Identity and Intergroup Communication

Intergroup communication is the interactive process of creating and interpreting messages between individuals based on their different social-cultural memberships. If people relate to one another not as individuals but as members of different social-cultural groups, they are engaged in intergroup communication. Simply stated, perceptions and feelings of group membership influence how individuals communicate with one another. Social identification or group membership identification can vary from large groups (e.g., nationality, ethnicity, and culture), to medium-size groups (e.g., organizations, institutions, and communities), to small groups (e.g., neighborhoods, teams, and family). Intergroup communication is pervasive as people are interacting with diverse others, either face-to-face or through electronic media including the Internet, smartphones, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype, among many options. Intergroup communication scholars such as Howard Giles argue that ...