Communication: Models

In order to explain why and how communication takes place, models of the flow of communication are often created. These models can serve to explain existing communication pathways, and also to recommend communication strategies.

Early Models

The first models trying to explain how communication works were simple.

Three components to the model:

• a sender, who is sending the message out
• a channel, the way the message is being sent
• a receiver, who is supposed to receive and use the message

This model was slightly expanded in the Lasswell formula, which can be summarized with questions similar to those reporters ask when constructing a lead for a story:

Questions describing communications:

• Who?
• Says what?
• In which channel?
• To whom?
• With what effect?

This was again expanded by Braddock with the questions:

• Under what circumstances?
• For what purpose?
• With what effect?
  

Putting it together in a graphic

These models were put together graphically and described by Shannon and Weaver in 1949. Their model is one of the most influential in communication modeling (5).

These models are linear—they treat communication as a one-way process. Communication is actually a more complex non-linear process, with both the senders and the receivers sending feedback to each other. DeFleur recognized this and added feedback to the basic models.

The meaning of the information or message being transmitted may be different for the sender and the receiver, and feedback enables both parties to work towards achieving a correspondence of meanings. Similar models, such as those created by Osgood and Schramm, and Dance, are even more circular or helical, demonstrating the dynamism and building nature of the communication process and the interactions between senders and receivers. The helix model leads to a convergence model, which is similar to the helix in terms of the learning structure of communications. This model shows the cycle of learning between participants, with an “emphasis on mutual understanding and consensus, on relationships within networks, which consist of interconnected individuals linked by patterned flows of information which provide continuous feedback.”

Limitations

There are challenges inherent with the actual practice of feedback.

• receivers are not always able to provide feedback directly to senders
• senders not always prepared or willing to receive feedback from receivers
• senders are more prepared, or more willing, to receive feedback from some receivers over others

Planning in Communications

Co-existent with feedback is the concept of feedforward, or the setting up of contingencies and planning for different types of feedback (as described by Mortensen). It represents the recognition of a larger communication strategy on the part of the sender, an acknowledgement that there may need to be multiple iterations of the process before the message is decoded in a meaningful way by the receiver. (Simply incorporating a feedback loop does not necessarily promise this forethought on the part of the sender.)

Focusing on the Receiver

Currently, communication theorists have been moving towards more audience-centered models. These models are built on the conceptual notion of effectiveness.

An effective message changes a receiver’s

• knowledge
• attitudes
• behavior

In order to design effective messages, a growing number of researchers and practitioners are urging participant or receiver collaboration with senders in order to design messages. This strategy means more than just including the pre-testing of materials and incorporating feedback into the second or third iteration of a message. This strategy is front-heavy, and means building receivers into the communications process much earlier (6).

Other audience-centered models:

• targeted marketing
• social marketing

These models, especially relevant within the public health context, are also message-oriented. The audience is involved to make the message effective, by affecting its tone, presentation, or spin. The message itself, whether in an advertising format or in a public service announcement, has already been determined, either by the producer or by society. These message-oriented types of communication have the most relevance for this work, since it is the effectiveness of the message in terms of acheiving its goals that is most important when thinking about communication during a water contamination event.