Abstract
Social influence has been a central area of inquiry since the beginning of research in small group communication. Nonetheless, controversy concerning whether communication matters in group discussion is relevant to the hypothesized impact of communication on social influence during discussion. In this paper, five positions concerning the functions that communication performs in social influence during group discussion are described, each with enough research backing to be considered viable. The question of whether communication matters in social influence during group discussion boils down to the question of which of these functions “count as” communication mattering.

This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit: