1 Sending and receiving communications
The notion of a sender and a receiver is common to most models of communication, though each has its own distinct emphasis. For example, telecommunications and electronics talk about the information or signals that are transferred between a sender and a receiver, as in the Shannon-Weaver model (Shannon and Weaver, 1963).
The Shannon-Weaver model is the basis of much of communication theory and grew out of work done by Shannon at Bell Labs [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (a world-leading electronics and communication centre). This model suggests there is:
a source of information (a sender)
a transmitter that sends a signal (perhaps encoding it)
a channel with the potential for noise interference or feedback
something that receives a signal (perhaps decoding it)
a destination where the information is received.
While the Shannon-Weaver model and the others that derive from it are not based on one-way communication, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking about the sender and the receiver as one-way communication with turn taking. Our lived experience can be very different.
Another model of communication is the set of five useful axioms suggested by Watzlawick et al. (1967):
You cannot not communicate; even saying nothing or in attempting to give nothing away you are communicating something.
All communications include more than the meaning we might attribute to the words or images within it; we must account for the context and the relationships.
All communication has someone who sends information and someone who receives it, and there is a structure to these exchanges.
Communications happen across a number of media – it is visual, textual, electronic, and can be embodied (i.e. we can communicate through our bodies).
The relational aspects and the tendency to see cause and effect means communications are often concerned with differences in power and influence.
Activity 1 Applying the five axioms
Thinking about Watzlawick et al.’s five axioms, can you think how these might, or might not, apply to you and your context? Try to note down something for each of them.
Discussion
Everyone’s context is different, and your thoughts about these axioms will be different. You might have reflected on a time when you were asked to summarise your idea and were lost for words, or felt you spoke too much and didn’t listen.
You might also have noted that not all of these axioms have aged well; for example, the faint glimmer of digital communications behind the call to recognise them is now so bright it is hard for the entrepreneur to think of communication as anything other than digital. As contemporary philosopher Floridi (2014) has noted, the digital or information age may be fundamentally changing our way of understanding the world, and represents a ‘Fourth Revolution’.
Some of these axioms benefit from being looked at in more detail. For example, McKeon (1957) noted that context changes over time and thus our understanding of the whole meaning changes over time and, one might argue, geographically. McKeon also suggests that within the sender–receiver model we tend to ascribe cause and effect, and different people within the conversation will understand the causes and effects differently.
Other axioms have become more important with time, in particular questions of power within communication and what is considered suitable content and forms of communication – something we return to later. The one that does stick out is the sense that even saying nothing, or attempting not to convey any information or meaning still communicates something.
If we think about what always communicating means in the digital age, imagine arriving at a brand’s Facebook page and seeing they have not posted for six months. What does that communicate?
Introduction