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Introductory models & basic concepts
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Introductory models & basic concepts
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The Shannon and Weaver and Lasswell model are typical of so-called transmission models of communication. These two models also typically underlie many others in the American tradition of research, showing Source-Message/Channel-Receiver as the basic process of communication. In such models, communication is reduced to a question of transmitting information.
Although transmission models have been highly influential in the study of human communication, it can be argued that, although Shannon's and Weaver's work was very fertile in fields such as information theory and cybernetics, it may actually be misleading in the study of human communication.
Some criticisms which could be made of such models are:
Their model presents us with what has been called the 'conduit metaphor' of communication (Reddy (1979) The source puts ideas into words and sends the words to the receiver, who therefore receives the ideas. The whole notion of 'sending' and 'receiving' may be misleading, since, after all, once I've 'sent' a message, I still have it. The underlying metaphor is of putting objects into a container and sending them through some sort of conduit to the receiver who receives the containers and takes the objects out. The important question which is overlooked is: How do the 'objects' get into the 'containers'? In other words, how do we succeed in putting meanings 'into' words and how does somebody else succeed in taking the meanings 'out of' words? Transmission models don't deal with meaning.
It's probably worth saying that that's not really a criticism of them, since they weren't intended to deal with meaning, but rather a criticism of their (mis)application to human-to-human communication. One might question how useful the application of information theory is. It may be helpful to academics in that it supplies them with an arcane vocabulary which gives them some kind of kudos. It also appears to offer a 'scientific' methodology, but it's worth bearing in mind Cherry's warning (speaking of the relationship between entropy and information):
...when such an important relationship ... has been exhibited, there are two ways in which it may become exploited; precisely and mathematically, taking due care about the validity of applying the methods; or vaguely and descriptively. Since this relationship has been pointed out, we have heard of 'entropies' of languages, of social systems, and economic systems and of its use in various method-starved studies. It is the kind of sweeping generality which people will clutch like a straw.
Cherry (1977)
Communication differs very greatly according to the context in which it takes place. I might give my partner a kiss when I leave her for work in the morning; if I give you a kiss when I leave work to go home in the evening, the same sign is decoded radically differently. Context is frequently not considered in transmission models.
What do I hope to achieve by talking to you? What do you hope to get out of listening to me? Our intentions fundamentally affect the exchange.
The information models pay no attention to the effect of the channel used. If I want to communicate with you, do I get someone else to pass on my message, 'phone you, send you a letter, send you a memo or seek you out to talk to you directly? The choice makes a difference. Obviously, there are also differences in the features of different media which make them more or less appropriate for saying what we want to say.
The student of communication needs to consider how the chosen medium affects the source, the message and the receiver. This consideration is not reflected in the basic transmission models. However, you will find its importance reflected in some models, which have the transmission model at their core, for example Maletzke's model of the mass media.
I am a teacher and you are my student. There is an imbalance of power there, which must have a considerable influence on the way we communicate. Even if I appear open to criticism, you're likely to be wary of being critical of my teaching, whereas I am probably quite prepared to be critical of your learning. Where the mass media are concerned, it could be argued (apparently, paradoxically, perhaps, since such models do not simply portray media institution and audience as simple transmitters and receivers) that those models which include a feedback loop are seriously misleading. Jean Baudrillard (1972), for example, argues that the mass media produce non-communication, if one considers communication to involve an exchange. As Baudrillard sees it, the mass media are 'what forever forbids a reply', thereby making any form of exchange impossible (except perhaps simulated replies which are in any case incorporated into the broadcasting process itself).
It would be possible to go on picking holes in the Shannon-Weaver model, but you get the general drift by now. Personally, I wonder that it is normally taught to students of Communication Studies early in their course since what it suggests about signification is reductionist and misleading. However, I should emphasise that that is my personal bias. It is possible (if a gross oversimplification) to discern two distinct strands in the study of communication, media and culture: communication science and semiotics.
Marcel Danesi has characterized the difference thus:
communication theorists generally focus more on the study of message-making as a process, whereas semioticians center their attention more on what a message means and on how it creates meaning
I'm not at all sure that I see what he's getting at here, but I see the most interesting part of the study of communication as being in the 'politics of signification', which is where semiotics places the emphasis. For me, therefore, semiotics seems to prove more fruitful. If you would like to know more, take a look at the section on semiotics.
Finally, it's worth bearing in mind that what I have often referred to as the American tradition of research in communication studies is probably now quite unrepresentative of the American approach, which has been heavily influenced by post-structuralism and post-modernism (in cultural studies at least, if not in communication studies (if it makes sense to separate the two)). Underlying much of the 'traditional' approach is the assumption that language (and other systems of signification) are transparent and that there is a tight correspondence between the message and the medium. Post-structuralism emphasizes the constant shifts of meaning, the undecidability of meaning, indeterminacy, the way that every signifier, every text used are always used on the basis of al the other signifiers and texts the communicator has come across before. Signifying systems, being social constructions, take on a life of their own, which at least in part is beyond our control, each signifier echoing other signifiers in a process of infinite semiosis, meanings connecting to meanings connecting to meanings and so on.
You may also like to take a look at what Ien Ang, one of the foremost representatives of the new turn in audience research, has to say on transmission models: 
.
Stanley Fish, a representative of the 'reader-response' school of literary criticism, may also be of interest to you:
The Lasswell Formula
The Osgood and Schramm Model
Gerbner's Model
The Lasswell Formula
The
Shannon-Weaver Model
Berlo's
S-M-C-R model
Maletzke's
mass media model
Criticism
of transmission models
Berlo
on meaning
Ien
Ang on Meaning
Stanley
Fish on 'anti-formalism'
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