ETHICAL CHALLENGES

Ethical Challenges in Small Group Communication by John Gastil and Leah Sprain

Ethical Challenges in Small Group Communication by John Gastil and Leah Sprain

Introduction

God created the world and divided the human beings into different segments. However, He created principles of equality and peace to maintain harmony on this planet. People divided themselves into different segments based on their religious differences in interaction with a Living G-d, oneself and others. This resulted in creating a state of conflicting between religious groups and association of people in serving the interest of those particular groups. Assuring the equality among groups, dominance, and eager to control creates a distinction among the group that creates a disturbance in society. Under power-justice theory this principle is associated with the intensity to lead and controlling other people.

When people interact in groups or think of the way their group relates to other groups, they do not always think of themselves as unrelated individuals. Instead, they may think of themselves and act as group members (Laughlin et al., 2006). All communication that include interpersonal, organizational, small group, mass mediated, political, informational, technical, or commercial, whether delivered orally, electronically, verbally or non-verbally, visually, or through a print medium occurs within a context, including goals, means, and occasion (Entman, 2004). Ethical communication requires understanding of and responsiveness to each of these key elements. What one hopes to achieve through the communication is dependent on how one chooses to communicate (the means), and the consequences of communication are particularly noteworthy features of ethical communication (Baron, 2005).

Ethics in Communication

Communication ethics is, first and foremost, about choice. To the extent an individual or group has options available in any given situation, moral agency is at play. With moral agency, the relative freedom to choose one's pathway in any given situation comes from the responsibility. The cognitive revolution in psychology moved the field from merely observing the relationship between group stimuli and behavior for attempting to understand how people mentally represent both the group and their role within it (Entman, 2004). The illusion of group cohesiveness is the persistent and widespread belief, despite some evidence to the contrary, that group performance is superior to individual performance. The popular media and quasi-scientific press often express strong and optimistic beliefs regarding the effectiveness of group-based work, and these beliefs seem widely shared within society (Baron, 2005). Sometimes, however, the scientific literature clearly shows that groups do not perform well at all and that certain tasks might be better left to individual member of the groups. The illusion of the superiority of the group over the individual may persist even when the individual has had extensive experience with a particular task (Turner, 1998). Therefore, it is not just due to cultural beliefs that are easily falsified through experience.

Group Association and System Thinking

The first cycle began with people noticing relationships among things that on the surface had seemed to be separate. This led to thinking more about relationships than about different ...