COMMUNICATION AND ADOPTION 3(3+0)

Lesson 11 : Process of Communication

Shannon- Weaver’s model

In the 1940s, Shannon and Weaver developed an information theory’ concerned with the accurate communication of information. He recognized three levels of problems in the communication of information, namely technical, semantic and influential.

• Technical problems relate to the accuracy in transferring the information from the sender to the receiver, through signals, symbols etc.
• Semantic problems relate to the interpretation of meaning by the receiver as compared to the intended meaning of the sender.
• The problems of influence or effectiveness are concerned with the success with which the meaning conveyed to the receiver leads to the desired behavior on his part.

According to them, the ingredients of communication are:

1. Source
2. Transmitter
3. Signal
4. Receiver
5. Destination

The Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication is also referred to as the ‘Mathematical Theory of Communication’. This model or theory has five key components:

1. an information source which produces a desired message out of asset of possible messages, written or spoken words, pictures, music etc;
2. a transmitter, which changes this message into signals suitable for transmission;
3. a channel, which carries signals from the transmitter to the receiver;
4. a receiver, a sort of inverse transmitter which transfers the transmitted signals back into a message, and
5. a destination, the final consumer of the message.

In the process of transmitting signals, some unwanted disturbances take place. This may be in the sound in the case of radio, telephone, or distortions of shape size and picture in the case of television and so on. This is called ‘noise’. Hence there is need to pay attention to noise. A key problem in this model is how to overcome noise and how the receiver can successfully reconstruct a message from signals distorted by noise.