ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION AND EARLY COMMUNICATION MODELS

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Introduction to Mass Communication MCM 101

LESSON 04

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION AND EARLY COMMUNICATION MODELS

Like all the complex objects, communication is also made up of certain basic things called elements.

A building has its elements in brick, sand, cement, iron, wood, paints and sanitary fittings. A machine has a

number of components which are all elements joined together to enable the machine to give desired results.

Communication is a complex business and involves certain elements which join together to help a message

go across.

In this chapter we will give a long sight to various elements which have been marked by experts and which

provide the very basics of any piece of communication however simple it may be.

Elements of communication

Sender

First and foremost is the person who sends a message. Known as sender in the jargons of

communication, he or she is the chief initiator of any communication. In fact a communication may not

take place if there is no sender. The sender may be singular and plural as well. It all depends on the nature

of communication. If a teacher is delivering lecture, it constitute a case of sender as one individual. Sender

comprising many is the case when a group of people shout together, or more than one person sing a song

as chorus.

Message

When sender the source of communication, decides to communicate he/she encodes the crux of

the feeling in words/gestures or any other form commonly understood. This encoded form is called

message. It may be a simple word or a very complex and technical integration of feelings by the source on a

given subject.

Channel

No sooner a message is created by a sender, it enters in the channel. The channel is part of the

communication process which helps carry the message to its desired destination. In case of printed words

paper is the channel, in the matter of voice air may serve as a channel. In telephonic conversation the wire

and the sets make the channel. Some times the channel itself becomes part of message and sometime

message is sent in a manner that a part of it serves as a channel.

Receiver

The process of communication may not be complete if the message does not reach a person, or

persons, it is designed for. Receiver in this process is the element which is target of the message and actually

receives it. The dimension of receiver is very wide it may vary from an individual to an army of people, or

a nation or all nations. Again, it depends what the message is.

Interpreter

Receiving message in most case is half the process of communication done. In most cases an

interpreter is required to understand decode the message so that the purpose of communication is

served. Noise always occurs at this stage. Noise means part of meaning which is lost from the original

message. There is hardly a message which is decoded, or interpreted cent per cent.

Feedback

Sending and receiving of message is a simultaneous process in which the receiver continuously

sends back its approval or disapproval after having interpreted the message. This helps the sender to modify

or discipline its message. This element in the communication process is referred as feedback. For instance a

person is delivering speech, the voices, gestures and facial expressions all part of feedback, would help the

speaker to check its loudness, smiles, rhetoric, contents or time to speak. If there is no feedback, the original

message may never shape accordingly which may distort the whole communication exercise.

Context

Introduction to Mass Communication MCM 101

Every message is delivered and received in a given context. Change in the background factors

denoted as context, may change the meanings altogether. Context itself comprises multiple factors each one

of them becomes essential when it comes to interpretation of the original message.

Communication Model

Communication experts have long been striving to arrange elements of communication into some

graphic arrangement so that all the complexities of communication may come in view in a glance. But

before we try to examine them lets try to understand what a model is.

What is a Model?

· A model is a systematic representation of an object or event in idealized and abstract form. Models

are somewhat arbitrary by their nature.

· Communication models are merely pictures; they're even distorting pictures, because they stop or

freeze an essentially dynamic interactive or transitive process into a static picture.

· Models are metaphors. They allow us to see one thing in terms of another.

The Shannon-Weaver's Model of Communication

The Shannon-Weaver's model is typical of what are often referred to as transmission models of

communication. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver were two different entities that jointly produced a

model known after their names.

Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver produced a general model of communication:

This model is now known after them as the Shannon-Weaver's Model. Although they were principally

concerned with communication technology, their model has become one which is frequently introduced to

students of human communication early in their study.

The Shannon-Weaver's Model (1947) proposes that all communication processes must include following six

elements:

· Source

· Encoder

· Message

· Channel

· Decoder

· Receiver

These six elements are shown graphically in the model. As Shannon was researching in the field of

information theory, his model was initially very technology-oriented. The model was produced in 1947.

The emphasis here is very much on the transmission and reception of information. 'Information' is

understood rather differently from the way you and I would normally use the term, as well. This model is

often referred to as an 'information model' of communication.

Apart from its obvious technological bias, a drawback from our point of view is the model's obvious

linearity. It looks at communication as a one-way process. A further drawback with this kind of model is

that the message is seen as relatively unproblematic. It is fine for discussing the transformation of

Introduction to Mass Communication MCM 101

'information' but when we try to apply the model to communication, problems arise with the assumption

that meanings are somehow contained within the message.

Detailed analysis of the model

The Source

All human communication has some source (information source in Shannon's terminology), some

person or group of persons with a given purpose, a reason for engaging in communication. You'll also find

the terms transmitter and communicator used.

The Encoder

You, as the source, have to express your purpose in the form of a message. That message has to be

formulated in some kind of code. How do the source's purposes get translated into a code? This requires an

encoder. The communication encoder is responsible for taking the ideas of the source and putting them in

code, expressing the source's purpose in the form of a message.

In person-to-person communication, the encoding process is performed by the motor skills of the source -

vocal mechanisms (lip and tongue movements, the vocal cords, the lungs, face muscles etc.), muscles in the

hand and so on. Some people's encoding systems are not as efficient as others'. So, for example, a disabled

person might not be able to control movement of their limbs and so find it difficult to encode the intended

non-verbal messages or they may communicate unintended messages.

A person who has suffered throat problem may have had their vocal cords removed. They can encode their

messages verbally using an artificial aid, but much of the non-verbal messages most of us send via pitch,

intonation, volume and so on cannot be encoded.

Shannon was not particularly concerned with the communication of meanings. In fact, it is Wilbur

Schramm's model of 1954 which places greater emphasis on the processes of encoding and decoding. We

will discuss threadbare Schramm's model in next lecture with special emphasis on the provision of

interpretation of a message for a logical understanding of what has been sent by the source originally.

The Message

The message of course is what communication is all about. Whatever is communicated is the

message.

Denis McQuail (1975) in his book Communication writes that the simplest way of regarding human

communication is 'to consider it as the sending from one person to another of meaningful messages'.

The Shannon-Weaver's Model, in common with many others separates the message from other

components of the process of communication. In reality, though, you can only reasonably examine the

message within the context of all the other interlinked elements. Whenever we are in contact with other

people we and they are involved in sending and receiving messages. The crucial question for

Communication Studies is: to what extent does the message received correspond to the message

transmitted? That's where all the other factors in the communication process come into play.

The Shannon-Weaver's model and others like it tends to portray the message as a relatively uncomplicated

matter. Note that this is not a criticism of Shannon since meanings were simply not his concern:

Frequently the messages have meaning that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with

certain physical or conceptual entities. (These considerations are irrelevant to the engineering problem).

The Channel

The words channel and medium are often used interchangeably, if slightly inaccurately. The

choice of the appropriate channel is a vitally important choice in communication. It's obvious that you don't

use the visual channel to communicate with the blind or the auditory channel with the deaf, but there are

more subtle considerations to be taken into account as well.

Introduction to Mass Communication MCM 101

Physical noise

Shannon is generally considered to have been primarily concerned with physical (or 'mechanical' or

'engineering') noise in the channel, i.e. unexplained variation in a communication channel or random error

in the transmission of information. Everyday examples of physical noise are:

A loud motorbike roaring down the road while you're trying to hold a conversation.

Your little brother standing in front of the TV set.

Mist on the inside of the car windscreen.

Smudges on a printed page.

'Snow' on a TV set.

It might seem odd to use the word noise in this way. In this technical sense, 'noise' is not necessarily

audible. Thus a TV technician might speak of a 'noisy picture'. However, it is possible for a message to be

distorted by channel overload. Channel overload is not due to any noise source, but rather to the channel

capacity being exceeded. You may come across that at a party where you are holding a conversation amidst

lots of others going on around you or, perhaps, in a communication lesson where everyone has split into

small groups for discussion.

Shannon and Weaver were primarily involved with the investigation of technological communication. Their

model is perhaps more accurately referred to as a model of information theory (rather than communication

theory). Consequently, their main concern was with the kind of physical (or mechanical) noise discussed

above.

Transfer of a mismatch between the encoding and decoding devices to the study of human communication

and you're looking at what is normally referred to as semantic noise That concept then leads us on to the

study of social class, cultural background, experience, attitudes, beliefs and a whole range of other factors

which can introduce noise into communication.

Semantic noise

Semantic noise is not as easy to deal with as physical noise. It might not be an exaggeration to say

that the very essence of the study of human communication is to find ways of avoiding semantic noise.

Semantic noise is difficult to define. It may be related to people's knowledge level, their communication

skills, their experience, and their prejudices and so on. It all depends on the commonality of experiences on

part of the receiver to understand message from sender.

The Decoder

The notion of a decoder reminds us that it is quite possible for a person to have all the equipment

required to receive the messages you send (all five senses, any necessary technology and so on) and yet be

unable to decode your messages.

The Receiver

For communication to occur there must be somebody at the other end of the channel. This person

or persons can be called the receiver. To put it in Shannon's terms, information transmitters and receivers

must be similar systems. If they are not, communication cannot occur. (Actually Shannon used the term

destination, reserving the term receiver for what we have called decoder.

What that probably meant as far as he was concerned was that you need a telephone at one end and a

telephone at the other, not a telephone connected to a radio. In rather more obviously human terms, the

receiver needs to have the equipment to receive the message. A totally blind person has the mental

equipment to decode your gestures, but no system for receiving messages in the visual channel. So, your

non-verbal messages are not received and you're wasting your energy.

1949 Shannon- Weaver's Model of Communication

Introduction to Mass Communication MCM 101

Feedback

Feedback is a vital part of communication. In the class room students' facial expression tell the

teacher to go to what extent to make students understand the point under discussion. More or less, these

expression would guide the teacher where and when to finish.

When we are talking to someone over the phone, if they don't give us the occasional 'mmmm', 'aaah', 'yes, I

see' and so on, it can be very disconcerting. In face-to-face communication, we get feedback in the visual

channel as well - head nods, smiles, frowns, changes in posture and orientation, gaze and so on.

Why do people often have difficulty when using computers, when they find it perfectly easy to drive a car?

You'd think it should be easier to operate a computer - after all there are only a few keys and a mouse, as

against levers, pedals and a steering wheel. A computer's not likely to kill you, either. It could be due to the

lack of feedback - in a car, you've the sound of the engine, the speed of the landscape rushing past, the

force of gravity. Feedback is coming at you through sight, hearing and touch -overdo it and it might come

through smell as well. With a computer, there's very little of that. In fact you apply more of your brain as

what you must be doing next rather than shaping your activity whether it's being liked or not by the

machine.

Feedback by definition

In its simplest form the feedback principle means that a behavior is tested with reference to its

result and success or failure of this result influences the future behavior

Though not exactly cut-out for human communication, the Shannon-Weaver model provides clear

guidelines for researchers to mark more avenues for graphic presentation of the elements in daily human

communication.

Lasswell Formula (1948)

To Whom?

Who?

Says What?

In What

With what

Effect?

Channel?

Communicator

Message

Channel

Receiver

Effect

Effects

Control

Content

Medium

Audience

Research

The sociologist, Harold Lasswell, tells us that in studying communication we should consider the elements

in the graphic above.

Introduction to Mass Communication MCM 101

Lasswell was primarily concerned with mass communication and propaganda, so his model is intended to

direct us to the kinds of research we need to conduct to answer his questions ('control analysis', 'effects

research' and so on). In fact, though, it is quite a useful model, whatever category of communication we are

studying. Note, incidentally, that the Lasswell Formula consists of five major components, though this is by

no means obligatory.

Harold Lasswell (1948) conceived of analyzing the mass media in five stages: "Who?" "Says what?" "In

which/what channel?" "To whom?" "With what effect?" In apparent elaboration on Lasswell and/or

Shannon and Weaver, George Gerbner (1956) extended the components to include the notions of

perception, reactions to a situation, and message context.

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