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Communication theory

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Title: Communication theory


1
Communication theory its relevance to new media
2
Senders and Receivers week 3
MS1304
3

senders
receivers
Senders and Receivers an overviewof
communication science
4
(No Transcript)
5
Aims of this lecture
  • To look at communication models and their
    relevance to new media
  • To look at communication as a subject of academic
    study  
  • To consider how theories of communication inform
    notions of
  • Senders/Receivers
  • Technical context
  • Social and cultural context
  • Power
  • Design

6
Watch Video
  • Monty Python Sermon on the Mount
  • What is happening in terms of communication?
  • http//www.thetop100.net/the-entertainment-zone/mo
    nty-python-sketches/sermon-on-the-mount/list/z26l5
    1i2330.aspx

7
Lecture QuestionHow can new media change the
relationship between senders and receivers?
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The Lecture
9
Simple model of communicationThe Lecture
10
Transformation
11
Packet Switching
The rapid transmission of small blocks of data
over a channel dedicated to the connection only
for the duration of one packet's transmission.
Each packet can take a different path from sender
to receiver (Paul Baran, 1964).
12
The New Media Lecture?
13
Network Communicationnew kind of intelligence?
14
(No Transcript)
15
Pierre Levys Collective Intelligence
  • 1998 pp. 140-141
  • Charts the role of information communication
    technology
  • Its effect on communities and social processes of
    sharing knowledge
  • Transformation
  • ONE-TO-MANY
  • MANY-TO- MANY

16
Interactive media as a transformation in
communication
  • one-to-many
  • many-to-many

Linear movement of message from sender to passive
receiver
Non-linear movement between responsive sender(s)
and receivers
17
Levys transformation
  • one-to-many
  • Separation between sender and receivers
  • many-to many
  • We all have potential to be senders and receivers

18
EchoesMarshall McLuhans Understanding Media
(1964)Global Village Thesis
  • We are
  • nomadic gatherers of knowledgenomadic as
    ever before, free from fragmentary specialism
    involved in the total social process as never
    before since with electricity we extend our
    central nervous system globally, instantly
    interrelating every human experience.
  • See McLuhan on Automationp.358

19
Power
  • In the communication process, power belongs to
    those who send messages and to whom no return can
    be made
  • Baudrillard, J. (1988). Selected Writings. Ed. M.
    Poster. Tr. J. Benedict. Oxford Polity Press.
  • Both McLuhan (1964) and Levy (1998) infer that a
  • transformation in communication empowers us
  • Communication process is democratised???

20
Communication as a subject of academic study
21
Origins of the word(etymology)
  • Communication comes from the Latin communis,
    "common."
  • establish a "commonness" with someone
  • share information, an idea or an attitude

22
Human need to communicate
  • Dimbleby and Burton (1994) identify reasons why
    we need to communicate
  • Power
  • Survival
  • Co-operation
  • Personal needs
  • Relationships
  • Persuasion
  • Social needs
  • Economic
  • Information
  • Making sense of the world
  • Decision making
  • Self expression

23
McQuail 0n communication and meaning
Society Wide Mass Media
'consider it as the sending from one person to
another of meaningful messages'. Denis McQuail
(1975)
Institutional and Organisational political and
business
Intergroup association-local community
Intragroup family
Interpersonal dyad-couple
Intrapersonal processing information
24
Levels of Communication
  • Intrapersonal Communications
  • Self image
  • Self Esteem
  • Perception

25
  • Interpersonal Communication
  • Social roles
  • Non-verbal communication
  • Language and meaning
  • Institutional

26
  • Group Communication
  • Group norms
  • Formal and informal groups

27
  • Mass Communication
  • The development of mass communication
  • Media analysis
  • Semiotics
  • Violence in the media
  • Advertising

28
Models of Communication
  • Aristotle - rhetoric
  • Lasswell - effects
  • Wiener Feedback anti-aircraft detection
  • Shannon and Weaver mathematical model
  • Schramm adaptation of SW
  • Hall - adaptation of SW (with meaning)
  • Interactivity the new media

29
models of communication
  • 2, 300 years ago Aristotle's model of human
    communication
  • Rhetoric
  • Study of oral communication

subject
person addressed
speaker
30
1900s
31
Lasswell and Mass Media Research
Harold Lasswell (1948). "The Structure and
Function of Communication in Society." In Lyman
Bryson (ed.), The Communication of Ideas. Harper
and Row.
32
The Shannon-Weaver Model (1948)
33
NOICE
34
Shannonerror checking noise
  • Concerned with the transmission of messages over
    noisy analogue channels
  • Noise increases over distance
  • Analogue solution Amplifiers

35
Shannonerror checking noise
  • Shannon took a new approach

36
technical error checking noise
  • Shannons formula established that, despite high
    levels of channel noise, any message could be
    encoded at the source so that it is received
    error free at its destination
  • Established information theory
  • Use of binary system (1 0) in the coding of
    information

37
Shannons communication complicates issue of
meaning
  • Technically messages are not measured in terms of
    meaning
  • Information measured in amount of possible
    messages
  • Certainty (order)
  • Uncertainty (disorder)
  • In Shannon's formula
  • Meaning and information are opposites
  • More new information means less meaning

38
Contemporary communication is problematic
  • We live in a world where there is more and more
    information, and less and less meaning.
    (Baudrillard,1994 p. 79)

39
senders and receivers must use similar systems Or
else information is without meaning
40
The Shannon-Weaver Model updated by Schramm
(1965) communication includes five elements
Shannons model adapted for the study of mass
human communication
41
The Encoder
  • Source expresses purpose in the form of a message
  • Message formulated in code
  • This requires an encoder

42
The Encoder
  • When you communicate, you have a particular
    purpose in mind
  • you want to sell something
  • you want to provide information
  • you want to convince somebody
  • you want to persuade

43
The Decoder
  • The source needs an encoder to translate
  • The receiver needs a decoder to retranslate
  • Introduces coding dilemmas

44
Hall on Code and How to Read Television, 1980
45
Hall, 1980
  • Dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading the reader
    fully shares the text's code and accepts and
    reproduces the preferred reading
  • Negotiated reading the reader partly shares the
    text's code and broadly accepts the preferred
    reading, but sometimes resists and modifies it in
    a way which reflects their own position,
    experiences and interests
  • Oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading the
    reader, whose social situation places them in a
    directly oppositional relation to the dominant
    code, understands the preferred reading but does
    not share the text's code and rejects this
    reading, bringing to bear an alternative frame of
    reference

See Daniel Chandlers Semiotics for
Beginners http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4
B/sem08c.html
46
Feedback (back to 1940s)
47
Weiner, 1948 Cybernetics the study
of control and communication in animals and
machines
48
Homeostasis
  • Feedback Loop
  • information about the result of a transformation
    or an action is sent back to the input of the
    system in the form of input data
  • Results in stability

49
Evolving communication models feedback
Osgood and Schramm 1954
50
Examples of social feedback
  • Telephone feedback
  • 'mmmm
  • 'aaah
  • 'yes, I see'
  • face-to-face NVC communication feedback
  • head nods
  • smiles
  • frowns
  • changes in posture and orientation
  • gaze

51
feedback
  • We are but whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing
    water
  • (Norbert Weiner, 1948 p. 96)
  • We are little switchboard centres handling and
    rerouting the great endless current of
    information....
  • Schramm W. (1954) quoted in McQuail Windahl
    (1981)

52
  • How important is feedback to new media
    communication?

53
Computer game scores reduce if sound is turned
off
54
Question
  • Is feedback the same as interaction?

55
Feedback versus InteractionThacker and Galloway
2007 pp. 122-124
  • Evolution in two-way communication
  • Two models
  • Feedback
  • Interaction

56
Interactivity about freedom?
  • New media supposed to equate to new freedoms
    (???)
  • Technologies of control on the wane more
    communication, more democratic (???)
  • Not so say Galloway and Thacker (2007)
  • Networked model of control
  • More communication means more control
  • More monitoring, surveillance, and biometics

57
The lecture
  • The main issues from the lecture
  • Why study communication?
  • How effective/relevant are models of
    communication? - consider areas of significance
    in new media
  • What is the relevance of the Shannon and Weaver
    model
  • How have models changed linearity, feedback and
    interactivity
  • What role does technology play in (re)shaping the
    communication process?
  • Freedom or control?

58
Seminar
  • Evaluating a published article
  • Reading critically
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