Communication Models

The first of the two models mentioned is the Transmission Model. The Transmission Model is very simple and therefore popular. It has three basic ideas behind it: source, message, and reciever. This model is also the basic idea of taking one object from one place to another location. This is the most straightforward method of communication.

The Culture Model is more in depth and requires more thought. The sender needs to think about what their message is going to say because the reicever has their own thoughts and beliefs about the message sent. If the sender says the wrong thing, it might get interpreted differently, and possibly negatively, by the reciever. Because this method requires more thought, there is a bigger meaning to the message being sent. This model is basically about what the message says to the reciever.

Representation & The Media

When listening to Stuart Hall speak, the main thing that caught my attention was that representation is saturated by the media. In the world today we are basically run and base our lives off of what the media tells us to do. Whether it is telling us what we need to look like, how to eat, or even what to eliminate from our lives. There are people who are afraid of leaving their homes and I believe the media is to blame for some of that. They way they talk on the news about all these different ways to get cancer, or viruses makes the world seem scarier than it is. The media also influences what we buy. It could be for fashion, but it could also be household products that if you do not have them, you can will get sick, or so they say.

True meaning versus media representation is a big thing also. The way I see this as being most true is when it was about the war. We live in an ethnocentric enviornment so we only see what we are doing right. Mind you, I do not think bad about America and the countries decisions, but I do think we do not know what is really happening, we just know the media representation. An example for this that I can think of is when my sister went to study abroad in Spain. She told me the things the news was playing about the war was way different than what we see here. It was more graphic and did not always make us look like the good guys. The only real effect hearing this had on me was how much the media can manipulate our perspective of what is really going on.