Shannon and Weavers and

DeFleurs Models
Written Report

Alonzo, Eymarie Julia A.

Shannon and Weaver:

According to Johnson and Klare (1961) Shannons model is the most important of all the single
contributions to the widespread interest in models. Still According to them, Shannons mathematical
formulations were the stimulus to much of the later effort in this area.
They also said that as Shannon worked for the Bell Telephone Laboratory, his theories and models
primarily applied to its particular field of communication. His works mostly answers the questions: Which
kind of communication channel can bring through the maximum amount of signals? How much of a
transmitted signals will be destroyed by noise while travelling from transmitter to receiver. These
questions were dealt with within the field of information theory. Nevertheless, the graphical model, made
by Shannon and his co-worker Warren Weaver (1949), has been used analogically by behavioural and
linguistic scientists. Technological problems differ of course from human ones, but it is easy to find the
traces of the Shannon-Weaver model in a number of later models of human communication.
According to Shannon and Weaver, Communication is a linear, one-way process.
Received signal
Message

Information Source

Transmitter

Signal

Receiver

Message

Destination

Noise Source

Shannon and Weavers Mathematical model

First in the process is the Information Source, producing a message or a chain of messages to be
communicated. In the next step, the message is formed into signals by a transmitter. The signals should
be adapted to the channel leading to the receiver. The function of the receiver is the opposite of the
transmitter. The receiver reconstructs the message from the signal. The received message then reaches
the destination. The signal is vulnerable in so far as it may be disturbed by noise, interference which may
occur, for example, when there is many signals in the same channel at the same time. This may result in
difference between transmitted and received signals which, in its turn, may mean that the message
produced by the source and that reconstructed by the receiver and having reached the destination do not

Noise
have the same meaning. The inability on the part of the communicators to realize that a sent and a
received message are not always identical, is a common reason why communication fails.
DeFleurs Development
DeFleur(1970) developed the Shannon and Weaver model further in a discussion about the
correspondence between the meaning of the produced and the received message. He noted that in the
communication process, meaning is transformed into message and describes how the transmitter
transforms message into information. If there is a correspondence between the two meanings the
result is communication. But, as DeFleur says, this
correspondence
is seldom perfect.
Mass
Medium Device
Feedback Device

source

Destination

transmitter

Channel

Receiver

Destination

Receiver

Channel

transmitter

source

DeFleurs development of the Shannon and Weaver model

DeFleur developed the Shannon and Weaver model by adding another component that shows how the
source gets its feedback. This Feedbacks gives the source a possibility of adapting more effectively its way
to the destination. This increases the possibility of achieving correspondence between the meaning
(Isomorphism).