Feedback in Communication Studies

In communication studies, feedback is the response of an audience to a message or activity.
Feedback can be conveyed both verbally and nonverbally.
"[L]earning how to give effective feedback is as important as any subject matter we teach," says Regie Routman. "Yet giving useful feedback is one of the most elusive elements in teaching and learning"

"Strictly speaking, negative feedback does not imply 'bad,' and positive feedback 'good.' Negative feedback indicates that you should do less of what you are doing or change to something else. Positive feedback encourages you to increase what you are doing. If you are crying, feedback from those around may cause you to dry your eyes and put on a brave face (if feedback is negative) or weep unashamedly (if feedback is positive)."

Useful Feedback on Writing

"The most useful feedback you can give someone (or receive yourself) is neither vague encouragement ('Good start! Keep at it!') nor scorching criticism ('Sloppy method!'), but rather an honest assessment of how the text reads. In other words, 'Rewrite your introduction because I don't like it' is not nearly as helpful as 'You start off saying you want to look at trends in functionalistic interior design, but you seem to spend most of your time talking about the use of color among the Bauhaus designers.' This gives the author not only insight into what is confusing the reader but also several options for fixing it: She can rewrite the introduction either to focus on Bauhaus designers or to better explain the link between functionalistic interior design and Bauhaus designers, or she can restructure the paper to talk about other aspects of functionalistic interior design."

"Public speaking offers a middle ground between low and high levels of feedback. Public speaking does not permit the constant exchange of information between listener and speaker that happens in conversation, but audiences can and do provide ample verbal and non-verbal cues to what they are thinking and feeling. Facial expressions, vocalizations (including laughter or disapproving noises), gestures, applause, and a range of body movements all signal the audience's response to the speaker."