Estructura organizacional 1 Organigrama estructural

The traditional mass media follows a "one-to-many" model of communication. In other words, one source speaks at one time to many people who constitute a homogeneous mass audience. Messages sent from these media are designed to appeal to and reach mass audience.

Everyone who is tuned to a particular radio station will hear the same commercial and movie-goers see the same version of film. Generally, the mass media communicate with the public as a mass audience rather than an individual human being.

This model is of course different from the interpersonal model, which is

"one-to-one" model of communication.

The marriage of computing systems and the Internet has given rise to a hybrid model of communication. A "many-to-one" model is a cross between mass broadcasting and interpersonal communication. With mainframe computers, local and wide area networks, and other

databases, large amounts of information are entered by many different sources and are stored until retrieved by individuals who select only the information they want or need (Kaye & Medoff 2001).

Mass media grow from one-way communication to incorporate interactive communication. Since the Internet allow individuals to select information based on personal preferences, in this way, the Internet is not only a mass medium but a new interactive medium also. Thus, new media technology has changed the flow of communication from a linear to a three dimensional form of information: mass (one-to- many), interpersonal (one-to-one) and computing (many-to-one). But more significant is the emergence of the fourth mode of communication. Just as you have information being entered from many different sources, many individuals too are selecting this information as required or needed by them. So we have the "many-to-many" model of communication (Oyero, 2007:171; 2010: 24 ). The model below shows the web-based communication pattern.

Oyero’s Model of Internet-based Communication

Other Models: Other communication models proposed between 1948 and 1960 include:

1) The George Miller Model (1951): Proposed in the context of language structure and performance.

2) The Charles Osgood Models (1954): Which stressed the essence of communication as a social process.

3) The Wilbur Schramm Models (1954): In one of which he introduced the idea of “Field of Experience”, which must be shared by decoder and encoder, for communication to be effective.

4) The George Gerbner Model (1956): interested mainly in the question of perception and representation.

5) The David Berlo Model (1960): Stressing the importance of the skills, attitudes and knowledge, which the participants bring into the communication transaction as well as the culture and social system within which they are communicating.

6) The McCombs Triangular or ABC Model (1960s): Drawing attention to the importance of the “Orientations” of decoder and encoder toward each other and to the object of communication.

Although these other models were not specifically directed at mass communication, they have varying degrees of relevance for mass communication, which is, after all, an aspect of general human communication.

4.0 CONCLUSION

In spite of their limitations(s), Communication Models come in useful for the explication of complex communication issues.

5.0 SUMMARY

In this unit, we have — in answer to the question: how does mass communication take place? — taken a cursory look at communication models, with emphasis on those models that deal directly with, or provide a bearing for our understanding of, the mass communication process.

We are concerned with communication models (mass communication models in particular) because of the important place they occupied in the seminal studies of mass communication and in the formulation of mass communication theories beginning from the decade of the end of World War II. Mass Communication models provide an invaluable aid in the unravelling of the different aspects of the complex subject and of the theories involved. Indeed, communication models may be said to have constituted the initial phase of the evolution of “social scientific”

theories in the field of mass communication.

Defining a model as a simplified graphic or verbal symbolisation designed to help us visualise the various elements of a complex structure, process or system, we went on to examine a few communication models, paying particular attention to:

a) The Shannon and Weaver model (1948-49) which made the graphic extraction of the elements involved in the communication process while proposing the now celebrated mathematical theory

of communication. It provided an indispensable bearing for later graphic models of communication.

b) Lasswell’s verbal model of communication (1948), centred around the “5WS” which has provided a working formula for modern journalists.

c) The Westley–McLean model (1957) which first included the

“gatekeeper point” as an element of the mass communication process, to distinguish the latter from the interpersonal communication process which is relatively free of the technological media interface.

d) The De Fleur model (1958) which first clearly represented the communication process (mass and interpersonal) as a cyclical process, thus underscoring the two-way structure of the true human communication.

e) The HUB model (1974), which visualises the impact of a communication message as a ripple caused by a pebble or small stone thrown into a pool of water, with all the ramifications of such a ripple.

We finally mentioned in passing other communication models, which are of general relevance to human communication.

6.0 TUTOR–MARKED ASSIGNMENT

Indicate which of the models explained in this unit you have found most illuminating and pinpoint the features which make it so.

7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING

Folarin, B. (2005) Theories of Mass Communication: An Introductory Text (3^rd edition). Ibadan: Bakinfol Publications, in association with E-Watch Print Media.

Hiebert, Unguray, and Bohn (1991) Mass Media VI: Introduction to Modern Communication, 6th Edition. New York: Longman Oyero, O. S. (2007). The Implications of Internet on the Media and the

Practice of Mass Communication. InternationalJournal of Communication. No 6, May: 169-174. Published at Mass Communication Department, University of Nigeria, Nssuka, Nigeria.

Oyero, O. (2010). From “One to One, to Many to Many”. In Akinfeleye, R. A. (ed.). Mass Communication: A Book of Reading. Lagos:

Department of Mass Communication, University of Lagos. 14-31