The Changing Flow of Communications

The Weaver and Shannon model of communication is one that is used to help us disseminate how news travels from person to person, and more importantly how that message can be changed as it flows down the line. This model is simple enough, it's a linear flow from an information source that generates a message to a transmitter. The transmitter's message can then get interrupted by noise, which tends to change the message from what it was initially, and then the receiver gets the message (now changed by the noise). The receiver then passes that message to the destination. Once it reaches destination, sometimes there will be feedback where the changed message gets back to the information source. If you've ever seen the movie Easy A, this is a prime example of this model. At one point, after hearing how much a story of her has changed, the main character Olive tells her friend, "I worry about the way information circulates at this school." But aside from gossip, is the Weaver and Shannon model as relevant today as it used to be due to the transformation of communication methods?

The underlying theory is definitely still true, messages get impact by noise all the time. There's noise from what's going on around us as we talk about the news, and people are forgetful, they don't always remember exactly what they hear. But in this digital world, I think that noise has less of an impact than it used to. People share the exact links to news stories on Facebook and Twitter instead of just talking about it, preventing the message from getting changed in any real way. They can start a conversation about what's happening without relying on what the other remembers. They can leave comments on news stories with the text right in front of them. It's harder for the noise to change the meaning of the message.

There is definitely still noise that exists, and messages do still get changed, but there's always going to be a link that exists on the internet to that story and what happened, there's more written documentation of what occurred today because of archives available on the internet even of broadcasted stories. Print newspaper copies can be destroyed or lost, and very few people would go back and look at a newspaper archive in a library if they were very dedicated to getting the story from the source. People definitely still talk about the news and what's going on, but if there's any question or doubt most people have a smartphone where they can look up the story right away or reference it if there is that much of a concern. I think the model is important to understand in general, but with the changes in technology it's not as relevant to the flow of communications today.