Linear & Interactive Models of Communication

The text describes linear models of communication as a one-way process to another person. It involves an information source sending a message to the receiver, and only flows in one direction. Later, Shannon and Weaver added noise to the linear model, which involves anything that causes a loss of information from the sender to the receiver. The other model the text discusses is the interactive model. The two models are similar in the fact that one person is the sender, while the other is the receiver. Interactive models are an improvement from linear models because it acknowledges that feedback is given from the receiver, such as a response to the message. Experience is key to the interactive model of communicating effectively because the more experience the receiver has, the more likely they will understand the senders message. Both linear and interactive models fail to recognize that communication improves over time if the sender and receiver become more familiar with each other.