Communication Media

Communication embraces the variety of behaviors, processes, and technologies by which meaning if transmitted or derived from information. The term is used to describe diverse activities; conversation; data exchange between computers, courting behavior of birds; the emotional impact of work of art; the course of a rumor; and the network of body’s immune system. The article focuses on human communication, including interpersonal communication, language and verbal behavior, and the anthropological aspects of communication in society.

History of communication

Until the 20th century, theories of communication were the province of writers on philosophy, language, and rhetoric. Aristotle thought that rhetoric was a search for all the available means of persuasion and that one had to examine the speaker, the message, and the audience to understand the effect of rhetoric and how that effect was achieved. The concept endured to the 20th century. Descartes and Leibniz reorganized mathematics as a universal languages for the description of physical systems and phenomena, and they speculated about the development of artificial languages to improve the precision of communication. Psychologists studying behavior and its antecedents in various stimuli explored some aspects of communication behavior in the first half of the 20th century, but it was not until in 1948 that a comprehensive theory Shannon’s monograph The Mathematical Theory of Communication and Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics; or control and communication in the Animal and Machine were published to wide acclaim.

Communication Models

Shannon’s model included six elements; and information source (usually a person), a transmitter, a communication channel, a noise source, a receiver, and a destination (usually another person). His and Warren Weaver’s revised model, published the same year, includes a source (the speaker), an encoder (the vocal system), a message (language and visual cues), a channel (sound waves in the air) a decoder (the listener’s ears), and a receiver (the listener). The noise source (static on a radio, background noise in face to face communication) in later formulation came to be known as Entropy.

Norbert Wiener, also a mathematician, introduced the concept of feedback, a construct he deduced from observation about interactions between humans, animals, and the physical environment. Wiener described the many ways in which organisms modify their own behavior to correct for adverse reactions to some other aspect of their behavior. In communication, feedback is a verbal or visual cue that indicate whether the message has been received and correctly interpreted, it may be a nod of the head, a slap in the face, or a question. Wiener used the term Homeostasis to describe the ability to detect a deviation from a desired state and a feedback mechanism by which the discrepancy is noted and fed back for the purpose of modifying behavior.

Such a system more closely approximates actual interpersonal communication and few theoretical models today fail to incorporate the concept.

Later models present a range of specific theories that pertain to various communication situations. In the social sciences, these theories have modified the Shannon Weaver and cybernetic models to include greater emphasis on the nature of the next interactions, the response to the message, and the context within which the interaction occurs. An extreme model put forth by Mashall McLuhan holds that the communication medium exerts so strong an influence on the communication medium exerts so strong an influence on the communication process that it virtually controls what is communicated.

Interpersonal Communication

Two basic approach have been used to define interpersonal communication. One approach includes all the ways in which people influence each other, even unintentionally. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall’s popular book The Silent Language Communication as the physical proximity between two people communicated much about their cultural background or personal relationship. This approach defines communication by referring to the response of the receiver and therefore includes the total environment of social behavior, not just specific acts or utterances.

Other scholars believe that communication should be limited to only those intentional interactions that occurs by means of symbols. This view assumes that although the attempt to communicate with another may fail in the sense that the speaker may not evoke the desired response, intention nevertheless defines the communication act. This orientation has produced research into persuasibility factors of personality; the importance of the order of presentation of arguments; and the role of selective perception, source credibility, and pressures to conform to group norms.