Compare and contrast Shannon and Weaver's model of communication with two of the following: Gerbner, Lasswell, Newcomb, Westley, Maclean, Jakobson. Which model would be most suited to the area of international relations?

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The 1949 Shannon and Weaver model of communication is one of the most famous in the field of Political Communication, having been referred to as “one of the main seeds out of which Communication Studies has grown” (Fiske, 1982). Due to its relative simplicity it is usually the first model a student of Communication Studies will learn, so that they might get a basic grip of how the concepts of Communication Studies work. It is however, far from the only one in existence, as many flaws have been identified in the Shannon and Weaver model, therefore many other communication theories have been put forward as alternatives that fill in the blanks that the Shannon and Weaver model has. It is these models and the Shannon and Weaver model that shall be focussed on, comparing the differences between them, and analysing their relative strengths and weaknesses. From this it is hoped that a conclusion can be drawn regarding which of the models is best suited in the field of international relations.

The Shannon and Weaver model was developed in 1949 by Claude Shannon, a communications engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories in conjunction with Warren Weaver in an attempt to help engineers increase and optomise the amount of information that could be sent over the limited bandwidth of contemporary telephone lines. The model is a linear one, that is it takes communication and presents it as “A simple linear process” (Fiske, 1982). As it was designed mainly to help technical issues, it does not deal with the more complex elements of human communication such as body language. It does however deal with concept of noise, with noise being anything that might prevent you from clearly receiving and understanding the message, be this physical noise, such as static on the line or metaphorical noise, such as the receiver being distracted while receiving the message.

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A further model of communication is that of George Gerbner, developed in 1956. While at its core a liner model in the same vein as Shannon and Weaver’s model, it goes into much more detail, introducing more advanced concepts such as perception and meaning into the equation. Indeed the model focuses primarily on perception, namely how someone may perceive a message once it has passed through various elements. The basic way the perception element of the model works, according to Fiske (1982) is that an Event (E) occurs, which is perceived by M (M being either a human or machine). ...

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