Undergraduates' transitions to adult working roles can befacilitated by off-campus field education programs. An evaluation study of one such program, a work internship program in Philadelphia, indicated that student participants had experienced significant positive changes in feelings of per-sonal and social efficacy. Participation in the program had apparently in-creased their self-confidence and willingness to enter novel social situations as well as decreased their tendencies to be self-abasing.
The nature and extent of public conversations may be indicators of the cohesiveness of communities.Wle engage in small talk to initiate exchanges, pass time effortlessly, and maintain cordiality around acquaintances and strangers. Small talk is a set of messages like any other, except that it is highly ritualized and predictable. Once learned, small talk can become a resource that facilitates confident entrance into novel social encounters because there is great certainty associated with its cycle of exchanges. Is there a communication framework that will relate small talk to other sets of messages and direct attention to its usefulness as a social gesture? Principles of metacommrinication provide a promising framework.In a recent article, LaRossa ( 7 ) elaborated 4 propositions about metacommimication, based on the work of Bateson, Ruesch, and Watzlawick. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that every message has two kinds of meaning: ( a ) a report or comment on an event, and ( b ) a command about how the report is to be interpreted. The command aspect of the message contains a directive: how the listener is to regard the report, the speaker's attitude toward it and/or his/her attitude toward the listener. Since the command aspect is information about information it is referred to as metacommunication.At one level, small talk may be treated as metacommrinication. It is a comment about the sitriational and/or social relationship of its users. Siiperficial exOberlin, Ohio Jiidith Reinstein is on the faciilty of the Department of Commiinications, O h d i n College, 147
A pilot study of media use among women whose informal social networks uary in close-knittedness shows the degree of urbanity and education to mediate choice of information source.Information seeking and opinion formation appear to be affected by certain social factors that incline people to utilize some information sources rather than others. The density of individuals' informal networks as one aspect of their social milieu might shape the type and frequency of their use of mass media and thereby the evolution of their opinions.Less variation in opinion would be expected within close-knit networks where an individual's friends know each other well than within loose-knit networks where an individual's friends are not well-acquainted (1, 2, 3, 5 ) .
Casual customer talk with beauticians, barbers, and druggists helps define a com~ilex set of mutual relations and expectations.Cit 117'nr t er ist ira 1 l y 11 r bn 17 it es m eet one n n o t h cr in h igh ly segm en t ed ro les.T h e y a~e , to be .sirre, dependent irpoii more people for the saiisfactions of their life-nccrl.c tlinn are rirrnl peoplc a n d t1iir.r are ossoriaterl with a g i m t c r niimbcr of organ,izecl g~oiif).r, h i t t h e y are less dependent upon pnrtirirlar pei..sons, and their dependence upon others is confined to a iiiglrly fractionnlizctl a.cpect of t h e other's ? m i n d 01 ortiuity. T h i s is es.scntial1y whnt i.c m e a n i b y .sciying thnt t h e city is characterized by secondayy rather than prinzary contacts. T h e contacts of the city may indeed be face to fore, birt t i 7 q are nevertheless impersonal, .siiperficid, lransitory, and segmental. T h e w s e r 7~, the indiflerencc, nnd the blase' outloolc which iir1~znite.e manifest in their relationships may thus be rega~~rlctl (is de71icc.c of inzniirnizing iiicrnsel7~e.s against the personal claims and cxpcctntions of othm-s.-Louis Wirth (7) Althougli the implications of urbanism for sorial participation have been a focus of systematic study for more than a generation now, many o f I~Virtli's early hypotheses about urban social participation (7) have been incompletely examined. Are the interpersonal relationships of the urbanite more segmental and transitory than those of his rural counterpart? Does he consequently develop a blask attitude toward other people and an intlifference to their problems and goals? Does he become increasingly self-seeking at the expense of neighborhood or community efforts-later regretting his loss of community (5)?
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