Transmission Model
In the simplest form the transmission model shows that a message is sent from the sender or source through a medium to the receiver. This model is also based on the interpersonal context of communication. In this context the primary focus is with what amount of accuracy can a message be transported from one person to another. The biggest challenge with this model is whether the same message and meaning is being transported from the sender to the receiver. When there is a shared meaning between the sender and receiver is called understanding or intersubjectivity.
Harold Lasswell’s study of communication was primarily based on the transmission model. Lasswell believed that communication was made up through a set of questions. The following questions make up Lasswell’s set:
• Who?
• Says what?
• To whom?
• Through what channel?
• And with what Effect?
Cultural Model
The transmission model is the most well known model is communication, however the cultural model shows a link between processes of social communication and production of a common culture. Over the centuries the world culture has taken on several different meanings. In the beginning there were different distinctions of culture, one being those that ideas of honor and worship, and another that referred to agricultural processes of cultivation. However over time culture has come to take on meaning that refers to “cultivating” specific abilities, sensibilities, and habits of the human society, or a particular form of human association and existence. But the meaning that we’re all most familiar with is that in which culture refers to the entire life of society of people.
Williams believes that people use the idea of culture to help explain their experiences. In trying to explain and express one’s experience a person might use verbal, literary, or visual elements. However, people find it a struggle to find a culture in which the experience fits into; this leads the communication process to be every changing and trying to balance the possibilities of culture and the idea of individuality. Williams feels that if culture was a rigid structure then it wouldn’t allow for people to learn anything new in the world, however, if people only focused on the individuality element then common understanding wouldn’t be possible between people. Williams, does a good job of explaining culture as communication. He states that “Culture as communication is the process of producing new shared meaning out of the interaction of historically given shared meaning and individually created meaning.”
Thursday, September 10, 2009
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