Elements and Models of

Communication

Elements of Communication • Stimulus

• Sender

• Message

• Channel

• Receiver

• Feedback

• Noise

• Context

• Effect

Stimulus

• This is the impulse that triggers off the communication exchange. It takes

place at the ideation stage of communication. We can also call it the reason

one has for communicating, which may be to inform, educate, entertain etc.

Sender

• This is the person who begins the communication process. He is the one

triggered by the stimulus and from him begins the communication activity.

He could be referred to as the initiator, encoder or sender. He is the

initiator because he begins the communication process. As the encoder, he

packages the message in a way that it can be communicated and as the

sender when he passes across the message by himself.

Message

• This could be the idea, feelings, information, thought, opinion, knowledge

or experience etc. that the source/sender wants to share.

Medium/Channel

• Medium and channel are generally used interchangeably. But here, a distinction

is made between the two. Medium could be regarded as the form adopted by the

sender of the message to get it to the receiver. It could be oral or written form.

The channel then is the pathway, route or conduit through which the message

travels between the source and the receiver e.g. the channel of radio, television,

newspaper, telephone etc. Channel provides a link that enables the source and the

receiver to communicate. It may also be seen in terms of the five physical senses-

sight, sound, touch, taste and smell-through which messages can be sent,

received, understood, interpreted and acted upon.

Receiver

• This is the person to whom the message is sent. He is the target audience

or the recipient of the message. All the source/sender’s effort to

communicate is to inform or affect the attitude of the receiver. That is why

communication must be receiver-centred

Feedback

• This is the response or reaction of the receiver to the message sent.

Communication is incomplete without feedback. It confirms that the

message is well received and understood. Feedback guides the source in

communication process and helps him to know when to alter or modify his

message if not properly received. A feedback is positive when it shows

that the message has been well received and understood and it could be

negative when it shows that the intended effect has not been achieved

Noise • Noise is interference that keeps a message from being understood or accurately interpreted. It is a potent barrier

to effective communication. Noise may be in different forms:

• I. Physical Noise: This comes from the environment and keeps the message from being heard or understood. It

may be from loud conversations, side-talks at meetings, vehicular sounds, sounds from workmen’s tools etc.

• II. Psychological Noise: This comes from within as a result of poor mental attitude, depression, emotional

stress or disability.

• III. Physiological Noise: Results from interference from the body in form of body discomforts, feeling of

hunger, tiredness etc

• IV. Linguistic Noise: This is from the source’s inability to use the language of communication accurately and

appropriately. It may be a grammatical noise manifested in form of defects in the use of rules of grammar of a

language, and faulty sentence structure. It may be semantic as in the wrong use of words or use of unfamiliar

words, misspelling, etc. And it could also be phonological manifested in incorrect pronunciation.

Context• Communication takes place in a context. At times it is noticeable and at other times not.

In other words, time, place, culture, physical and social condition and psychology of the

participants are important in determining communication effect. If we try to interpret a

message out of its context, we may get an entirely different meaning which may result in

communication error. Rules are the norms we have to follow while communicating in

different situations. For example, our communication behaviour is different when we are

in class room, market or prayer hall, depending on the rules the situation demands. Roles

are the character or part each participant in communication has to play. For example, in

family communication situation, father plays a leader’s role. In class room, students play

the receiver’s role.

Effect • Why do we communicate? It is a fundamental question. To make some effect on the receiver

is the answer. Effect is consequence or result of communication. Every communication act

makes some effect on the person/s. Effect may be positive or negative. Communication is said

to be success when we achieve the indented effect.

• Communication effects are of three types, they are:

• Cognitive effects: The consequences take place in the receiver’s intelligence due to

communication. Example: Knowledge acquisition

• Affective effects: The consequences occurred in the emotions of the person/s due to

communication. Eg. Compassion, love etc.

• Behavioral effects: The change in the receiver’s bahaviour or actions due to communication.

Eg. Political campaign and change in people’s voting behaviour or purchasing new products

inspired by the advertisements.

Models of Communication

Models of Communication

• A model is a miniature, a highly selective visual representation of any reality. A model is a

graphic representation designed to explain the way a variable works. It is a pattern, plan,

representation, or description designed to show the structure or workings of an object, system,

or concept. In that sense, communication model means graphical/visual representation of

communication process using various elements involved. The best example is the above

described graphic that visualanalizes various elements in the communication.

• A graphic representation of any reality helps us visualize the relationships among various

elements of a structure, system or process; an object, event or act. Mc Quil and Windhal say

that a model is a consciously simplified description in graphic form of a piece of reality. No

single model can be expected to present a holistic picture of reality. Communication models

help us to visualise, analyse and discuss various complex processes and issues that would be

otherwise difficult to explain.

Models of Communication Continued…

• The Greek philosopher Aristotle looked at communication from the rhetorical

perspective i.e. speaking to the masses to influence them and thus persuade them.

Aristotle constructed a model with three elements: Speaker-Speech-Audience in

which the basic function of communication was to persuade the other party. This

is accepted by many as the first model of communication. Thereafter in the

twentieth century many more models came up. Some models of communication

are Lasswell Model, Shanon and Weaver Model, Osgoods Model and Schramm

Model. Let us now discuss these models.

Lasswell Model (1948) • One of the early models of communication was developed by the political

scientist Harold D. Lasswell who looked at communication in the form of a

question:

• Who

• Says What

• In Which Channel

• To Whom

• With What Effect

Continued…• This verbal model focussed attention on the essential elements of communication

and identified the areas of communication research. 'Who' raises the question of

identification of the source of the message. 'Says what ' is the subject of analysis

of the message. Communication channel is the medium through which the

message has traveled. 'To whom’ deals with the characteristics of the receivers

and audience and 'what effect' can be seen as evaluation of the effect of the

message. These essentially comprise the basic components of communication.

This model implied that more than one channel could carry a message. It was

considered an oversimplified model which implied the presence of a

communicator and a purposive message.

Shannon and Weaver Model (1949)• This model of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver has been considered as one of the most

important models of communication and it has led to the development of many other models.

It is referred to as the transmission model of communication as it involves signal transmission

for communication.

• In this model, the information source produces a message to be communicated out of a set of

possible messages. The message may consist of spoken or written word. The transmitter

converts the message into a signal suitable for the channel to be used. The channel is the

medium that transmits the signal from the transmitter to the receiver. The receiver performs

the inverse operation of the transmitter by reconstructing the message from the signal. The

destination is the person or thing for whom/which the message is intended.

Continued…

• This model introduced the concepts like 'noise' i.e. disturbances or errors in

transmission, problems in accepting the signal (message), etc. and the need for

maintaining necessary balance between 'entropy', which means the degree of

uncertainty and 'redundancy', which refers to the uniqueness of the information.

This implied that for effective communication the greater the noise in

communication, the greater is the need for building redundancy i.e. repetition of

the message. This model was criticized for being based on the hardware aspect

developed for engineering problems and not for human communication. Another

criticism was that it did not take the element of feedback into account.

Charles Osgood's Model (1954)

• Osgood in his model showed communication, as a dynamic process in

which there is an interactive relationship between the source and the

receiver of the message (M). An individual engaged in the communication

process sends as well as receives messages and as such encodes, decodes

and interprets messages through a number of feedback mechanisms.

Schramm Model (1954)

• Wilbur Schramm, a well-known communication expert did not make a

sharp

• distinction between technical and non-technical communication. But

drawing upon the ideas of Shannon and Osgoods, Schramm proceeded

from a simple human communication model to a more complicated one

(Figure 3). His first model has a lot of similarity with Shannon and

Weaver Model.