Communication models

Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver:

Claude Shannon was a research scientist at Bell Telephone Company trying to achieve maximum telephone line capacity with minimum distortion. He had never intended for his mathematical theory of signal transmission for anything but telephones. But when Warren Weaver applied Shannon's concept of information loss to interpersonal communication, one of the most popular models of communication was created. According to Shannon and Weaver's model (as seen above), a message begins at an information source, which is relayed through a transmitter, and then sent via a signal towards the receiver. But before it reaches the receiver, the message must go through noise (sources of interference). Finally, the receiver must convey the message to its destination. Suppose you have an idea in your head (information source) that you want to tell someone about. You must first move the idea from your brain to your mouth (transmitter). Since you cannot actually share your gray matter, you must select words for your transmitter to use. Once you speak, your voice (signal) is carried through the air toward the listener's ear (receiver). Along the way, your signal is joined by a myriad of other sounds and distractions (noises). The receiver then takes everything it receives and tries to maximum the message and minimize the noise. Finally, the receiver conveys its message to the other person's mind (destination). Shannon and Weaver's model clearly demonstrates why even the simplest communications can be misunderstood. Transmitting a signal across additional media only adds to the complexity of the communication and increases the chance for distortion. It is suddenly easier to understand why other people just can't grasp what we already know.

Mathematical theory of communication, and a linear model of communication. Message Signal received signal message

Information Source Transmitter Channel receiver destination Noise Source: Communication as a linear process. communication. Three levels of problem in the study of

Level A Technical problems How, accurately can the symbols of communication be transmitted? Level B - Semantic problems How precisely do the transmitted symbols convey the desired meaning? Level C - Effectiveness problems how effectively does the received meaning affect conduct in the desired way?

The above levels are not watertight, but are interrelated, and interdependent: and that their model, despite its origin in level A, works equally well on all three levels. The point of studying communication at each and all of these levels is to understand how we may improve the accuracy and efficiency of the process. In this model the source decides which message to send out of many messages. In conversation, our mouth is the transmitter, the signal is the sound waves which pass through the channel of the air and our ear is the receiver. This model is important because it introduces the concept of noise. Noise whether it originates in the channel, the audience, the sender or the message itself, always confuses the intention of the sender and thus limits the amount of desired information that can be sent in a given situation in a given time. In this model, no provision has been made for medium and feedback. Feed back is the transmission of the receivers reaction back to the sender. The medium is basically the technical or physical means of converting the message into a signal capable of being transmitted along the channel. The media can be divided into three main categories: 1. The presentational media: the voice, the face, the body, etc. 2. The representational media: books, paintings, photographs 3. The mechanical media: telephones, radio, television, etc. There is no acknowledge of the importance of the context-social, political, cultural in influencing all stages of the communication process. Mathematical theory: Accuracy in message transmission is essential if systems are to operate effectively and achieve long-term goals. Even minor errors compound over time and lead to serious problems. To address this situation, communications engineers developed a very sophisticated way of conceptualising the flow of communication from one part to another within a system. The flow was referred to as a signal and each element in it was labelled an information bit. The ultimate information bit is a digital bit one that is either present or absent. Methods of monitoring the accuracy of transmissions of bits were developed. The signal transmitted by one part was compared to the signal received by another. Any differences between the signal sent and received were viewed as errors or noise. Because a signal can be composed of thousands or even millions of bits, some level of noise can usually be tolerated before it creates a problem. High levels of noise can be tolerated if a messenger is redundant, that is, if it contains many bits that carry the same information. All redundant bits must be lost or distorted before noise becomes a problem. Every communication link can be seen as a channel and every channel capacity may be quite high, permitting a very complex signal to be carried with few errors or it may be low, permitting only a very simple signal to be accurately transmitted. Obviously, it is better to have channels that can be increased, but this reduces efficiency because the same information is being sent more than once. For example, when you listen to an AM radio, you hear static. The static is actually thousands of erroneous bits information that have somehow entered the signal as it moves from the radio transmitter to your receiver. Fm signals arent as subject to the introduction of errors as the signal moves from transmitter to receiver, so you receive a more accurate transmission of the original signal. Notions about signals, noise, bits, efficiency, redundancy and channel capacity have found their way into mass communication theory through a variety of sources. One of the first and most important books was the Mathematical Theory of communication written by Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver in 1949. They believed that these new concepts would transform how all forms of

communication were understood. They were optimistic that it might even be possible to remedy macroscopic, societal-level communication problems using these very microscopic notions. Their ideas came to be referred to as information theory. The highest ambitions for Shannon and Weavers information theory have yet to be realised. In communications technology and the design of communications systems, the theory has been enormously successful. Technology based on this theory is providing the building blocks for constructing an information superhighway. But efficient, accurate transmission of information isnt enough. Entry into the information age has been accompanied by a troubling escalation is social problems. Ideally, systems notions could also provide a powerful way of conceptualising complex, social systems and analysing the role played by communication in them. Important social problems might be solved.

Harold Lasswell
Lasswell, a political scientist suggested a convenient way to describe an act of communication is to answer the following questions: Who What Channel Whom Effect

Speaker Message for medium audience or listener-Who says what to whom in which channel with what effect The Who the communicator: The communicator is the source of the message. S/he may be a primary or a secondary source of message. With what purpose The objective: the communicator must be clear about the response from the audience. The objectives must be defined clearly which could be-informing, educating, reasoning or may be lobbying. To whomthe audience: Communication requires receivers and consumers of messages, the people with whom he communicates. Communication involves the joint conduct or transaction of source and receiver. In which channel (s): this portion of Lasswells model pertains to the media. Says What? The message: Three factors are pertinent to the message produced by the source: the code, content and the treatment. With What Effect? The impact of a message depends upon whether it can be used within the frame of reference that is already available. It is a linear model of communication. Good for face-to-face communication.

C.E. Osgood and Wilbur Schramm

Osgood describes communication as a dynamic process and says that a given communication event may begin with receiving stimuli. He stressed that each participant in the communication process sends as well as receives messages and as such encodes, decodes and interprets messages. Communication is a dynamic process in which there is an interactive relationship between the

source and the receiver where a person may be a source one moment, a receiver the next and again a source the following moment. This is particularly true in interpersonal communication. Communication is a circular process with three elements in the behaviour of a sender/receiver. Encoding, (putting the message/feedback into the mode or channel of communication), Decoding, (getting it out again) and interpreting (the mental process of forming message or responding to it). What determines which offerings of mass communication will be selected by a given individual, asked Wilbur Schramm in his book The process and effects of Mass Communication. The answer he offered is called the fraction of selection, and it looks like this: Expectation of reward Effort required His point was that people weigh the level of reward (gratification) they expect from a given medium or message against how much effort they must make to secure that reward. You can develop your own fractions for your own media use of all kinds, but the essence of Schramms argument remains we all make decisions about which content we choose based on our expectations of having some need met, even if that decision is to not make a choice say between two early evening situation comedies, for example, because its too much trouble to get up and change the channel because all we really want is some background noise while we sit and daydream. As an act of communication goes on, the noise gets less (because the communicators get more used to handling the channel/mode) and personality becomes more helpful (because, as communicators get to know each other and the subject, they adjust to each other and fill gaps in their knowledge).

Horace Newcomb
He claimed that the question what does it all mean? is essentially, a humanistic question. Then he accused Gerbner and his collegues of misapplying the values of humanism. First, he argued, televisions ideas and the symbols that express them on that medium are not created there. Those symbols have a history and meaning in the culture that existed long before now and apart from television. Violence, for example, has many and has always had many meanings for Americans. Second, he argued that the cultural indicators project ignored the wide variety of organisation and expression of these ideas in the world of television. In other words, violence for example, is not presented as uniformly on television as cultural indicators would have us believe. Finally, his most serious complaint about the Gerbner research was that it did not permit the possibility that individual members of the television audience can apply different, individual meanings to what they see on television. Newcomb summarised his humanist objections this way: It may be that all the messages of television speak with a single intent and are ruled by a single dominant symbol whose meaning is clear to a mass audience, or to that part of the audience heavily involved with those messages. But I have yet to see evidence sufficient to warrant such a reductive view of human experience in America. The assumptions of the Cultural Indicators approach are clearly imbedded in Gerbner and Gross reply. As for Newcombs first challenge, they argued that those ideas and symbols must be learned somewhere, we are born into and grow up in a symbolic environment of which television is now the mainstream that cultivates stable images after some of its patterns. As to the second humanistic criticism, Gerbner and Gross responded, we consider most television plays assembly-line drama rather than works of unique craftsmanship. The patterns that the corporate assembly-line imparts to its products becomes the aggregate and repetitive terms of common exposure and usage. And, finally, they asserted that regardless of whether or not individual audience members can apply their own interpretations to what they see on the screen, the Fact is that heavy viewers overestimate their chances of involvement in violence and their general vulnerability (compared to light viewers in the same social groups) however defined.

Newcombs big question, what does violence mean to the respondents is not only irrelevant but distracting. We study what exposure to violence-laden television contributes to their conceptions of the realities of their own lives.

George Gerbner s Model

Communication is seen as transmission of messages. There is source that reacts to an event in a situation through some channel. The content and the consequences of the communication act are conveyed in some form and context. This model emphasised the importance of effects and context in the communication process and act. It relates the messages to reality and thus enables us to approach the question of perception and meaning. It sees the communication process as consisting of two alternative dimensions the perceptual or receptive dimension and the communicating or means and control dimension.