Shannon and Weaver’s Communication Model
Very well-known model of communication developed by Shannon and Weaver (1949), as the prototypical example of a transmissive model of communication: a model which reduces communication to a process of 'transmitting information'. The underlying metaphor of communication as transmission underlies 'commonn' everyday usage but is in many ways misleading and repays critical attention.
Shannon and Weaver's model is one which is, in John Fiske's words, 'widely accepted as one of the main eds out of which Communication Studies has grown' (Fiske 1982: 6). Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver were not social scientists but engineers working for Bell Telephone Labs in the United States. Their goal was to ensure the maximum efficiency of telephone cables and radio waves. They developed a model of communication which was intended to assist in developing a mathematical theory of communication. Shannon and Weaver's work proved valuable for communication engineers in dealing with such issues as the capacity of various communication channels in 'bits per cond'. It contributed to computer science. It led to very uful work on redundancy in language. And in making 'information' 'measurable' it gave birth to the mathematical study of 'information theory'. However, the directions are not our concern here. The problem is that some commentators have claimed that Shann
on and Weaver's model has a much wider application to human communication than a purely technical one.
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C & W's original model consisted of five elements:
1.An information source, which produces a message.
2. A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals
3. A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission
4. A receiver, which 'decodes' (reconstructs) the message from the signal.
5. A destination, where the message arrives.
A sixth element, noi is a dysfunctional factor: any interference with the message travelling along the channel (such as 'static' on the telephone or radio) which may lead to the signal received being different from that nt.
For the telephone the channel is a wire, the signal is an electrical current in it, and the transmitter and receiver are the telephone handts. Noi would include crackling from the wire. In conversation, my mouth is the transmitter, the signal is the sound waves, and your ear is the receiver. Noi would include any distraction you might experience as I speak.
Although in Shannon and Weaver's model a speaker and a listener would strictly be the source and the destination rather than the transmitter and the receiver, in discussions of the model the participants are commonly humanid as the nder and the receiver. My critical comments will refer less specifically to Shannon and Weaver's model than to the general transmission model which it reflects, where communication consists of a Sender passing a Message to a Receiver. So when I am discussing transmission models in general I too will refer to the participants as the Sender and the Receiver.
Shannon and Weaver's transmission model is the best-known example of the 'informational' approach to communication. Although no rious communication theorist would still accept it, it has also been the most influential model of communication which has yet been developed, and it reflects a commonn (if misleading) understanding of what communication is. Lasswell's verbal version of this model: 'Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect ?' was reflected in subquent rearch in human communication which was cloly allied to behaviouristic approaches.
Levels of problems in the analysis of communication
Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of problems of communication:
✧ A The technical problem: how accurately can the message be transmitted?
页面设置✧ B The mantic problem: how precily is the meaning 'conveyed'?ps发光效果
✧ C The effectiveness problem: how effectively does the received meaning affect
behaviour?
预应力塑料波纹管Shannon and Weaver somewhat naively assumed that sorting out Level A problems would lead to improvements at the other levels.
Although the concept of 'noi' does make some allowance for the way in which messages may be 'distorted', this frames the issue in terms of incidental 'interference' with the nder's intentions rather than in terms of a central and purposive process of interpretation. The concept reflects Shannon and Weaver's concern with accuracy and efficiency.
销售的定义Advantages of Shannon and Weaver's model
Particular models are uful for some purpos and less uful for others. Like any process of mediation a model foregrounds some features and backgrounds others. The strengths of Shannon and Weaver's model are its
✧simplicity,
✧generality, and
✧quantifiability.
Such advantages made this model attractive to veral academic disciplines. It also drew rious academic attention to human communication and 'information theory', leading to further theory and rearch.
Weakness of the transmission model of communication
The transmission model is not merely a gross over-simplification but a dangerously misleading misreprentation of the nature of human communication. This is particularly important since it underlies the 'commonn' understanding of what communication is. Whilst such usage may be adequate for many everyday purpos, in the context of the study of media and communication the concept needs critical reframing.
Metaphors
Shannon and Weaver's highly mechanistic model of communication can be en as being bad on a transport metaphor. James Carey (1989: 15) notes that in the nineteenth century the movement of information was en as basically the same as the transport of goods or people, both being described as 'communication'. Carey argues that 'it is a view of communication that derives from one of the most ancient of human dreams: the desire to increa the speed and effect of messages as th
ey travel in space' (ibid.) Writing always had to be transported to the reader, so in written communication the transport of letters, books and newspapers supported the notion of the transport of meaning from writer to readers. As Carey notes, 'The telegraph ended the identity but did not destroy the metaphor' (ibid.).
Within the broad scope of transport I tend to e the model primarily as employing a postal metaphor. It is as if communication consists of a nder nding a packet of information to a receiver, whereas I would insist that communication is about meaning rather than information. One appalling conquence of the postal metaphor for communication is the current reference to 'delivering the curriculum' in schools, as a conquence of which teachers are treated as postal workers. But the influence of the transmission model is widespread in our daily speech when we talk of 'conveying meaning', 'getting the idea across', 'transferring information', and so on. We have to be very alert indeed to avoid falling into the clutches of such transmissive metaphors.
Michael Reddy (1979) has noted our extensive u in English of 'the conduit metaphor' in describing communicative acts. In this metaphor, 'The speaker puts ideas (objects) into words (containers) and nds them (along a conduit) to a hearer who takes the idea/objects out of the word/containers' (Lakoff & Johnson 1980: 10). The assumptions the metaphor involves are that:
✧Language functions like a conduit, transferring thoughts bodily from one person to
another;
✧in writing and speaking, people inrt their thoughts or feelings into the words;
✧words accomplish the transfer by containing the thoughts or feelings and conveying
桌面字体them to others;
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✧in listening or reading, people extract the thoughts and feelings once again from the
words. (Reddy 1979: 290)
As Reddy notes, if this view of language were correct, learning would be effortless and accurate. The problem with this view of language is that learning is en as passive, with the learner simply 'taking in' information (Bowers 1988: 42). I prefer to suggest that there is no information in language, in books or in any medium per . If language and books do 'contain' something, this is only words rather than information. Information and meaning aris only in the process of listeners, readers or viewers actively making n of what they hear or e. Meaning is not 'extracted', but constructed.
In relation to mass communication rather than interpersonal communication, key metaphors associated with a transmission model are tho of the hypodermic needle and of the bullet. In the context of mass communication such metaphors are now largely ud only as the targets of criticism by rearchers in the field.
Linearity
The transmission model fixes and parates the roles of 'nder' and 'receiver'. But communication between two people involves simultaneous 'nding' and 'receiving' (not only talking, but also 'body language' and so on). In Shannon and Weaver's model the source is en as the active decision-maker who determines the meaning of the message; the destination is the passive target.
It is a linear, one-way model, ascribing a condary role to the 'receiver', who is en as absorbing information. However, communication is not a one-way street. Even when we are simply listening to the radio, reading a book or watching TV we are far more interpretively active than we normally realize.
There was no provision in the original model for feedback (reaction from the receiver). Feedback enables speakers to adjust their performance to the needs and respons of their audience. A 'feedb
ack loop' was added by later theorists, but the model remains linear.
Content and meaning
In this model, even the nature of the content ems irrelevant, whereas the subject, or the way in which the participants feel about it, can shape the process of communication. Insofar as content has any place (typically framed as 'the message'), transmission models tend to equate content and meaning, whereas there may be varying degrees of divergence between the 'intended meaning' and the meanings generated by interpreters.
According to Erik Meeuwisn (e-mail 26/2/98) Shannon himlf was well aware of the fact that his theory did not address meaning. He offers the supportive quotations from Shannon and Weaver:
The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message lected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. The mantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem (Shannon 1948).
The word information, in this theory, is ud in a special n that must not be confud with its ordinary usage. In particular, information must not be confud with meaning. In fact, two messages, one of which is heavily loaded with meaning and the other of which is pure nonn, can be exactly equivalent, from the prent viewpoint, as regards information. It is this, undoubtedly, that Shannon means when he says that 'the mantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering aspects. (Weaver 1949)
Weaver also noted that the theory
...has so penetratingly cleared the air that one is now, perhaps for the first time, ready for a real theory of meaning. An engineering communication theory is just like a very proper and discreet girl accepting your telegram. She pays no attention to the meaning whether it be sad, or joyous, or embarrassing. But she must be prepared to deal with all that come to her desk (Weaver 1949).
However, the important point here is that meaning-making is not central in transmission models. It is widely assumed that meaning is contained in the 'message' rather than in its interpretation. But there is no single, fixed meaning in any message. We bring varying attitudes, expectations and understandings to communicative situations. Even if the receiver es or hears exactly the same me
ssage which the nder nt, the n which the receiver makes of it may be quite different from the nder's intention. The same 'message' may reprent multiple meanings. The word 'message' is a sort of microcosm of the whole postal metaphor, so I'm not happy with even using that label.
Transmission models treat decoding as a mirror image of encoding, allowing no room for the receiver's interpretative frames of reference. Where the message is recorded in some form 'nders' may well have little idea of who the 'receivers' may be (particularly, of cour, in relation to mass communication). The receiver need not simply accept, but may alternatively ignore or oppo a message. We don't all necessarily have to accept messages which suggest that a particular political programme is good for us.
Instrumentalism
The transmission model is an instrumental model in that it treats communication as a means to a predetermined end. Perhaps this is the way in which some people experience communication. However, not all communication is intentional: people unintentionally communicate a great deal about their attitudes simply through body language. And, although this idea will sound daft to
