COMMUNICATION THEORIES

Communication:

Communication consists of transmitting information from one person to another.
Communication is information-related behavior, and, by extension, the study of human behavior regarding how information exchanges take place between them. Communication is a necessary life process through which animal and human systems acquire information about their environment that is necessary to carry out their life activities.


History of Communication:

Aristotle first addressed the problem of communication and attempted to work out a theory of it in his book “The Rhetoric”. He was primarily focused on the art of persuasion.

Humanistic and rhetorical viewpoints and theories dominated the discipline prior to the twentieth century, when more scientific methodologies and insights from psychology, sociology, linguistics and advertising began to influence communication thought and practice.

Communication Settings:

Communication, as seen above, is a necessary life process. It takes three common settings, inter-personal, Machine-assisted and mass communication.

Interpersonal (face to face) – In the contextual view, Interpersonal Communication is that which involves few participants where the interactants are in close proximity to each other. But, this view does not take into account the relationship between the interactants. E.g. A passenger asking for a rail ticket at the ticket office to the person at the counter. In this case there is communication between two or more persons but their relationship is not clearly determined. In the developmental view, interpersonal communication is defined as communication that occurs between people who have known each other for sometime. E.g. A father asking his son to clean his car. In this case there is a relationship between both the parties involved.

Machine assisted – Machine assisted communication as the name states is the use of any equipment in the interaction between two or more people. These machines include telephones, Fax, Computers (instant messaging), Cell phones and other electronic and non-electronic equipments.

Mass: Mass communication refers to the process by which a complex organization with the aid of one or more machines produces and transmits public messages that are directed at large, heterogeneous, and scattered audiences. E.g. A press conference conducted by an organization to explain its new company policies to all the constituencies.

Communication Theories

Let’s have a look at the various communication theories developed by theorists like Harold Lasswell, Claude Shannon, Wilbur Schramm and many others over the years.

Lasswell’s Model

Harold Lasswell was a leading American Political Scientist and communication theorist. He was a member of the Chicago School of Sociology and was a student of Yale University in Political Science. He developed his model of communication in 1948.


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."


His theory mainly focused on verbal communication. Similar to Aristotle’s view, it also emphasized the elements of speaker, message, and audience. He viewed communication as a one way process in which one influenced the others through messages. 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:

Claude Shannon, An American Electrical engineer and mathematician along with Warren Weaver, an American Scientist and mathematician developed this model, where communication will be used 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.

Schramm’s Model

In 1954, Wilbur Schramm provided several additional models.

First Model

Schramm saw communication as a purposeful effort to establish commonness between a source and receiver. 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.

Second Model

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. 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.

Third Model

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 create a relational model of communication and a beginning of a convergence or network approach.
Schramm re-emphasized the elements of source, message, and destination. He suggested the importance of the coding and decoding process and the role of field experience.

Westley and Maclean Model:

Bruce Westley and Malcolm MacLean, Jr. suggested that communication does not begin with a source, but, rather, with a series of signals or potential messages. They suggest 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. 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.

Kincaid’s Convergence Model:

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.

Although acknowledging the role of interpretive processes that occur within individuals, Lawrence 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.

We had a look at the various Communication models above. These offer a convenient way to think. They offer a chance to adapt to mass communication methods.

LINKS…
· www.cas.usf.edu/lis/lis6260/lectures/shannon.htm
· http://www.wikipedia.org/
· http://www.abacon.com/commstudies/interpersonal/indefinition.html