Models and Theories of Communication
Taken from talks by Sue Turnbull, senior lecturer in Media Studies at La Trobe University, in 1997 &1998
and
John Schwartz, senior lecturer in Media Studies at
Swinburne University, in 1999 & 2000 for ATOM (Vic)
Communication Models
Let’s look at some theories of communications on which all these ideas depend. if you think about it, how do people
talk about communication? They talk about getting the message across. If I’m speaking to you it’s as if it’s going on
a direct line, it’s going from this place to that place, and there’s no problem. But of course there are huge problems
- communication is not that easy, it is incredibly hard but that idea that linear model goes back quite along way.
I’m calling it a linear model just meaning it goes in a line,that idea that information travels from point A to point B,
and nothing gets in its way it’s just a simple matter of conducting it in a particular way of channel. Linear models of
communication started to be developed in the USA in about the 1940’s modelled on research that was being done at
the Bell telephone laboratory.
People started to draw little diagrams about how communication takes place and those diagrams took into account
the information source, the transmitter, the signal, the receiver and the destination, so they were thinking very much
about telephone, it was what we call a sender message receiver model. Now this is a very beautiful drawing, this was a
model put up by two researchers called Shannon and Weaver in 1949, and what you’ll see from that is you got your
information source,let’s call
that “me” lets call that Aver transmitter which might be my telephone, there’s the signals which travel along the telephone lines, there’s the receiver on the other end and there’s the destination - you.
Lets imagine that the transmitter is my voice, it’s the same model. This was the only complication they put in, that’s
the conflict of noise which actually stands for any sort of interference which might take place, so I can say literally that
the interference to my communication might be the person next to you whispering.
There’s a noise source that interferes but it may actually be, if we take it a little bit more metaphorically, the fact that
you’re tired at seven o’clock at night, you were up running the dog at six o’clock this morning, its hot, you’re hungry,
these are all factors which might interfere with you’re ability to concentrate and receive the message.
The other problem might be the language I’m using You might not understand certain words that I’m using. Teachers have this problem all the time, they think they’ve taught something, they think they’ve got their ideas across and
then they read their students essays and then they realise that’s not what I meant at all - it came out a bit garbled at the
other end.
Feedback
The process about communication is in fact incredibly difficult, and one of the only ways you can check is if that end
speaks back to you - what we call feedback -which is of course the hand. When you stick your hand up and say “I do
not understand that. Could you please explain it again?” that, actually forms a communication loop. You’re telling me
that it did not succeed; do it again.
There are ways in which you can start to complicate this model, take the way that communication does not go in
straight lines, it goes in circles and it gets quite complicated.
If you think about this in terms of television: here is the television set; there is the producer; there is you, the receiver;
there is your receiver at home; there is the broadcasting etc. What your feedback’s look in terms of television? How
does television know you’re receiving it, enjoying it, understanding it, doing what it wants you to do? Does television
have any feedback loops? internet sites, letters etc.
Does anyone remember a series called Good Guys Bad Guys that was on a couple of years ago? They were one of
the first television shows to set up a viewer’s site, and they set it up in such a way that you could go and drop off your
laundry in Elvis’ Dry Cleaning Shop and you could leave a message for Elvis. They were trying to get feedback loops
in terms of audience response.
If you think about it, the coming of digital television, broadcasters will be much more able to know what you are doing and access information about you in terms of those feedback loops because they will know what programs you’re
taking. In the same way now, web sites on the internet can calculate how many hits there are to that web site, they also
can leave traces on your computer, so they know who you are.
Microsoft has been doing that for some time: They can drop a cookie on your computer and, therefore, know how
to get back to you and can offer you more information. In fact, those linear models of communication never really
existed in quite that form, they are disappearing massively as the producer of the communication wants to get more
information about you and what you are doing.
Communication theories
Communication theories were developed over the twentieth century to try and deal with, come to terms with, some of
the big issues of media influence, like the violence in the media issue.
How do we conceptualise the role the media has to play?
How do we conceptualise how the media influences us?
Does the media have the power to shape and influence our opinions?
Communication theories give us a framework to debate this central question in media studies. There are more than
five theories but they have been merged and structured here to make them more understandable. They are theories,
nothing other than theories, ideas, understandings.
The first theory types can be thought of as top down, they could be called “What the media do to people” which is
probably one of those dystopian ones mentioned before.
The second theory types are bottom up or “What the people do with the media”.
Number One
The Bullet Theory or Hypodermic Needle Theory
Originated in the 1920s - 30s and very popular in the ‘40s & ‘SOs. N
Brief:
In the USA - Harold Laswell, Herbert Blumer (Payne Fund Studies)
In German - Theodore Adorno, Max Horkeimer (Frankfurt School)
• the media is a very powerful institution
• passive audiences - sitting ducks
• uniform meanings are understood
• texts are closed
No real empirical testing. Based on observations and speculation.
This was the first major theory that was developed when the media was becoming a force to be reckoned with. It is a
top down theory, concerned with “What the media do to people”
Impact of the mass media
The first true mass media was the cinema, it was universal, language wasn’t needed because it was silent. But it was
with the end of World War 1 that radio started to become a force in Europe and America and later in Australia and
this was an amazing development, much bigger in it’s impact on the society of the day than the internet has on us today. Radio was the first media to reach the family in the home, altogether, without the need to be able to read or write.
It was a shared experience that was simultaneously being shared by thousands of other families all around.
The first school that started up research into the power of the media were very worried, they saw the media and especially radio, as having immense power over society. They saw audiences as passive sitting ducks without the ability to
distinguish fact from fantasy, without questioning what was being broadcast. The sitting duck audience taking in the
media’s message like it was being injected from a hypodermic needle or bang like a bullet from a gun.
Concern about the power of radio
These theorists were worried about the immense power that radio broadcasters had on their audience. This was a
brand new thing in the world, in culture, to have this device in so many peoples living rooms. In America and Germany these theorists were very worried about its power and the potential for people in power, politicians etc getting
their hands on it.
They developed this notion that the media was very very powerful and that audiences were somehow passive and accepting of the media, sitting in their living rooms like sheep just absorbing it.
At the top is the sender, radio station and at the bottom is the passive receiver.
Message goes down the line and bang, message received like a bullet
The Nazis and propaganda
The theory took on a lot more power and influence in Germany by the Frankfurt school who were a group of mainly
Marxist Jewish intellectuals very concerned at watching Hitler come to power.
Joseph Goebbels was Hitler’s minister for propaganda and in 1933 when the Nazi’s came to power and he played a
crucial role in taking over all the radio stations as well as all the newspapers and magazines. The Nazis saw this as a
crucial part of their power in Germany and the Frankfurt school were very worried by what they saw. The people could
not resist the influence of Hitler’s message through radio, how else could 38 million people become so supportive of
him in such a short time. The bullet theory could explain how Hitler could convert a whole nation to follow him.
Most of the Frankfurt school saw the writing on the wall fled to the USA by 1938 and here their worst fears about the
power of radio were confirmed on the night of October 311938, when the young Orson Welles did his famous War
of the Worlds radio play as if it were a documentary of an actual invasion of America by Martians. The result was chaos
and millions of panicked Americans fled their homes, the police and the army could not contain the mayhem for 24
hours.
The bullet theory not only saw audiences as passive but also saw texts as being closed. By a closed text we mean there
was only one way for an audience to read a text like the War of the Worlds broadcast, the bullet theory has no room
for different interpretations. So the effect of the media text (War of the Worlds) will be the same on everyone.
Number two
Uses and Gratifications Theory originated in the 1940’s and still going very strong
Brief:
In the USA Paul Lazarfeld. Structural Functionist School - Sociology.
• media has no power over audiences
• audiences are active & texts work to reinforce existing opinions
• audiences are made up of very different members who have the freedom to choose their own media content
and thereby have their own needs met.
Unlike the bullet theory this one was tested empirically.
This second theory type is bottom up or “What the people do with the media”
The Structural Functionist School were saying the bullet theory was based not on research but on speculation and was
completely wrong.. They said the media has no power what so ever, then they went further to say that we have power
over the media.
They then went out to test their premise with social research like questionnaires. People were saying to them when
they answered their questions that they weren’t influenced at all by the media.
We have uses for the media, so we switch on what we enjoy and we are gratified. We go through a process of selecting
and choosing media to view or listen to and we make further choices about when, where, how long and how often we
want to use the media. The uses and gratification theory was basically saying that people have their own needs and will
chose the media they consume according to those needs and the media has no influence over what they choose.
When you come home from a hard day and you want to veg out you choose a particular radio or television station to
suit your needs, comedy, music, the newspaper or whatever. The ratings measure what you want and respond to your
needs according to what you want.
The media industry to this day are uses and gratification theorists because it enables them to come up their slogan or
catch phrase ‘we give the public what it wants’.
That is used by media organisations through out. If a media product isn’t consumed it will go out of circulation.
The uses and gratification theorists are arguing that texts are open, they are open to different interpretations, different understandings depending on who the audience is and how they ‘read’ them. People create their own meanings
from a given media text and therefore audiences are not passive, audiences are active and every theory since the late
1940’s has assumed that we are not sheep, morons, robots or sitting ducks.
The uses and gratification theorists get us onto this track that texts are open to interpretation and that everyone is different and on that basis that therefore the media have no power.
They reflect who we are and we as a group determine media content.
Number three
Reinforcement theory, 1960’s onwards.
Brief:
In the USA Joseph Klapper.
• media has very little power to shape or influence public opinion
• audiences are active and texts work to reinforce existing opinions
• other socialising agencies; family, peer group, schools, social class and occupation are far more
important influences than the media
• the media can only influence in special circumstances
Again this third theory type is bottom up or “What the people do with the media”
Developed in America by Joseph Klapper who through all his research and understanding believed that the uses and
gratification theory was pretty much right, but through his research he came up a modification to the the uses and
gratification theory and these modifications developed into his reinforcement theory.
Being a traditional sociologist he was able to say that the role of the media was to
reinforce that which you already believe, in other words the media reinforce your own opinions that you have already
got.
Klapper’s point was. Where do we get our values and opinions from? We get them from our family, we get them from
our peer group, from our education process, from our religious institutions, from our work and from our social class.
They are the traditional socialising agencies and this is where Klapper was coming from as a traditional sociologist.
But what Klapper did was he threw in the media at the end of this list, at about number seven or eight as being there
as another socialising agency which influenced the individual, but he said it doesn’t actually activate change, it simply
reinforces it.
Klapper argues that as a consumer of the media you can look at a media product and be sucked in and you can see
what it is doing to you But because of who you are and because of the socialising process that has occurred from the
moment you were born all the media can do is reinforce what you already believe.
Okay that is how it is most of the time, we see something or hear something through the media and we go through the
same process of accepting or rejecting it on the basis of our beliefs and values. But Joseph Klapper went further and
asked the key question What about when the media begin to talk about something that is new? Something that your
socialising agents (parents, peer group etc) had never heard of or talked about.
At this point Klapper said, in those circumstances that were new or previously unheard of the media did have the
power to shape and influence opinion by reporting and presenting particular issues in a particular way.
Because there were no other socialising influences forming our opinions, because something was new and unheard
of, then the media has the power to form and influence how we respond to these new and particular issues.
Klapper would say on this level that if it is a brand new issue and we have had no understanding or discussion then the
media does have influence. But by and large the media simply reinforces what we believe and have no influence over
us.
Texts are open, audiences are individual and they are certainly active.
Number four
The Agenda Setting Function Theory, 1970’s onwards.
Brief:
In the UK. Stuart Hall and the Birmingham school (Structuralist).
• media has significant power to set agendas or the terms of reference of any
discussion or social ‘political economic issue
• it can not dictate to audiences ‘what to think’
• it can dictate ‘what to think about’
• selection and omission a key factor here
• readings can be preferred, dominant, oppositional, negotiated or aberrant .
Unlike the bullet theory this one was tested empirically.
The next theory is a top down theory, concerned with “What the media do to people”
This theory came out of a swing back to considering that the media was important. The media had to be understood
at a deeper level, we have to take everything into account and the media are able to set agendas, hence the name the
Agenda Setting
Function Theory
Agenda Setting Function Theory in a nut shell says the media can’t tell you what to think (bullet theory), but it can tell
you what to think about. The media can set the agenda about what is discussed. They are able to do this by the process
of selection and omission.
The media has the ability to give one side of the story far more prominence, so for example in wartime the media
frame the arguments for our side of the conflict clearly and profoundly while downplaying or omitting entirely the
opposing point of view.
Although the Birmingham school did the most significant work with the agenda setting theory the most famous example of agenda setting was work done by the Glasgow media group in the 1970’s
The Glasgow media group was interested in how the news was prioritised as it came into the newsroom. What would
a news bulletin set as its agenda. They researched what lead news bulletins, what came second in a report and so on
and they showed that the news does have priorities and does indicate with these priorities what importance events are
given. You can then set the agenda of what is important, what is significant.
We all now expect the news to be about politics, international affairs etc. The only reason that a school sports day is
not news is because the agenda has already been socially set. The notion of agenda setting can be used with any show,
a show without an agenda will often look lacking.
A brief word about two important concepts, denotation and connotation
Semiotics is the science or study of signs and signals. It is like the central point in top down and bottom up theories.
Semiotics basically came out of linguistics (the study of language) and when Roland Bart got his hands on Semiotics
his approach was a structuralist approach. He basically said lets look at the signs in this image and this is what this image means, we will all interpret the image in the same way if we all read same meanings in the signs.
To find out the way a signs works we need to break it into notions of denotation and connotation.
• denotation is what the sign depicts
• connotation is what we bring to the sign, how we interpret it
Connotation in Bart’s framework was limited by our shared understanding. We all share the same myths and understandings. At this point semiotics can stay on the top half of this top down model.
But what came into semiotics was the fact that we do not interpret signs in the same way. What any interpretation
depends on is the social context of the viewer, that is the viewers beliefs, prejudices and mores etc. What came about
was the notion of ‘one image-many meanings’ rather than one image-one meaning’.
What the meaning of an image depends on is the position of the reader.
This idea emerged out of all these debates and theories of the 60’s 70’s and 80’s.
How do we read an advertisement? It depends on who is seeing it (the audience).
People will bring quite different perspectives and interpretations to the same image.
If you ask how is an ad. making its appeal you are working with connotations
Number five
The Open Text.
Post-Structuralist and Post modernism, 1980’s on
Brief:
The French School. Derrida, Baudrillard, Lyotard.
• media has little power
• texts are always open
• no such thing as dominant or preferred readings. Derrida argues there is no such thing as
truth, certainty, reality or knowledge
• readings are more often negotiated and oppositional i.e. audiences are empowered and make their own
meanings
We now have the French influence, if you like, we are now talking more and more about all these issues about media
powered influence. People are saying that the question itself needs to be reformulated. Media power, what is media
power?
These theorists are in a sense far more concerned about the complexities of about the way meanings are created, and
talking about understanding it on such a general level.
Now what are they basically saying? Texts are so open, individual audiences are so individual and unique. You are
what you are. Derrida ends ups starting to say things like all texts, all meanings of texts are aberrant. Every media text
is open to interpretation and changes.
Open text theory means that everything is relative. Our meanings are always changing. The meanings will create
change. There is no truth. Truth depends on who you are and at what time and what place you exist in.
I’ll give you the most obvious example to make this easy. Watch a film, read a book, look at an a&today. But the~one
that you know you looked at 5, 10,15, 20 years ago. The book word for word, line by line is the same, but your interpretation of it, is that the same?
After all those years you’re not the same person, now you, an individual have a different interpretation of that book,
that poem or that song, whatever. Because you, not the text has changed, the meaning has changed because of you.
Where does the truth lie? If you read the same book, watched the same film, read the same poem, heard the same song
in 2010, or 2015, or 2020, again clearly the text remains the same in terms of the content analysis of the text, but
your interpretation is different. The truth has therefore evolved for you.
The text is so open, we can’t talk about media on the same level anymore. Post-Structuralists are continously arguing
on that level, that the search ‘for truth and meaning is always there, it’s always illusive.
Summary
When you teach these theories, I don’t think they should ever be taught or even understood as either one is right and
the other four are wrong. There’s clearly overlaps that are occurring.
Clearly there are things that do overlap in these theories. While we are trying neatly, to put them on a little graph and
chart to show them in order one to five. It is seriously misleading to do that and that’s why it is important to explain
them with clarity and care, so students get the big picture involved in conceptualising the communication process.
How you see the media and the effects on audience absolutely depends on how you conceive the processes of communication, whether you think of it as top down or bottom up. Whether you think of the Media as all powerful shaping
the way we think about the world or whether you think our social climate and our social context determines what we
take from the media.
It is critical to think about the whole notion of media influence and media effects in relation to communication theory as a whole, not just one theory.