &Poor Dad: The theme of  story notable quotes, inspiring incidents

Write an article 

Assignment submission deadline March 28,2018.

You are requested to submit the assignment before the due date

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MCLUHAN'S CONCEPT OF "MEDIA"- MEDIUM THEORY

MCLUHAN'S CONCEPT OF "MEDIA"

McLuhan's approach is new and ingenious. It is rich of enlightenment for the understanding of the development of new media especially online games. It helps to understand the virtualization of people's cultural life nowadaysit helps to understand the entertainment and games of the contemporary media. 

THE MEDIUM AFFECTS THE SOCIETY.

McLuhan observes that any medium "amplifies or accelerates existing processes",  "change of scale or pace or shape or pattern into human association, affairs, and action", More controversially,   suggested that content had little effect on society the effect of media is considerable  McLuhan pointed to the light bulb as an example.   A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs. Yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during night-time .
McLuhan says that we are fail in  studying media, because we pay attention to and focus on the content, which blinds them to see its actual character, the psychic and social effects.
Impact on a society is not linear and static, but multi-dimensional and dynamic as that medium interacts with other media and as the society changes how it uses the  medium.

Content is medium

McLuhan also says that a CHARACTERISTIC OF EVERY MEDIUM is that its content is always another medium.The impact of each medium is somewhat limited to the previous social condition,since it just adds itself to the existing, amplifying existing processes. Therefore, different societies may be differently transformed by the same media.

Hot or Cool Media

McLuhan also stated that different media invite different degrees of participation on the part of a person who chooses to consume a medium.
Some media, such  A movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot", intensifying one single sense "high definition", demanding a viewer's attention, enhance one single sense .  "Any hot medium allows of less participation than a cool one.  Hot media  are usually sequential, linear and logical. They emphasize one sense over the others. For this reason, hot media also include radio, as well as film, the lecture and photography
Cool media, on the other hand, they require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts.  Therefore, according to McLuhan cool media include television, as well as the seminar and cartoons.
Hot Medium

• extends single sense in high definition
• low in audience participation
• engenders specialization/fragmentation
• uniform, mechanical, extends space
• horizontally repetitive

Cool Medium

• low definition (less data)
• high in audience participation
• engenders holistic patterns
• tribalizes
• creates vertical associations

 

MEDIA--THE EXTENSION OF MAN/  OURSELVES

McLuhan thinks that game is also a media; it is the extension of man and society.
The core of McLuhan’s theory, and the key idea to start with in explaining him, is his definition of media as extensions of ourselves.  Any extension, whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex.
In McLuhan’s theory language too is a medium or technology because it is an extension, or offering, of our inner thoughts, ideas, and feelings—that is, an extension of inner consciousness.
Thus, spoken language is the key development in the evolution of human consciousness and culture and the medium from which subsequent technological extensions have evolved.Thus,  make us aware of the implications of the evolution toward the extension of collective human consciousness facilitated by electronic media.

Media can “heat up” over time

Writing in the 1960s McLuhan described television as a cool medium, but one could argue that television has “heated up” since then as it has become more high definition and more omnipresent. We do not use television today in the same way we used it in the 1950s and 1960s, when families frequently sat around the television watching one show at a time. Now we have multiple televisions and other types of screens (such as personal computers, laptops, cell phones, tablet computers) of multiple sizes in multiple locations (including on our person) that are available continuously to provide a stream of images, text, and other information that we often attend to in a fragmentary and desultory manner. Therefore the experience and effect of using electronic screen technology has heated up over time.

 Global village

Electronic media create the “global village”, transforming us into people who are complex, depth-structured and emotionally aware of our interdependence with all of human society .

MEDIUM THEORY

 

During the 1960’s and 1970’s, a Canadian literary scholar, Marshall McLuhan, who had a profound understanding of electronic media and its impact on both popular culture and society. It is a analytical theory.

It analysis of media characteristics and the historical analysis of human perception.

 Popular media content includes television programming specially includes television programming are appear on the surface.  Multiple levels of meaning are often present and sophisticated content itself is ambiguous (vague meaning to their content). They will have a better chance to appealing to different audience. George Gerber distinguished media by the cognitive process each required. He stressed how channels differ not only in terms of their  content but also in regarded to how they awaken and alter thoughts and senses.

 

Medium theory focused on the medium characterization itself rather than on what it conveys or how information is received. In medium theory a medium is not only a news paper, Television, or the digital camera and so forth.  Rather it is the symbolic environment of any communicative act.  For instance the internet or blogs.

Assumption and declaration of McLuhan Theory regarding medium:

1.Changes in communication technology inevitably produce profound changes in both culture and society orders. 

2.McLuhan argued that technology inevitably cause specific changes in how people think, in how society is structured.

3.McLuhan proclaimed that the medium is the massage. In other words, new forms of media transform our experience of ourselves and our society. The medium is message. We live in message.  The content of new medium is  as old medium. This influence of new forms of media(TV, Internet) is ultimately more important than the content that is transmitted in its specific messages.

4. He suggested the term “global village”. It refers to the new form of social organization that would inevitably emerge electronic media tied the entire world into one great social, political and cultural system.

5. McLuhan proclaimed media to be the extension of the man. He argued that media quite literally extended sight, hearing and touch through time and space

Criticism:

McLuhan work became more accepted within the media industries. It aroused increasing criticism with in academia. The critics is found that his ideas to diverse and inconsistent.

 

it also have a opinion that, this thinking was no meaning no linear and logically inconsistent and random thoughts only.

 

His ideas were overly speculative and empirically unverifiable cultivation analysis.

 

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SOCIAL MEDIA THEORIES

Social media
These are websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet using a computer or mobile phone.  Now social media is consider as one of the hottest areas of interpersonal communication research; such as  how technology is influencing our interpersonal communication and how our interpersonal communication is influencing the development of technologies. 

Our interpersonal relationships has been changed lot by Technology . Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) is  altering the norms of interpersonal interaction and creating a new system of messages by which people attempt to understand one another both verbally and nonverbally.

According to Mcluhan , technology refers to human inventions that enhance communication. The new technologies like alphabets, printing press, electronic media and now digital communication have effect on man’s cognition and social organization which in turn affect the culture of any society. 

SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY

Social exchange theory defined by sociologist, George Homans . Social exchange as the exchange of activity, tangible or intangible, and more or less rewarding or costly, between at least two persons.Social exchange theory is  influenced by a social psychological and sociological perspective. Social exchange theory has been generally analyzed by comparing human interactions with the marketplace. 
Social exchange theory have some key concept; they are  include reciprocity, fairness and negotiated rules, with information, approval, respect, power, group gain and personal satisfaction among the rewards in successful transactions.”

Social exchange theory views exchange as a social behavior that may result in both economic and social outcomes.

Online social networking is an ideal application of social networking theory. Researchers  find that positive social influence to use an online community increases online community self-disclosure; reciprocity increases self-disclosure; online community trust increases self-disclosure; and privacy risk beliefs decrease self-disclosure. 

THE SOCIAL PENETRATION THEORY

The theory was formulated by psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor in 1973 to understand relationship development between individuals.  It is also called the “onion theory” of personality, since “layers” of personality are penetrated as time passes and intimacy grows. Social penetration theory was developed to explain the evolution of interpersonal relationships. 
The social penetration theory states that the relationship development occurs primarily through self-disclosure, or intentionally revealing personal information such as personal motives or desires, feelings, thoughts, and experiences to others. This theory is also guided by the assumptions that relationship development is systematic and predictable. Self-disclosure is the major way to bring a relationship to a new level of intimacy.
The Social Penetration Theory explain the relationships, which is become more intimate over a period of time. The maintaining relationship determine the people’s willing to reveal their more personal information; For ex FB relationships. Millions of friendships have formed from a friend request. A person may start to follow you, but constant and direct interaction will lead to more intimate friendships that go beyond the computer or cell phone.  Maintaining relationships also relies on intimate exchanges by both parties.
The process of self-revelation is influenced by three major factors, which are:  personal characteristics, reward-cost assessments, and the situational context. 
The social penetration theory (SPT) proposes that, as relationships develop,  from relatively shallow, non-intimate levels to deeper, more intimate ones. 

THE STRONG AND WEAK TIES THEORY 

The Strong and  Weak tie theory derives by Nick Granovetter .

The Strong and Weak Ties Theory says  that people relationship levels depends on time, emotional intensity, intimacy and reciprocal service. The weaker connections also serve an important purpose, they help you connect to another part of the world that we  may not be aware of.

When Granovetter talks about ties in social networks, he defines a strong tie as being your close friend and a weak tie as your remote friend. An average Facebook user, who has no experience with social network theory or has never heard of Granovetters theory,
The individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. This deprivation will not only insulate them from the latest ideas and fashions but may put them in a disadvantaged position in the labour market, where advancement can depend,

MEDIA RICHNESS THEORY, OR  INFORMATION RICHNESS THEORY OR MRT,

This theory was  introduced by Richard L. Daft and Robert H. Lengel in 1986 . This is consider as an extension of information processing theory.

 MRT is used to rank and evaluate the richness of certain communication media, such as phone calls, video conferencing, and email. Media Richness Theory provides a framework for describing a communication medium's ability to reproduce the information sent over it without loss or distortion. For example, a phone call cannot reproduce visual social cues  while video conferencing, which affords the transmission of gestures and body language. MRT explains that richer, personal communication mediums are generally more effective for communicating of equivocal issues than less rich media.
Media richness theory states that all communication media vary in their ability to enable users to communicate and to change understanding. The degree of this ability is known as a medium's "richness."
Media richness depends on

• Ability to handle multiple information cues simultaneously
• Ability to facilitate rapid feedback
• Ability to establish a personal focus
• Ability to utilize natural language

 

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