Foundations of Professional Communication - Personal Reflection
Time flies, my 12-week course “Foundations of Professional Communication” has come to an end; along with my second semester at RMIT. Looking back, I ask myself “What have I truly learned after this course?” The answer even surprises me when it comes to the summarization of my achievements throughout this course. Frankly, the journey of learning was quite tough for me as it required a wide range of comprehension & familiarization for both academic knowledge and transferable skills. Yet, the more challenging the course is, the more rewarding accomplishments that I can get after encountering all the difficulties.
The importance and roles of Media & Communication
I’ve come up with a conclusion about the indisputable significance of the Media & Communication field towards certain target audiences’ segments & the general public; as it’s related to other industrial practices like news reporting & many prominent social issues. All of the theories that I’ve learned throughout this course and especially my experience after finishing the 2 assignments, have proved that the mass media solely & the Communication industry generally stands for many key roles within the context of this modern world. The media can either create public awareness or eliminate existing unwanted ideas by releasing more & more updated news that makes the audiences can’t even control their own minds among the chaotic “information matrix” nowadays. Owing to the fact that both modern media instruments (e-news websites, social media platforms…) & traditional ones (radios, TV) are still widely tailored to be the major sources of information updating (Wearesocial, 2021). These are some of the most fundamental & vital roles of the media; it’s also able to alter and respond to the public attitudes, advocate changes, manage information sources, and communicate during crisis periods for certain subjects (Smith & Lennon, 2019)...However, my 2 exercises only focused on the dark sides of the Vietnamese mass media; as “How it’s shaping & misleading the public opinions via reports about different social issues?”
My first group assignment was to scrutinize the topic “How does the Vietnamese mass media demonstrate celebrities’ love scandals?”. The love triangle drama between 3 celebrities Son Tung MTP, Hai Tu & Thieu Bao Tram received tremendous attention from both the Vietnamese media and netizens in January, 2021. Even though it was just all rumors and there had not been any official statements from the insiders, many Vietnamese e-news agencies triggered the public’s anger & harsh criticism toward Hai Tu by repeatedly publishing numerous news articles implied that HT was the secret mistress of ST, who ruined TBT’s 8 years relationship. Clearly, the mass media has adopted gender-biased angles in reporting about love scandals. As a result, with its enormous influences on the viewers, it has misguided the public to be indirectly sexist with subjective perspectives: blaming women & defending men-despite that the truth has not been told; it’s always the woman’s fault and the man’s role is not even being judged when it comes to a dilemma.
My second individual assignment has answered the main question “How does the Vietnamese mass media portray Sexual harassment in the educational environment?” Since power goes along with responsibilities, the Vietnamese mass media is responsible for genuinely reflecting social issues with full insights regarding all the participants of the reported phenomenon (Dang, 2020). In terms of the textual sexual harassment case towards 20 female students that happened in a Vietnamese famous high school this April, the media has well-functioned its roles by promptly mentioning this controversial issue & strengthening communal protection for the victims as well as anger and accusation on the culprits throughout various news articles. Yet, this social problem can’t be completely resolved due to a shortcoming in available reports to notify the public about the reactions & solutions from the Vietnamese authorities and the victims’ school board: as the “relevant 3rd sides” of the case. Therefore, the Vietnamese mass media might have underrated its ethical framework of prioritizing the entire truth.
Personally, it’s really eye-opening to penetrate deeply into both the dark & bright sides of the Vietnamese mass media; especially, how it can be biased in reporting social issues. From those statements above, I can argue that everything has its good & bad sides; hence, facing the drawbacks of something can help us to master the reality of that phenomenon. Consequently, understanding the existence of dark sides within the Vietnamese mass media with its causes & repercussions; I’ll patiently practice by learning more to enrich both my academic knowledge & practical skills as well as a good set of occupational morals for the ultimate goal of being a promising Media practitioner in the near future.
Evidently, the Vietnamese mass media environment can be either toxic by “brainwashing” the public or “wholesome & healthy” by being the best tool to widely disseminate positive & genuine values for the society. It entirely depends on the Communicators; who are PR staff, Advertisers, Marketers & Journalists working in the same field. I think we should not only sharpen our social knowledge & professional skills but also practice qualified working ethics to contribute our utmost efforts for the general development of the Vietnamese Communication industry.
My personal learning experiences
Since the course’s content was available on Canvas for our preparation shortly before the new semester officially began; I was quite shocked because of the “heavy” knowledge & complicated assignments’ topic that I must cover, which were completely new to me. As its name -"Foundations of Professional Communication", all the knowledge & skills delivered within this course are supposed to be basic & understandable for beginners’ level in order to manufacture a solid foundation for students to be ready for the upcoming advanced courses, yet it was so mind-blowing as I first approached this educational method. First thing first, in terms of the Theoretical Approach, this course’s main content is about all the fundamental theories to advanced concepts & communication models of key theorists, with detail-oriented instructions from lecturer Abdul to convey the general view about: How the Media field truly works within certain social contexts? I was taught different communication theories & concepts each week. That was also the first time I got to literally learn about these new terminologies, such as “Objective-Interpretive-Narrative Paradigm”, “Discourse” & “Persuasion Theories”… Along with these theories, many practical modern concepts were insightfully introduced to me; as I personally rate them to be highly workable for my future career: “Ethics in the Media industry”, “Consumer culture/Consumerism” & “Globalisation”, etc. Yet, the one that impressed me the most was the series of “Audiences & Effects” theories, which depict the roles & features of the audiences or the receivers, as either active or passive. From that, the communicators or messengers will utilize appropriate theory to create an effective communication process due to their wishes & demands. Particularly, Framing Theory-one of the most basic but common theories attached to the real-life contexts, since it has crucial impacts on the audiences (Botan, 2018). It’s probably the most understandable theory that I can easily apply for my future professions; especially in Framing messages & information properly for news articles.
Our group for assignment 1
Our Infographics
Presentation Day of assignment 1
Secondly, completing assignments 1&2, to me, was a tricky mission, yet filled with enjoyable moments & gratifying achievements since we’ve tried our very best to conduct the tasks so that we won’t have any regrets whenever looking back at our journey. Immediately, we had to cope with numerous challenges of Assignment 1: Producing a collaborative multimedia presentation regarding a specific social topic under the lens of the Communication framework. At first, our team of 4 was really struggling to find an appropriate topic that must be presented on the Vietnamese mass media outlets & intriguing, timely enough to talk about. We also tackled the "Cognitive Dissonance" theory by Leon Festinger in the 1950s, which is the discomfort caused by opposing thoughts and viewpoints (Westmeyer, 1989); due to the fact that our team members had strong personalities & opposite viewpoints. Nevertheless, thanks to the help of Mr. Abdul & many of our online meetings, not only we could resolve that issue (for a better process of teamwork) by bringing out the common points between us and being extremely open-minded to others’ objective ideas, but also we were able to invent a productive working strategy to eventually create a quite coherent, media-related & in-depth presentation (apart from some mistakes like “wordy” slides, as our instructor commented)
Consecutively, my second assignment is to individually operate a case study regarding a social phenomenon that was widely discussed by the Vietnamese mass media. It was the first step of choosing a suitable topic that was always the hardest decision for me since there were too many intriguing topics to choose from. After tons of considerations & a list of more than 40 topics, I finally went with the social issue of “Sexual harassment in Vietnamese educational environment”, which was worth discussing & recent enough for my case study. Followed up by the 2 steps that were much of a problem to me; the second & third step of composing the main question & selecting an appropriate paradigm & Communication theory/concept due to the requirement that unlike assignment 1, assignment 2 is heavily theoretical-based and the topic must be well-illustrated under the Media lens. Fortunately, after some helpful consultations with lecturer Abdul, I figured out the case study’s main question and the best theoretical approach for it was Interpretive Paradigm & Framing theory-the one that I could comprehend the most. When everything was well-planned as my intentions, I started to operate the 1st draft of the case study. In terms of knowledge gained after assignment 2, now I’m getting used to the “standardized” structure of a formal case study-recommended by my mentor, from A to Z, step by step: Introduction-Background/Context-Theoretical Approach-Data-Findings-Discussion-Conclusion-(Appendix)-References. By doing so, I can ensure cohesiveness among all the sections to deliver a clear & coherent case study for the readers to easily understand and keep track of. In addition, both assignments of this course have brought me to a realization regarding the Importance of News Articles: as an indispensable part of the mass media, where journalists from various news agencies can reflect objectively on certain social issues (Rovira et al., 2014) and an essential type of Textual Data that acts as evidence for a case study.
Thirdly, when it comes to skills learned, there’re 2 typical skill sets that I’ve attained differently from both in-class sessions & personal experiences of doing assignments. The most rewarding improvement is definitely my time management skill has been significantly enhanced as a result of the strategy: breaking down a massive workload into smaller tasks daily to finish; which allows me to meet the deadlines on time & avoid panicking about “last-minute” work. I perceive this advancement as crucial to me because a good time management skill will not only provide more efficiency & higher-quality works (Proofhub, n.d.) but also assist me to avoid terrifying situations of procrastinating, stress & anxiety like I experienced throughout the previous semester.
Professionally, I’ve simultaneously learned to use several convenient online tools to collect data for a topic: SeoQuake & Listly (for Textual data like News articles) & Netlytic (Youtube comments). After gathering sufficient & clear data, it’s vital to generate related insights by either skimming through all the articles’ main content or interpreting from the available dataset. Interestingly, it was the first time that I got to know about the 2 terms “Datapoints (units of data-e.g: news articles) and Dataset-the collection of the same type of Datapoints” & its roles as statistical & textual proofs for certain arguments of the case study. However, the data can’t speak for themselves without decent data analysis; via reasonable inclusion & exclusion criteria. Initially, I got the chance to practice visualizing the datasets: under the formats of Word clouds, graphs & charts, even Infographics by utilizing efficient online tools like Canva & Google Documents...Specifically, as the Presentation was the media product that made up the most marks in assignment 1, our team was able to boost up the Slides designing skills; using popular software like Powerpoint & Google Slides, etc so that we could release as informative & well-visualized presentation as possible, yet professionally competitive enough to compare with other groups. In my perceptions, Synthesising information & Polishing academic writing skills (correcting spelling & grammatical issues through Proofreading...) are the 2 skills that have never been taken as seriously as within this course. Not until the workshop of RMIT SAS during the lecturing session that I knew what the phrase “information synthesis” means. According to Paré et al. (2015), it’s integrating ideas from multiple different sources that have the same meanings and interpretations in order to establish an overall viewpoint. Through times, I’ve unintentionally got acquainted with the professional usage of academic Citation & Reference; via both APA & RMIT Harvard styles. Indisputably, all of the skills mentioned above are incredibly necessary for both academic learnings and industrial standards of any job category.
In-class sessions were the most effective time when I could accumulate practical skills for my self-cultivation. Honestly, this is the most "active" & interesting course that I've attended so far; in which our lecturer encouraged students to involve in all activities of the class. At first, Critical thinking was just an abstract notion due to my assumptions, nonetheless, I didn’t expect that this skill could be directly applied to each session of the course. It’s a fact that Critical thinking can support the students in developing their circumstantial assessment ability & problem-solving skills. Students with good critical thinking capabilities become self-oriented learners and more independent, instead of conventionally relying on teachers’ subjective instructions (Hooks, 2009; Iyer, 2019). Strengthening this skill within each & every student is the educational purpose of this course, all questions regarding the weekly topic were openly welcomed since my lecturer stated that “There is no such thing as a stupid question, just the discouragement of acknowledging your lack of information is truly alarming here”! Additionally, many in-class discussions were organized to actively fabricate more interactions between the teacher & learners to contribute constructive ideas for the lessons. Besides, I could also refine my public speaking skills by increasing the level of self-confidence & body language, interactions with the audiences...So that there would be no more mumblings and tensions whenever I have to present in front of a crowd; all thanks to the group-presenting activities and mock-presentations (before assignment 1) held both in-class & off-class. Unfortunately, I had to take online classes due to Covid19’s impacts for the last few weeks of the course, yet I still gradually discovered some new vital skills of utilizing online meeting applications like Microsoft Teams (how to share screens, create sub-groups, record the lecturing sessions...)
All in all, even though Abdul has given us many wise words throughout the whole course; I remember this phrase the most “It’s not all about good grades here in this course, assignment is just a small task among numerous tasks in our life; it’s the obtainable skills & information that truly matters”. Undoubtedly, I can affirm that not only the Communication’s academic knowledge that I’ve deeply absorbed after this course & other related subjects but also the practical studying & working skills; which will be significantly beneficial for my learning journey at RMIT & future career path in the Media field!
Last but not least, as I don't have many opportunities ahead, I just want to express my sincere gratitude towards our lecturer Abdul Rohman. I can feel that he’s not just simply doing his job, but he also has tried his best to train the students to become “professional” both ethically & academically; so that we can achieve better job opportunities regarding the Communication field. Thanks to his efforts in inviting the Vice President of Communication and Government Relations of Traveloka-an “unicorn” start-up in Southeast Asia; that I could experience such a useful session full of expert insights. Although there are many more courses that I have to take, this course will definitely be one of the most memorable courses that I have ever joined at RMIT so far.
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REFERENCES:
Botan, C. (2018). Strategic communication theory and practice: the cocreational model. Wiley Blackwell.
Dang, H. (2020, May 13). Truyền thông đại chúng và vấn đề cá nhân hoá-xã hội
hoá nhân cách con người Việt Nam. Người làm báo. http://nguoilambao.vn/truyen-thong-dai-chung-va-van-de-ca-nhan-hoa-xa-hoi-
hoa-nhan-cach-con-nguoi-viet-nam-n17889.html
Hooks, B. (2009). Teaching critical thinking practical wisdom. Routledge.
Iyer, L. (2019). Critical Thinking and its Importance in Education. Cognitive, Psychological and Behavioural Perspectives in Education (pp. 30-40). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339433132_Critical_Thinking_and_it's_Importance_in_Education
Paré, G., Trudel, M., Jaana, M., & Kitsiou, S. (2015). Synthesizing information systems knowledge: A typology of literature reviews. Information & Management, 52, 183–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2014.08.008
Proofhub. (n.d.). Importance of time management in the workplace. https://www.proofhub.com/articles/importance-of-time-management-in-the-workplace
Rovira, C., Capdevila, J., & Marcos, M. (2014). The importance of sources in the selection of online newspaper articles: a study of Google News using eye-tracking. Investigación bibliotecológica, 28, 15–28. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0187-358X(14)72574-2
Smith, C., & Lennon, C. (2019). The Media Workflow Puzzle: How It All Fits Together. Taylor & Francis Group.
We are social. (2021). Digital 2021: Global overview report. https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2021-global-overview-report
Westmeyer, H. (1989). Psychological Theories from a Structuralist Point of View. Springer Berlin Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-84015-9
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