COMMUNICATION

Need for communication

“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself,
must be either a beast or God” Aristotle
 Psychological and Biological need
 Communication  “Communis” means “Commonness”

Definition
 “The conveying or exchanging of ideas, knowledge, whether by speech, writing or signs”
(Oxford English Dictionary)
 “The word communication includes all the procedures by which one mind may affect
another, this process involves not only written and oral speech but also music, the pictorial
arts, the theatre, the ballet and in fact all human behavior.” (Shannon and Warren Weaver)
 The Mechanism through which relations exist and develop – all the symbols of the mind
together with the means of conveying tehm through space and preserviong them in time”
(Charless Coley)

Types of Communication (Social point of view)

1. Intra-personal
2. Inter-personal
3. Extra Personal Communication
4. Mass communication

Other types
1. Accidental communication
2. Expressive Communication
3. Rhetoric communication

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

1. Elements
a. Source
b. Message
c. Channel
d. Receiver
2. Procedure of Communication
a. Encoding
b. Decoding
c. Feedback

Essential for Effective communication

1. Gaining the audience

2. Holding the audience
3. Influencing the audience
a. Frame of reference
i. Age, sex, education, financial position, race, taste, religion, culture, tradition, attitude …..
b. Personality needs
Barriers of Communication
1. Physical
2. Psychological
a. Language / Semantic barriers
b. Cultural barrier
i. Meaning of meaning
c. Blind imitation / Stereotype thinking
d. Restricted / Limited experience

COMMUNICATION MODELS

1. Shannon-Weaver Model 1949

a. Mother of all models

b. Source, Encoder, Message, Channel, Decoder, Receiver

2. Wilber Schramm Model 1954

a. Father of communication studies
b. Encoding and decoding simultaneously

3. Lasswell Communication Model

a. Message, Channel, Receiver, Effect, Feedback
4. David Berlo’s Communication Model
a. Simplest and most influential message-centered model

Development Support Communication

 Exchange of messages to achieve specific developmental goals
 It is direct, goal oriented, terminated after goal achievement
1. The theory of Cognitive Dissonance
a. Difference b/w belief and act
b. Person tries to justify to decrease dissonance
2. Two step flow of communication
a. Two steps of communication; first direct and second indirect
b. Originates the need of Opinion Leader
i. Characteristics of Opinion Leader
1. Official Sanction
2. Respected Authority
a. Accomplishment
b. Identity with Target
c. Position of Authority
3. Source of Authority
a. Enemy leader, fellow soldier, famous scholars

Development Communication

“Art and Science of human communication apply to the speedy transformation of a country
and mass if tis people from poverty to a dynamic state and the larger fulfillment of the
human potential”

Development Journalism
“A counter concept generated in developing countries against developed countries to
provide information about developmental projects”

Rumors

“Ambiguous information about any important topic”

1. Hostility rumours
2. Wish rumours
3. Fear rumours
Rumour Development: Three-pronged process
1. Leveling  detail grow shorter
2. Sharpening  selective perception
3. Assimilation  listener adds something – falsification

PROPANGANDA
“The art of influencing, manipulating, controlling, promoting and changing opinions,
attitudes and actions through words and symbols”

Types of Propaganda

1. White Propaganda
a. Accurate source
2. Black Propaganda
a. Group rather than source
3. Gray Propaganda
a. No accurate source

PUBLIC OPINION

It is the aggregate result of individual opinions on public matter. It is a social judgment

reached upon a question of general importance after conscious and rational public
discussion.
Public opinion is an aggregate of the individual views, attitudes, and beliefs about a
particular topic, expressed by a significant proportion of a community. Some scholars treat
the aggregate as a synthesis of the views of all or a certain segment of society; others
regard it as a collection of many differing or opposing views. Writing in 1918, the American
sociologist Charles Horton Cooley emphasized public opinion as a process of interaction and
mutual influence rather than a state of broad agreement. The American political scientist
V.O. Key defined public opinion in 1961 as “opinions held by private persons which
governments find it prudent to heed.”

Factors influencing public opinion

1. Environmental factors
Most pervasive is the influence of the social environment: family, friends, neighborhood,
and place of work, church, or school.

2. The mass media

Newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet—including e-mail and blogs—are usually less
influential than the social environment, but they are still significant, especially in affirming
attitudes and opinions that are already established. The news media focus the public's
attention on certain personalities and issues, leading many people to form opinions about
them. Government officials accordingly have noted that communications to them from the
public tend to “follow the headlines.”

3. Interest groups
Interest groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), religious groups, and labour
unions (trade unions) cultivate the formation and spread of public opinion on issues of
concern to their constituencies. These groups may be concerned with political, economic, or
ideological issues, and most work through the mass media as well as by word of mouth.
Some of the larger or more affluent interest groups around the world make use of
advertising and public relations. One increasingly popular tactic is the informal poll or straw
vote. In this approach, groups ask their members and supporters to “vote”—usually by
phone or via the Internet—in unsystematic “polls” of public opinion that are not carried out
with proper sampling procedures.

4. Opinion leaders
Opinion leaders play a major role in defining popular issues and in influencing individual
opinions regarding them. Political leaders in particular can turn a relatively unknown
problem into a national issue if they decide to call attention to it in the media. One of the
ways in which opinion leaders rally opinion and smooth out differences among those who
are in basic agreement on a subject is by inventing symbols or coining slogans: in the words
of U.S. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, the Allies in World War I were fighting “a war to end all
wars,” while aiming “to make the world safe for democracy”; post-World War II relations
with the Soviet Union were summed up in the term “Cold War,” first used by U.S.
presidential adviser Bernard Baruch in 1947. Once enunciated symbols and slogans are
frequently kept alive and communicated to large audiences by the mass media and may
become the cornerstone of public opinion on any given issue.

5. Public opinion polling

Polling can occasionally reveal whether the people holding an opinion can be thought of as
constituting a cohesive group.

6. World opinion
The increasing importance of global telecommunication, trade, and transportation have
contributed to interest in a new concept of world public opinion, or “world opinion.” The idea
began to receive serious academic consideration near the end of the 20th century, as
scholars noticed certain global homogeneities in views and attitudes as well as in tastes and
consumer behaviour.
__________________
Ahmad Shakeel Babar
.
"If you really want to achieve something the whole universe conspires for you to get your
dream realized."