Breaking with tradition: Individual agency in mass communication

How do individual actors and modern day networks effect the traditional communication system? One of the traditional views of communication is expressed in the Shannon and Weaver sender-receiver model (drawn below, credit goes to Stephen Billig). 

Their 1949 model was based on radio transmission and highlighted the roles of the encoder (message originator), the message, the channel (through which the message is sent, e.g. radio or telephone), the decoder, and noise, or the risk of environmental interferences with the message. If the intended recipient successfully understands ("decodes") what the sender intended to him/her to understand, then the model is successfully realized. Amazing! 

If not, then it's a game of Telephone gone very, very wrong. For better or for worse. Right?

And maybe hilariously so. (Like Norman Rockwell depicted above, for an edition of the Saturday Evening Post.) Let's be honest here. Even with technology at our fingertips and ears--keyboards, headsets, bluetooth devices--it is rare that we successfully fulfill the Shannon and Weaver model. While we are gigabytes and exabytes ahead of Rockwell's time, our lovely human propensity for curiosity, laughter, and sense of scandal prevail. 

And, more often that not, our communications with others can get fuzzy. Though technology is increasingly used in place of face-to-face contact, it is not always the best medium for transmission of information. Skype drops out. You can't read your mother's face at the other end of the telephone when you tell her you had not one, but two hotdogs for dinner. From a cart. And the emoticons on GChat can't convey tone or accurately convey non-verbal reactions. (They're still missing an appropriate sarcasm emoticon.)

When it comes to mass media (instead of just the usual neighborhood gossip), what happens when we are part of the encoding process, and not just the decoding work? Professor Hayden highlighted this puzzle when he discussed the "the pervasiveness of mass self communication that preferences networks over nation states." This ability to mass self communicate -- via Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit -- seemingly "allows us to be reflexive consumers of information." In other words, he noted, "We also create agency over how, when and why what we consume as information, do with it, and create it."

Such thoughts are a fascinating way to frame this new era of communication and the complex issues that arise from it (including debates over fair use and copy right laws). 

The upside to all these debates is that although there are complexities that come with all of these developments, there are also benefits and exciting usage of technology that come out of the increasing role of individual agency in the mass communication process. See U.S. Ambassador to Korea Sung Kim's "Ask the Ambassador" video above. (Spoiler: I hope PSY doesn't request that he take it down because it includes snippets of "Gangnam Style".) More of Amb. Sung's videos are available here: http://www.youtube.com/user/USEmbassySeoul.