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Model of Communication

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MODELS OF COMMUNICATION

Models:

• Aim to present communication as a process. • It is like a map, representing features of a territory. But it cannot be comprehensive. • We need therefore to be selective, knowing why we are using it and what we hope to gain from it.

Transmission models - criticism

The Shannon and Weaver and Lasswell model are typical of so-called transmission models of communication. These two models also typically underlie many others in the American tradition of research, showing Source-Message/Channel-Receiver as the basic process of communication. In such models, communication is reduced to a question of transmitting information.

Although transmission models have been highly influential in the study of human communication, it can be argued that, although Shannon's and Weaver's work was very fertile in fields such as information theory and cybernetics, it may actually be misleading in the study of human communication.

Some criticisms which could be made of such models are:

The conduit metaphor

Their model presents us with what has been called the 'conduit metaphor' of communication (Reddy (1979) The source puts ideas into words and sends the words to the receiver, who therefore receives the ideas. The whole notion of 'sending' and 'receiving' may be misleading, since, after all, once I've 'sent' a message, I still have it. The underlying metaphor is of putting objects into a container and sending them through some sort of conduit to the receiver who receives the containers and takes the objects out. The important question which is overlooked is: How do the 'objects' get into the 'containers'? In other words, how do we succeed in putting meanings 'into' words and how does somebody else succeed in taking the meanings 'out of' words? Transmission models don't deal with meaning.

It's probably worth saying that that's

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