Models of the Communication Process

Abstract

We teach the same models of communication today that we taught forty years ago. This
can and should be regarded as a mark of the enduring value of these models in
highlighting key elements of that process for students who are taking the process apart for
the first time. It remains, however, that the field of communication has evolved
considerably since the 1960's, and it may be appropriate to update our models to account
for that evolution. This paper presents the classic communication models that are taught
in introducing students to interpersonal communication and mass communication,
including Shannon's information theory model (the active model), a cybernetic model
that includes feedback (the interactive model, an intermediary model (sometimes referred
to as a gatekeeper model of the two-step flow), and the transactive model. It then
introduces a new ecological model of communication that, it is hoped, more closely maps
to the the range of materials we teach and research in the field of communication today.
This model attempts to capture the fundamental interaction of language, medium, and
message that enables communication, the socially constructed aspects of each element,
and the relationship of creators and consumers of messages both to these elements and
each other.

Introduction

While the field of communication has changed considerably over the last thirty years, the
models used in the introductory chapters of communication textbooks (see Adler, 1991;
Adler, Rosenfeld, and Towne, 1996; Barker and Barker, 1993; Becker and Roberts, 1992;
Bittner, 1996; Burgoon, Hunsaker, and Dawson, 1994; DeFleur, Kearney, and Plax,
1993; DeVito, 1994; Gibson and Hanna, 1992; Wood, 2002) are the same models that
were used forty years ago. This is, in some sense, a testament to their enduring value.
Shannon's (1948) model of the communication process (Figure 1) provides, in its
breakdown of the flow of a message from source to destination, an excellent breakdown
of the elements of the communication process that can be very helpful to students who
are thinking about how they communicate with others. It remains, however, that these
texts generally treat these models as little more than a baseline. They rapidly segue into
other subjects that seem more directly relevant to our everyday experience of
communication. In interpersonal communication texts these subjects typically include the
social construction of the self, perception of self and other, language, nonverbal
communication, listening, conflict management, intercultural communication, relational
communication, and various communication contexts, including work and family. In
mass communication texts these subjects typically include media literacy, media and
culture, new media, media industries, media audiences, advertising, public relations,
media effects, regulation, and media ethics.

There was a time when our communication models provided a useful graphical outline of
a semesters material. This is no longer the case. This paper presents the classic models
that we use in teaching communication, including Shannon's information theory model
(the active model), a cybernetic model that includes feedback (the interactive model, an
intermediary model (sometimes referred to as a gatekeeper model of the two-step flow),
and the transactive model. Few textbooks cover all of these models together. Mass
Communication texts typically segue from Shannon's model to a two-step flow or
gatekeeper model. Interpersonal texts typically present Shannon's model as the "active"
model of the communication process and then elaborate it with interactive (cybernetic)
and transactive models. Here we will argue the value of update these models to better
account for the way we teach these diverse subject matters, and present a unifying model
of the communication process that will be described as an ecological model of the
communication process. This model seeks to better represent the structure and key
constituents of the communication process as we teach it today.

Shannon's Model of the Communication Process

Shannon's (1948) model of the communication process is, in important ways, the
beginning of the modern field. It provided, for the first time, a general model of the
communication process that could be treated as the common ground of such diverse
disciplines as journalism, rhetoric, linguistics, and speech and hearing sciences. Part of its
success is due to its structuralist reduction of communication to a set of basic constituents
that not only explain how communication happens, but why communication sometimes
fails. Good timing played a role as well. The world was barely thirty years into the age of
mass radio, had arguably fought a world war in its wake, and an even more powerful,
television, was about to assert itself. It was time to create the field of communication as a
unified discipline, and Shannon's model was as good an excuse as any. The model's
enduring value is readily evident in introductory textbooks. It remains one of the first
things most students learn about communication when they take an introductory
communication class. Indeed, it is one of only a handful of theoretical statements about
the communication process that can be found in introductory textbooks in both mass
communication and interpersonal communication.

Figure 1: Shannon's (1948) Model of the communication process.

Shannon's model, as shown in Figure 1, breaks the process of communication down into
eight discrete components:
1. An information source. Presumably a person who creates a message.
2. The message, which is both sent by the information source and received by the
destination.
3. A transmitter. For Shannon's immediate purpose a telephone instrument that
captures an audio signal, converts it into an electronic signal, and amplifies it for
transmission through the telephone network. Transmission is readily generalized
within Shannon's information theory to encompass a wide range of transmitters.
The simplest transmission system, that associated with face-to-face
communication, has at least two layers of transmission. The first, the mouth
(sound) and body (gesture), create and modulate a signal. The second layer, which
might also be described as a channel, is built of the air (sound) and light (gesture)
that enable the transmission of those signals from one person to another. A
television broadcast would obviously include many more layers, with the addition
of cameras and microphones, editing and filtering systems, a national signal
distribution network (often satellite), and a local radio wave broadcast antenna.
4. The signal, which flows through a channel. There may be multiple parallel
signals, as is the case in face-to-face interaction where sound and gesture involve
different signal systems that depend on different channels and modes of
transmission. There may be multiple serial signals, with sound and/or gesture
turned into electronic signals, radio waves, or words and pictures in a book.
5. A carrier or channel, which is represented by the small unlabeled box in the
middle of the model. The most commonly used channels include air, light,
electricity, radio waves, paper, and postal systems. Note that there may be
multiple channels associated with the multiple layers of transmission, as described
above.
6. Noise, in the form of secondary signals that obscure or confuse the signal carried.
Given Shannon's focus on telephone transmission, carriers, and reception, it
should not be surprising that noise is restricted to noise that obscures or
obliterates some portion of the signal within the channel. This is a fairly
restrictive notion of noise, by current standards, and a somewhat misleading one.
Today we have at least some media which are so noise free that compressed
signals are constructed with an absolutely minimal amount information and little
likelihood of signal loss. In the process, Shannon's solution to noise, redundancy,
has been largely replaced by a minimally redundant solution: error detection and
correction. Today we use noise more as a metaphor for problems associated with
effective listening.
7. A receiver. In Shannon's conception, the receiving telephone instrument. In face
to face communication a set of ears (sound) and eyes (gesture). In television,
several layers of receiver, including an antenna and a television set.
8. A destination. Presumably a person who consumes and processes the message.

Like all models, this is a minimalist abstraction of the reality it attempts to reproduce.
The reality of most communication systems is more complex. Most information sources
(and destinations) act as both sources and destinations. Transmitters, receivers, channels,
signals, and even messages are often layered both serially and in parallel such that there
are multiple signals transmitted and received, even when they are converged into a
common signal stream and a common channel. Many other elaborations can be readily
described.. It remains, however, that Shannon's model is a useful abstraction that
identifies the most important components of communication and their general
relationship to one another. That value is evident in its similarity to real world pictures of
the designs of new communication systems, including Bell's original sketches of the
telephone, as seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Bell's drawing of the workings of a telephone, from his original sketches
(source: Bell Family Papers; Library of Congress;
http://memory.loc.gov/mss/mcc/004/0001.jpg)

Bell's sketch visibly contains an information source and destination, transmitters and
receivers, a channel, a signal, and an implied message (the information source is talking).
What is new, in Shannon's model (aside from the concept of noise, which is only partially
reproduced by Bell's batteries), is a formal vocabulary that is now generally used in
describing such designs, a vocabulary that sets up both Shannon's mathematical theory of
information and a large amount of subsequent communication theory. This
correspondence between Bell's sketch and Shannon's model is rarely remarked (see
Hopper, 1992 for one instance).

Shannon's model isn't really a model of communication, however. It is, instead, a model
of the flow of information through a medium, and an incomplete and biased model that is
far more applicable to the system it maps, a telephone or telegraph, than it is to most
other media. It suggests, for instance, a "push" model in which sources of information
can inflict it on destinations. In the real world of media, destinations are more typically
self-selecting "consumers" of information who have the ability to select the messages
they are most interested in, turn off messages that don't interest them, focus on one
message in preference to other in message rich environments, and can choose to simply
not pay attention. Shannon's model depicts transmission from a transmitter to a receiver
as the primary activity of a medium. In the real world of media, messages are frequently
stored for elongated periods of time and/or modified in some way before they are
accessed by the "destination". The model suggests that communication within a medium
is frequently direct and unidirectional, but in the real world of media, communication is
almost never unidirectional and is often indirect.

Derivative Models of the Communication Process

One of these shortcomings is addressed in Figure 2's intermediary model of

communication (sometimes referred to as the gatekeeper model or two-step flow (Katz,
1957)). This model, which is frequently depicted in introductory texts in mass
communication, focuses on the important role that intermediaries often play in the
communication process. Mass communication texts frequently specifically associate
editors, who decide what stories will fit in a newspaper or news broadcast, with this
intermediary or gatekeeper role. There are, however, many intermediary roles (Foulger,
2002a) associated with communication. Many of these intermediaries have the ability to
decide what messages others see, the context in which they are seen, and when they see
them. They often have the ability, moreover, to change messages or to prevent them from
reaching an audience (destination). In extreme variations we refer to such gatekeepers as
censors. Under the more normal conditions of mass media, in which publications choose
some content in preference to other potential content based on an editorial policy, we
refer to them as editors (most mass media), moderators (Internet discussion groups),
reviewers (peer-reviewed publications), or aggregators (clipping services), among other
titles . Delivery workers (a postal delivery worker, for instance) also act as
intermediaries, and have the ability to act as gatekeepers, but are generally restricted from
doing so as a matter of ethics and/or law.

Figure 3: An Intermediary Model.

Variations of Figure 3's gatekeeper model are also used in teaching organizational
communication, where gatekeepers, in the form of bridges and liaisons, have some ability
to shape the organization through their selective sharing of information. These variations
are generally more complex in depiction and often take the form of social network
diagrams that depict the interaction relationships of dozens of people. They network
diagrams often presume, or at least allow, bi-directional arrows such that they are more
consistent with the notion that communication is most often bidirectional.

The bidirectionality of communication is commonly addressed in interpersonal

communication text with two elaborations of Shannon's model (which is often labeled as
the action model of communication): the interactive model and the transactive model.
The interactive model, a variant of which is shown in Figure 4, elaborates Shannon's
model with the cybernetic concept of feedback (Weiner, 1948, 1986), often (as is the case
in Figure 4) without changing any other element of Shannon's model. The key concept
associated with this elaboration is that destinations provide feedback on the messages
they receive such that the information sources can adapt their messages, in real time. This
is an important elaboration, and as generally depicted, a radically oversimplified one.
Feedback is a message (or a set of messages). The source of feedback is an information
source. The consumer of feedback is a destination. Feedback is transmitted, received, and
potentially disruptable via noise sources. None of this is visible in the typical depiction of
the interactive model. This doesn't diminish the importance of feedback or the usefulness
of elaborating Shannon's model to include it. People really do adapt their messages based
on the feedback they receive. It is useful, however, to notice that the interactive model
depicts feedback at a much higher level of abstraction than it does messages.

Figure 4: An Interactive Model:

This difference in the level of abstraction is addressed in the transactional model of

communication, a variant of which is shown in Figure 5. This model acknowledges
neither creators nor consumers of messages, preferring to label the people associated with
the model as communicators who both create and consume messages. The model
presumes additional symmetries as well, with each participant creating messages that are
received by the other communicator. This is, in many ways, an excellent model of the
face-to-face interactive process which extends readily to any interactive medium that
provides users with symmetrical interfaces for creation and consumption of messages,
including notes, letters, C.B. Radio, electronic mail, and the radio. It is, however, a
distinctly interpersonal model that implies an equality between communicators that often
doesn't exist, even in interpersonal contexts. The caller in most telephone conversations
has the initial upper hand in setting the direction and tone of a a telephone callr than the
receiver of the call (Hopper, 1992).In face-to-face head-complement interactions, the
boss (head) has considerably more freedom (in terms of message choice, media choice,
ability to frame meaning, ability to set the rules of interaction) and power to allocate
message bandwidth than does the employee (complement). The model certainly does not
apply in mass media contexts.

Figure 5: A Transactional Model:

The "masspersonal" (xxxxx, 199x) media of the Internet through this implied symmetry
into even greater relief. Most Internet media grant everyone symmetrical creation and
consumption interfaces. Anyone with Internet access can create a web site and participate
as an equal partner in e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, computer conferences,
collaborative composition sites, blogs, interactive games, MUDs, MOOs, and other
media. It remains, however, that users have very different preferences in their message
consumption and creation. Some people are very comfortable creating messages for
others online. Others prefer to "lurk"; to freely browse the messages of others without
adding anything of their own. Adding comments to a computer conference is rarely more
difficult than sending an e-mail, but most Internet discussion groups have many more
lurkers (consumers of messages that never post) than they have contributors (people who
both create and consume messages). Oddly, the lurkers sometimes feel more integrated
with the community than the contributors do (Baym, 2000).

A New Model of the Communication Process

Existing models of the communication process don't provide a reasonable basis for
understanding such effects. Indeed, there are many things that we routinely teach
undergraduates in introductory communication courses that are missing from, or outright
inconsistent with, these models. Consider that:

• we now routinely teach students that "receivers" of messages really "consume"

messages. People usually have a rich menu of potential messages to choose from
and they select the messages they want to hear in much the same way that diners
select entrees from a restaurant menu. We teach students that most "noise" is
generated within the listener, that we engage messages through "selective
attention", that one of the most important things we can do to improve our
communication is to learn how to listen, that mass media audiences have choices,
and that we need to be "literate" in our media choices, even in (and perhaps
especially in) our choice of television messages. Yet all of these models suggest
an "injection model" in which message reception is automatic.
• we spend a large portion of our introductory courses teaching students about
language, including written, verbal, and non-verbal languages, yet language is all
but ignored in these models (the use of the term in Figure 5 is not the usual
practice in depictions of the transactive model).
• we spend large portions of our introductory courses teaching students about the
importance of perception, attribution, and relationships to our interpretation of
messages; of the importance of communication to the perceptions that others have
of us, the perceptions we have of ourselves, and the creation and maintenence of
the relationships we have with others. These models say nothing about the role of
perception and relationshp to the way we interpret messages or our willingness to
consume messages from different people.
• we spend large portions of our introductory courses teaching students about the
socially constructed aspects of languages, messages, and media use. Intercultural
communication presumes both social construction and the presumption that
people schooled in one set of conventions will almost certainly violate the
expectations of people schooled in a different set of expectations. Discussions of
the effects of media on culture presume that communication within the same
medium may be very different in different cultures, but that the effects of the
medium on various cultures will be more uniform. Existing general models
provide little in the way of a platform from which these effects can be discussed.
• when we use these models in teaching courses in both interpersonal and mass
communication; in teaching students about very different kinds of media. With
the exception of the Shannon model, we tend to use these models selectively in
describing those media, and without any strong indication of where the medium
begins or ends; without any indication of how media interrelate with languages,
messages, or the people who create and consume messages.without addressing the
ways in which they are . while these media describe, in a generalized way, media,

The ecological model of communication, shown in Figure 6, attempts to provide a

platform on which these issues can be explored. It asserts that communication occurs in
the intersection of four fundamental constructs: communication between people (creators
and consumers) is mediated by messages which are created using language within media;
consumed from media and interpreted using language.This model is, in many ways, a
more detailed elaboration of Lasswell's (1948) classic outline of the study of
communication: "Who ... says what ... in which channel ... to whom ... with what effect".
In the ecological model , the "who" are the creators of messages, the "says what" are the
messages, the "in which channel" is elaborated into languages (which are the content of
channels) and media (which channels are a component of), the "to whom" are the
consumers of messages, and the effects are found in various relationships between the
primitives, including relationships, perspectives, attributions, interpretations, and the
continuing evolution of languages and media.

Figure 6: A Ecological Model of the Communication Process

A number of relationships are described in this model:

1. Messages are created and consumed using language

2. Language occurs within the context of media
3. Messages are constructed and consumed within the context of media
4. The roles of consumer and creator are reflexive. People become creators when
they reply or supply feedback to other people. Creators become consumers when
they make use of feedback to adapt their messages to message consumers. People
learn how to create messages through the act of consuming other peoples
messages.
5. The roles of consumer and creator are introspective. Creators of messages create
messages within the context of their perspectives of and relationships with
anticipated consumers of messages. Creators optimize their messages to their
target audiences. Consumers of messages interpret those messages within the
context of their perspectives of, and relationships with, creators of messages.
Consumers make attributions of meaning based on their opinion of the message
creator. People form these perspectives and relationships as a function of their
communication.
6. The messages creators of messages construct are necessarily imperfect
representations of the meaning they imagine. Messages are created within the
expressive limitations of the medium selected and the meaning representation
space provided by the language used. The message created is almost always a
partial and imperfect representation of what the creator would like to say.
7. A consumers interpretation of a messages necessarily attributes meaning
imperfectly. Consumers intepret messages within the limits of the languages used
and the media those languages are used in. A consumers interpretation of a
message may be very different than what the creator of a message imagined.
8. People learn language by through the experience of encountering language being
used within media. The languages they learn will almost always be the languages
when communicating with people who already know and use those languages.
That communication always occurs within a medium that enables those
languages.
9. People learn media by using media. The media they learn will necessarilly be the
media used by the people they communicate with.
10. People invent and evolve languages. While some behavior expressions (a baby's
cry) occur naturally and some aspects of language structure may mirror the ways
in which the brain structures ideas, language does not occur naturally. People
invent new language when there is no language that they can be socialized into.
People evolve language when they need to communicate ideas that existing
language is not sufficient to.
11. People invent and evolve media While some of the modalities and channels
associated with communication are naturally occurring, the media we use to
communicate are not.

A medium of communication is, in short, the product of a set of complex interactions

between its primary consituents: messages, people (acting as creators of messages,
consumers of messages, and in other roles), languages, and media. Three of these
consituents are themselves complex systems and the subject of entire fields of study,
including psychology, sociology, anthropology (all three of which study people),
linguistics (language), media ecology (media), and communication (messages, language,
and media). Even messages can be regarded as complex entities, but its complexities can
be described entirely within the scope of languages, media, and the people who use them.
This ecological model of communication is, in its most fundamental reading, a compact
theory of messages and the systems that enable them. Messages are the central feature of
the model and the most fundamental product of the interaction of people, language, and
media. But there are other products of the model that build up from that base of
messages, including (in a rough ordering to increased complexity) observation, learning,
interpretation, socialization, attribution, perspectives, and relationships.

Discussion: Positioning the study of media in the field of communication

It is in this layering of interdependent social construction that this model picks up its
name. Our communication is not produced within any single system, but in the
intersection of several interrelated systems, each of which is self-standing necessarily
described by dedicated theories, but each of which is both the product of the others and,
in its own limited way, an instance of the other. The medium is, as McLuhan famously
observed, a message that is inherent to every message that is created in or consumed from
a medium. The medium is, to the extent that we can select among media, also a language
such that the message of the medium is not only inherent to a message, but often an
element of its composition. In what may be the most extreme view enabled by the
processing of messages within media, the medium may also be a person and consumes
messages, recreates them, and makes the modified messages available for further
consumption. A medium is really none of these things. It is fundamentally a system that
enables the construction of messages using a set of languages such that they can be
consumed. But a medium is also both all of these things and the product of their
interaction. People learn, create, and evolve media as a vehicle for enabling the creation
and consumption of messages.

The same might be said of each of the constituents of this model. People can be, and
often are, the medium (insofar as they act as messengers), the language (insofar as
different people can be selected as messengers), or the message (one's choice of
messenger can be profoundly meaningful). Fundamentally a person is none of these
things, but they can be used as any of these things and are the product of their experience
of all of these things. Our experience of messages, languages, media, and through them,
other people, is fundamental in shaping who we become and how we think of ourselves
and others. We invent ourselves, and others work diligently to shape that invention,
through our consumption of messages, the languages we master, and the media we use.

Language can be, and often are, the message (that is inherent to every message
constructed with it), the medium (but only trivially), the person (both at the level of the
"language instinct" that is inherent to people (following Pinker, xxxxx) and a socialized
semiotic overlay on personal experience), and even "the language" (insofar as we have a
choice of what language we use in constructing a given message). Fundamentally a
language is none of these things, but it can be used as any of these things and is the
product of our use of media to construct messages. We use language, within media, to
construct messages, such as definitions and dictionaries) that construct language. We
invent and evolve language as a product of our communication.

As for messages, they reiterate all of these constituents. Every message is a partial and
incomplete precis of the language that it is constructed with, the medium it is created in
and consumed from, and the person who created it. Every message we consume allows us
to learn a little more about the language that we interpret with, the medium we create and
consume messages in, and the person who created the message. Every message we create
is an opportunity to change and extend the language we use, evolve the media we use,
and influence the perspective that consumers of our messages have of us. Yet
fundamentally, a message is simply a message, an attempt to communicate something we
imagine such that another person can correctly intepret the message and thus imagine the
same thing.

This welter of intersecting McLuhanesque/Burkean metaphors and interdependencies

provides a second source of the models name. This model seeks, more than anything, to
position language and media as the intermediate building blocks on which
communication is built. The position of language as a building block of messages and
and communication is well understood. Over a century of study in semantics, semiotics,
and linguistics have produced systematic theories of message and language production
which are well understood and generally accepted. The study of language is routinely
incorporated into virtually all programs in the field of communication, including
journalism, rhetoric and speech, film, theater, broadcast media, language arts, speech and
hearing sciences telecommunications, and other variants, including departments of
"language and social interaction". The positioning of the study of media within the field
of communication is considerably more tenuous. Many departments, including most of
those named in this paragraph, focus almost entirely on only one or two media,
effectively assuming the medium such that the focus of study can be constrained to the
art of message production and interpretation, with a heavy focus on the languages of the
medium and little real introspection about what it means to use that medium in preference
to another or the generalized ways in which all media are invented, learned, evolved,
socialized, selected or used meaningfully.

Such is, however, the primary subject matter of the newly emerging discipline of media
ecology, and this model can be seen as an attempt to position media ecology relative to
language and messages as a building block of our communication. This model was
created specifically to support theories of media and position them relative to the process
of communication. It is hoped that the reader finds value in that positioning.

Conclusion: Theoretical and Pedogogical Value

Models are a fundamental building block of theory. They are also a fundamental tool of
instruction. Shannon's information theory model, Weiner's Cybernetic model, and Katz'
two step flow each allowed allowed scholars decompose the process of communication
into discrete structural elements. Each provides the basis for considerable bodies of
communication theory and research. Each model also provides teachers with a powerful
pedagogical tool for teaching students to understand that communication is a complex
process in which many things can, and frequently do, go wrong; for teaching students the
ways in which they can perfect different skills at different points in the communication
process to become more effective communicators. But while Shannon's model has proved
effective across the primary divides in the field of communication, the other models Katz'
and Weiner's models have not. Indeed, they in many ways exemplify that divide and the
differences in what is taught in courses oriented to interpersonal communication and
mass communication.

Weiner's cybernetic model accentuates the interactive structure of communication. Katz'

model accentuates its production structure. Students of interpersonal communication are
taught, through the use of the interactive/cybernetic and transactive models that attending
to the feedback of their audience is an important part of being an effective communicator.
Students of mass communication are taught, through the intermediary/gatekeeper/two-
step flow model, that controlled production processes are an important part of being an
effective communicator. The difference is a small one and there is no denying that both
attention to feedback and attention to detail are critical skills of effective communicators,
but mass media programs focus heavily on the minutiae of production, interpersonal
programs focus heavily on the munitiae of attention to feedback. Despite the fact that
both teach both message production the languages used in message production, and the
details of the small range of media that each typically covers, they discuss different
media, to some extent different languages, and different approaches to message
production. These differences, far more than more obvious differences like audience size
or technology, are the divides that seperate the study of interpersonal communication
from mass communication.

The ecological model of communication presented here cannot, by itself, remediate such
differences, but it does reconsitute and extend these models in ways that make it useful,
both pedogogically and theoretically, across the normal disciplinary boundaries of the
field of communication. The author has made good use of the model in teaching a variety
of courses within several communication disciplines, including on interpersonal
communication, mass media criticism, organizational communication, communication
ethics, communication in relationships and communities, and new communication
technologies. In introductory Interpersonal Communication classes the model has shown
considerable value in outlining and tying together such diverse topics as the social
construction of the self, verbal and non-verbal languages, listening, relationship
formation and development, miscommunication, perception, attribution, and the ways in
which communication changes in different interpersonal media. In an Organizational
Communication class the model has proved value in tying comtemporary Organizational
models, including network analysis models, satisficing, and Weick's model to key
organizational skills like effective presentation, listening, and matching the medium to
the goal and the stakeholder. In a communication ethics class it has proved valuable in
elaborating the range of participants in media who have ethical responsibilities and the
scope of their responsibilities. In a mass media criticism class it has proved useful in
showing how different critical methods relate to the process of communication and to
each other. In each course the model has proved valuable, not only in giving students
tools with which they can decompose communication, but which they can organize the
course materials into a cohesive whole.

While the model was originally composed for pedagogical purposes, the primary value
for the author has been theoretical. The field of communication encompasses a wide
range of very different and often unintegrated theories and methods. Context-based gaps
in the field like the one between mass media and interpersonal communication have been
equated to those of "two sovereign nations," with "different purposes, different
boundaries", "different methods", and "different theoretical orientations" (Berger and
Chaffee, 1988), causing at least some to doubt that the field can ever be united by a
common theory of communication (Craig, 1999). xxxxx The author Models of
Communication
Models are representations. There are model airplanes,
mathematical models, and models of buildings. In each case, the model is
designed to provide a simplified view of some more complex object,
phenomenon, or process, so that fundamental properties or
characteristics can be high-lightedand examined. Models highlight some
features that their designers believe are particularly critical, and there is
less focus on other features. Thus, by examining models, one learns not
only about the object, situation, or process, but also about the
perspective of the designer.
FIGURE 1. Aristotelian view of communication.

In communication study, models function in this same way, allowing for

the simplification of complex dynamics to help scholars and students
better understand the components and processes that are involved. As
with other models, communication models also provide important insights
into the perspectives of the designers.
One of the first scholars to examine the communication process in terms
of its component parts was Aristotle (385-322 B. C. E.), who
characterized communication (then called "rhetoric") in terms of an orator
(i.e., a speaker) constructing an argument to be presented in a speech to
an audience (i.e., listeners). This view is illustrated in visual form in
Figure 1. This Aristotelian view of communication usefully highlighted the
perspectives of communication thinkers until the midtwentieth century.
In the late 1940s, and through the 1950s and 1960s, a number of new
communication models were advanced. Many of the new models
preserved the basic themes of the Aristotelian perspective. In 1949,
Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver published a model that they called
the "Mathematical Model of Communication." Based on their research with
telephones and telephonic communication, the model also used boxes and
arrows to represent the communication process. However, their view was
more complex. They began with the "information source" box and then,
using arrows as the connections, progressed on to boxes for the
"transmitter," the "channel," the "receiver," and, finally, the "destination."
Box-and-arrow models of communication, of which there have been many
over the years, emphasize the components of communication(e.g., a
sender, message, and receiver) and the direction of influence. Where
arrows go from left to right, that is, from a sender to a receiver,
theimplication is that it is the sender who, through messages or speeches,
brings about communication influences on the receiver.

FIGURE 2. "Sawtooth" communication model.

Other models, including a helical-spiral model developed by Frank Dance

(1967), a circular model proposed by Lee Thayer (1968), and a
"sawtooth" model advanced by Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin, and Don
Jackson (1967), emphasized the dynamic and evolutionary nature of the
communication process rather than the components or the directions of
influence.
A "sawtooth" model that is similar to the sort advanced by Watzlawick,
Beavin, and Jackson(1967) is shown in Figure 2. The lines represent
messages that are exchanged during the course of a communication
event. The downward lines with arrows represent messages sent by
Person 1, while the upward lines represent messages initiated by Person
2. A model of this sort highlights the communication process, dynamics,
and history, while it minimizes the emphasis on direction of influence.
Other types of models that have become popular emphasize
communication networks—the flow of messages among individuals in a
group or organization, for example. Such a model for a hypothetical
group is depicted in Figure 3. Each circle represents an individual, and the
arrows denote messages.
Communication models serve to clarify the nature of communication, to
provide a guide for research, and to offer a means of displaying research
findings. Such models are a tool by which scholars, practitioners, and
students can illustrate their thinking about what they consider to be the
most important aspects of communication.

repeatedly finds these gaps and boundaries problematic

It may be be that complex model of the communication process that bridges the
theoretical orientations of interpersonal, organizational, and mass media perspectives can
help to bridge this gap and provide something more than the kind of metamodel that
Craig calls for. Defining media directly into the process of communication may help to
provide the kind of substrate that would satisfy Cappella's (1991) suggestion we can
"remake the field by altering the organizational format", replacing contexts with
processes that operate within the scope of media. This perspective does exactly that. The
result does not integrate all of communication theory, but it may provide a useful starting
point on which a more integrated communication theory can be built. The construction of
such theory is the author's primary objective in forwarding this model for your comment
and, hopefully, your response.

Communication Models
Contents

What is a Model?
The Advantages of Models
Limitations of Models
Classical Communication Models
Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric
Aristotle’s model of proof
Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation
Early Linear Models
The Shannon-Weaver Mathematical Model, 1949
Berlo’s S-M-C-R, 1960
Schramm’s Interactive Model, 1954
Non-linear Models
Dance’s Helical Spiral, 1967
Westley and MacLean’s Conceptual Model, 1957
Becker’s Mosaic Model, 1968
Multidimensional Models
Ruesch and Bateson, Functional Model, 1951
Barnlund’s Transactional Model, 1970
Suggestions for Communication Models
Systemic Model of Communication, 1972
Brown’s Holographic Model, 1987
A Fractal Model
Suggested Readings

Although adapted and updated, much of the information in this lecture is derived from C.
David Mortensen, Communication: The Study of Human Communication (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1972), Chapter 2, “Communication Models.”

What is a Model?

Mortensen: “In the broadest sense, a model is a systematic representation

of an object or event in idealized and abstract form. Models are
somewhat arbitrary by their nature. The act of abstracting
eliminates certain details to focus on essential factors. . . . The key to
the usefulness of a model is the degree to which it conforms--in
point-by-point correspondence--to the underlying determinants of
communicative behavior.”
“Communication models are merely pictures; they’re even distorting
pictures, because they stop or freeze an essentially dynamic
interactive or transactive process into a static picture.”

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

The Advantages of Models

They should allow us to ask questions.

Mortensen: “A good model is useful, then, in providing both general

perspective and particular vantage points from which to ask questions
and to interpret the raw stuff of observation. The more complex the
subject matter—the more amorphous and elusive the natural boundaries
—the greater are the potential rewards of model building.”

They should clarify complexity.

Models also clarify the structure of complex events. They do this, as

Chapanis (1961) noted, by reducing complexity to simpler, more familiar
terms. . . Thus, the aim of a model is not to ignore complexity or to
explain it away, but rather to give it order and coherence.

They should lead us to new discoveries-most important, according to

Mortensen.

At another level models have heuristic value; that is, they provide new
ways to conceive of hypothetical ideas and relationships. This may well be
their most important function. With the aid of a good model, suddenly we
are jarred from conventional modes of thought. . . . Ideally, any model,
even when studied casually, should offer new insights and culminate in
what can only be described as an “Aha!” experience.

Limitations of Models

Can lead to oversimplifications.

“There is no denying that much of the work in designing communication

models illustrates the oft-repeated charge that anything in human affairs
which can be modeled is by definition too superficial to be given serious
consideration.”

Some, like Duhem’s (1954), believe there is no value in models at all:

We can guard against the risks of oversimplification by
recognizing the fundamental distinction between simplification
and oversimplification. By definition, and of necessity, models
simplify. So do all comparisons. As Kaplan (1964) noted, “Science
always simplifies; its aim is not to reproduce the reality in all its
complexity, but only to formulate what is essential for
understanding, prediction, or control. That a model is simpler than
the subject-matter being inquired into is as much a virtue as a
fault, and is, in any case, inevitable [p. 280].” So the real question
is what gets simplified. Insofar as a model ignores crucial
variables and recurrent relationships, it is open to the charge of
oversimplification. If the essential attributes or particulars of the
event are included, the model is to be credited with the virtue of
parsimony, which insists-where everything is equal-that the
simplest of two interpretations is superior. Simplification, after all,
is inherent in the act of abstracting. For example, an ordinary
orange has a vast number of potential attributes; it is necessary to
consider only a few when one decides to eat an orange, but many
more must be taken into account when one wants to capture the
essence of an orange in a prize-winning photograph. abstracting.
For example, an ordinary orange has a vast number of potential
attributes; it is necessary to consider only a few when one decides
to eat an orange, but many more must be taken into account when
one wants to capture the essence of an orange in a prize-winning
photograph.

Models can miss important points of comparison. Chapanis (1961), “A

model can tolerate a considerable amount of slop [p. 118].”

Can lead of a confusion of the model between the behavior it portrays

Mortensen: “Critics also charge that models are readily confused with
reality. The problem typically begins with an initial exploration of some
unknown territory. . . .Then the model begins to function as a substitute
for the event: in short, the map is taken literally. And what is worse,
another form of ambiguity is substituted for the uncertainty the map was
designed to minimize. What has happened is a sophisticated version of
the general semanticist’s admonition that “the map is not the territory.”
Spain is not pink because it appears that way on the map, and Minnesota
is not up because it is located near the top of a United States map.

“The proper antidote lies in acquiring skill in the art of map reading.”

Premature Closure
The model designer may escape the risks of oversimplification and map
reading and still fall prey to dangers inherent in abstraction. To press for
closure is to strive for a sense of completion in a system.

Kaplan (1964):

The danger is that the model limits our awareness of unexplored

possibilities of conceptualization. We tinker with the model when
we might be better occupied with the subject-matter itself. In many
areas of human behavior, our knowledge is on the level of folk
wisdom ... incorporating it in a model does not automatically give
such knowledge scientific status. The majority of our ideas is
usually a matter of slow growth, which cannot be forced.... Closure
is premature if it lays down the lines for our thinking to follow
when we do not know enough to say even whether one direction or
another is the more promising. Building a model, in short, may
crystallize our thoughts at a stage when they are better left in
solution, to allow new compounds to precipitate [p. 279].

One can reduce the hazards only by recognizing that physical reality can
be represented in any number of ways.

Classical Communication Models

Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric. Ehninger, Gronbeck and Monroe: One of

the earliest definitions of communication came from the Greek
philosopher-teacher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).

“Rhetoric” is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of
persuasion” (Rhetoric 1335b).

Aristotle’s speaker-centered model received perhaps its fullest development in the

hands of Roman educator Quintilian (ca. 35-95 A.D.), whose Institutio
Oratoria was filled with advice on the full training of a “good” speaker-
statesman.
Aristotle’s model of proof. Kinnevay also sees a model of communication in
Aristotle’s description of proof:

Logos, inheres in the content or the message itself

Pathos, inheres in the audience

Ethos, inheres in the speaker

Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation. Lloyd Bitzer developed described the
“Rhetorical Situation,” which, while not a model, identifies some of
the classical components of a communication situation (“The
Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 1 (Winter, 1968):1-
15.).

Bitzer defines the “rhetorical situation” as “a complex of persons, events,

objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which
can be completely or partially removed if discourse, introduced into the
situation, can so constrain human decision or action so as to bring about
significant modification of the exigence.”

See more of Bitzer's approach here.

Early Linear Models

The Shannon-Weaver Mathematical Model, 1949

Background

Claude Shannon, an engineer for the Bell Telephone Company, designed the
most influential of all early communication models. His goal was to
formulate a theory to guide the efforts of engineers in finding the most
efficient way of transmitting electrical signals from one location to
another (Shannon and Weaver, 1949). Later Shannon introduced a
mechanism in the receiver which corrected for differences between the
transmitted and received signal; this monitoring or correcting
mechanism was the forerunner of the now widely used concept of
feedback (information which a communicator gains from others in
response to his own verbal behavior).
Strengths

This model, or a variation on it, is the most common communication model used
in low-level communication texts.

Significant development. “Within a decade a host of other disciplines—many in

the behavioral sciences—adapted it to countless interpersonal
situations, often distorting it or making exaggerated claims for its
use.”

“Taken as an approximation of the process of human communication.”

Significant heuristic value.

With only slight changes in terminology, a number of nonmathematical schemas have
elaborated on the major theme. For example, Harold Lasswell (1948) conceived
of analyzing the mass media in five stages: “Who?” “Says what?” “In which
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.

The concepts of this model became staples in communication research

Entropy-the measure of uncertainty in a system. “Uncertainty or entropy increases in exact
proportion to the number of messages from which the source has to choose. In
the simple matter of flipping a coin, entropy is low because the destination
knows the probability of a coin’s turning up either heads or tails. In the case of
a two-headed coin, there can be neither any freedom of choice nor any
reduction in uncertainty so long as the destination knows exactly what the
outcome must be. In other words, the value of a specific bit of information
depends on the probability that it will occur. In general, the informative value
of an item in a message decreases in exact proportion to the likelihood of its
occurrence.”

Redundancy-the degree to which information is not unique in the system. “Those items in a
message that add no new information are redundant. Perfect redundancy is
equal to total repetition and is found in pure form only in machines. In human
beings, the very act of repetition changes, in some minute way, the meaning or
the message and the larger social significance of the event. Zero redundancy
creates sheer unpredictability, for there is no way of knowing what items in a
sequence will come next. As a rule, no message can reach maximum efficiency
unless it contains a balance between the unexpected and the predictable,
between what the receiver must have underscored to acquire understanding
and what can be deleted as extraneous.”

Noise-the measure of information not related to the message. “Any additional signal that
interferes with the reception of information is noise. In electrical apparatus
noise comes only from within the system, whereas in human activity it may
occur quite apart from the act of transmission and reception. Interference may
result, for example, from background noise in the immediate surroundings,
from noisy channels (a crackling microphone), from the organization and
semantic aspects of the message (syntactical and semantical noise), or from
psychological interference with encoding and decoding. Noise need not be
considered a detriment unless it produces a significant interference with the
reception of the message. Even when the disturbance is substantial, the strength
of the signal or the rate of redundancy may be increased to restore efficiency.”

Channel Capacity-the measure of the maximum amount of information a channel can carry.
“The battle against uncertainty depends upon the number of alternative
possibilities the message eliminates. Suppose you wanted to know where a given
checker was located on a checkerboard. If you start by asking if it is located in
the first black square at the extreme left of the second row from the top and
find the answer to be no, sixty-three possibilities remain-a high level of
uncertainty. On the other hand, if you first ask whether it falls on any square at
the top half of the board, the alternative will be reduced by half regardless of
the answer. By following the first strategy it could be necessary to ask up to
sixty-three questions (inefficient indeed!); but by consistently halving the
remaining possibilities, you will obtain the right answer in no more than six
tries.”

vi. Provided an influential yet counter-intuitive definition of communication.

From Littlejohn, Stephen W. Theories of Human Communication. Second Ed. Belmont,
California: Wadsworth, 1983, p 116.

Information is a measure of uncertainty, or entropy, in a situation. The greater the

uncertainty, the more the information. When a situation is completely
predictable, no information is present. Most people associate information with
certainty or knowledge; consequently, this definition from information theory
can be confusing. As used by the information theorist, the concept does not refer
to a message, facts, or meaning. It is a concept bound only to the quantification
of stimuli or signals in a situation.

On closer examination, this idea of information is not as distant from common sense as
it first appears. We have said that information is the amount of uncertainty in
the situation. Another way of thinking of it is to consider information as the
number of messages required to completely reduce the uncertainty in the situa-
tion. For example, your friend is about to flip a coin. Will it land heads up or
tails up? You are uncertain, you cannot predict. This uncertainty, which results
from the entropy in the situation, will be eliminated by seeing the result of the
flip. Now let’s suppose that you have received a tip that your friend’s coin is
two headed. The flip is “fixed.” There is no uncertainty and therefore no
information. In other words, you could not receive any message that would
make you predict any better than you already have. In short, a situation with
which you are completely familiar has no information for you [emphasis
added].

vii. See Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of
Communication (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949). For a
number of excellent brief secondary sources, see the bibliography. Two
sources were particularly helpful in the preparation of this chapter:
Allan R. Broadhurst and Donald K. Darnell, “An Introduction to
Cybernetics and Information Theory,” Quarterly Journal of Speech
51 (1965): 442-53; Klaus Krippendorf, “Information Theory,” in
Communication and Behavior, ed. G. Hanneman and W. McEwen
(Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1975), 351-89.

Weaknesses

Not analogous to much of human communication.

“Only a fraction of the information conveyed in interpersonal encounters can be taken as
remotely corresponding to the teletype action of statistically rare or redundant
signals.”

“Though Shannon’s technical concept of information is fascinating in many respects, it

ranks among the least important ways of conceiving of what we recognize as
“information.” “

Only formal—does not account for content

Mortensen: “Shannon and Weaver were concerned only with technical problems associated
with the selection and arrangement of discrete units of information—in short,
with purely formal matters, not content. Hence, their model does not apply to
semantic or pragmatic dimensions of language. “
Theodore Roszak provides a thoughtful critique of Shannon’s model in The Cult of
Information. Roszak notes the unique way in which Shannon defined
information:

Once, when he was explaining his work to a group of prominent

scientists who challenged his eccentric definition, he replied, “I
think perhaps the word ‘information’ is causing more trouble . . .
than it is worth, except that it is difficult to find another word that
is anywhere near right. It should be kept solidly in mind that
[information] is only a measure of the difficulty in transmitting the
sequences produced by some information source” [emphasis
added]

As Roszak points out, Shannon’s model has no mechanism for distinguishing important
ideas from pure non-sense:

In much the same way, in its new technical sense, information has
come to denote whatever can be coded for transmission through a
channel that connects a source with a receiver, regardless of
semantic content. For Shannon’s purposes, all the following are
“information”:

E = mc2

Jesus saves.

Thou shalt not kill.

I think, therefore I am.

Phillies 8, Dodgers 5

‘Twas brillig and the slithy roves did gyre and gimble in the
wabe.

And indeed, these are no more or less meaningful than any string
of haphazard bits (x!9#44jGH?566MRK) I might be willing to pay
to have telexed across the continent.

As the mathematician Warren Weaver once put it, explaining “the

strange way in which, in this theory, the word ‘information’ is
used .... It is surprising but true that, from the present viewpoint,
two messages, one heavily loaded with meaning and the other pure
nonsense, can be equivalent as regards information” [emphasis
added].

Static and Linear

Mortensen: “Finally, the most serious shortcoming of the Shannon-Weaver communication
system is that it is relatively static and linear. It conceives of a linear and literal
transmission of information from one location to another. The notion of
linearity leads to misleading ideas when transferred to human conduct; some of
the problems can best be underscored by studying several alternative models of
communication.”

Berlo’s S-M-C-R, 1960

Background

Ehninger, Gronbeck and Monroe: “The simplest and most influential message-
centered model of our time came from David Berlo (Simplified from
David K. Berlo, The Process of Communication (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1960)):”

Essentially an adaptation of the Shannon-Weaver model.

Significant after World War II because:

The idea of “source” was flexible enough to include oral, written, electronic, or
any other kind of “symbolic” generator-of-messages.

“Message” was made the central element, stressing the transmission of ideas.
The model recognized that receivers were important to communication, for they
were the targets.

The notions of “encoding” and “decoding” emphasized the problems we all

have (psycho-linguistically) in translating our own thoughts into
words or other symbols and in deciphering the words or symbols of
others into terms we ourselves can understand.

Weaknesses:

Tends to stress the manipulation of the message—the encoding and decoding

processes

it implies that human communication is like machine communication, like

signal-sending in telephone, television, computer, and radar systems.

It even seems to stress that most problems in human communication can be

solved by technical accuracy-by choosing the “right” symbols,
preventing interference, and sending efficient messages.

But even with the “right” symbols, people misunderstand each other. “Problems
in “meaning” or “meaningfulness” often aren’t a matter of
comprehension, but of reaction, of agreement, of shared concepts,
beliefs, attitudes, values. To put the com- back into communication, we
need a meaning-centered theory of communication.”

Schramm’s Interactive Model, 1954

Background

Wilbur Schramm (1954) was one of the first to alter the

mathematical model of Shannon and Weaver. He conceived of
decoding and encoding as activities maintained simultaneously by
sender and receiver; he also made provisions for a two-way
interchange of messages. Notice also the inclusion of an
“interpreter” as an abstract representation of the problem of
meaning.

(From Wilbur Schramm, “How Communication Works,” in The

Process and Effects of Communication, ed. Wilbur Schramm
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1954), pp. 3-26):
Strengths

Schramm provided the additional notion of a “field of experience,” or the

psychological frame of reference; this refers to the type of orientation
or attitudes which interactants maintain toward each other.

Included Feedback
Communication is reciprocal, two-way, even though the feedback may be delayed.

Some of these methods of communication are very direct, as when you talk in direct
response to someone.

Others are only moderately direct; you might squirm when a speaker drones on and on,
wrinkle your nose and scratch your head when a message is too abstract, or
shift your body position when you think it’s your turn to talk.

Still other kinds of feedback are completely indirect.

For example,
politicians discover if they’re getting their message across by the number of votes cast on
the first Tuesday in November;

commercial sponsors examine sales figures to gauge their communicative effectiveness in

ads;

teachers measure their abilities to get the material across in a particular course by seeing
how many students sign up for it the next term.

Included Context
A message may have different meanings, depending upon the specific context or setting.

Shouting “Fire!” on a rifle range produces one set of reactions-reactions quite different
from those produced in a crowded theater.

Included Culture
A message may have different meanings associated with it depending upon the culture or
society. Communication systems, thus, operate within the confines of cultural
rules and expectations to which we all have been educated.

Other model designers abstracted the dualistic aspects of communication as a

series of “loops,” (Mysak, 1970), “speech cycles” (Johnson, 1953),
“co-orientation” (Newcomb, 1953), and overlapping “psychological
fields” (Fearing, 1953).

Weaknesses

Schramm’s model, while less linear, still accounts for only bilateral
communication between two parties. The complex, multiple levels of
communication between several sources is beyond this model.

Non-linear Models

Dance’s Helical Spiral, 1967

Background

Depicts communication as a dynamic process. Mortensen: “The helix represents

the way communication evolves in an individual from his birth to the
existing moment.”

Dance: “At any and all times, the helix gives geometrical testimony to the
concept that communication while moving forward is at the same
moment coming back upon itself and being affected by its past
behavior, for the coming curve of the helix is fundamentally affected
by the curve from which it emerges. Yet, even though slowly, the helix
can gradually free itself from its lower-level distortions. The
communication process, like the helix, is constantly moving forward
and yet is always to some degree dependent upon the past, which
informs the present and the future. The helical communication model
offers a flexible communication process” [p. 296].

Strengths
Mortensen: “As a heuristic device, the helix is interesting not so much for what
it says as for what it permits to be said. Hence, it exemplifies a point
made earlier: It is important to approach models in a spirit of
speculation and intellectual play.”

Chapanis (1961) called “sophisticated play:”

The helix implies that communication is continuous, unrepeatable,
additive, and accumulative; that is, each phase of activity depends upon
present forces at work as they are defined by all that has occurred
before. All experience contributes to the shape of the unfolding moment;
there is no break in the action, no fixed beginning, no pure redundancy,
no closure. All communicative experience is the product of learned,
nonrepeatable events which are defined in ways the organism develops
to be self-consistent and socially meaningful. In short, the helix
underscores the integrated aspects of all human communication as an
evolving process that is always turned inward in ways that permit
learning, growth, and discovery.

Weaknesses

May not be a model at all: too few variables.

Mortensen: “If judged against conventional scientific standards, the
helix does not fare well as a model. Indeed, some would claim that it does
not meet the requirements of a model at all. More specifically, it is not a
systematic or formalized mode of representation. Neither does it
formalize relationships or isolate key variables. It describes in the
abstract but does not explicitly explain or make particular hypotheses
testable.”

Generates Questions, but leaves much unaswered.

Mortensen: “For example, does not the helix imply a false degree of
continuity from one communicative situation to another? Do we
necessarily perceive all encounters as actually occurring in an
undifferentiated, unbroken sequence of events? Does an unbroken line
not conflict with the human experience of discontinuity, intermittent
periods, false starts, and so forth? Is all communication a matter of
growth, upward and onward, in an ever-broadening range of
encounters? If the helix represents continuous learning and growth, how
can the same form also account for deterioration and decay? What
about the forces of entropy, inertia, decay, and pathology? And does not
the unbroken line of a helix tacitly ignore the qualitative distinctions that
inevitably characterize different communicative events? Also, what
about movements which we define as utterly wasted, forced, or
contrived? Along similar lines, how can the idea of continuous,
unbroken growth include events we consider meaningless, artificial, or
unproductive? Countless other questions could be raised. And that is the
point. The model brings problems of abstraction into the open. “rtificial,
or unproductive? Countless other questions could be raised. And that is
the point. The model brings problems of abstraction into the open. “

Westley and MacLean’s Conceptual Model, 1957

Background

Westley and MacLean realized that communication does not begin when one
person starts to talk, but rather when a person responds selectively to
his immediate physical surroundings.

Each interactant responds to his sensory experience (X1 . . . ) by abstracting out

certain objects of orientation (X1 . . . 3m). Some items are selected for
further interpretation or coding (X’) and then are transmitted to
another person, who may or may not be responding to the same objects
of orientation (X,b),
A conceptual model of communication. (Reprinted with permission from Westley and MacLean, Jr., 1957.)
(a) Objects of orientation (X 1 ... X) in the sensory field of the receiver (B) are transmitted directly to him in
abstracted form (XZ ... X 3) after a process of selection from among all Xs, such selection being based at least in
part on the needs and problems of B. Some or all messages are transmitted in more than one sense (X3m, for
example).

(b) The same Xs are selected and abstracted by communicator A and transmitted as a message (x') to B, who
may or may not have part or all of the Xs in his own sensory field (X1b). Whether on purpose or not, B transmits
feedback (fBA) to A.

(c) The Xs that B receives may result from selected abstractions which are transmitted without purpose by
encoder C, who acts for B and thus extends B's environment. C's selections are necessarily based in part on
feedback (fBC) from B.

(d) The messages which C transmits to B (x") represent C's selections both from the messages he gets from A (x')
and from the abstractions in his own sensory field (X3c, X 4), which may or may not be in A's field. Feedback
moves not only from B to A (fBA) and from B to C (f BC) but also from C to A (fCA). Clearly, in mass
communication, a large number of Cs receive from a very large number of As and transmit to a vastly larger
number of Bs, who simultaneously receive messages from other Cs.
Strengths

Accounts for Feedback

Accounts for a sensory field or, in Newcomb’s (1953) words, “objects of co-
orientation.”

Accounts for non-binary interactions—more than just two people

communicating directly.

Accounts for different modes. E.g. interpersonal vs. mass mediated

communication.

Weaknesses

Westley and MacLean’s model accounts for many more variables in the typical
communication interaction. It is, however, still two-dimensional. It
cannot account for the multiple dimensions of the typical
communication event involving a broad context and multiple message.

Becker’s Mosaic Model, 1968

Background

Mortensen: “Becker assumes that most communicative acts link message

elements from more than one social situation. In the tracing of various
elements of a message, it is clear that the items may result in part from
a talk with an associate, from an obscure quotation read years before,
from a recent TV commercial, and from numerous other dissimilar
situations—moments of introspection, public debate, coffee-shop
banter, daydreaming, and so on. In short, the elements that make up a
message ordinarily occur in bits and pieces. Some items are separated
by gaps in time, others by gaps in modes of presentation, in social
situations, or in the number of persons present.”

Mortensen: “Becker likens complex communicative events to the activity of a

receiver who moves through a constantly changing cube or mosaic of
information . The layers of the cube correspond to layers of
information. Each section of the cube represents a potential source of
information; note that some are blocked out in recognition that at any
given point some bits of information are not available for use. Other
layers correspond to potentially relevant sets of information.”
Strengths (from Mortensen)

It depicts the incredible complexity of communication as influenced by a

constantly changing milieu.

It also accounts for variations in exposure to messages. In some circumstances

receivers may be flooded by relevant information; in others they may
encounter only a few isolated items. Individual differences also
influence level of exposure; some people seem to be attuned to a large
range of information, while others miss or dismiss much as
extraneous.

Different kinds of relationships between people and messages cut through the
many levels of exposure. Some relationships are confined to isolated
situations, others to recurrent events. Moreover, some relationships
center on a particular message, while others focus on more diffuse
units; that is, they entail a complex set of relationships between a given
message and the larger backdrop of information against which it is
interpreted.

It may be useful to conceive of an interaction between two mosaics. One

comprises the information in a given social milieu, as depicted in the
model; the other includes the private mosaic of information that is
internal to the receiver. The internal mosaic is every bit as complex as
the one shown in the model, but a person constructs it for himself.

Weaknesses

Even though this model adds a third dimension, it does not easily account for all
the possible dimensions involved in a communication event.

Multidimensional Models

Ruesch and Bateson, Functional Model, 1951

Mortensen: “Ruesch and Bateson conceived of communication as functioning

simultaneously at four levels of analysis. One is the basic intrapersonal
process (level 1). The next (level 2) is interpersonal and focuses on the
overlapping fields of experience of two interactants. Group interaction
(level 3) comprises many people. And finally a cultural level (level 4) links
large groups of people. Moreover, each level of activity consists of four
communicative functions: evaluating, sending, receiving, and channeling.
Notice how the model focuses less on the structural attributes of
communication-source, message, receiver, etc.—and more upon the actual
determinants of the process.”

Mortensen: “A similar concern with communicative functions can be traced

through the models of Carroll (1955), Fearing (1953), Mysak (1970),
Osgood (1954), and Peterson (1958). Peterson’s model is one of the few to
integrate the physiological and psychological functions at work in all
interpersonal events.”

Barnlund’s Transactional Model, 1970

Background

Mortensen: “By far the most systematic of the functional models is the
transactional approach taken by Barnlund (1970, pp. 83-102), one of
the few investigators who made explicit the key assumptions on which
his model was based.”

Mortensen: “Its most striking feature is the absence of any simple or linear
directionality in the interplay between self and the physical world. The
spiral lines connect the functions of encoding and decoding and give
graphic representation to the continuous, unrepeatable, and
irreversible assumptions mentioned earlier. Moreover, the
directionality of the arrows seems deliberately to suggest that meaning
is actively assigned or attributed rather than simply passively
received.”

“Any one of three signs or cues may elicit a sense of meaning. Public cues
(Cpu) derive from the environment. They are either natural, that is,
part of the physical world, or artificial and man-made. Private objects
of orientation (Cpr) are a second set of cues. They go beyond public
inspection or awareness. Examples include the cues gained from
sunglasses, earphones, or the sensory cues of taste and touch. Both
public and private cues may be verbal or nonverbal in nature. What is
critical is that they are outside the direct and deliberate control of the
interactants. The third set of cues are deliberate; they are the
behavioral and nonverbal (Cbehj cues that a person initiates and
controls himself. Again, the process involving deliberate message cues
is reciprocal. Thus, the arrows connecting behavioral cues stand both
for the act of producing them-technically a form of encoding-and for
the interpretation that is given to an act of others (decoding). The
jagged lines (VVVV ) at each end of these sets of cues illustrate the
fact that the number of available cues is probably without limit. Note
also the valence signs (+, 0, or -) that have been attached to public,
private, and behavioral cues. They indicate the potency or degree of
attractiveness associated with the cues. Presumably, each cue can
differ in degree of strength as well as in kind. “t each end of these sets
of cues illustrate the fact that the number of available cues is probably
without limit. Note also the valence signs (+, 0, or -) that have been
attached to public, private, and behavioral cues. They indicate the
potency or degree of attractiveness associated with the cues.
Presumably, each cue can differ in degree of strength as well as in
kind."
Strengths

Mortensen: “The assumptions posit a view of communication as

transactions in which communicators attribute meaning to events
in ways that are dynamic, continuous, circular, unrepeatable,
irreversible, and complex.”

Weaknesses

Mortensen: “The exception is the assumption that communication

describes the evolution of meaning. In effect, the model
presupposes that the terms communication and meaning are
synonymous and interchangeable. Yet nowhere does the model
deal in even a rudimentary way with the difficult problem of
meaning. The inclusion of decoding and encoding may be taken as
only a rough approximation of the “evolution of meaning,” but
such dualistic categories are not particularly useful in explaining
the contingencies of meaning.”
Suggestions for Communication Models

A Systemic Model of Communication, 1972

Background

Some communication theorists have attempted to construct models

in light of General Systems Theory. The “key assumption” of GST
“is that every part of the system is so related to every other part
that any change in one aspect results in dynamic changes in all
other parts of the total system (Hall and Fagen, 1956). It is
necessary, then, to think of communication not so much as
individuals functioning under their own autonomous power but
rather as persons interacting through messages. Hence, the
minimum unit of measurement is that which ties the respective
parties and their surroundings into a coherent and indivisible
whole.”

A Systemic Communication Model would have to address the following axioms by

Watzlawick and his associates (1967).

The Impossibility of Not Communicating

Interpersonal behavior has no opposites. It is not possible to conceive of
non-behavior. If all behavior in an interactional situation can be taken
as having potential message value, it follows that no matter what is said
and done, “one cannot not communicate.” Silence and inactivity are no
exceptions. Even when one person tries to ignore the overtures of
another, he nonetheless communicates a disinclination to talk.

Content and Relationship in Communication

All face-to-face encounters require some sort of personal recognition and
commitment which in turn create and define the relationship between
the respective parties. “Communication,” wrote Watzlawick (1967), “not
only conveys information, but ... at the same time . . . imposes behavior
[p. 51].” Any activity that communicates information can be taken as
synonymous with the content of the message, regardless of whether it is
true or false, valid or invalid. . . . Each spoken word, every movement of
the body, and all the eye glances furnish a running commentary on how
each person sees himself, the other person, and the other person’s
reactions.

The Punctuation of the Sequence of Events

Human beings “set up between them patterns of interchange (about
which they may or may not be in agreement) and these patterns will in
fact be rules of contingency regarding the exchange of reinforcement”
[pp. 273-274].

Symmetrical and Complementary Interaction

A symmetrical relationship evolves in the direction of heightening
similarities; a complementary relationship hinges increasingly on
individual differences. The word symmetrical suggests a relationship in
which the respective parties mirror the behavior of the other. Whatever
one does, the other tends to respond in kind. Thus, an initial act of trust
fosters a trusting response; suspicion elicits suspicion; warmth and
congeniality encourage more of the same, and so on. In sharp contrast is
a complementary relationship, where individual differences complement
or dovetail into a sequence of change. Whether the complementary
actions are good or bad, productive or injurious, is not relevant to the
concept.

Brown’s Holographic Model, 1987

Background

Rhetorical theorist, William Brown, proposed “The Holographic View of

Argument” (Argumentation, 1 (1987): 89-102).

Arguing against an analytical approach to communication that dissects the

elements of communication, Brown argued for seeing argument or
communication as a hologram “which as a metaphor for the nature of
argument emphasizes not the knowledge that comes from seeing the
parts in the whole but rather that which arises from seeing the whole
in each part.”

“The ground of argument in a holographic structure is a boundaryless event.”

A model of communication based on Brown’s holographic metaphor would see

connections between divided elements and divisions between connections.

A Fractal Model

Background

Polish-born mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot, while working for IBM in the

1960s and 70s, became intrigued with the possibility of deriving
apparently irregular shapes with a mathematical formula. "Clouds are
not spheres," he said, "mountains are not cones, coastlines are not
circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight
line." So if these regular geometric forms could not account for
natural patterns, what could?

To solve the problem, Mandelbrot developed the fractal, a simple, repeating

shape that can be created by repeating the same formula over and
over.
“I coined fractal from the Latin adjective fractus. The corresponding Latin verb frangere
means ‘to break’: to create irregular fragments. It is therefore sensible—and how
appropriate for our needs!—that, in addition to ‘fragmented’ fractus should also mean
‘irregular,’ both meanings being preserved in fragment.” Benoit Mandelbrot

Construction of a Fractal Snowflake

A Koch snowflake is constructed by making progressive additions to a simple triangle. The additions are
made by dividing the equilateral triangle’s sides into thirds, then creating a new triangle on each middle
third. Thus, each frame shows more complexity, but every new triangle in the design looks exactly like the
initial one. This reflection of the larger design in its smaller details is characteristic of all fractals.

Fractal shapes occur everywhere in nature: a head of broccoli, a leaf, a

snowflake—almost any natural form. See
http://math.bu.edu/DYSYS/explorer/index.html.

Mandelbrot’s discovery changed computer graphics—by using fractal formulas,

graphic engines could create natural-looking virtual landscapes. More
importantly, fractal formulas can account for variations in other
natural patterns such as economic markets and weather patterns.
Mandelbrot Set

Polish-born French mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot coined the term “fractal” to describe complex
geometric shapes that, when magnified, continue to resemble the shape’s larger structure. This property,
in which the pattern of the whole repeats itself on smaller and smaller scales, is called self similarity. The
fractal shown here, called the Mandelbrot set, is the graphical representation of a mathematical function.

Fractals allow for almost infinite density. For example, Mandelbrot considered
the deceptively simple question: “How long is the coast line of
Britain?” A typical answer will ignore inlets and bays smaller than a
certain size. But if we account for these small coastline features, and
then those smaller still, we would soon find ourselves with a line of
potentially infinite and constantly changing length. A fractal equation
could account for such a line.

vi. Fractal geometry is in some ways related to chaos theory, the science of
finding pattern in apparently random sequences, like a dripping faucet
or weather patterns. Chaos theory has been applied to computer-
generated landscapes, organizational structures
(http://www.cio.com/archive/enterprise/041598_qanda_content.html),
and even washing machines. Of course, it has also been applied to
economics and the stock market, in particular: