Fact Check: Communication Theory

Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationship among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about and analyzing key events, processes, and commitments that together form communication. Theory can be seen as a way to map the world and make it navigable; communication theory gives us tools to answer empirical, conceptual, or practical communication questions.

Communication is defined in both common sense and specialized ways. Communication theory emphasizes its symbolic and social process aspects as seen from two perspectives--as an exchange of information (the transmission perspective), and as work done to connect and thus enable that exchange (the ritual perspective).

Sociolinguistic research in the 1950s and the 1960s demonstrated that the level to which people change their formality of their language depending on the social context that they are in. This had been explained in terms of social norms that dictated language use. The way that we use language differs from person to person.

Communication theories have emerged from multiple historical points of origin, including classical traditions of oratory and rhetoric, Enlightenment-era conceptions of society and the mind, and post-World War II efforts to understand propaganda and relationships between media and society. 

One key activity in communication theory is the develpment of models and concepts used to describe communucation. In the Linear Model, communication works in one direction: a sender encodes some message and sends it through a channel for the receiver to decode. In comparison, the Interactional Model of communication is bidirectional. People send and receive messages in a cooperative fashion as they continuously encode and decode information. The Transactional Model assumes that information is sent and received simultaneously through a noisy channel, and further considers a frame of reference or experience each person brings to the interaction.

Some of the basic elements of communication studied in communication theory are:

• Source: Shannon calls this element the "information source" which "produces a message or sequence of messages to be communicated to the receiving terminal."
• Sender: Shannon calls this element the "transmitter," which "operates on the message in some way to produce a signal suitable for transmission over the channel." In Aristotle, this elenent is the "speaker" (orator).
• Channel: For Shannon, the channel is "merely the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to receiver."
• Receiver: For Shannon, the receiver "performs the inverse operation of that done by the transmitter, reconstructing the message from the signal."
• Destination: For Shannon, the destination is "the person (or thing) for whom the message is intended."
• Message: from Latin mittere, "to send." The message is a concept, information, communication or statement that is sent in a written, verbal, recorded or visual form to the recipient.
• Feedback
• Entropic elements, positive and negative

Communication theory also vary substantially in their epistemology, and articulating this philosophical commitment is part of the theorizing process. Although the various epistemic positions used in communication theories can vary, one categorizaton scheme disringuishes among interpretive empirical, metric empirical or post-positivist, rhetorical (the art of persuasion), and critical epistemologies. Communication theories may also fall within or vary by distinct domains of interest, including information theory, rhetoric and speech, interpersonal communication, organizational communication, sociocultural communication, political communication, computer-mediated communication, and critical perspectives on media and communication.

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