May 6, 2020 | Adamas University

THE SCOPE OF STUDYING CONFLICT COMMUNICATION

Conflict communication is one of the papers you study while pursuing mass communication as it is offered as an elective paper. Now many questions will come in your mind regarding this subject – what is conflict communication, why do we study it, how is it a part of the communication world?

Do not contemplate much as I bring this article to provide you information on the subject. So, read on to know more about the subject and the career prospects it will bring.

What is a Conflict?

Everyone hates conflict. The word ‘conflict’ immediately brings to our mind a negative emotion, and we always want to avoid it. So you would ask; why should one study conflict communication? Well, conflict is inevitable and an imperative part of the society. Conflicts are bound to happen as long as living beings keep on interacting with each other.

What is Conflict Communication?

In addition to family disputes, commercial disputes, workplace disputes, either interpersonal or among groups, conflict communication also studies how communication can play a fundamental role in international relations. The aim is to use communication to resolve hostilities between nations and reinforce peace. The Strategic Communications Division of the United Nations makes use of communication devices to achieve its goals of peacekeeping, peacebuilding, disarmament, counter-terrorism and migration in the world. They organise global communication campaigns to support the organization’s diverse and challenging priorities.

Conflict can cause resentment, hostility and perhaps the ending of the relationship. If it is handled well, however, conflict can be productive – leading to deeper understanding and mutual respect.

To put it simply, conflict communication is all about using communication for the purpose of resolution of conflicts. In order to be able to solve a conflict, we first need to understand what triggers conflict. The difference in ideas and opinions is the major cause behind most conflicts.

Understanding the conflict cycle

Conflict is a natural and inevitable part of life. According to the conflict cycle, it is primarily our actions and reactions to these challenges that determine whether the situation will have constructive or destructive results. Contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling are our common reactions to conflict or adverse situations, which often aggravates the condition.

Every individual has a certain set of pre-determined beliefs and notions which we have formed from our experiences in lives. The conflict cycle postulates that when we find ourselves in a conflict situation, we give a response to it. After we give a response to the conflict, now, we have to face the consequences of the response. And this consequence takes us back to the beliefs. This means that after we face the consequence of the conflict, our pre-conceived beliefs are either strengthened and we start believing in those values much more than before. Or the beliefs break and we form a new set of beliefs, which are a result of the new experience resulting out of the conflict. Thus, no matter what we are not able to break the conflict cycle and we keep getting entangled in it. Since, the conflict cycle continues, we cannot break it and that conflict situation in our lives keeps repeating itself. In order to break the conflict cycle, we have to change our response to the conflict situation otherwise it will keep on repeating itself.

For conflict to occur there has to be some sort of interdependence between two parties. If the actions of one person will affect the well-being of the other, interdependence exists. It is very common to observe conflicts in relationships with high degrees of interdependence, such as close friends, family members, and co-workers.

What will one study in Conflict Communication?

The course will inculcate in you the communication skills which are required for alternative dispute resolution. This will be done with the help of case studies and strategies related to the resolution of conflicts which one may encounter at workplace, family and personal relationships. Also, you will learn to handle difficult people in educational, business, and family, intercultural settings. You will be skilled to apply different communication theories to bring peace around you, in a situation when no mediator is available.

That brings us to another important aspect of this course which is, learning methods of alternative resolution like negotiation, arbitration and mediation. Mediation involves a lot of techniques like caucusing, trust building, etc which a mediator requires to practice for successfully conducting the mediation session. While studying conflict communication you would be introduced to many concepts and communication skills like empathizing, reframing, validation and many more.

All these and much more knowledge you will be able to pick up from the subject on conflict communication. These skills will be helpful to you to conduct a counselling or mediation session and also avoid conflicts in your daily life and so it will be a very valuable learning experience.

Generation gap: how values are shaped with the passage of time

Sociologists have been said to have a deeper understanding of social phenomena than the practitioners of any other discipline. This is mostly because Sociologists deal with such intricate aspects of everyday social life, that most people fail to notice as a specific phenomenon. One such everyday phenomenon is generation gap. Generation gap is generally perceived as difference in values, attitudes, opinions etc. between people of different generations. But is it a noteworthy thing? The answer is Yes. It can be perceived in daily lives of people in families, in the office, on the street, pretty much everywhere. And it is a complex and interesting thing omnipresent in our lives.

Why does generation gap happen?

The difference in values and attitudes result from difference in their indoctrination to these values and socialization. And social condition shapes the values and attitudes of its time. It is very interesting to note that there is a notable difference in attitudes about expected behaviours of couples in public. Indians in the 60s considered embracing of couples in public a shameful act. The number of joint families in the 1960s was also way more than it is in 2020. So, couples were expected to refrain from any public show of love even in their joint families. But with the growing number of nuclear families and rise of the urban lifestyle, public embracing of couples has been destigmatised to a certain extent. Now, the 2020 youth might feel a public show of love for his/her partner is nothing to be ashamed of, whereas the man in his 60s now might feel enraged that today’s youth have crossed all boundaries of shamelessness. It is a natural feeling for both the age groups, because their values are completely shaped by the specific time they grew up, and the social currents affecting them.

Technological cause of generation gap

Technological development of an age also give rise to difference in culture and the value system. Inventions like smartphones and 4G network have suddenly provided a level of speed and efficiency in our daily lives, and its corresponding change in the values. For example, the perception of learning with books and paper and pen has undergone profound transformation with the onset of online classes in schools and universities worldwide. Thus, the understanding of mobile phones as a mere method of communication has graduated to the indispensable lifeline that is the smartphone, which is also the major means of teaching learning activity today. Smartphones and digital presence have brought profound cultural changes. Digital connectivity is fast eroding personal relationships where people went to see each other in person. Instead, automated messages or GIFs are circulated in social media and messengers for the same occasions. Today’s youth spend considerable part of their days browsing through social media, and their value system has been tuned with connectivity through the web. Older people often find this behaviour of the millennials as flimsy, irresponsible and detached. The gap in both the generation’s values prevent them from coming to a common ground.

Is generation gap psychological?

Generation gap has often been depicted as a psychological phenomenon, where the younger generation has been accused of a careless youthful attitude, where they don’t respect the values of the older generation, and love to act on their heightened adrenaline. Similarly, the older generation has been accused of orthodoxy and lack of open mindedness. But I have advanced several arguments in this article to prove that generation gap is unmistakably social, and I further argue that it has not anything to do with the psychology of the individuals. A specific time period gives rise to values and emotions that are obsolete at a former or latter time. The difference in values in two separate time periods may vary so much that they might appear contrary.

How values of different time shape the attitudes towards things

Presently, the world is gradually being aware of environmental degradation and the effects of global warming. In this respect, the inspiration from and imitation of developed countries has transformed in view of their increased carbon footprint. Environmental sustainability is increasingly given more importance in every country. This consciousness of protecting the environment has given birth to new and changed values. This awareness and sensitivity to the environmental cause is a unique aspect of the contemporary time, unknown and unthinkable 25 years back. A person belonging to an older generation might think it alright to burn garbage as a means of getting rid of waste materials and keeping the house clean, since he has never been raised in the consciousness of environmental conservation, and never had the need to think of the emission of different gases resulting from burning of different objects in the garbage. However, the values of a person raised into a consciousness of conservation dictates him never to commit such an act, and possibly prevent such action by others, he might also advocate keeping it inside the house until the garbage collector arrives. The difference in value system both the generations were socialized into are contrary to each other, and hence, the same circumstance is experienced differently by both.

Conclusion

As a concluding remark, I argue that generation gap is not homogeneously experienced by everyone. Since the different cultural values one is exposed to shapes one’s beliefs and attitudes, generation gap between two generations is widened when contradictory social values of two different time periods are in strife.

Importance of Mathematical and Statistical models for COVID-19 Modeling

The SARS-CoV-2, which have been named as 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a contagious disease. The virus that causes COVID-19 is mainly transferred through droplets caused when an infected person sneezes, or exhales and coughs. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) on has declared this novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. Worldwide till date near about 3.2 million people got infected, out of which near about 1 million people recovered whereas at least 2, 28, 000 people has died due to COVID-19 so far. In India nearly 38 thousand positive cases have registered, whereas more than 10,000 people return to their home after recovery whereas nearly 1,200 death cases have been recorded. Since still there is no vaccine is available for COVID-19 so far. Thus the absence of specific healing treatment or effective vaccine against it, scientist looking for other possibilities of the prevention and control measures. In this scenario modelling pursues to judge the likely impact of various non-pharmaceutical justification and dominance strategies on the spread of the virus and the number of deaths. Few questions may arises in almost every one’s mind that are: (i) will the COVID-19 disease infect millions in India? (ii) How many are likely to die due to this infection?

Results from mathematical and statistical models (studies) may not give accurate answers to these questions but may helpful to understand nature of spreading of the COVID-19 virus and its impacts. Models may also help to shed new light on this virus. By comparing predictions with field of statistics, scientists may detect those parameters that explain potential differences. They may be then deduce any information that would otherwise have escaped them, and refine their systems. Now as we all know the situation is changing day by day and so it is too important to understand the true magnitude and behavior of the pandemic is important in framing public policies. Scientists from different science fraternity are tried their best to find out the remedies from this pandemic situation. Mathematician as well as Statistician are also working hard to find the best out of way to model or forecast the nature of spreading and understand the impact of COVID-19. Here is some mathematical and statistical models which may help Scientist or researcher to predict or forecast the spreading COVID-19 virus and its influence.

Mathematical Models:

(i) SIR model: This model consists of three compartments: the number of susceptible (S), the number of infectious (I), and the number of recovered (R) individuals. It is one of the simplest compartmental models and from this basic form many models can be derivative. The basic SIR model uses equations that take the assumptions and determine what percentage of S (the Susceptibles) are infected and move to I (the Infectious), what percentage of I die and what percentage of I recover and move to R. These models often have additional parameters that govern how the infection rate, recovery rate, and death rate change at particular times.

(ii) SEIR model: In this model having four compartments such as susceptible (S), exposed (E), infected (I), and resistant (R). Each of those variables represents the number of people in those groups. Recently a mathematical model is developed based on susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) model to describe the COVID-19 transmission dynamic in Korea.

(iii) SSqEqIHRM model: Recently this model has been used to study of mitigation spread of COVID-19 in the early phase of the outbreak in Wuhan, China (Weike Zhou et al., 2020). In this model, the population is divided into seven compartments, including susceptible (S), quarantined susceptible (Sq), infectious without symptoms (or exposed E), quarantined exposed (Eq), infectious with symptoms (or infected I), hospitalized (H) and recovered (R), M represents the cumulative density of awareness programs driven by the media reports.

Statistical models: The statistical models are supposed to be unsuccessful, often because of one or more key assumptions were not adjusted to reflect in the current data set. Therefore, one of the major exercise is to develop a dynamic model in which the process of ensuring an effective feedback loop to stress on test the assumptions, and revive the model with new reliable information. Here is the two models which may useful in modeling COVID-19 virus.

(i) ARIMA model: Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models can be treated as one of the simplest and direct tool to which may use to monitor national and regional level the health monitoring system. ARIMA model may be completely summarized by three numbers: p= the number of autoregressive terms, d = the number of non-seasonal differences and q = the number of moving-average terms. A standard notation is used of ARIMA (p, d, q) where the parameters are substituted with integer values to quickly indicate the specific ARIMA model being used. A value of 0 can be used for a parameter, which indicates to not use that element of the model. It may be used to forecast the epidemic trend over the period. An ARIMA-type models have proved to be useful to a very wide range of physical and human-generated dynamic systems in engineering, econometrics, Earth sciences, and other fields (Feigelson ED et al, 2018). One of the advantage of this model to surely forecasting approach and its ease of application and interpretation.

(ii) ARFIMA model: The autoregressive fractional integral moving average (ARFIMA) models are time series models that generalize ARIMA models by permitting fractional values of the differencing parameter (Granger C.W.J and Joyeux .R, 1980). In a simple manner, ARFIMA (p, d, q ) is a time series model where the autoregressive and moving average components treat many short-memory dependencies on recent past values, and the fractional integration component treats both many forms of trend and also a class of long memory models.

The mathematical and statistical models discussed above may be useful for the scientist to do modeling of spreading of COVID-19, if analysts would collect correct data from the medical authorities that distinguish between deaths caused by COVID-19 and deaths that would have happened anyway. The useful and more accurate forecasting may be provided these models provided scientists or researchers bring up to date data related to COVID-19 cases and applying the models to other countries as well.

References:

Weike Zhou, Aili Wang, Fan Xia, Yanni Xiao and Sanyi Tang, (2020) Effects of media reporting on mitigating spread of COVID-19 in the early phase of the outbreak, Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering Vol- 17(3), pp-2693–2707
Granger C.W.J and Joyeux .R, 1980. An introduction to long memory time series models and fractional differencing, Journal of Time series Analysis, 15-29.
Feigelson ED, Babu GJ and Caceres GA (2018) Autoregressive Times Series Methods for Time Domain Astronomy. Phys. 6:80. doi: 10.3389/fphy.2018.00080
http://www.public.asu.edu/~hnesse/classes/seir.html.
https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2020/04/predicting-the-pandemic-mathematical-modelling-tackles-covid-19/

Probable threats of Child Trafficking during COVID-19 Pandemic

The recent picture in the Delhi railway station and bus terminals show thousands of migrant labourers and their children gathering to return to their hometown amidst COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. These migrant labourers regularly travel from their native places like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand and other states to work and stay there as migrant labourers. But after the announcement of lockdown to resist the spread of COVID-19, they could not get facilities to reach their native villages. Thus, these migrant labourers were gathering in different place of the country like Delhi and Maharashtra. Since the last few weeks, several photographs and video clips are focused on social media showing their effort to reach their native villages. Thousands of people walked to reach their villages with children on their fathers’ shoulders and mothers sharing heavy knapsack on their head. These people are now collectively in panic for their loss of job in the period of lockdown due to COVID 19. This will have an impact and lead to the increase of child labour, school dropouts and violence against children within these communities.

The Financial Condition:

The financial condition of migrant workers is very poor. Returning jobless will lead to a lot of suffering within their family. In most cases, they do not have much land for cultivation. These leads to becoming migrant workers and they are forced to leave their home in search of work to the other states of India and even abroad. Thus, this lockdown situation has left many of them jobless and lack of any source of income to run their family. Government relief packages to support their income and financial condition may not help on a long-term basis. In past several other epidemics, droughts, floods and such other natural calamities left such migrant population to lose their job and face severe disturbance. Presently this COVID-19 situation has created severe panic amongst such population for want of support financially. Government and Government initiative must be taken to bring them out from this severe condition.

Child Trafficking:

Since, schools and educational institutions are closed, children of school-going age of this migrant population are facing severe problems. They are lacking nutritional food from mid-day meals from their schools. Government has taken measures to distribute an uncooked supply of food materials as a supplement to the mid-day meals to the school-going children. However, this may not be enough to satisfy their hunger. This might lead to child trafficking and other unsocial activities, as parents are facing difficulty to manage their family and home in this pandemic situation. It might also lead to underage marriage and prostitution. Girl child trafficking and the rise of pornography may also become a part of this, due to lack of finance and proper well-being.

Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi on 24th April 2020 showed our Prime Minister Narendra Modi, some references of employers who belong to factories, workshops, stone quarries, brick kilns etc. also prosecute child labours. According to him, child labour employers cannot pay their full wages and these child labourers are not being provided with proper nutritional foods in this pandemic situation. Thousands of children from different factories located in the adjacent area of Delhi were trafficked from different states and forced them into child labour. At this pandemic period, the activists are not being able to reach these children due to the lockdown situation. He requests to the government to make proper facilities of food, safety, shelter, and medical treatment. After removing lockdown these number of child labourers may increase in a larger quantity. He advised the government to constitute an effective task force to formulate and implement a strong action against the employers and child trafficking agents. It would help present child labourers and would-be child labourers.

Conclusion:

Socio-economical and psycho-social threats of widespread COVID19 pandemic have created an emergency situation for the Government and administration. It is the responsibility of the Government to look into the matter seriously and provide sufficient nutritional food, medical facilities, economic assurance and psychological counselling as and when needed, only then these children and their family can overcome this present situation. It would be proper to utilise and seek help from NGO’s which are specialised in dealing with such crisis situations. The after-effect of a pandemic can be devastating in the perspective of child health, malnutrition, under nutrition, abuses, sexual violence, trafficking etc. It needs specific responses and interventions from every section of the society.