Linear Model

• The main flaw in the linear model is that it depicts communication as a one-way process where speakers only speak and never listen.
• It also implies that listeners listen and never speak or send messages.

a. Aristotle mode:

• communication process communication has three ingredients, speaker speaks the speech he produces and the person or audience who listen.
• Such a communication process takes place in face-to-face situation or direct communication.
• The speech is an idea, thought or message or feelings.
• This model includes three steps and emphasized the speech should be at the level of audience.
• According to him, message preparation involves invention, arrangement, language or styles according to speakers and the audience and the rehearsal of actual presentation.
• This model criticized as Aristotle did not give the place to feedback.

b. Shannon Weaver’s Model:

• Also called “telephone model”.
• In this model there is a transmitter which sends out the senders’ message and the receiver which catches the message for destination.
• The source is speaker, the signal is speech and the destination is audience.
• Shannon and Weaver also recognized that often there is static that interferes with one listening to a telephone conversation, which they deemed noise. The noise could also mean the absence of signal.
• The strengths of this model are simplicity, generality, and quantifiability. Social scientists Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver structured this model based on the following elements:

a) An information source, which produces a message.

b) A transmitter, which encodes the message into signals

c) A channel, to which signals are adapted for transmission

d) A receiver, which ‘decodes’ (reconstructs) the message from the signal.

e) A destination, where the message arrives.

Shannon and Weaver argued that there were three levels of problems for communication within this model.

a) The technical problem: how accurately can the message be transmitted?

b) The semantic problem: how precisely is the meaning ‘conveyed’?

c) The effectiveness problem: how effectively received meaning affect the behavior?

Problems with the Linear Model

1. Do senders and receivers have the same mind-set?
2. Assumes that information is neutral – without intrinsic meaning
3. Reduces meaning to something delivered like a parcel

c. David Berlo’s model:

• In 1960, David Berlo expanded on Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) linear model of communication and created the SMCR Model of Communication.
• The Sender-MessageChannel-Receiver Model of communication separated the model into clear parts and has been expanded upon by other scholars.
• It is NOT a model because it was never actually tested. Berlo designed what he thought would be the ideal system to describe communication, but never had a chance to put it to the test in real life.
• Since it was never “field-tested,” the “model” that Berlo developed has to take on a new title. It has to be called a “theory”.
• This model includes four elements source, message, channel and the receiver. In source communication skills utilized knowledge and attitudes are important variables.
• The receiver has the same variables. Channels includes seeing, hearing, touching etc and message are varied in their structures, elements, contents, code and the treatment.

d. Harold and Lasswell’s Model:

• Lasswell’s model helped probe into political communication and propaganda, which where some of earliest communication research in social science.
• Lasswell’s version of communication process mention four parts-who, what, channel and whom.
• Although concept of the feedback does not appear in the model still this model exercised a propound influence on scholars.

e. Schramm’s model of communication:

• According to Wilbur Schramm, communication can be seen as processes of information transmission governed by three levels of semantic rules:

1. Syntactic (formal properties of signs and symbols),
2. Pragmatic (concerned with the relations between signs/expressions and their users) and
3. Semantic (study of relationships between signs and symbols and what they represent).

• Therefore, communication is social interaction where at least two interacting agents share a common set of signs and a common set of semiotic rules.
• Schramm explained that understanding to take place between the communicator and the destination, they must have something in common. If the source’s and destination’s field of experiences overlap, communication takes place. If there is no overlap communication is

f. Transactional Model of communication

• The transactional model shows that the elements in communication are interdependent. Each person in the communication act is both a speaker and a listener, and can be simultaneously sending and receiving messages.
• “Transactional” means that communication is an ongoing and continuously changing process. You are changing, the people with whom you are communicating are changing, and your environment is also continually changing as well.
• Each person in the communication process reacts depending on factors such as their background, prior experiences, attitudes, cultural beliefs and self-esteem.

g. Westley and Mac Lean’s model:

• Bruce H. Westley and Malcolm S. Macleans not only stressed on critical importance of feedback in human communication but distinguished between non purposive cues that unintentionally modify the behavior of others and purposive cues that intentionally affect the behavior of others .
• This clearly points out communication is circular rather linear process and the feedback principle is clearly reflected in the communication model.

h. Leagans model (1963):

• The communication model forwarded by Leagans 1963 has the elements as, the communicator, message, channel, treatment, audience and response.
• It is same as the Westley and Maclean model differing some terminologies, however most of the elements are common.
• Audience response is the sixth element and is vital to the process especially when it is meant to bring about change in people.
• The task of communication, according to him, is to provide powerful incentives for change.
• Success at this task requires through understanding of the six elements of communication, a skillful communicator sending useful message through proper channel, effectively treated, to an appropriate audience that responds as desired.