mass-communication-theory

184 Section 3 From Limited-Effects to Critical Cultural Theories: Ferment in the Field
was increasing optimism that important societal-level communication problems
might also be solved by improving the accuracy of message transmissions.
THE RISE OF SYSTEMS THEORIES
cybernetics
The study of regulation
and control
in complex
systems
feedback loops
Ongoing mutual
adjustments in
systems
communication
systems
Systems that
function primarily
to facilitate
communication
MODELING SYSTEMS
model
Any representation
of a system,
whether in words
or diagrams
After the successes achieved by systems engineers during World War II, social theorists
became intrigued by systems notions as a way of conceptualizing both macroscopic
and microscopic phenomena. Some decided that the idea of systems
offered a means of constructing useful models of various social processes, including
communication. Rather than merely adding more variables, these models altered
how relationships between variables were understood. In developing these models,
theorists drew on a variety of sources. But most 1960s social systems theorists acknowledged
that the greatest and most recent impetus toward the development of
systems theories came from an engineering subfield known as cybernetics, the study
of regulation and control in complex machines. Cybernetics investigates how communication
links between the various parts of a machine enable it to perform very
complex tasks and adjust to changes taking place in its external environment.
Cybernetics emerged as an important new field during World War II, partly
because of its use for designing sophisticated weapons (Wiener, 1954, 1961). It
proved especially useful for communications engineering—the design of powerful
new communication systems for military applications, such as radar and guided
missiles. Communications engineers had abandoned simple linear models of the
communication process by the 1940s. They conceptualized a circular but evolving
communication process in which messages come back from receivers to influence
sources that in turn alter their messages. They referred to these circular processes
as feedback loops. In these systems, ongoing mutual adjustment is possible, ultimately
leading to the achievement of a long-term objective or function.
Complex machines rely on feedback loops as a means of making ongoing adjustments
to changes caused by the environment. Feedback loops enable sources to
monitor the influence of their messages on receivers. But just as important, receivers
can in turn influence sources. If the effects are not what was expected or desired,
a source can keep altering a message until the desired feedback is obtained.
As World War II progressed, machines were built that used ever more powerful
forms of communication technology, such as radar and television cameras, to monitor
the environment. These provided sophisticated means of detecting subtle
changes so that a weapons system could achieve its objective. We refer to these as
communication systems if their function is primarily to facilitate communication.
By this definition, a guided missile is not a communication system; it is a weapons
system that contains a communication subsystem.
The term system is used in communication engineering and cybernetics to refer to
any set of interrelated parts that can influence and control one another through
communication and feedback loops. Any representation of a system, whether in
words or diagrams, is a model. In systems with many interrelated parts, a change
in one part affects the others because all are interconnected through channels.
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