mass-communication-theory

THINKING
about
THEORY
Chapter 7 Moving Beyond Limited Effects: Focus on Functionalism and Children 187
constantly adjusting to one another. The overall social environment can be understood
as something created by ongoing negotiation between actors.
The usefulness of systems models for representing mass communication processes
was less obvious, although Bruce Westley and Malcolm MacLean (1957)
offered one widely accepted effort, as you can see in the box entitled “The
Westley-MacLean Model of the Communication Process.” With most traditional
forms of mass media, there are few if any direct communication links from receivers
to sources. Message sources can be unaware of the impact of their messages
or find out what that impact was only after days or weeks have elapsed. During
the 1960s, however, refinement of media ratings systems and improved, more scientific
public opinion polls allowed the establishment of indirect communication
links between message sources and receivers. Ratings and opinion poll results provided
message producers with feedback about audience reaction to their messages.
For television ratings this feedback was quite crude—either people watch a show
or they don’t. If they don’t, producers change the message without much understanding
of what people want. If ratings are high, then they provide more of the
same—until people get so tired of the same programming that they finally tune to
something else. With opinion polls, the feedback can provide a bit more information
to message sources, but not much. Politicians, for example, are constantly experimenting
with messages in an effort to alter voter opinions and produce
favorable evaluations of themselves.
The Westley-MacLean model of the communication
process is a well regarded representation of mass
communication as a system.
The messages (X ) that C, a mass communication
channel, transmits to B, a member of the audience,
THE WESTLEY-MACLEAN MODEL OF THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS
represent its selections both from messages (X )it
receives from a number of possible A’s, purposive
communicators in the environment such as advertisers,
programmers, and government agencies that
have something to transmit, and its selections and
abstractions from entities and events in its own sensory
field (X3c, X4), which may not be messages in the
purposive communicators’ field. Feedback moves
not only from B to A (fBA) and from B to C (fBC) but
also from C to A (fCA). Clearly, in a mass communication
system, a large number of Cs receive a large
number of messages from a large number of As while
they themselves, the Cs, are surveying a large environment
and transmitting to a vastly larger number of
Bs, who simultaneously receive from a large number
of other Cs.
How well do you think this model represents the
complex process of communication? Can you use it
to clarify your understanding of the process of mass
communication? Why or why not?
Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.