Discuss if Shannon and Weaver’s (1954) model of
communication complete?
The origin of the Shannon Weaver model of communication is in an article called A Mathematical Theory Of Communication written by the Mathematician Claude Shannon for the publication Bell System Technical Journal. In this article, Shannon described a model of a general communications that explained the process of how information was transmitted and received. Shannon’s intention for creating this model was to improve telephonic communication in engineering through mathematical study of information transmission between machines. It was later expanded on and reapplied to general communication by the scientist Warren Weaver when he realized that the generality of Shannon’s work exceeded the domain it was originally intended for. He continued her work in a book called The Mathematical Theory Of Communication. Their combined work on the same communications model was how it got to be named the Shannon-Weaver model of communication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%E2%80%93Weaver_model
This model is a good tool for breaking down and analyzing the fundamental elements of a communication system. At a rudimentary level a message can be conveyed as long as the elements(Information Source, Transmitter, Channel, Receiver, Destination) are present, if anyone of these elements were removed communication would not be possible. As an example
- Information Source: Brain
- Transmitter(Encoder): Mouth
- Channel: Sound, words spoken in the air
- Receiver(Decoder): Ear of the receiver
- Destination: Brain of the receiver
- Feedback: Reply
- Noise: The noise of an engine running the background
The last element in this model is the Noise Source. This element is received alongside the Transmitter by the receiver and accounts for ambient noise that has the potential to affect the message. In our example, the noise of the engine running in the background may drown out certain words the sender is saying rendering the receiver unable to hear the entire message.
Explanation of the model Source
The Shannon Weaver model makes a good attempt at classifying the components of a communication system because it establishes the basic elements in a communication system and the interaction between them. However it is only useful for a basic understanding of human communication as it lacks important details of each component that ultimately affect the message being delivered. The elements sender and receiver are simple entities with no characteristics. There is no room in the model for other information such as the number of people who make up the elements, the social position of the participants and the psychological state of each party. All these factors are important determinants that affect the type of communication that takes place but are absent in the model. A public speaker would communicate differently than a person having a private conversation on the phone.
The inclusion of a noise source is a good effort on the people who created this model to account for ambient noise. However it is very sparse of details which are just as important to the receiver as the message has to be encoded and decoded again. It would be good if the model had a reverse flow of communication to represent the back and forth process of communication.
The model does not consider the context that communication takes place in. There are factors that make up the context of the system include the environment of the communication, the social-psychological conditions such as the type of society that this is taking place in or how the people are feeling and the time factors which include what era we are talking about and the sequence of events. Context is an important factor which could change the meaning of the message
Summary: Shannon Weaver model manages to encompass some of the principles of communication, however it is not an all-encompassing model of communication theory between humans and has left out a certain number of concepts.
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