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Milestones in Communication Science Lecture + Book Notes
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MILESTONES IN COMMUNICATION SCIENCESPRING SEMESTER 2020
MASS COMMUNICATION THEORY 6TH EDITION - DENNIS MCQUAIL.
Basic Transmission Model (Shannon & Weaver)
➢ Sender → Message → Receiver
➢ Starts with a sender, who creates a message and somehow ends up with an audience, the
receiver.
➢ Laswell, in 1948 made this model explicit. To understand the process of
communication, according to Laswell, we need to consider:
○ Who, says What, in which Channel, to Whom and with what Effect
➢ Communication, in this linear way of looking at communication, is only effective when
the desired effect is reached: when the message successfully reaches and is correctly
interpreted by the receiver.
➢ Sender → Message → Channel → Receiver → Effect
➢ In each of these stages, ‘noise’ can disrupt the correct transmission. Noise is defined as
everything that can cause a disruption in the flow of communication.
➢ Semiotics/ Semiology: the study of signs and signification.
➢ A sign is basically everything that communicates something. A spoken word, a gesture,
a glance, a photo, a cartoon, a written sentence, a hieroglyph, they are all signs.
➢ The process of giving meaning to these signs is called signification.
➢ This approach views communication not as a linear process, but as an exchange of
meaning. The sender puts meaning in a message and the receiver takes meaning from a
message.
Four Models of Communication
❖ Transmission Model
➢ At the core of the dominant paradigm is a particular view of communication as
a process of transmission of a fixed quantity of information - t he message as
determined by the sender or source. There is an asymmetrical relationship
between sender and receiver and the sender has more power in the
communication process. The receiver can’t change the message. It is also a
calculative relationship, as the sender has a certain goal in mind behind the
communication effort.
➢ Westley and MacLean created a model that involves the interpolation of a new
communicator role between society and the audience. The sequence is not
simply Sender → Message → Channel → Many potential receivers, but rather:
,Events and voices in society → Channel/Communicator Role → Messages → Reciever
➢ This revised version takes account of the fact that mass communicators do not
usually originate messages or communication. Rather they relay to a potential
audience their own account of a selection of the events occurring in the
environment, or they give access to the views and voices of some of those (such
as advocates of opinion, advertisers, performers and writers) who want to reach
a wider public.
➢ There are three important features of the complete model as drawn by Westley
and MacLean:
■ One is the emphasis on the selecting role of mass communicators
■ The second is the fact that selection is undertaken according to an
assessment of what the audience will find interesting.
■ Third is that communication is not purposive, beyond this last goal. The
media themselves typically do not aim to persuade or educate or even to
inform.
➢ According to this model, mass communication is a self-regulating process that
is guided by the interests and demands of an audience that is known only by its
selections and responses to what is offered. Such a process can no longer be
viewed as linear since it is strongly shaped by feedback from the audience both
to the media and to the advocates and original communicators.
❖ Ritual/Expressive Model
➢ Communication is linked to such terms as sharing, participation, association,
fellowship and the possession of a common faith. A ritual view is not directed
towards the extension of messages in space, but the maintenance of society in
time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared
beliefs.
➢ Communication between two parties that are equal. Not one way of
communication.
➢ The emphasis is on the intrinsic satisfaction of the sender (or receiver) rather
than on some instrumental purpose.
➢ Ritual or expressive communication depends on shared understandings and
emotions. It is celebratory, consummatory, and decorative rather than utilitarian
in aim and it often requires some element of performance for communication to
be realised.
➢ Communication is engaged in for the pleasures of reception as much as for any
useful purpose.
➢ The message of ritual communication is usually latent and ambiguous. Ritual
communication is also relatively timeless and unchanging.
, ❖ Publicity Model
➢ The main focus is on gaining a large hearing. There is no bad publicity.
➢ The most important function of communication is to be heard.
➢ Economically driven perspective. A large audience makes a medium attractive
to advertisers.
➢ Often, the primary aim of mass media is neither to transmit particular
information not to unite a public in some expression of culture, belief or values,
but simply to catch and hold visual or aural attention.
➢ In doing so, the media attain one direct economic goal, which is to gain
audience revenue and an indirect one, which is to sell audience attention to
advertisers.
➢ Media Logic: effort in media production that is devoted to devices for gaining
and keeping attention by catching the eye, arousing emotion, stimulating
interest.
❖ Reception Model
➢ The focus of this model is on the receiver. The receiver connects their own
knowledge, culture and background with the elements of the message and
makes their own unique meaning.
➢ This model is based on the view of mass communication from the position of
many different receivers who do not perceive or understand the message as
“sent” or as “expressed”.
➢ The essence of the reception approach is to locate the attribution and
construction of meaning with the receiver.
➢ Media messages are always open and polysemic (having multiple meanings)
and are interpreted according to the context and culture of receivers.
➢ Stuart Hall emphasised the stages of transformation through which any media
message passes on the way from its origins to its reception and interpretation.
➢ Hall accepted the premise that intended meaning is built into (encoded)
symbolic content in both open and concealed ways that are hard to resist but
recognised the possibilities for rejecting or re-interpreting the intended message.
➢ It is true that communicators choose to encode messages for ideological and
institutional purposes and to manipulate language and media for those ends.
Secondly, receivers are not obliged to accept messages as sent but can and do
resist ideological influence by applying variant or oppositional readings, this is
described as differential decoding.
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