The Communication Process

Communication: a definition

The basic steps of communication (7)

In 1949 the first major model for communication was introduced by Claude Shannon & Warren Weaver for Bell Laboratories. It was designed to mirror the functioning of radio and telephone technologies.

Communication has 6 major elements and an interference component:
1. sender = the messenger; the person who intends to send the message
2. message = the subject matter of the communication
3. receiver = the recipient; the person who receives the message or for whom the message is meant for
4. channel = the medium chosen by the sender to send the message. The message is trasnmitted to the receiver through certain channels which may be formal, informal, oral, written, etc.
5. noise = the interference that influence the interpretation of the message. Forms of communication noise include psychological noise (stereotypes, reputations), physical noise (external stimulus), physiological (being tired or hungry) or semantic noise (language used by the sender which is not understood by the receiver).
6. context = the environment in which a message is delivered. Context can make or break the effectiveness of communication.
7. feedback = the process of ensuring that the receiver has received the message and understood in the same sense as sender meant it.