Element of communication

 

Elements of Communication are

1.     1. communicator,

2.     2. Message,

3.     3. Channel,

4.     4. Treatment,

5.     5. Audience,

6.     6. Audience Response and

7.     7.Feed back

1. The communicator

This is the person who starts the process of communication in operation. He is the source or originator of messages. He is the sender of messages. He is the first to give expression to messages intended to reach an audience in a manner that results in correct interpretation and desirable response. The communicator may be a agricultural extension officer, village development officer, a principal or an instructor in a training center, a mandal agricultural officer, a villager, an administrator or any other person.

2. Message or content:

A message is the information a communicator wishes his audience to receive, understand, accept and act upon. Messages, for example, may consist of statements of scientific facts about agriculture, sanitation or nutrition, description of action being taken by individuals, groups or committees, reasons why certain kinds of action should be taken; or steps necessary in taking given kinds of action. Potential messages range as wide as the content of the programmes is.

3. Channels of communication

The sender and the receiver of messages must be connected or ‘tuned’ with each other. For this purpose, channels of communication are necessary. Channels are the physical bridges between the sender and the receiver of messages and the avenues between a communicator and an audience on which messages travel to and from. They are the transmission lines used for carrying messages to their destination. Thus, the channels serve as essential tools of the communicator.

4. Treatment of messages

Treatment has to do with the way a message is handled to get the information across to an audience. It relates to the technique, or details of procedure, or manner of performance, essential to expertness in presenting messages. Designing the methods for treating messages does not relate to formulation of the message or to the selection of channels, but to the technique employed for presentation within the situation provided by a message and a channel.

5. The audience

Obviously, an audience is the intended receiver of messages. It is the consumer of Messages. It is the intended respondent in message -sending and the assumed to be in a position to gain economically, socially or in other ways by responding to the message in particular ways. In good communication, the audience aimed at is already identified by the communicator. The ‘pay of’ in communication is dependent on what the audience does in response to messages.

6. Audience response

This is the terminating element in communication applied to rural development Programmes. Response by an audience to messages received is in the form of some kind of action to some degree, mentally or physically. Action, therefore, should be viewed as a product, not as a process; it should be dealt with as an end, not as a means. Consequently, the five elements we have just analyzed-communicator, message, channel, treatment, audience-are intended to be viewed as an organized scheme (means) for attaining the desired action (end) on the part of an intended audience. Action taken by an intended audience that can be attributed to a given communicative act by an extension worker may properly be assumed to be a result of the degree to which these elements have been effective.

7. Feed back:

Extension communication is never complete without feedback information. Feedback means carrying some significant response of the audience back to the communicator. Communication work is not an end in itself. The extension agent should know what has happened to the audience after the message has reached them.