MASS COMMUNICATION

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BA Degree in Social Sciences
Level -3, Semester-1
SSU-1201-Pricipals of Mass Communication
TMA-1
Reg No-30730163
1. Intra-personal communication is the foundation on which a meaningful dialogue takes
place. Explain
Intrapersonal communication is communication that a person has with him or herself.
Although some might take the position that no communication is needed if only one party is
involved, we communicate with ourselves all the time.
Intrapersonal communication can encompass:
 Sense-making .e.g. interpreting maps, texts, signs, and symbols
 Interpreting non-verbal communication,e.g. gestures, eye contact
 Communication between body parts; e.g. "My stomach is telling me it's time for lunch."
 Speaking aloud ("talking to oneself"), reading aloud, repeating what one hears; the
additional activities of speaking and hearing (in the third case of hearing again) what one
thinks, reads or hears may increase concentration and retention.
 Writing (by hand, or with a word processor, etc.) one's thoughts or observations: the
additional activities, on top of thinking, of writing and reading back may again increase self-
understanding ("How do I know what I mean until I see what I say?")And concentration. It
aids ordering one's thoughts; in addition it produces a record that can be used later again.
Copying text to aid memorizing also falls in this category.
 Making gestures while thinking: the additional activity, on top of thinking, of body motions,
may again increase concentration, assist in problem solving, and assist memory.
 Day-dreaming
 Nocturnal dreaming
This is known as talking to our self and it also a communication act. When we talk with others it
means inter -personal communication. These communication processes are doing a very good
contribution to the mass communication. So we can conclude intra-personal communication
when takes place it is the foundation for a meaningful dialogue.

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2. Encoding and decoding in the mass communication process.
If communication involves the use of codes, the process of communicating can be viewed as
one of encoding and decoding. Encoding is defined as the act of putting an idea or a thought in
to a code. Decoding is assigning meaning to that idea or thought.
For instance, suppose you are interested in purchasing a new car. You are trying to describe a
compact model to your father, who wants to help you with your purchase. You might be
visualizing the car with the black interior, sporty design, and red interior that belongs to your
best friend.
Putting this vision in to words, you tell your father you are interested in a car that is small and
well designed.
You encode your perceptions of a particular car in to words that describe the model.
Your father on hearing this decodes your words and develops his own picture. His love of
larger cars affects this process. As a result of your definition, he envisions a sedan. As you can
see, misunderstanding often occurs because of the limitations of language and the inadequacy
of descriptions. Nonetheless, encoding and decoding are essential in sharing your thoughts,
ideas, and feelings with others.
3. Describe three types of noise connected with the communication process.
In the communication process, noise is any interference in the encoding and decoding process
that reduces the clarity of a message. Let’s discuss these noises.
1. Semantic Noise
Semantic means confused or uncertainty about what the other person’s words are supposed
to mean. This is also occurs when different people have different meanings for different words
or phrases. for example if an American tourist was walking along Colombo streets and a local
police men asked him to walk on the pavement, he would not understand what the policeman
says, as the word for pavement in USA is kerb.when semantic noise occurs the message which
is communicated amounts to no communication at all.
2. Mechanical Noise
Noise can be also mechanical. This type of noise occurs when for example, there is a problem
with a radio, television or another machine that being used to assist communication. Most of
you who would have attended public meetings would have witnessed the irritation caused by

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speakers when the public address system is faulty. Pens that run out of ink, television antennas
which are not properly set up, also cause this type of noise in communication.
3. Environmental Noise
This noise is refers to external to the communication process. for example if you are trying to
speak to someone in a disturbing outdor,then you may know that the other person would not
understand what are you trying to say, or you may know it is impossible to carry out an talk
about his future plans while attending a important meeting in your office.
In this situation we found the difficulties to communicate with others. These facts are known as
communication barriers. At any point in the communication process a barrier can occur. Barriers
keep us from understanding others ideas and thoughts.
4. The need to listen to those who communicate with an open mind.
Understanding listening is important because effective listening behaviors are related to success in
our personal relationships, our work place productivity, and even our ability to think clearly.
The need to listen to those who communicate with an open mind states that the important of
listening in the communication process. It means the recipient should listen carefully and should
not only listen with his ears, but also with an open mind.
Hearing is the physical act of receiving a sound. We hear all of the noises around us. Listening is
the active process of receiving, paying attention to, assigning meaning to, and responding to
sounds. Listening is an active process whereas hearing is reflexive.
Listening is generally divided in to active, empathic, critical and enjoyment listening. Active
listening, which is listening with a purpose, includes both empathic and critical listening.
Empathic listening is when you are attempting to understand another person. Critical listening
requires evaluating a speaker’s message for accuracy, meaningfulness, and usefulness. We also
listen to things like music for enjoyment purposes.
In this regard listening with an open mind is very important in the process of mass
communication. If we do not listen clearly with the communicator it’s being confusing your mind.
So the importance of listening is “listening, hearing, and communicating with an open mind.”
5. Significance of socio-culturaland psycho-personal background in the communication process.
First we have to clarify what is socio cultural and psycho personal background in
communication.socio cultural background means the recipient cultural background in the
communication process. We often communicate deferent people deferent messages to deferent

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situations and porposes.these situations may confuse the recipient (the person who receive
messages) completely a wrong understanding about the messages he or she receives.
For example if I speaking by mobile to a Tamil person GANESH,he is in jaffna,he cant understand
what I am saying, because I speaks with him in sinhala and he don’t know what I say. So this is a
critical situation to GANESH to understand the message meaningfully. So his cultural social
background also very different and the better thing is first we have to understand the recipient’s
socio cultural background and not only the language, words and symbols they use to
communicate people.
On the other hand we also know what psycho personal background of the recipient is. It means to
get some ones insight in to the recipient’s personality, his childhood experiences, and his
relationships with his parents and friends, his emotions, mental status and his tastes and also
dislikes. So the act of understanding messages depends largely on this knowledge, since there
understanding is an act of constant interpretation in relation toones own personal understanding
of one self.
Therefore the socio cultural background and psycho personal background in the communication
process is most important clarifications in the mass communication process.
6. Mass audience is a heterogeneous audience.
We cannot define mass communication in a quick simple way. Because each medium includes its
own special kinds of communicators, technologies, groups, kinds of content, types of audiences,
and efforts.
The term mass communication implies a large and diverse audience. The term derives from the
concept of a mass society. This refers not just to idea that large numbers of people are involved.
So the significant characteristic about mass communication is the diversity of audience, which is
large, geographically widespread, largely anonymous and always self defined. Millions of
audience watches TV programmes and listening to radio, read news papers, magazines come from
different ethnic backgrounds social classes with various political beliefs.
Therefore the audience also spread out over a wide range of area, for example millions of people
in the word watching 20/20 cricket match or Olympic Games, all the sources and receivers are
separated by time and space and the members of receiving audience also strange.
Therefore we defined mass audience as a heterogeneous audience.
7. Persuasion is important in mass communication.
Persuasion is an active force which continues to influence almost all people in different ways with
regard to the activities that they need to carry out in life.persuation takes place both with and
without our knowledge and no one is able to deny that he or she is immune from this process.

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Persuasion is an age old mechanism used in human interactions, it needs to be carried out in
purposeful manner since man could persuade to act progressively and also react negatively
towards progress.
8. Significance of public relations.
Public relations defined as an effort of an individual or a corporation to promote goodwill between
itself and the public. It also defined as the methods used to promote goodwill between the
organization, individual and public.
PR is a distinctive management function which helps establish and maintain mutual lines of
communications, understandings acceptance and corporation between an organization and its
publics, and also it help the management to keep inform and responsive to public opinion ,it helps
management to keep abreast of and effectively utilize change and serves as an early warning
system.
The PR involves in maintenance of sound relationships between all those who need to initiate
communications with the goodwill to public as individuals and as organizations.
9. Deficiencies identified in the fist phase communication models and how second phase
communication models differ?
In mass communication there are several communication models, in these communication models
are evaluated in to three types. There are 1st phase, 2nd and 3rd phase. We have identified
deficiencies in the first phase models are,
 They conceptualize the process of communication as one way liner process.
 There is a heavy emphasis laid on the task of the communicator and little emphasis on the
interaction between the communicator and the receiver.
 The socio cultural context of the act of communication which plays an important role in
establishing the meaning of the message has not been taken into consideration.
 There is a heavy emphasis on the possible persuasive manipulation of the receiver, from the
part of the communicator, at the expense of mutual dialogue between them.
 There is a tendency in these models to consider the individuals as parts of mechanical acts.
Because these models perceive the process of communication as a mechanical act between
two destinations and not as a dialogue between two human beings.
These are the deficiencies in the first phase, now we consider how this differ from second phase
and second phase is a definite improvement of first phase.
There are,

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 The new way of conceptualizing the act of communication.
 The circular reality of the act of communication.
 The establishing of the contextual dimension of the communication act.
 The communication act is now act of sharing information, reaction to social circumstances
and a way of interpretation.
10. Significance of traditional media.
Traditional media means the old media, traditional means of communication need to be given due
recognition by modern societies.
Traditional communication patterns are reflective of social norms and standards of behavior
specific to deferent societies.
Gebners comment is traditional and non traditional uses of mass media channel, in the traditional
forms of communication masses learned and shared ideas, opinions and experiences in an orally
transmitted manner. By the development of the language this became more effective. In the study
of traditional forms of communication the human language as signs and codes which is used to
make the linguistic patterns are significant.
There are many instances for traditional forms of communication such as song, dance and drama,
were used to promote campaigns against social evils such as alcoholism, dowry system,
discrimination against women, child slavery, exproitation and age old taboos.
Some research’s indicates that many countries in the world consider the traditional media to be
essential in emphasizing contemporary concerns and to promote political and social aims. This is
also intermixing with more modern forms of communication.
These are the significance of traditional media.
 Comments of the Lecturer