Communication and Mass Communication

What is Communication?

Webster's Dictionary defines communication as "information transmitted or conveyed", and while the common usage of the word has evolved to incorporate a great deal more than this most basic definition, that definition still holds fundamentally true.

The Shannon-Weaver model of communication is similar to the Webster definition in its simplicity, stating that communication is the act where an INFORMATION SOURCE produces a message that is encoded into signals by a TRANSMITTER, which are then adapted for transmission by a CHANNEL, decoded by a RECEIVER, and finally received at the DESTINATION. While this is a very techincal and basic definition of communication, it is nonetheless applicable in many broader senses of the word.

Hardt takes a more critical view of the term, saying that the word communication in fact refers to "the process of making common", and is applicable to a plethora of practices that range beyond conventional usages, going so far as to include roads and waterways as methods of establishing "commonality". When defining mass communication, Hardt is far more specific, limiting it to the sharing of public information. This is a much more practical definition, and is definitely easier to use in an age where technology is the most often shared and traded commodity in the world.

The internet, as one of the most significant innovations of the modern era, drastically redefines the conventional understanding of communication and mass communication. Looking at the Shannon-Weaver model, we see that it has a very singular flow, one info source, one transmitter, etc... When we try and fit the internet into this model, we are forced to change it from the way that Shannon and Weaver envisioned it when dealing with early telephone and radio transmissions. When fitted to illustrate the internet, the CHANNEL portion of the model, graphically shown as the smallest part, becomes infinitely massive, as it represents the Web itself, and therefore doesn't only handle one data transmission, but is constantly adapting
trillions of data transmissions to be received at millions of destinations around the globe.
With the internet, a single info source and transmitter (say, a blogger on their home computer) is able to send out any message they'd like, and have it travel alongside countless other information transmissions to be received and viewed at countless destinations. To be frank, the utilization of the internetredefines the idea of mass communication, changing it from a local scale to a potentially infinite one.

Chandler, D. (1994). The Transmission Model of Communication. Retrieved January 4, 2011, from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/trans.html

Hardt, H. (2004). Myths for the Masses: An Essay on Mass Communication. Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.