Communication is the idea of sending a message or information from one person to another. This being said, mass communication is the ability to send information to a large amount of people at once (1). Every message has multiple meanings, which leads to people drawing different conclusions about the same message. The message being sent to the audience can be interpreted in many different ways. It depends on how an individual understands the message, and what they decide to do with that information (2).
The internet changes the traditional ideas of communication. The communication model by Shannon and Weaver does not take into account technological advances such as the internet. The Shannon and Weaver theory explains communication as a one-way idea, Chandler describes is as being too linear (3). Shannon and Weaver were concerned only with technical problems associated with the selection and arrangement of discrete units of information—in short, with purely formal matters, not content. Hence, their model does not apply to semantic or pragmatic dimensions of language (4).
(1) (1) Morgan,, Michael. "Effects of Mass Communication: Mass Communication." EHow | How To Videos & Articles. Web. 05 Jan. 2011.
(2)((2) Hardt, Hanno. Myths for the Masses: an Essay on Mass Communication. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.
(3) Chandler, Daniel. "Transmission Model of Communication."Prifysgol Aberystwyth / Aberystwyth University. 18 Sept. 1995. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/trans.html 04 Jan. 2011. Web.
(4) "Communication Models." Www.shkaminski.com. Web. 05 Jan. 2011.
Jason, I think you make a good point by stating that any message may have multiple meanings. In this day and age, our society greatly depends on communication through the internet and text messages. However, the fact that every message may have multiple meanings is a potential downfall. One may interpret something to be negative when it was intended to be positive.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you Kayla and Jason. With the internet anything can be taken out of context and misinterpreted very easily which causes problems. It is extremly difficult to determine someone's tone or mood without a face to face conversation. I see this over and over again with text messaging (as you mentioned Kayla) as well. For instance, I do not know why, and I am sure someone will agree with me, that putting a period at the end of a text message comes off stern and rude, but why is that? It is just proper punctuation.
ReplyDeleteGetting back to your post, this is one reason why the internet does change traditional Shannon-Weaver model, because it was so straightforward but communication these days is anything but straightforward.