This document explores the complex relationship between conflict management and communication, highlighting the ways in which communication can both resolve and exacerbate conflicts. It examines the rise of communication power in modern society and its impact on individualism and conflict. The author argues that communication is a 'total social fact' that affects all areas of life, from culture to economics and politics. The document also touches on the challenges of communication in a globalized world, including the spread of disinformation and propaganda. It concludes that communication plays a crucial role in conflict management, but its impact is ambivalent and depends on how it is used.
Extract
[...] Examples of deep social transformations that have led to the rise in power of the visibility of communication are therefore numerous and diverse. Communication is therefore everywhere, in our homes, in our associations, in our workplaces, at school, etc. Communication affects everyone. From cradle to old age, from the poor to the rich, from the West to the East, communication has become a 'total social fact' since it concerns both the cultural, economic, marketing, social sciences and political sectors. A society increasingly individualistic and a source of conflicts: This emphasis on communication, which seeps into all areas of our lives, regardless of our culture, age, or sex, is however ambivalent. [...]
[...] Several reasons seem to explain the growing importance of communication in contemporary society. Communication now enjoys a greatly increased visibility. The emergence of new technologies has enabled the growth of communication technologies, considered as sciences and as leisure. The media become key actors in the social and political life of the country, serving as relays and transmission at a multiplied speed and over increasingly important distances. The communication industries, and in particular the famous Google Apple Facebook Amazon and Microsoft (GAFAM), have taken an excessive economic weight and have acquired a major influence on the life of billions of human beings. [...]
[...] It is first necessary to revisit the importance placed on communication in today's society. If the communication phenomenon has always existed, it takes on a much greater scope today. This increase in power coincides with the increase in the number of conflicts and therefore legitimately questions the cause-and-effect link between the contemporary importance of these two phenomena It will then be necessary to recognize that the question of conflict management maintains a relationship that is quite ambivalent with the notion of communication. [...]
[...] It is a matter of recognizing that no one has the same body, the same values, the same culture, and that one must renounce the search for a perfect understanding of each other, but rather use negotiation to accept and tolerate each other's differences. Negotiation then allows us to live in cultural cohabitation. Communication would therefore have a role in pacifying customs and thus guaranteeing cohabitation. To communicate is therefore to seek to build a link and 'common' with the other. [...]
[...] Each type of communication has its own drifts. It is interesting to cite examples of economic, commercial, marketing, and even political communication that are increasingly exploited and used strategically. The objective of such communication is no longer the presentation of ideas or information, but rather argumentation with a form of manipulation. The loss of the informative and expressive function necessarily leads to an aggravation of conflicts, a spiral of lies that everyone eventually becomes aware of. Commercial and economic communication is also increasingly pointed out and is the subject of suspicion, fueling existing conflicts or nurturing new conflicts. [...]
