Communication processes, principles and ethics

What this topic covers

Every day you send and receive messages: a text to your mother in the province, a question to your teacher, a post on your class page, an announcement over the barangay loudspeaker. Purposive Communication studies this activity on purpose.

1. The elements of communication

Communication is more than speaking. It has parts that work together, and a breakdown in any one of them can spoil the whole exchange.

• Sender (source). The person who starts the communication. The sender has an idea, a feeling or a piece of information to share.
• Message. The idea, information or feeling being shared, put into words, sounds, images or actions.
• Encoding. The sender's act of turning the idea into a form the receiver can understand: choosing words, a tone, a picture or a gesture.
• Channel. The path or medium that carries the message: face-to-face talk, a phone call, a text message.
• Receiver. The person or group who gets the message.
• Decoding. The receiver's act of interpreting the message and giving it meaning.
• Feedback. The receiver's response, spoken, written or unspoken, which tells the sender how the message was understood.
• Noise. Anything that interferes with the message at any stage. Noise can be physical (a noisy jeepney, a weak signal), psychological (worry, anger, prejudice) or semantic (words the receiver does not understand).
• Context. The setting, occasion, relationship and culture in which the message is sent. The same words mean different things in a classroom, at a wake and at a fiesta.

2. The process of communication

These elements are not a checklist; they form a process. A process is continuous and changing, with parts that depend on one another. In the basic sequence, the sender forms an idea, encodes it into a message, sends it through a channel, and the receiver decodes it and responds with feedback. Noise may enter at any point. Because the receiver's feedback becomes a new message, the roles of sender and receiver keep switching.

3. Models of communication

A model is a simplified picture of how communication works. No single model is complete; each highlights something different. They are usually grouped as linear (one-way), interactive (two-way, with feedback) and transactional (simultaneous and shared).

Aristotle's model

The Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, described persuasive public speaking in terms of three parts: the speaker, the speech (message) and the audience. His model is linear and speaker-centered. He also named three means of persuasion, often called the rhetorical appeals:

• Ethos – the appeal to the speaker's credibility and character. Listeners trust a speaker who seems knowledgeable and honest.
• Pathos – the appeal to the audience's emotions.
• Logos – the appeal to logic, facts and reasoning.

Lasswell's model

Harold Lasswell, a political scientist, proposed in 1948 a simple formula for analyzing communication, especially mass communication: Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect? Each question points to a part of the process: the communicator ("Who?"), the message ("Says what?"), the medium ("In which channel?"), the audience ("To whom?") and the effect ("With what effect?"). It is linear and useful for analyzing a news broadcast or a campaign, but it does not show feedback or noise.

Shannon–Weaver model

Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver published their model in 1949. It came out of telephone and telecommunication engineering. It has an information source that selects a message, a transmitter that converts it into a signal, a channel that carries the signal, a receiver that converts the signal back into a message and a destination where the message ends. Noise can disturb the signal in the channel. The model is linear: it describes a one-way flow with no feedback, and it was meant to explain how to send messages accurately.

Berlo's SMCR model

David Berlo's model (1960) takes its name from four parts: Source, Message, Channel, Receiver. It is still a linear model, but it looks closely at the factors inside each part.

• Source and receiver factors: communication skills, attitudes, knowledge, social system and culture. Berlo's point is that communication works best when the source and receiver are alike in these factors. A skilled speaker who looks down on listeners shows a problem of attitude.
• Message factors: content, elements, treatment, structure and code.
• Channel: identified with the five senses (seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting), through which a message is received.

Schramm's interactive model

Wilbur Schramm (1954) pictured communication as a circle rather than a straight line. Each participant is an encoder, a decoder and an interpreter, and feedback completes the loop. Schramm also stressed the field of experience: each person's background, knowledge, culture and language. Communication succeeds only to the extent that the fields of experience of the two people overlap. Where they do not overlap, misunderstanding is likely, even when the channel works. A teacher who uses technical terms her Grade 7 pupils have never heard has little overlap with them, and a barangay notice full of legal terms may not be understood by residents for the same reason.

Transactional models

Transactional models, associated with scholars such as Dean Barnlund, drop the idea of a fixed sender and a fixed receiver. Both people send and receive at the same time. While you talk, you are also reading your listener's face, and your listener is communicating while listening. The models also place the participants in a shared and changing context (physical setting, social and cultural background and the relationship). Communication, in this view, is a joint creation of meaning, and the receiver is never merely passive.

Comparing the models

4. Principles of communication

Whatever the model, certain principles hold in nearly every act of communication.

• Communication is a process. It is ongoing, dynamic and made of parts that affect one another.
• Communication is symbolic. Words, gestures and images stand for ideas and are not the ideas themselves. Their meanings are agreed on by a community, so a thumbs-up emoji may mean approval in one group chat and sound sarcastic in another.
• Meaning is in people, not in words. A word has no fixed meaning outside the minds of the people using it. If a teacher says, "Do it later," one student may hear "tonight" and another "next week." It is wise to check how receivers interpret a message; a dictionary cannot settle what a person meant.
• Communication is unavoidable. It is often said that one cannot not communicate: silence, a frown, crossed arms or an absence can be read as a message, whether or not the person meant to send it.
• Communication is irreversible. Once a message is sent, it cannot be fully taken back. You may apologize or delete a post, but the receiver has already seen it, and may have saved or shared it.
• Communication is contextual. Meaning and appropriateness depend on the situation, the relationship, the culture and the channel. The same joke is welcome among barkada but offends mourners at a wake.
• Communication has a purpose. We communicate to inform, persuade, entertain, express feelings or build relationships, and good communicators keep their purpose in mind.

5. Types of communication

Communication may be classified in several ways.

By mode

• Verbal communication uses words, spoken or written. A lecture, a letter and a text message are verbal.
• Nonverbal communication uses signals other than words: facial expression, eye contact, gestures, posture, tone of voice, touch, use of space and time, and appearance. Nodding, smiling, avoiding eye contact and fidgeting are nonverbal.
• Visual communication uses images (an emoji or photo beside words combines verbal and visual modes): charts, graphs, infographics, maps, posters, photographs, icons, videos and slides.

By context

Note the difference between public and mass: a speaker before a live audience is public; the same speaker on a provincial radio network, heard by thousands who cannot be seen, is mass communication. In an organization, messages travel in set directions. Downward communication flows from management to employees (instructions, policies, announcements). Upward communication flows from employees to management (reports, suggestions, concerns). Horizontal (lateral) communication flows among people of equal rank, such as two grade-level teachers sharing a lesson plan.

By purpose

• To inform. To give facts, explain or instruct: a weather bulletin, a lesson, a memo announcing a test schedule.
• To persuade. To change what people believe or do: a campaign to join a tree-planting drive, a sales pitch, a debate speech.
• To entertain. To amuse and give enjoyment: a comedy skit, a storytelling session, a radio show with games and jokes.
• To express feelings. To show emotions and personal views: a thank-you letter, a diary, a poem.
• To build and maintain relationships. To create or keep social bonds: greetings, small talk, "Kumusta ka?" and chats at the sari-sari store.

By style

Style describes how formal the message is.

• Formal communication follows set conventions: complete sentences, careful grammar, appropriate titles and a polite tone. It is used with people of higher rank or with strangers, in writing for official purposes and on serious occasions: a letter of application, a research paper, an invitation to the mayor, a memo.
• Informal communication is relaxed and personal: everyday language, contractions, slang, abbreviations and humor. It is used among friends, family and familiar classmates: a barkada group chat, a casual talk in the canteen.

6. Ethics of communication

Ethics is the study of right and wrong conduct. Communication ethics asks what we owe our listeners and readers when we use words, images and media to affect them. Principles that most ethical communicators follow include:

• Honesty and truthfulness. Do not lie, exaggerate, fabricate quotations or leave out key facts to mislead. Check facts before you share them.
• Respect for the audience and for others. Treat people with dignity. Avoid insults, stereotypes, bullying and hate speech, and avoid jokes that stereotype a group or leave part of the audience out.
• Acknowledgment of sources. Give credit when you use another person's words, ideas or survey results. Presenting someone else's work as your own is plagiarism.
• Accountability. Accept responsibility for what you say and publish, including its effects, and be willing to correct your mistakes and apologize.
• Privacy and confidentiality. Do not reveal private information or images without permission. In the Philippines, Republic Act No. 10173, the Data Privacy Act of 2012, protects personal information, so a teacher, counselor or school officer cannot freely share a student's records, such as grades.

Misinformation and disinformation

Misinformation is false information shared without the intent to deceive: the sender believes it is true. Disinformation is false information shared on purpose to deceive or to gain something, such as a fake page that invents a flood warning or "leaked exam questions" to attract followers. Both can cause harm. Before you forward a viral post, such as one announcing a class suspension, check the official announcement of the school or local government, and do not forward it with a note that you are unsure.

Guided task (not graded)

Think of a recent message you sent that did not get the response you wanted. In one short paragraph (about five sentences), describe it using the vocabulary of this topic. Name the sender, receiver, channel and the lead purpose.