There are eight steps in communication, whether its face to face, machine assisted, or mass communication. Six of these are essential, one blocks communication, and one can be used to improve communication.
1) A sender
2) A process of encoding
3) A message
4) A channel
5) A process of decoding
6) A receiver
7) Feedback
8) Noise
1) The Sender
The originator of the message. That could be you, your roommate, your boss.
Or it could be a newspaper reporter, a politician, a film maker, a songwriter.
The tragic events of September 11 were a form of communication. In the chaos of the first hours, the sender wasn't clear. Even now, many Americans still misunderstand critical elements of the communication, such as who was the sender.
The mental activity of planning a message and the technical activity of preparing the communication of that message.
Complex communications have multiple encodings. The first is always mental, planning your message. The second might be mechanical, encoding your thoughts with a pencil or keyboard or technological like a telephone handset or a video camera.
Don't confuse encoding with channels. The encoding takes place first. You have to decide what to say (mental encoding), then prepare it for "transmission" (technological encoding) before actually sending the message through a channel.
The ad below is encoded in Portuguese. Do you understand the message? Is the visual encoding clear enough to overcome the language barrier?
3) The Message
The product of the encoding. It's the idea or content to be delivered to the receiver.
In any communication, the chance exists of misunderstanding the message. Another critical point of failure is also the possibility of sending unintended messages. In the ad on the right, the intended message is "buy this product." Since the receiver creates meaning out of your message, the message might be planned. But it might not. Is this ad sending unintended messages about appropriate behavior for women?
A simple communication can have one message, a complex communication can have several. The poster on the right shows how easy it is to deliver multiple messages with a single channel. The sender of the message was the US Office of War Information during World War II.
Primary message - Work Hard ("Stay on the job")
Another message - Japanese are evil ("Murdering Jap")
Still another message - The Japanese must be wiped out as a race ("is wiped out")
Once you have developed a message and encoded it, you are no longer in direct control of the communications process. Control now passes to the channel, decoding, receiver or noise.
Since you have little control in over half of the communications process, you must make careful decisions in the part you do control.
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