17. The linear model of communication

The first formal model within information theory was Shannon’s mathematical model of communication, developed in the 1940s, which laid out a linear schema of production, transmission, channel, receiver, and destination. According to this model, information is ‘sent’ by one person and subsequently ‘received’ and ‘processed’ by another. In this framework, communication is not seen as a problem; once the information has been sent out it will automatically be processed at the other end. Although widely discredited in the academic literature today, the basic schema of the linear model (sender-message-channel-recipient) still provides the implicit underpinning of many communication initiatives.

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