The history of communication theory is thousands of years old. Even in ancient Greece people used rhetoric, which is the use of language to persuade the constituent to do something. Aristotle, who was Plato’s student, developed rhetoric as an art and in his major work “The Art of Rhetoric” is regarded as the root of modern communication theory. Aristotle’s definition of the composition of every speech contains three major parts, the speaker, the subject treated in the speech, and the constituent to whom this subject is addressed to. In the following, the most important modern communication theories are to be discussed.
Communication is an information-related behavior, and is necessary for individuals in order to survive. Interpersonal Communication is an interactional process between two persons either face-to-face (direct) or through mediated forms (indirect). Machine-assisted communication means the use of media like telephone, telegraph, computer in order to communicate. Machine-assisted communication can be used either for interpersonal communication or for mass communication. Mass communication is the use of any media to reach a broad audience, such as television or the internet.
Harold Laswell’s Model of 1948 depicts an equation that describes the effect of a message as a result on the right side of the equation. The left side of the equation consists of the variables “speaker”, “message”, “medium”, and “audience or listener”. The parameters are “who” for speaker, “what” for message, “channel” for medium and “whom for audience or listener. The equation is one of the most famous quotations of communication theory, “who says what to whom in what channel with what effect.”
Shannon & Weaver’s Model, developed in 1949, shortly after Laswell’s model, focuses on the transmission of information. The source of the message can be a person or a group. The message, the subject that is treated, is of secondarily importance in the Shannon Weaver model. The transmitter is the media that is used to communicate, i.e. telephone, fax, e-mail etc. The signal can be the voice or an electronic impulse, etc. Noise is the disturbing factor that distorts the information and can be either of physical or of semantic nature. A physical noise can be i.e. a loud passing car or a strong hiss in the phone’s speaker. A semantic noise can be i.e. if the listener is distracted by the speakers appearance, thus hearing but not listening to the message; or the sender might speak in a tone that causes ambiguity in her message. The receiver finally, is the constituent; if there is no receiver, no communication can occur.
Schramm enhanced Shannon and Weaver’s model in 1954. He added two important components into the model, the encoder and the decoder. The encoder is not a medium like telephone (transmitter) i.e.; in a face to face communication the encoder is the tone of the voice, the gestures, and the body language in general. Decoding the message is very important for the receiver, because if the sender uses i.e. written characters the receiver cannot read and respectively cannot decode, the message failed to be transmitted as purposed. The sender might use i.e. a lot of technical terms that the receiver does not understand, here again the message failed to reach the receiver.
Since people became encoders and decoders, Schramm adds the field of experience in his model. The signal occurs where the fields of experience overlap. This common field of experiences is an area where both sender and recipient are familiar with the content that is communicated. Messages have to be in this common field of commonalities in order to be understood appropriately. Those commonalities can be language, culture, values and beliefs etc. If they are not in this field, communication is disturbed and frustration can arise.
While the second model is still mechanistic, Schramm’s third model breaks with the linear nature of transmission models. The encoder is also the decoder. After the message is encoded, it is interpreted, and then again the receiver becomes a sender by assembling a new message (feedback), encoding and sending it to the receiver, respectively former sender.
Katz and Lazarsfeld’s Model of 1955 basically describes how individuals can be affected by opinion leaders. Opinion leaders are people who can influence other people in their decisions. What Lazarsfeld discovered in the 1940’s by observing people’s decisions during the elections, was that many voters regarded family members and close personal friends, and not the mass media, as major influences in their decision making process. So, opinion leaders filtered the messages sent trough mass media and affected therefore other people’s decisions.
The Westley-McLean Model describes the role of mass media in communication. Westley and McLean introduce the role of the channel into the communication flow between the advocate and the audience. The advocate is the sender and the audience the receiver; messages are regarded as events. The advocate sends messages through a gatekeeper (channel) that may alter the messages before they can reach the audience. This model shows the influence of mass media and the participants’ responses to the events.
Communication is defined by Kincaid as “a process in which two or more individuals or groups share information in order to reach a mutual understanding of each other and the world in which they live” (Gudykunst & Mody, 2002, p.184). Furthermore Kincaid states that mutual understanding can be approached but never perfectly achieved. Kincaid presents a mathematical model to the way information is created and shared in order to reach mutual understanding; “By means of several iterations of information exchange, two or more individuals may converge towards a more mutual understanding of each other’s meaning” (Gudykunst, 2004, p. 11). Mutual understanding, the product of ongoing interaction and communication, is included in Kincaid’s Convergence Model as a key element. Kincaid uses rather the term information than message. The convergence model is a cyclical model depicting the process of exchanging and giving meaning to each other’s information.
Examples / Experiences:
Many companies apply communication theories in practice in order to improve internal and external communication. I used to work for a company that provided customer care by phone by order of other companies. All service agents were not only trained about the products, but also about the way to communicate to customers. It was put a lot of effort by the company to ensure that every employee understood how to communicate correctly with customers, because you do not have only customers who seek for information, there are also customers who are dissatisfied with the company or its product. The employee has to try to make the customer finish the conversation with a smile, no matter how angry or annoyed the customer is. Communication theories and some basic psychology are taught to the employees in order to manage their job best.
Of course, I was taught communication theories also in my MBA program. A very interesting, practical exercise we had to do was preparing a 30 second speech, pretending that we meet our boss in the elevator and have only 30 seconds time to convince him that you are the right person for the next promotion. It was really hard at the beginning to find a way to compress everything you want and you need to say so that it fits the time frame of 30 seconds. I think it was a good exercise and everybody should try to do this exercise; it really helps you to improve your communicative skills and to learn to reduce to the max.
References:
Beck, Andrew, & Bennett, Peter, & Wall, Peter (2004). Communication Studies: The Essential Resource. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 38-39.
Gudykunst, William B. & Mody, Bella (2002). Handbook of international and intercultural communication (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc, p. 184.
Gudykunst, William B. (2004). Theorizing About Intercultural Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc, pp. 11-12.
Windahl, Sven, & Signitzer, Benno, & Olson, Jean T. (1992). Using Communication Theory: An Introduction to Planned Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc, pp. 73-74.
Ruben, Brent D. (1985). Information and behavior. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, p. 105.
Szul Dr., Linda. PowerPoint Presentation. Retrieved June 9th, 2008 from http://webct.iup.edu/SCRIPT/BTST670LZ/scripts/serve_home
Theaker, Alison (2004). The Public Relations Handbook. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 18-24.
Watson, James (1998). Media Communication: An introduction to theory and process. New York, NY: Mcmillan, pp. 37-38.
http://www.ciadvertising.org/studies/student/97_fall/theory/functional/2step.html Retrieved June 9th, 2008.
http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/introductory/sw.html Retrieved June 9th, 2008.
http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/interpersonal/ Retrieved June 9th, 2008.
Links:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Communication_Theory/Introduction
http://www.ciadvertising.org/studies/student/99_spring/theory/griswold/twostep.html
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3669/is_200201/ai_n9064814
http://www.tcw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/
http://www.mhhe.com/mayfieldpub/westturner/student_resources/theories.htm
http://www.uky.edu/~drlane/capstone/interpersonal/#List%20of%20Representative
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