Fundamentals of Extension Education (1+1)

Treatment of Message

IV. TREATMENT OF MESSAGE
Treatment means the way a message is handled, so that the information gets across the audience. It relates to the techniques or details of procedure or manner of performance, essential to effective presentation of the message clear, understandable and realistic to the audience.
Treatment of the message by the communicator shall depend to a great extent on choice of the channel and the nature of audience. The task cannot be reduced to a formula or recipe. Treatment is a creative task that has to be tailor-made for each communication function.
For example, treatment of a message will be different to when it is conveyed in a meeting or published in a folder or telecast. Similarly, there will be difference in the treatment of the message according to the level of literacy, socio-economic condition and degree of progressiveness of the audience.
Designing treatments usually requires original thinking, deep insight into the principles of human behaviour and skill in creating and using refined techniques of message presentation.

The following are the categories of bases useful for varying treatment.

Matters of general organisation

1. Repetition or frequency of ideas and concepts.

2. Contrast of ideas.

3. Chronological compared to logical and psychological.

4. Presenting one side compared to two sides of an issue.

5. Emotional compared to logical appeals.

6. Starting with strong arguments compared to them until the end of presentation.

7. Inductive compared to deductive.

8. Proceeding from the general to the specific and vice versa.

9. Explicit drawing conclusions compared to leaving conclusions implicit for the audience to draw.

Matters of speaking and acting

1. Limit the scope of presentation to a few basic ideas and to the time allotted. Too many ideas at one time are confusing.

2. Be yourself, you can’t be anyone else. Strive to be clear, not clever.

3. Know the facts, fuzziness means sure death to a message

4. Don’t read your speech. People have more perfect for a communicator who talks to the audience.

5. Know the audience. Each audience has its own personality, be responsive to it.

6. Avoid being condescending (Patronising). Do not talk or act down to people, or over their heads. Good treatment of messages result in hitting the target. Never overestimate the knowledge of an audience or underestimate its intelligence.

7. Decide on the dramatic effect desired. Effective treatment required sincerity, smoothness, enthusiastic, warmth, flexibility and appropriateness of voice, gestures, movements and tempo.  

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