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Communication Theory: Shannon-Weaver and transmission models · The Shannon-Weaver Model

How Shannon and Weaver's model breaks communication into source, transmitter, channel, noise, receiver and destination, and what it does and does not explain.

Communication Theory · 26 questions

Try 3 questions

1. Claude Shannon developed his 1948 theory of communication while working on what kind of problem?

  1. Sending signals efficiently over telephone lines
  2. Measuring the persuasive power of propaganda
  3. Explaining how children acquire language
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Answer: Sending signals efficiently over telephone lines

Shannon worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and his paper tackled the engineering problem of reproducing a message accurately at another point over noisy channels.

2. What was Warren Weaver's main contribution to the model that bears both names?

  1. Explaining its wider relevance to human communication
  2. Inventing the mathematics of the channel
  3. Adding a feedback loop to the diagram
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Answer: Explaining its wider relevance to human communication

Weaver wrote an accessible essay, published with Shannon's paper in 1949, arguing the theory applied to all human communication; the mathematics was Shannon's.

3. In Shannon's diagram, what is the job of the transmitter?

  1. To deliver the message to its intended person
  2. To turn the message into a signal for the channel
  3. To choose which message will be sent
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Answer: To turn the message into a signal for the channel

The information source selects the message; the transmitter encodes it into a signal suited to the channel, as a telephone turns sound into electric current.

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