What is the term for any interference that causes the message you send to be different from the message your audience understands?

The communication process can be broken down into a series of eight essential components, each of which serves an integral function in the overall process:

1. Source
2. Message
3. Channel
4. Receiver
5. Feedback
6. Environment
7. Context
8. Interference

Source

The source imagines, creates, and sends the message. The source encodes the message by choosing just the right order or the best words to convey the intended meaning, and presents or sends the information to the audience (receiver). By watching for the audience’s reaction, the source perceives how well they received the message and responds with clarification or supporting information.

Message

“The message is the stimulus or meaning produced by the source for the receiver or audience” (McLean, 2005). The message brings together words to convey meaning, but is also about how it’s conveyed — through nonverbal cues, organization, grammar, style, and other elements.

Channel

“The channel is the way in which a message or messages travel between source and receiver.” (McLean, 2005). Spoken channels include face-to-face conversations, speeches, phone conversations and voicemail messages, radio, public address systems, and Skype. Written channels include letters, memorandums, purchase orders, invoices, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, email, text messages, tweets, and so forth.

Receiver

“The receiver receives the message from the source, analyzing and interpreting the message in ways both intended and unintended by the source” (McLean, 2005).

Feedback

When you respond to the source, intentionally or unintentionally, you are giving feedback. Feedback is composed of messages the receiver sends back to the source. Verbal or nonverbal, all these feedback signals allow the source to see how well, how accurately (or how poorly and inaccurately) the message was received (Leavitt & Mueller, 1951).

Environment

“The environment is the atmosphere, physical and psychological, where you send and receive messages” (McLean, 2005). Surroundings, people, animals, technology, can all influence your communication.

Context

“The context of the communication interaction involves the setting, scene, and expectations of the individuals involved” (McLean, 2005). A professional communication context may involve business suits (environmental cues) that directly or indirectly influence expectations of language and behaviour among the participants.

Interference

Interference, also called noise, can come from any source. “Interference is anything that blocks or changes the source’s intended meaning of the message” (McLean, 2005). This can be external or internal/psychological. Noise interferes with normal encoding and decoding of the message carried by the channel between source and receiver.

The Transmission Model of communication (see Figure 1.2) describes communication as a linear, one-way process in which a sender intentionally transmits a message to a receiver (Ellis & McClintock, 1990). This model focuses on the sender and the message within a communication encounter. Although the receiver is included in the model, this role is viewed as more of a target or end point rather than part of an ongoing process. In this case, one presumes that the receiver either successfully receives and understands the message or does not. As such, this model is not representative of effective communication for how messages are received.

Figure  1.2: The Transmission Model of Communication

Because this model is sender- and message-focused, responsibility is put on the sender to help ensure the message is successfully conveyed. This model emphasizes clarity and effectiveness, but it also acknowledges that there are barriers to effectively sending communication. Noise is anything that interferes with a message being sent between participants in a communication encounter. Even if a speaker sends a clear message, noise may interfere with a message being accurately received and decoded. The Transmission Model of communication accounts for environmental and semantic noise.

• Environmental noise is any physical noise present in a communication encounter. Other people talking in a crowded hallway could interfere with your ability to transmit a message and have it successfully decoded.
• Semantic noise refers to an interference that occurs in the encoding and decoding process resulting in different interpretations of what is being communicated (e.g., lack of understanding, clarity, and confusion of words and meanings). To use a technical example, a nurse may tell the client that they should progress their walking time to 60 minutes a day. However, the client’s interpretation of this could be influenced by uncertainty surrounding how fast to walk, how quickly to progress to 60 minutes per day, and whether these 60 minutes should occur all at the same time.

Nursing Example

A client is seeking care for a suspected urinary tract infection. A nurse communicates to a client that they need to provide a urine sample and fully empty their bladder. The nurse speaks quietly in an attempt to maintain confidentiality because the client is sitting near a waiting room full of people. The client provides a urine sample but does not follow the proper technique for collecting the sample.

Analysis: In this case, the message was successfully sent to the client as evidenced by the client’s action and response to the request. The interference of environmental noise (nurse speaking softly) and semantic noise (nurse not providing complete instructions) affected how the message was decoded and ultimately the accuracy of the urine sample results.

Pros: This model spotlights the sender and the possible noise that can affect the transmission of communication.

Cons: This model is limited because it privileges how the sender communicates, with little attention paid to how the message is received. It is also limited in terms of the message, because it simply evaluates whether or not the message was delivered. The example above illuminates how detail and nuance should be attended to when communicating.

Activity: Check Your Understanding

In Figure 1.3, click on any features that represent environmental noise.

Figure 1.3: Elements of environmental noise.

Attribution Statement

With the exception of the nursing example, content was adapted from (with editorial changes):

Communication in the Real World: An Introduction to Communication Studies by University of Minnesota. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.