[互動理論] Osgood-Schramm's communication model in 1954

Another well-known communication model is the Osgood-Schramm circular model, which has been proposed by Schramm (1954). In the Shannon and Weaver’s communication model, the process of communication could be considered as a linear process; on contrary, the Osgood-Schramm model is highly circular. Moreover, another distinctive characteristic between Shannon and Weaver’s and Osgood-Schramm’s models is that the former mainly directed to the channels mediating between the senders and receivers; while the later devotes their discussion to personal behavior of individuals in the communication process. Nevertheless, some similarities could be figured out between two approaches.

In Shannon and Weaver’s model, they made a distinction between source and transmitter and between receiver and destination; however, in the Osgood- Schramm case, they do not use the terms of transmitters and receivers; on contrary, they describe three cognitive functions of individuals, which are encoding, decoding, and interpreting. Compared to Shannon and Weaver’s model, the encoding behavior is similar to the transmitting signals and the decoding function is similar to receiving signals. Schramm and Osgood’s interpreting function of both sides is matched in Shannon and Weaver’s model by the source and the destination.

[互動理論]Shannon and Weaver's communication model in 1949

The classical model of communication, which has been applied analogically by behavioral and linguistic scientists, was addressed by Shannon and Weaver in 1949. Although this model was formed in terms of technological view, it influences a great number of later human communication models (Shannon and Weaver, 1949).

The Shannon and Weaver’s communication model is described as a linear process, which is including five functions and one noise factor (figure). The first state in the process is the information source, which is the source of producing a message or continuing messages to communicate with others. In the second step, the function of transmitter is to delivery the message by signals. Through the channels, the signals should be leading to the receiver, which is the opposite of the transmitter. After receiving signals, the receiver attempts to reconstruct the message from the signals. Therefore, the received message reaches the destination. During the process, the signal is too vulnerable to keep the original meaning from message, and could be easily disturbed by noise. For example, if there are many signals in one channel at the same time, the signal will be interfered by other sources between transmitted and received signal, which may mean that there are some differences between the original massage, produced by the source, and the reconstructed message, received by receiver. Because a sent and a received massage are not always identical, therefore, that is the common reason why communication fails.