Assignment 2: Midterm Reading Exercises Media Coursework

Assignment 2: Midterm Reading Exercises
Your Name:
Subject and Section:
Professor’s Name:
Date Submitted:
SECTION A
1 How is communication as exchange different from communication as transfer/transmission?
Communication is often defined as the process of the transfer of information, and an exchange enabling the emergence of feelings, thoughts, and ideas between two or more agents of communication (Dunhill, 2009). Communication as an exchange is more descriptive of the interaction model of communication which involves the alternating roles of the sender and the receiver, as well as the generation of ideas and processing of messages. There is a wide network or interconnection between groups of people with the help of technology allowing the exchange to happen. This is also a definitive trait of what mass communication is (Gasher, et al., 2012). In comparison to communication as a transfer that closely uses the transmission model of communication. This is in linear or one-way form rather than an exchange or an interaction. A similar situation is the transmission of a message using a radio where the audience or receiver of the message does not have much say or effect on the whole process except for decoding the message sent by the other agent of communication (Mitchell, n.d.). This is more applicable to traditional media where there is less participation of the audience when it comes to the context and manner of transmission of the message. Although considered as traditional, communication as the transmission is still fundamental to what communication is today (Gasher, et al., 2012).
2 What does seeing communication as political and ethical rather than the semantic mean? Do you think this changes the view of communication? Why or why not?
Both political and ethical aspects of communication are focused on the meaning that the sender conveys to the receiver, but communication is a semantic aspect sees the relationship of the words and the meaning that can be drawn from this. Political and ethical communication is concerned with the manner of dissemination up to the influence of the message on the receiver, while these are comparable to seeing the semantic of communication because semantics opens a lot of possible interpretations to the words in the message presenting various barriers affecting how it is processed and if it is understood in a manner that the sender wants the receiver to perceive the message. Barriers such as culture, body language, word choices, dialect, pronunciation, and etc. are some of the barriers in semantics (Mitchell, n.d). This changes the perspective of communication and opens more aspects and factors that should be considered to ensure that the intended meaning of the words in the message is conveyed successfully to the receiver. Problems with either the political and ethical aspects of communication or semantics can alter the communication process affecting the interpretation and processing of the message by the receiver.
3 What are some special features of new media and what are their implications for democracy?
The main features of new media are interactive, digital, hypertextual, virtual, globally networked, and at times simulation. The evolution of the new media has pre...