Theories of Communication

Technically communication is a process where a sender sends the message to a receiver through the various channels and with the same or the other channel sender gets the feedback from receiver.

The different types of communication: - intrapersonal, interpersonal, group and mass communication. Each type of communication includes few basic elements namely- sender, receiver, message, channel, feedback and barrier. To simplify and understand the process of communication different models are interpreted.

Communication theory models offer a convenient way to think about communication, providing a graphical checklist, which one can use to create anything from a speech to a major advertising campaign. Communication models are visualizations of communication process. They are basic theories concerning the elements of communication and how they operate and interact.


Basic components that are part of all communication models:

SOURCE MESSAGE RECEIVER
S ---------> M --------> R (linear)

Aristotle’s model of communication

Formal communication theory (rhetorical theory) goes back 2500 years ago to Classical Greece when Plato, Aristotle, and the Sophists were speech teachers. Classical Rhetoric . The study of communication in Greek society was called RHETORIC, and this was how Greek philosophers thought about communication.

The Greek tradition was continued and improved upon by the Romans, after which it remained static until the twentieth century. Indeed, Classical Rhetoric was and still is being taught today. However, as a result of the proliferation of mass communications via radio, movies, and television, and of empirical scientific methods, communication theory changed in the latter part of the twentieth century.

The model proposed by Aristotle is a linear one. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle tells us that we must consider three elements in communication:

The speaker
The speech
The audience


Aristotle’s model has a Speaker, so the emphasis is on personal debate. Rhetoric or persuasive communication is based on the Greek model. Many models and theories of communication stem from this early one. If you just think for a moment about the variety of communication acts, you shouldn't have too much difficulty seeing those elements. In some cases, of course, Aristotle's vocabulary doesn't quite fit. In the example of you reading the newspaper, no one is actually 'speaking' as such, but if we use, say, the terms 'writer' and 'text', then Aristotle's elements can still be found.

The Audience includes those who are listening to your speech. Yet, not all audiences are the same. An astute speaker will carefully assess the nature of the audience at hand to determine the best ways to address the audience. In thinking about the audience who will be listening to your speech, consider some of the following audience demographics:

• age
• sex
• family affiliation
• sexual orientation
• cultural diversity
• racial background
• economic and social standing
• political identification
• religious or philosophical orientation

Depending on who makes up your audience, you will select and shape your topic. To be responsive to the unique audience gathered for your speech you will need to take into account how your audience is predisposed on an emotional and psychological level to respond to you or your topic.
It is also meaningful to consider the attitudes, beliefs and values of the audience that constitute the frame of reference members of the audience bring to the situation:

An attitude is the predisposition to respond favorably or unfavorably toward a topic.
A belief is a position or standard that audience members hold as valid or truthful.
A value is a deeply seated attitude commonly rooted in core beliefs, usually about the intrinsic worth of something.


The Evolution of Communication Study - Linear Models of Communication (S>M>R) to Convergence Models

Initially, linear models dominated communication research. We will look at several of the more famous linear models and then look at now convergence models of network communications evolved. In network or convergence models, the information-exchange relationships are the unit of analysis, rather than the individual as in linear models.

LASSWELL'S VIEW OF COMMUNICATION

One of the most often cited characterizations of communication was advanced by political scientist Harold Lasswell in 1948 as an outgrowth of his work in the area of propaganda. Lasswell provided a general view of communication that extended well beyond the boundaries of political science. He said that the communication process could best be explained by the simple statement: "Who says what to whom in what channel with what effect."
Lasswell's view of communication, similar to Aristotle's had some two thousand years earlier, focused primarily on verbal messages. It also emphasized the elements of speaker, message, and audience, but used different terms. Both men viewed communication as a one-way process in which one individual influenced others through messages. Lasswell was big on persuasion. The addition of the channel as a specific lement was a response to the growth in new communication media, such as print, the telegraph, the radio, etc. The inclusion of effects was an important break with past models which served mainly descriptive purposes. The study of effects initiated a new field: the communication approach to human behavioral change.

Lasswell's approach also provided a more generalized view of the goal or effect of communication than did the Aristotelian perspective. Lasswell's work suggested that there could be a variety of outcomes or effects of communication such as to inform, to entertain, to aggrevate, and to persuade.


SHANNON AND WEAVER'S MODEL

About a year after Lasswell published his view, Claude Shannon, the father of Information Theory, published some work he had done for Bell Telephone, which formed the basis for the Shannon and Weaver model.
Communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theatre, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior.
The information source selects a desired message out of a set of possible messages . . . The selected message may consist of written or spoken words, or of pictures, music, etc.
The transmitter changes the message into the signal which is actually sent over the communication channel from the transmitter to the receiver.
Shannon and Weaver introduced the term noise, and a compensating correction channel. Noise was used as a label for any distortion that interfered with the transmission of a signal from the source to the destination, such as static on a radio, a blinding fog, or blurred, rain-soaked pages of a newspaper. They also advanced the notion of a "correction channel," which they regarded as a means of overcoming problems created by noise. The correction channel was operated by an observer who compared the initial signal that was sent with that received; when the two didn't match, additional signals would be transmitted to correct the error. [Check digits in electronic transfer of messages]
The academic field of communication "took off" when Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver published their model in The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949). Their model is essentially a linear, left-to-right, one-way model of communication. It led to technical improvements in message transmission, and it served to bring together scholars from several disciplines to the scientific study of communication. Shannon and Weaver's most important contribution was probably their concept of information, which provided a central focus to the new field of communication research. It became the main conceptual variable around which the new intellectual approach began to grow.

SCHRAMM'S MODELS

In 1954, Wilbur Schramm provided several additional models. The first was essentially an elaboration of Shannon's.
Schramm saw communication as a purposeful effort to establish commonness between a source and receiver, noting that the word communication comes from the Latin communis, which meant common:

What happens when the source tries to build up this commonness with his intended receiver? First, the source encodes his message. That is, he takes the information or feeling he wants to share and puts it into a form that can be transmitted. the pictures in our heads can't be transmitted until they are coded ... Once coded and sent, a message is quite free of its sender ... And there is good reason ... for the sender to wonder whether his receiver will really be in tune with him, whether the message will be interpreted without distortion, whether the picture in the head of the receiver will bear any resemblance to that in the head of the sender.

Schramm's second model of communication is, in my opinion, far more aware of the subtleties involved. Without a common background and culture, there is little chance for a message to be interpreted correctly. He introduced the concept of a field of experience, which he thought to be essential in determining whether or not a message would be received at its destination in the manner intended by the source. The old "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." He contended that without common fields of experience -- a common language, common backgrounds, a common culture, and so forth -- there was little chance for a message to be interpreted correctly.
To overcome the problem of noise, he suggested the importance of feedback. "An experienced communicator is attentive to feedback and constantly modifying his messages in light of what he observes in or hears from his audience." Hence the roles of sender and recipient are taken on by both parties, and communication becomes circular, and creates a relational model of communication and a beginning of a convergence or network approach.
The Schramm view of communication was more elaborate than many other developed during this period and added new elements in describing the process. In addition to re-emphasizing the elements of source, message, and destination, it suggested the importance of the coding and decoding process and the role of field experience.

THE WESTLEY-MACLEAN MODEL

Bruce Westley and Malcolm MacLean, Jr. departed from previous popular approaches in their model by suggesting that communication does not begin with a source, but, rather, with a series of signals or potential messages. Their model suggests that in a given situation some of the many signals in one's environment at any point in time were selected by an advocate and combined to form a new message -- a news story, advertisement, or speech, etc. If the audience had some first hand knowledge, they might question the advocate, and their questioning would be classified as feedback.
Events occur. Advocates (politicians) may choose to comment upon those events. What the advocates say may be picked up on by the channels (press, TV). The channels then move that information on to the audience. Channels may also choose to report directly on events. Note that the audience never interacts directly with the events or with the advocates -- this is the nature of mass media. Feedback is possible, from the channels to the advocate, and from the audience to the advocates and channels.
This model accounted for mass communication and interpersonal communication, as well as the relationship between the two. Also, it broadened and elaborated on the feedback concept.

KINCAIDS'S CONVERGENCE MODEL (1979)

In the convergence model, "communication" is defined as a process in which participants create and share information with one another in order to reach a mutual understanding. Several cycles of information-sharing about a topic may increase mutual understanding but not complete it. Generally communication ceases when a sufficient level of mutual understanding has been reached for the task at hand. Mutual understanding is never perfect.
Information and mutual understanding are the dominant components of the convergence model of communication. Information shared by two or more participants in the communication process may lead to collective action, mutual agreements, and mutual understanding.
The unity of information and action is indicated by three bold lines information-action-believing; information-collection action; and information-action-believing]. All information is a consequence (or physical trace) of action, and through the various stages of human information-processing, action may become the consequence of information. A similar unity underlies the relationships among all the basic components of the convergence model. The communication process has no beginning and no end, only the mutually defining relationship among the parts which give meaning to the whole.
The convergence model represents human communication as a dynamic, cyclical process over time, characterized by:
mutual causation, rather than one-way mechanistic causation; and emphasizing the
Interdependent relationship of the participants, rather than a bias toward either the "source" or the "receiver" of a message.
Mutual understanding and mutual agreement are the primary goals of the communication process. They are the points toward which the participants either converge or diverge over time.
The convergence model of communication lead to a relational perspective of human communication because of the shift to information as opposed to messages as the content that is created and shared by participants. From this understanding, research into the "invisible college" and "gatekeepers" are possible, both topics of interest to information scientists.
Although acknowledging the role of interpretive processes that occur within individuals, Lawrence Kincaid (and later Everett Rogers and Kincaid) emphasized the information exchanges and networks between them. Their perspectives also carried forth the view of communication as a process rather than a single event, a point of view emphasized in nearly all communication models in recent years.