Modeling the Communication Process: The Map is Not the Territory

Abstract

Shannon andWeaver's "transmission" model of the communication process has long been recognized as inadequate for describing the complex process of human communication except in the limited context of radio-telephone communication for which it was originally developed. In spite of numerous criticisms and attempts to postulate new models, none of the alternatives has been widely accepted.

From a practical standpoint, the principal problem with Shannon and Weaver's model is that it evaluates communication based on the efficiency of the channel. In an effort to account for more of the components of the communication processes, subsequent researchers focused attention on the components of the communication process, communication reaction, and the semantic reaction. A new communication model incorporating both syntactic and semantic aspects of communication is required.

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