Media and Information Literacy

Module 1: Introduction to Media and Information Literacy

Defining Communication
Communication is from the latin word “communicare” which means “to
share” or “to devide out”. It may be also thought to originate from
another Latin word “communis” which roughly means “working
together”.

You now to begin to understand that communication has a lot to do

with a sense of sharing. As explained in the book “Practical Speech
Fundamentals” by Bulan and de Leon (2002), without speech or oral
communication, societies could not attain levels of civilization,
communities could not organize into living and working groups, mark
and ritualize practices and traditions, debate and decide difficulties
issues, and transform societies for its good.

Explaining the Communication Process through Model

To understand better the process of communication, here are some
models as discussed by communication scholar Denis McQuail (2005) in
his book “McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory”

1. Transmission models. Perhaps the most popular among these is

Harolds Laswell’s representation of communication as to attempt to
answer the question “Who says what to whom, through what medium,
and what effect?”.
The model is relatively straightforward and tells you that
communication originates from someone and their message flows
through a channel, either sound waves or light waves, and that
someone on the other end receives the message with a corresponding
effect.
Later improvements in the model where later introduced such as
Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver which incorporates the concept of
noise that refers to anything that interferes with the message. The
model is a more mechanical look at communication.
Another transmission model is by Bruce Westley and Malcolm Maclean
Jr. where they argued that instead of having a sender merely relaying a
message, you have a communicator who relays his or her account of a
selection of events or views/voices in society. Westley and Maclean Jr.
also said that communication is “guided by interest and demands of an
audience that is known only by its selectious and responses to what is
offered (McQual, 2005)”.

A more sophisticated transmission model was provided by George

Gerbner where “someone perceives as event and reacts in a situation
through some means to make a available materials in some form and
context conveying content of some consequences (McQuail, 1985).
Relating these transmission models to your own communication
experiences. For example, you are telling a story to a friend, your
primary intention is to successfully gets across the story from you to
him or her as accurately and clearly as possible so that he or she can
respond accordingly.

2. Ritual or expressive model. This is an alternative way of looking at

how communication works. In the expressive model, communication
happen due to the need to share understanding and emotions.
Communication has an integrative consequence in the society, it is
done to build social relationship. An example would be when you use
certain symbolism or euphemisms to indirectly refer to certain things,
but you are sure that the audience still understands what you are trying
to say. The communication is ritualized because the meaning is
suggested more than explicitly stated and the understanding of it,
through connotative, is mutual.

3. Publicity model. This is the model explains that communication

involves around the audiences as “” spectators rather than participants
or information receivers” (McQuail, 2005). Attention is important
because it measures of how successful the communication has
transpired. Imagine yourself telling a friend about a potentially boring
story but you tell it in a compelling and animated manner to keep his
interest and attention. Another example is how TV commercials
aggressively convince the audience to buy the product that they
advertise.
4. Reception model. In this model, you come to understand
communication as an open process, which means that messages send
and received are open to various interpretations based on context and
the culture of the receiver. In other words, there might be various
meanings to a single statement that is communicated. One such model
illustrating this is Wilbur Schramm depiction of cyclical communication
where the sender and receiver have alternating roles in the loop. A
communicator who produces and sends the message is called a
“encoder” and the one who receives and interprets is the “decoder”.

Another reception model is one by David Bretto that accounted for

factors that affect how communicators are influenced when they send
and received a message. These factors include the following:
- Communication skills such as reading, writing, speaking, listening, and
watching
- Knowledg about the subject or topic
- Attitude toward the topic and audience
- Social and cultural aspects that influence the content of the message
and the manner by which is sent

Table 1.1 Berlo’s Model

The reception models show that it is not just about saying the message
but also considering how the message may be received because of the
factors that may influence reception. That is the why someone breaks a
bad news to someone else, he or she does not say it as straightforward
and blatant. He or she will have to consider how the other person will
react to the news or what possible interpretations that the other
person might have about the news.
What evident among all the models discussed is that there are many
ways of defining what communication is or how it works. But you have
probably observed two distinct elements that are intrinsically
interconnected with the concept of communication, media and
information. They are so intertwined that information can be shared
through media.

When you study communication in a more advanced level, you would

learn that one of the functions of communication is to inform This is all
made possible through the use of media. Ponder on one of those
occasions where you read a magazine, watched a TV, listened to the
radio, went to see a film in a cinema, or surfed the internet. In a sense,
you cannot do away with communicating, that is, getting and sharing
information and utilizing media to achieve both.

Have you ever wondered what the word mediate means? The base
word of this term is media. Like communication, media have been
defined in several ways by different sources. Strictly speaking media is
the plural form of medium, although the former is already accepted as
a singular form.
Table 1.2 Different Definitions of Media
Table 1.3 Categories of Media

Media Modality refers to the nature of message, whether it is relayed

using text, audio, video, graphics, animation or combination of any of
these things. The Media Format is the way that data us arranged. The
data or message may be transmitted through radio waves (for audio)
and light waves for other modalities. The mass media form refers to the
particular media technology to which the message is transmitted.

All definitions of media suggest that it is a conduit for transmitting

something called Information.

One of the more convenient sources of information now is the World

Wide Web, but with the volume of information it provides come the
challenge of choosing which to use.