Do not forget that the most important component of social interaction will be social communication. Although in some situations it is possible to interact without communication, in the vast majority of cases, social contacts involve communication.

Communication -϶ᴛᴏ mutual exchange of information, which implies the orientation of both participants to the reciprocal openness of the partner. Such an exchange does not necessarily take place in a verbal form (verbal), but also in a non-verbal one. Non-verbal communication is much older than verbal communication. It is worth noting that it contains gestures and facial expressions, dance, music, fine arts, sculpture and architecture. In fact, the engineering structures, temples, palaces, sculptures, and paintings left over from the past centuries convey without words information about the life, feelings, relationships of long-dead people.

The essence of the communication process, as follows from the definition, is to transfer a message containing information to another participant. The very act of revealing the content of his consciousness in the course of communication in sociology is called signal.

But a signal - ϶ᴛᴏ is not always a message or information. For example, if a passer-by in a foreign language addresses us on the street, whom we do not know, then we will receive such a signal, but we will not receive a real message. Of course, in this case, neither communication nor receipt of information will take place. If something is said that we already know, we receive a message, but it will not be information for us. A message will be information only if it contains something unknown to us.

The transfer of information in the course of the communicative process requires certain carriers - symbols and signs, since communication by its nature is a symbolic process. Objects that reveal the meaning that they contain not by themselves, but due to the fact that society endowed them with this meaning, act as symbols and signs. Such a meaning is ϶ᴛᴏ the meaning of the sign. Therefore, we can say that communication is a process of deciphering signs and reading their social meanings.

Signs will be words, gestures, postures, facial expressions, sometimes expressive behavior (laughter, smiles, tears, sighs, etc.)

Language - the most important sign system, institutionalized by society and therefore having a historical character. An individual is born and formed in a specific social context, where a specific structure of the language is already set. Therefore, the language of any society indirectly demonstrates the structure of the society itself and, as it were, sets the specifics of social communication.

Do not forget that an important characteristic of any communication process will be the intention of the participants to influence each other. Influence can be carried out through the use of such mechanisms of psychological influence as:

• persuasion - a process of purposeful communicative influence, characterized by a logical justification of a message (or several messages) in order to achieve the consent of the interlocutor (or audience) with the expressed point of view;
• suggestion - a method of communicative influence, designed for non-critical perception of information; such a nature of perception does not require any detailed logical analysis, nor evaluation, nor deep reflection, but is realized by influencing feelings, emotions, which in turn affect the intellectual and volitional characteristics of an individual who is unaware that he is exposed to external influences.

Suggestion is used to create a state in the interlocutor that encourages him to take certain actions. The effectiveness of the ϶ᴛᴏth process directly depends on the individual characteristics of the individual, his level of education, culture, mental state and degree of exposure to influences. Excluding the above, the power of influence largely depends on the visibility, accessibility, imagery and conciseness of information. The effectiveness of communicative means is largely determined by how the content of the suggested message, in general, meets the interests and needs of the audience.

The variety of spheres of public life determines the multitude of objects of communication. For the researcher, it becomes obvious that the typology or simply the classification of these species will be incomplete if separate indicators are used, it must be carried out according to multiple criteria. We encounter this in the literature, discovering various approaches. F.I. Sharkov 4 gives the following approaches to the typology of communication:

by the scale of the course (mass, medium level, local, intragroup, intergroup, interpersonal, intrapersonal);

by the method of establishing and maintaining contact (direct and indirect);

on the initiative of the subject (active, passive);

by degree of organization (random, non-random); depending on the use of sign systems (verbal, non-verbal); depending on the flow of information (downward, upward).

A.V. Sokolov 5 distinguishes the following types and types of communication. If communication is a mediated and expedient interaction of subjects, then four types of communication can be distinguished: material (transport, energy, population migration, etc.); genetic (biological, species); mental (intrapersonal, autocommunication); social. An individual, a social group and a mass aggregate can act as subjects of communication. In this case, we can talk about the following types of social communication. Microcommunications, where the subjects are the individual, the group, the mass, and the communicator is the individual. Midicommunications is the interaction of two groups, the group and the mass. Macrocommunications - the interaction of mass aggregates. If an individual, a group and a mass aggregate act as an object of influence, then we can talk about interpersonal, group and mass communication.

In the textbook "Fundamentals of the Theory of Communication 6" types of communication are considered for a number of reasons. So, according to the method of communication, they are distinguished: verbal and non-verbal. Within verbal communication, forms of speech communication are considered: dialogue, monologue, dispute, oral-speech and written-speech communication. Non-verbal communication includes facial expressions, gestures, posture, gait, eye contact. According to the levels of communication, there are: interpersonal communication, communication in small groups, mass communication.

The types of professionally oriented communication are also given:

business communication in the organization, marketing, communication in management;

political communication, public communication, intercultural communication, etc.

Of course, the authors' attempt to give as complete a list of types of communications as possible deserves attention. However, upon closer examination, a single basis for classification is not always maintained. This is especially felt when revealing the types of professionally oriented communication. Social relations are objective in nature, since they are determined by the place of the group in the social structure, its functions. However, in intergroup interaction, there is also a relation of a group to another in the subjective sense: the perception of another group, its assessment, acceptance or rejection, etc. In socio-philosophical terms, not only individuals, but also groups act as subjects of communication. Highlighting large and small social groups in the structure of society, the problem of interaction, relationships, communication, communication appears. Intergroup relations mediate the relations of society and the individual, and also constitute the field in which the interaction of individual groups and individuals is carried out. Joint life activity generates the need for interaction between its participants, their relationships, in its process "impersonal" relationships are personified.

Involving in social life through a system of functions and roles, each person performs a function and plays a role in accordance with his individual properties, which gives each act of communication a unique character. The picture of an event, a fact, a period in history largely depends on the state of the individual and social psyche. The personality is the subject of communication and has a number of communicative abilities. A.A. Bodalev distinguishes four groups of abilities: intellectual, emotional-volitional, ability to learn, a special structure of the value orientations of the individual. Intellectual abilities are features of cognitive processes (the ability to capture information about others, to imagine oneself in the place of others). Emotional-volitional means the ability to adapt, empathy and self-control. Interpersonal communication is the process of exchanging information and interpreting it by two or more partners who have come into contact with each other. The most important condition for interpersonal communication is the ability of an individual to identify standard, typical social situations of interaction between people, the content and structure of which are known to representatives of a given culture, and to construct them by appropriate actions. Each level of communication corresponds to a certain level of mutual understanding, coordination, agreement, assessment of the situation and rules of conduct for participants. Failures in interpersonal communication are determined by the fact that people, firstly, perceive each other incorrectly and inaccurately, and secondly, they do not understand that their perceptions are inaccurate.

From the context of the socio-philosophical and socio-psychological approaches, the following logic of the analysis of intergroup relations follows: if society is a system, groups are elements of the structure, then the relationship between them is objective (connection, interdependence, interaction) and subjective (social perception). The objective attitude was studied in social philosophy, sociology, subjective - in psychology. The study of the interaction of groups in a social context helps to reveal the meaningful characteristics of intergroup relations. Intergroup relations are a set of socio-psychological phenomena that characterize the subjective reflection of diverse relationships between groups in the form of an image of another group, ideas about another group, perceptions of another group, stereotypes, etc. The basic component is social perception, in which the cognitive, emotional and evaluative components are more merged, and the group acts as the subject. Thus, the "group context" of interpersonal perception emerges: the perception by members of the group of each other and members of another group; a person's perception of himself, his group, another group; the group's perception of its member and a member of another group; the group's perception of itself and the other group. The mechanisms of intergroup perception are stereotyping (perception, classification and evaluation of social objects based on certain standards, which can be verbal signs, symbols, sensory, perceptual, etc.) and categorization (the psychological process of attributing a single object to which - then the class whose properties are transferred to this object).

Thus, the specificity of intergroup perception lies, firstly, in the fact that in it individual representations are combined into a whole, qualitatively different from its elements; secondly, in the long and insufficiently flexible formation of intergroup ideas; thirdly, in the schematization of ideas about another group (social stereotype). The attitude towards the group is formed through the mechanism of comparison. It is characterized by a tendency to overestimate its own group as opposed to another - intergroup discrimination, which is the establishment of differences with a strongly pronounced evaluative coloring; artificial exaggeration of these differences; the formation of a negative attitude, "the image of the enemy"; establishing positive evaluative differences in favor of one's group (intragroup favoritism); the establishment of positive evaluative differences in favor of another group (as a result - the emergence of tension in intra-group relations, hostility, weakening of intra-group ties, devaluation of intra-group values, destabilization, disintegration of the group.

All these aspects of intergroup relations are most clearly manifested in interethnic relations and communication and are expressed in the phenomena of interethnic perception. It is enough to single out such a phenomenon as an ethnic stereotype, which is characterized by appraisal, emotional coloring, and partiality. The indicative space of an ethnic stereotype is formed by: ethnocultural features, character traits, language, assessment of behavior and dynamic characteristics of a person, qualities that determine attitudes towards people, etc. Interethnic communication contributes to the transfer of forms of culture and social experience. At the interpersonal level, intersubjective 7 interaction takes place, in which the subjective world of one person opens up for another. At the same time, an individual person acts as a carrier of self-consciousness and culture of an ethnic group.

The phenomenon of intra-group communication arises, first of all, with direct communication of people in small groups. The specific phenomena of this type of communication include: a set of positions of group members regarding the receipt and storage of information significant for the group (the structure of communication flows); group influence and the degree of identification of a person with a group; making a group decision; the formation of consent, the folding of a special culture of the group. A specific feature of group communication is its lexical homogeneity, as well as the norms and rules of acceptable communication tactics. Considering the concept of "mass communication", some researchers just have in mind this "narrow" aspect of communicative interaction, emphasizing the influence of new information transfer technologies. Considering mass communication as the main form of dissemination of information in the human community, they associate it with the linguistic (oral and written) communication of people. It is assumed that initially, in the early stages of the development of human civilization, in the pre-industrial era, social communication was potentially mass in nature, and together with the emergence and development of the media - the press, radio, cinema, television - it actually acquired a mass form. However, mass communication expresses not only the formal characteristics of modern communication processes, but also indicates a qualitative change in the content parameters of social communication in the industrial and post-industrial era, expressed in the most general terms in the emergence and spread of the phenomenon of mass consciousness 8

When defining "mass communication", its special characteristics are distinguished, such as:

1. social information addressed to the masses;

2. information born, formed in a mass audience;

3. information disseminated through mass channels;

4. information consumed by the mass audience. Along with mass communication, it is legitimate to single out specialized communication, the main feature of which is an appeal to specialists, a specialized audience, a specialized consciousness. The totality of sources, distributors, organizers of information consumption by specialized and mass consciousness constitutes the content of information and communication (communicative and information) structures.

One of the most powerful components of this structure is the mass media system (media). At the same time, we note that the system of mass communication (MSC) has a broader content than the media. The mass media include the press, radio, television, cinema, show business, video production, the Internet and technical and technological means that provide specialized and mass communication. It is necessary to highlight the following general conditions for the functioning of mass communication:

1. mass audience (it is anonymous, spatially dispersed, but divided into interest groups, etc.);

2. social significance of information;

3. the availability of technical means that ensure the regularity, speed, replication of information, its transmission over a distance, storage and multi-channel (in the modern era, everyone notes the predominance of the visual channel). Mass communication performs a number of important social and psychological functions in the life of a mass society:

Social features:

1. information function - the immediate task of mass communication;

2. socializing function - associated with the formation or change in the intensity and direction of the socio-political attitudes, values ​​or value orientations of the audience with which the communication process is taking place, is the teaching of norms, values ​​and patterns of behavior;

3. organizational - behavioral function is associated with the termination or vice versa provoking some action of the audience, as well as changing its activities;

4. emotional and tonic function is the management of the emotions of the audience, through which mass communication awakens optimism or drives one into depression, it creates and maintains a certain emotional level of the audience;

5. The communicative function is associated with influencing the audience in order to strengthen or vice versa weaken the ties between individual members or groups of the audience.

Psychological functions:

1. the function of the formation of mass psychology is the main psychological function of mass communication, through which the psychology of the masses is formed as a subject of socio-political processes;

2. integrative and communication function is associated with the creation of a general emotional and psychological tone of the audience;

3. information function provides the audience with a certain set of information, creates a single coordinate system in its perception;

4. socializing educational function - forms common attitudes, values ​​and value orientations;

5. The function of organizing behavior stimulates the actions of the formed mass in a certain direction.

There are several types: interpersonal, public,; a special type of social communication is the non-verbal communication of ritual actions.

Human communication can take place between units of varying size and complexity.

The individual must master the art of interpersonal communication, learn to communicate with himself - intrapersonal communication and self-reflection. He must be able not only to think and feel, but also to think and feel about his own thoughts and feelings.

Groups can be defined as a series of individuals between whom there is mutual communication. If the structure of group communication is formalized and clearly hierarchically built, then such a group is called a formal organization.

At the level of society, communication is carried out within the framework of accepted laws of communication, more or less formalized rules, conventions, mores and habits, as well as within the framework of the national language and traditions.

States communicate with their citizens usually in a formalized way: through announcements, acts of parliament, government decrees, and so on. Within their territorial boundaries, states also have a monopoly on a crude form of communication—organized physical violence.

Thus, communication can be considered as a factor that determines the level and type of organization of social groups.

In order for communication to take place, it is necessary to have a common language in which the subjects of communication could communicate, the presence of channels through which communication can be realized, the rules for its implementation.

Communication as a process is a kind of social action aimed at communicating people with each other and exchanging information. Communicative action differs from other types of social actions in that it is focused on the norms of communication that are in force in society. In sociology, there are two approaches to communicative action:

• rational-technological, considering communication as a simple set of means and methods of information transfer that society has;
• phenomenological understanding, represented by the concepts of A. Schutz and J. Habermas and focusing on the mutual understanding of the subjects of communication as the goal and basis of the whole process.

• innovative - reporting new information;
• orientational - helping to navigate in life, values ​​and information;
• stimulating - actualizing motivations.

In the 1920s the study of social communication has become a separate discipline.

Symbolic interactionism has shown the greatest interest in the problems of social communication. In particular, J. Mead tried to explain the mechanism of interaction, revealing the specifics of human communication in comparison with communication in the animal world.

Analyzing the sign language, he found out that the gesture of one of the participants in communication is understandable to another participant if he understands it as the beginning of a specific action. For example, when a dog bares its teeth, the other dog understands this as a signal to attack and, in turn, bares its teeth or runs away. Thus, the initial gesture is a sign that symbolizes the entire action that may follow it.

The condition for such anticipatory understanding is the ability of the second partner to the same reaction. It is thanks to her that he can have specific expectations regarding the behavior of another. The action is guided by these behavioral expectations, and the ability of both partners to similar reactions determines the possibility of mutual understanding and interaction.

Mead calls these behavioral expectations role expectations. Estimating the role of another allows you to foresee his behavior in a given situation. Such foresight as an internal act of consciousness presupposes that consciousness itself splits into I and the Other. This means the ability to put oneself in the place of another and, conversely, to look through the eyes of another at oneself. “Coming into communication with other people, I get from each of them some idea of ​​myself, as each of them sees me. From such representations, I develop a single image of myself.

Thus, the basis of social communication lies in the ability, putting oneself in the place of another, to anticipate his role behavior and orient his own accordingly. Communication skills develop from innate biopsychic inclinations in the game. The child, playing with imaginary partners, simultaneously plays several roles, alternately putting himself in the place of one of them, then another, then himself. The next stage is a group game with real partners, in which the skills of anticipating the behavior of others are honed.

C. Cooley considers social communication as a tool for the socialization of the individual. According to Cooley, socialization and the formation of an active personality occur in primary groups in which individuals are connected by direct relationships. A person acquires his Self in communication with other people. In the process of communication, an exchange of ideas about each other, knowledge of oneself and one's capabilities are carried out. The social in a person is his irresistible desire for communication with others and the product of this communication. Communication intersects the individual and the social, it is the focus of interaction. This is explained by the fact that in the course of communication, people's ideas about each other and about the society in which they live are developed and polished. Such representations constitute the "social consciousness" of the individual, linking him to society.

We can say that in symbolic interactionism, communication acts as a matrix of social life. Other approaches to the phenomenon of social communication are more specific and are aimed at studying its historical dynamics.

In 1960, the Canadian scientist M. McLuhan put forward the thesis according to which modern society is on the way from the “culture of the printed word” to the “visual culture”. This means that among young people, television, sound recording, and, later on, the computer and the Internet, are increasingly becoming the preferred channels of communication. At the end of the XX century. the center of research interest in communication has shifted towards the mass communication industry, its impact on the audience, the influence of information technology, the dynamics of verbal, non-verbal and extrasensory communication, the characteristics of individual perception of various types of communication, etc.

The term "communication" (lat. communicatio, from communico - I make common, I connect, I communicate) originally meant the ways of communication, transport, communication, the network of the underground urban economy. In the broadest possible sense communication is a means of communication of any objects of the world. However, in relation to social objects, this term acquires a special meaning. The communicative process is a necessary prerequisite for the formation, development and functioning of any social systems. Social communication provides a link between people and their communities, makes it possible to link between generations, the accumulation and transfer of social experience, its enrichment, the division of labor and the exchange of its products, the organization of joint activities, the transmission of culture. It is through communication that management is carried out, power arises and is realized in society.

There are many definitions of social communication. Let's present some of them. social communication - this is:

Ø transfer of information, ideas, emotions through signs, symbols

Ø process that connects separate parts of social systems with each other

Ø the mechanism through which power is realized (power as the desire to determine the behavior of another person).

The mechanistic approach treats communication as a unidirectional process of encoding and transmitting information from the source and receiving information by the recipient of the message. From the point of view of the activity approach, communication appears as a joint activity of communication participants (communicators), during which a common (up to a certain limit) view of things and actions with them is developed.

Communication is a specific form of interaction between people in the cognitive and productive process, carried out mainly with the help of language (less often with the help of other sign systems).

Social communication is a type of social connection based on the directed transfer of information that allows for the socio-cultural interactions of individuals and social communities. Social communication should be understood as the interaction of people, due to a number of socially significant assessments, specific situations, communicative spheres and norms of communication accepted in society, in this society.

Social communication in the process of its implementation solves three main interrelated tasks:

1. Integration of individual individuals into social groups and communities, and the latter into a single and integral system of society;

2. Internal differentiation of society, its constituent groups, communities, social organizations and institutions;

3. Separation and isolation of society and various groups, communities from each other in the process of their communication and interaction, which leads to a deeper awareness of their specifics, to a more effective performance of their inherent functions.

Communication is a process, the main components of which are:

Ø The subjects of the communication process - the sender and recipient of the message (communicator and recipient)

Ø Means of communication - a code used to transmit information in a sign form (words, pictures, graphics, etc.), as well as channels through which a message is transmitted (letter, telephone, radio, telegraph, etc.)

Ø The subject of communication (any phenomenon, event) and the message that displays it (article, radio program, television story, etc.)

Ø Communication effects - the consequences of communication, expressed in a change in the internal state of the subjects of the communication process, in their relationships or in their actions.

The communicative process is a necessary prerequisite for the formation, development and functioning of all social systems, because it is it that ensures the connection between people and their communities, makes possible the connection between generations, the accumulation and transfer of social experience, its enrichment, the division of labor and the exchange of its products, the organization joint activities, transmission of culture. It is through communication that management is carried out, therefore, in addition to all of the above, it also represents a social mechanism through which power arises and is implemented in society.

There are many definitions of social communication. The most common of them are: social communication is the transfer of information, ideas, emotions through signs, symbols; is a process that connects the individual parts of the social. systems with each other; - this is the mechanism through which power is realized (power, as an attempt to determine the behavior of another person).

There are several types of social communication:

By the nature of the audience:

• interpersonal (individualized)
• specialized (group)
• mass

According to the source of the message:

• official (formal)
• informal

By transmission channel:

• verbal
• non-verbal

Communication is a complex multicomponent process.

Its main components are:

• 1. The subjects of the communication process are the sender and recipient of the message (communicator and recipient);
• 2. Means of communication - a code used to transmit information in a sign form (words, pictures, graphics, etc.), as well as channels through which a message is transmitted (letter, telephone, radio, telegraph, etc.);
• 3. The subject of communication (any phenomenon, event) and the message that displays it (article, radio program, television story, etc.)
• 4. Effects of communication - the consequences of communication, expressed in a change in the internal state of the subjects of the communication process, in their relationships or in their actions.

Social communication in the process of its implementation solves three main interrelated tasks:

• 1. Integration of individual individuals into social groups and communities, and the latter into a single and integral system of society;
• 2. Internal differentiation of society, its constituent groups, communities, social organizations and institutions;
• 3. separation and isolation of society and various groups, communities from each other in the process of their communication and interaction, which leads to a deeper awareness of their specifics, to a more effective performance of their inherent functions.

Models of social communication

In the process of sociological research of communication processes, various models of social communication have been developed. Any communicative activity involves not only knowledge of the characteristics of the communicator, analysis of the content of information, but also an analysis of the audience. To carry out such an analysis, the communicator needs psychological competence. Knowledge of psychotypes allows you to determine the strategy of the communication process, to predict actions. Psychotype- a model of the behavioral structure of the personality and its interaction with the environment. Psychologists distinguish five main psychotypes: square, triangular, circular, rectangular and zigzag. Knowing the various psychotypes, the communicator in the process of communication uses this information to properly manage the communication process.

The effectiveness of information perception by the audience is influenced by the cultural, educational, social levels of the communicant. Important factors for successful communication are knowledge of the audience, respect for it, the ability to communicate with it on an equal footing, i.e. equality of psychological positions of the communicator and the communicant. In the 80s. 20th century J. Goldhaberg created a charismatic model of communication. He proceeded from the fact that TV has more effect on emotions than on the mind. Therefore, the success of television programs is less related to the information content, but directly depends on the “charisma” of the person who is on the screen. D. Goldhaberg identified three types of charismatic personality:

• · The hero is an idealized person, looks “as we want”, says “what we want”.
• · An antihero is a “simple person”, one of us. Looks “like all of us”, says the same thing, “as we do”. We feel safe with him. We trust him.
• · Mystical personality - alien to us (“not like us”), unusual, unpredictable. This type of communicator is suitable for late night transmissions.

When studying the impact on the perception of information by the intellectual level of the audience, it was found that for an audience with a high level of education, a two-way message is preferable. Such a message is a text that, in addition to the arguments of the communicator, contains the arguments of the other party. This is explained by the fact that such an audience needs to compare views and independently evaluate them. For an audience with a low educational level, it is recommended to use a one-way message containing only the arguments of the communicator. One-way communication is just as effective when the audience agrees with the communicator when it has not been affected by the opponent's arguments.

The goal of the specialist is to change the values ​​and behavior of the communicant. If it is possible to change the behavior of the communication object, then the actions of the communicator are considered as influence. Influence can be exerted in three ways: by forcing; manipulating the consciousness of the communicant; inviting him to cooperate. Since the specialist does not have formal power, his influence is based either on manipulation, or on cooperation, or on both of these methods at once.

The manipulation of consciousness is understood as the actions of a communicator aimed at changing psychological attitudes, value orientations, behavior of individuals and entire audiences, regardless of their desire. Among the reasons for manipulation are: a person's conflict with himself (A. Maslow); distrust towards other people (E.Fromm); feeling of absolute helplessness (existentialism); fear of close interpersonal contacts (E.Bern); an uncritical desire to get the approval of everyone and everyone; the desire for symbolic mastery of a communication partner (S. Freud); realization of a compensatory desire for power (A. Adler).

The purpose of manipulation is control over the audience, its controllability and obedience. To achieve the goal, various manipulative technologies are used: purposeful transformation of information (default, selection, “distortion”, distortion of information, reversal); concealment of exposure; impact targets; robotization. These technologies are used in such types of manipulative influence as:

• Image manipulation - since images have a strong psychological impact, they are widely used in communicative practice, especially in advertising.
• · Conventional manipulation - based not on personal psychological attitudes, but on social schemes: rules, norms, traditions accepted in society, family.
• Operational-subject manipulation - based on such mental characteristics of a person as the force of habit, inertia, the logic of the execution of an action.
• · Manipulation of the personality of the addressee - the desire to shift the responsibility for any action to the addressee, while the manipulator remains the winner.
• · Manipulation of spirituality - manipulation of the highest levels of the psyche (the meaning of life, spiritual values, a sense of duty).

The linear model of communication developed by the famous American sociologist and political scientist G. Lasswell and including five elements has received wide recognition and distribution:

• 1. Who? (transmits a message) - communicator
• 2. What? (transmitted) - message
• 3. How? (transmitting) - channel
• 4. To whom? (message sent) - audience
• 5. With what effect? - efficiency

Finding Lasswell's model applicable, albeit greatly simplified, some researchers began to develop it further. R. Braddock added to it two more elements of a communicative act: the conditions under which communication takes place, and the purpose with which the communicator speaks. The "Lasswell Formula" reflects a characteristic feature of early models of communication - it assumes that the communicator is always trying to influence the recipient, and therefore communication should be interpreted as a process of persuasion. This assumption orients the model for application primarily in the field of political propaganda analysis.

In the Shannon-Weaver model, communication is also described as a linear one-way process. The mathematician Shannon worked on his communication model in the late 40s by order of the Bell Telephone laboratory, and this largely determined the "technical" nature of the created model, its "remoteness". The main task was to reduce the "noise" and facilitate the exchange of information as much as possible. The model describes five functional and one dysfunctional (noise) factors of the communication process. Functional elements include: a source of information that produces a message; a sender encoding the message into signals; the channel carrying this message; recipient; goal or destination.

The signal is only as vulnerable as it can be distorted by noise. An example of distortion can be the superimposition of signals simultaneously passing through one channel.

The advantage of this scheme is that it is clear that the message sent by the source and the message that reaches the recipient do not have the same meaning. Later, the provision on the distortion of information was supplemented by other reasons for the initial and final information. In connection with the work on the selectivity of perception, it became known that the communication channel includes a sequence of filters, leading to the fact that the amount of information at the input to the system is greater than the information that works at the output [N.Wiener].

The inability of communication participants to realize that the message sent and received does not always match is a common cause of communication difficulties. This important idea, embedded in the Shannon-Weaver model, attracted attention and was developed in the studies of DeFluer, who expanded the original model into a more extensive network:

In particular, he notes that in the communicative process the "meaning" is transformed into a "message" and describes how the sender translates the "message" into "information", which is then sent through the channel. The receiver decodes the "information" into a "message", which in turn is transformed at the destination into a "value". If there is a match between the first and second values, then communication has taken place. But, according to DeFluer, full compliance is a very rare case.

The DeFluer model takes into account the main drawback of the Shannon-Weaver linear model - the absence of a feedback factor. He closed the chain of information from the source to the target with a feedback line that repeats all the way in the opposite direction, including the transformation of the value under the influence of "noise". Feedback enables the communicator to better tailor its message to the communication channel to improve the efficiency of information transfer and increase the likelihood of a match between the sent and received value.

The inclusion of feedback as a full-fledged element in the model of such seemingly one-sided processes as television, radio broadcasting, and the press seems problematic at first glance. But one should distinguish between first-order feedback, when the communicator can receive it during the impact, and indirect second-order feedback, obtained on the basis of an assessment of the results of the impact. In addition, the communicator begins to receive feedback not only from the recipient, but already from the message itself (for example, from the sound and image on the monitor). The fundamental absence of feedback can be noted only in exceptional cases of communication between large social groups - for example, when sending probes with information into space, "towards" extraterrestrial civilizations.

But the final overcoming of the simplified interpretation of communication as a one-way linear process was the Osgood-Schramm circular model. Its main distinguishing feature is the postulation of the circular nature of the process of mass communication. Its other feature is determined by the fact that if Shannon was primarily interested in channels - mediators between the communicator and the audience, then Schramm and Osgood turned their attention to the behavior of the main participants in communication - the sender and recipient, whose main tasks are encoding, decoding and interpreting the message.

A review of the definitions of "communication" conducted by W. Schramm made it possible to single out the common thing that unites them - the existence of a set of information signs. This set may include not only facts, objects, but also emotions, latent meanings ("silent language").

The adequacy of the perception of the message implies the existence of an area in which the experience of the communicator and the recipient is similar, in which certain signs are recognized by them in the same way. The communicator and the recipient have a "fund of used meanings", a "correspondence frame", and the area in which they can communicate successfully lies in the "overlap" of their "framework". The success of communication also depends on the expectations placed by the participants in communication with each other. Professor of the Department of Journalism at the University of Memphis J. DeMott points out that a certain tacit agreement has developed between the media and their audience, an agreement (Mass Comm Pact) that defines the duties of the QMS in relation to the audience, and the duties of the audience in relation to the QMS. The imperfection of this agreement lies in the fact that the points of view of consumers of information and its producers on the range of these duties are not the same.

According to Schramm, it is wrong to think that the communication process has a beginning or an end. In fact, it is endless. "We are small switches that continuously receive and distribute an endless stream of information ...". (Some researchers go even further in this direction, arguing that the entire inner life of a person consists solely of a unique combination of what he saw, heard and remembered throughout his life.)

A possible point of criticism of this model is that it creates the impression of "equality" of the parties in the process of communication. Meanwhile, this process is often unbalanced, especially when it comes to mass communication. Under these conditions, the recipient and the sender are not such equal participants in communication, and the circular model, which equalizes them as links in the same chain, does not adequately reflect the share of their participation in the communication process.

Dance's spiral model does not pretend to be a full-fledged model and arose only as a striking argument in discussions on the comparison of linear and circular models of communication. Dance notes that at present most researchers agree that the circular approach is more adequate for describing communication processes. But the circular approach also has some limitations. It assumes that communication goes full circle to the point where it starts. This part of the circle analogy is clearly wrong. The spiral shows that the process of communication is moving forward, and what is currently in the process of communication will affect the structure and content of communication in the future. Most models give the so-called "frozen" picture of the communication process. Dance, on the other hand, emphasizes the dynamic nature of this process, which contains elements, relationships and conditions that are continuously changing in time. For example, in conversation, the cognitive field is constantly expanding for those who are included in it. Participants receive more and more information on the issue under discussion, about the partner, his point of view. Knowledge in the discussion expands and deepens. Depending on the course of the conversation, the spiral takes on different forms in different settings and for different individuals.

The Dance model is certainly not a convenient tool for a detailed analysis of the communication process. The main advantage and purpose of Dance's spiral model is that it recalls the dynamic nature of communication. According to this model, a person in the process of communication is an active, creative, information-storing individual, while many other models describe him, rather, as a passive being.

The goal of the American researcher of mass communication G. Gerbner was to create a model with a wide scope of application. It was first introduced in 1956.

A specific feature of this model is that it takes on different forms depending on what type of communicative situation is being described. The verbal description of Gerbner's model is similar in form to Lasswell's: Someone perceives an event and reacts in the given situation by some means to create content accessible to others in some form and context, and conveys a message with some consequences. The graphical representation of the model already has the original look:

This model implies that human communication can be viewed as a subjective, selective, changeable and unpredictable process, and the human communication system as an open system.

What people choose and remember from a communicative message is often related to how they are going to use the information received. The behavioral approach links perception selectivity to reward-punishment categories. The probability of selecting information within this concept is determined by the formula:

Selection probability = ( B - H) / U

B - the expected measure of remuneration,

H is the intended punishment,

Y is the estimated cost of effort.

In addition to the variables mentioned in this formula, many other factors play a role in the choice of messages: random noise, impulsiveness, audience habits, etc. is what Gerbner calls context.

Gerbner believes that the model can be used to describe a mixed type of communication, including both a person and a machine, dynamic, visual, applicable to communication interactions of various scales - both at the level of individuals and at the level of large social communities.

Let us consider in more detail the simplest linear communicative model of Lasswell. He singled out three main functions of the communication process as an inherently managerial process:

• 1. Observation of the environment to identify a threat to the represented society and determine the possibilities of influencing the value orientations of this society and / or its constituent parts
• 2. the correlation of the ratio of the constituent parts of this society in its response to the "behavior" of the environment;
• 3. transmission of social heritage from generation to generation.

So, in this model, the following components of the communication process are distinguished:

• communication source (switch)
• · content
• communication channel
• target (audience)
• · Effect