Monday, September 8, 2008

CoMM105-Social Constructionist perspective

As I'm watching Tru TV's Party Heat, a show that show's police officers carrying out their duties to protect the public, and thinking about this perspective, I begin to wonder about how a lot of people seem to think that police officers are the enemy.  When someone thinks about public safety, who do they think falls within that category?  The model for Social Constructionism explains that their are people within a group surrounded by collective representations of reality, which is surrounded by customs and traditions and codes.  On the outside of that, is the circle of communication that builds around them.

For some reason, maybe due to the all of these aspects of the model, the people being questioned and investigated for public intoxication seem to act very hostile towards the police.  As if the police were the ones that ruined there fun and inability to drive a boat.  Then when other people see the officers trying to arrest and apprehend the violators they think that the police are being hostile towards them.  

It seems that a world is created around the officers instead, where people who aren't cops and don't understand the life of one, gather their knowledge and perception from their surrounding peers.  The social construct model shows a circle of communication all around and even explains that our construction of reality are distorted by communication.  Possibly even by the way it is communicated.

Maybe, this model of communication is also partially responsible for shaping the way people act, feel, think, and so on.  

I guess this concept can explain how people's perceptions of others can be formed.  I wonder what would contribute to their decision to believe for themselves.  Experience could be the determining factor and current state of one's mentality of the world around them.  But the thing that is even more interesting is that this model, given what it includes, makes me think that social constructs change very often.

1 comment:

chocoyuko said...

I see many people who don’t like police officers too. When I was living in San Jose downtown, my friends were annoyed by many police officers patrolling at night, but I remember that I felt safe for that.

As for the social construction, I think the role of media is enormous too. In Japan, a woman gives chocolates to a man who she likes on St. Valentines Day. I heard this custom began after a chocolate company advertized chocolates as a gift for St. Valentines Day. By the chocolate company’s tactic, we now buy chocolates on St. Valentines Day, and declare love for somebody we like. Also in the U.S., I saw many advertisements for St. Valentines Day that makes us wanting to buy gifts for lovers. I think the power of media to construct our world is very strong.