This document discusses various perspectives on the concept of information in communication studies. It addresses how information is defined, the role it plays in reducing uncertainty, and how it impacts individuals, relationships, organizations, and media. Specifically, it explores how information helps people understand themselves and their environment, how it both actively and passively influences understanding, and how factors like cognitive involvement impact how information is received and interpreted.

1. COM 830
By Evonne Mwangale Kiptinness

2.  Communication studies have been greatly affected by
the concept of information
 A central motive in communication is the desire
people have to reduce uncertainty
 which produces emotional and cognitive discomfort
 Why is information important
 It lets people know who they are and how well they are
doing
 It tells them how they fit in social circles
 It helps them make decisions
 It tells them what is going on in their environment

3.  Some information is sought, but it can also come to you
without you having to exert much effort
 Information acquired through conversations or news
stories confirms or disconfirms propositions that people
test to understand events, other people and themselves
 People acquire information passively or aggressively with
an aim to increase the certainty that they know what is
going on and how to cope with the events and
requirements of life
 Information has been described as the means by which
people come to know one another as well as physical and
social realities (Watzlawick et al., 1967)
 It can also be defined as the aspect of messages that
increases or reduces uncertainity.

4.  Information as a concept was popularized in the 1950s and
1960s by researchers who were influenced by the work of
Shannon and Weaver (1949) and N. Weiner (1948).
 In this period Cybernetics developed – seeks to explain the
processes by which people or other systems receive
information in regard to the means they have decided to
use to achieve their goals.
 People use feedback when they use information to decide
to continue or abandon those strategic means or to change
their goals.
 Therefore an understanding of information is valuable to
efforts to explain and improve the communication process.

5.  Information has had an uncertain status with
communication theorists because of unsound
assumptions
 These include:
1. Information and persuasion can be treated as mutually
exclusive
 The belief that a source can inform and persuade as though
the processes were independent of each other
 Information and persuasion are enemies
 Persuasion is equated to lies, manipulation and deceit
 Analysis suggests that information is a major part of
persuasive influence – information is used to persuade

6. 2. Information is received and processed independent of other
variables
 Research suggests that several variables interact to increase the
consistency between the amount of knowledge persons have on a
topic, their attitudes on that topic, and the likelihood that their
behaviour will be consistent with their knowledge and attitude.
 Cognitive involvement is one of the most important of these
variables
 People who have more involvement with a topic are capable of
reporting more messages on that topic than people with less
cognitive involvement
 People are more likely to receive information regarding those
topics on which they believe they have personal risk
 People are more likely to receive and think about information
when they hold strong positive or negative attitudes on the topic
 Information is more likely to influence people who engage in
higher amounts of reading / information gathering.

7. 3. Treating information as something that is tangible
 That can be seen or touched
 A better way would be to think of information as a
means to knowledge
4. Messages contain information as opposed to
receivers interpreting the amount of informativeness
of a message
 People interpret information differently
 What is information to one person may not be
information to another
 Some researchers have argued that information must
not be confused with meaning

8.  How do you define information
 Facts and figures
 A commodity that is bought and sold
 Something tangible conveyed from one person to
another
 Refers to data, decision making, problem solving,
commodities and constraints on choices
 It is used in conjunction with stimuli, learning, thinking,
cognition, memory, knowledge, media, and linkages
between a living system and its environment.
 That which reduces uncertainty
 Something that the receiver does not already know

9.  Reuben (1985) suggested that the term information be
narrowed to feature four broad topics:
 Data – what it expresses
 Process – actions and structures by which it is acquired,
transmitted, transformed, stored or retrieved
 Channel – the technical means by which it is
transmitted, stored, transformed or retrieved
 Uses and outcomes – its impact

10.  Human cognition is fed by information
 A family is an information processing system – each day its
members obtain and share information (or fail to do so) in
ways that affect one another.
 Information is data an individual uses in its attempts to
adapt to its environment in order to reduce uncertainty and
achieve gratification and achieve gratification (N. Weiner,
1948).
 Information is explicitly linked to meaning (Daniels and
Spiker, 1987) – meaning occurs when information is placed
within a context.
 Information is that which informs or tells individuals
something they want to know as they interpret data they
have acquired.

11.  The degree of disorganization that exists in any system ,
whether physical or social
 The degree of uncertainty that results from the
randomness or lack of predictability, in a situation or
message.
 It is experienced for example when we have lost something
– entropy is great when the location of the lost item is
unlimited
 Link between entropy and information: when certainty or
predictability is present in a situation, no additional
information is needed and no entropy exists
 Certainty is high when entropy is low

12.  Ambiguity or vagueness are also examples of high entropy –
when a receiver can not accurately decode a word or
statement to know what the sender means
 Entropy refers to the amount of freedom people have in the
design and interpretation of messages
 The objective of effective message design is to limit the
range of possibilities the receiver has for interpreting the
message received, thereby reducing unpredictability and
increasing uncertainty
 In the same line, conversations are not unpredictable –
each comment in one way or another suggests the
allowable possibilities that can be used to continue a
conversation.

13.  Information by which a decision can be arrived at
accurately and efficiently
 The central assumption of this model is that information
consists of the bits of data needed to progress through a
series of discrete, binary decisions.
 Each bit of information moves the decision to a certain,
predictable conclusion.
 This model hangs on the desire to understand the problem
that reduces uncertainty, to estimate the availability of
information, and to calculate how much effect each piece
of information has on the uncertainty in the situation.

14.  Information is measured by the number of choices
available
 The basic unit of measure is the bit, which represents a
decision between two alternatives
 In a fixed decision model, a limited number of bits is
known to the person who is making the decision
 (Shannon and Weaver) any bit of information that
increases uncertainty is noise.
 Uncertainity which arises by virtue of freedom of choice on
the part of the sender is desirable uncertainty
 While uncertainty that arises because of errors or because
of the influence of noise is undesirable uncertainty

15.  Feedback
 increases accuracy and efficiency – lessens entropy and
uncertainty
 Determines whether the information is satisfactory or
unsatisfactory
 Can be used to determine how well you are doing in
accomplishing a task
 The key to the fixed decision model is the knowledge of the
total number of decision points that need to be resolved to
reach a final conclusion
 Entropy can be a measure of the amount of news in a story,
the proportion of news in one story versus other stories and
the amount of information received by readers or viewers

16.  As we set out to make major purchases we are likely to have
incentive to experience greater amounts of uncertainty because
we have more at risk in the process of deciding which of several
products is best and which one is best value for the cost.
 Conant (1979) – information is that which changes knowledge,
and a message can be said to convey information to a receiver if
and only if the receiver’s knowledge is changed as a result.
 The important of a message is the effect on those who hear it e.g.
FIRE!
 Information is not stable or fixed – the need to communicate
and the value of any piece of information fluctuates over time.
 A message is meaningful if the receivers knowledge is as a result
of it.
 The information contained in a message is not the same for
everyone

17.  The amount of information conveyed by a message is
the difference between the amount of uncertainty
before a message is received and the amount of
uncertainty that exists after it is received.
 The value of information is measured by the impact it
has on a person's degree of uncertainty


18.  As people create interpersonal relationships they
encounter substantial amounts of uncertainity – which
motivates them to gather information to reduce
uncertainty.
 Social cognition – predicts that uncertainity motivates the
processes individuals use to obtain and interpret
information as they scrutinize others, themselves and
reality.
 Uncertainty is present when people do not know each
other and therefore cannot predict their motives, actions or
goals.
 In an attempt to build consensus, people prefer to talk to
people with whom they agree and avoid those with whom
they disagree.

19.  Co-orientation features three key ingredients in a
relationship
 Mutual understanding – agreement of views
 Accuracy
 Congruency – satisfaction that mutual understanding
exists
 Several factors are basic to information seeking in
interpersonal contexts
 Its impact on judgments by the relational partners
 Degrees to which the interactants like each other and
have the same tastes.

20.  In friendship situations, people seek information from
persons they like, and they prefer information that
helps them to build and maintain the relationship,
which includes knowing the other persons opinions
about the relationship.

21.  Organizations are typically defined as collectivities that seek to survive by
obtaining, processing and using information.
 Information is the energy of the organization
 The desire to reduce uncertainty motivates people within and outside an
organization to obtain and share information.
 How communication supports organizations feature the defining
characteristics of a system:
 Homeostasis – the tendency for the system to adapt dynamically to survive and
prosper by achieving balance with its environment e.g news
 Equifinality – the ability of systems to reach the same goal even though they
employ different means e.g reporters working on a story with different approach
 Wholeness – a system is a collection of parts but it is more than the sum of its
parts
 Openness – the ability of a system to interchange information dynamically with
its environment to adapt and survive or the ease with which information can
flow into and from the organization
 Complexity means that systems are not simple and tend to become more
complex and differentiated over time

22.  The role of information in media
 Involves who observing who is saying what to whom, under what
circumstances and with what effect
 This depends on whether a receiver is passive or active in information
seeking
 Reinforcement theory – media have limited effects because viewers,
listeners and readers select programming and information to which
they want to be exposed to.
 Uses and gratifications theory – users are dynamic because they can
and will seek sources of information and entertainment to satisfy their
needs.
 Needs that have physiological and social origins lead individuals to have expectations
of the media and other sources which lead to differential patterns of media exposure
to gratify those needs.
 Entropy is used to refer to the likelihood that people will find
information they want and that the media will get the information to
them

23.  Diffusion of innovation theory predicts that media as
well as interpersonal contacts provide information and
influence opinion and judgement
 Invention
 Diffusion - an idea spreads from one point of origin to
others eventually achieves general or limited acceptance
 Consequences

24.  Capacity influences how people accept and use
information
 Capacity – the extent that the parts of the
communication process can handle information.
 Sender capacity – the amount of information that a
source can supply at a given time vis-à-vis the receivers
needs
 Message capacity – the amount of information that
can be contained in a single message such as specific
combination of words

25.  Channel capacity – equal to the maximum rate at
which useful information can be transmitted over a
channel
 Time capacity – a measure of how long
communicators have or take to transmit a message as
well as process it
 Receiver capacity – ability to receive and process
information.