Seminar Notes - Communication Theory

-Rhetoric
-Semiotics
-Critical Communication
-Cybernetic
-Phenomenological

The Shannon-Weaver Mathematical Model, 1949
-based on telephone and radio communication
-doesn't work perfeectly for GD as it focuses on message to audience, but does not have a feedback loop to the client to ensure the message recieved is correct
-linear communication (A to B)
-it is only successful is B responds in the way A wants it to.

Communication problems
-level A - technical problems - accuracy of message
-level B - semantic problems - how precisely conveyed
-level C - effectiveness problems - how effectively does the recieved message affect behaviour.

Noise
-static - technical
-what work is amongst/up against
-not intended - but then can become the message

Redundancy Vs Entropy
-Entropy - strengths of message fades - seaps out
-Redundancy - nothing is lost - message is not changed in any way
-aim to maximise redundancy in erms of audience, audience decoding, message encoding of ideas
-simplify message increases redundancy
-makes message more predictable/conventional

LOW INFORMATION - HIGH PREDICTABILITY

Phatic Communication
-communication at a base level - without knowing its happening
-e.g. a handshake with someone saying hello, you already know how to respond, by shaking there hand and saying hello.
-if a person shook your hand with an electric buzzer you wouldn't know what they are tying to communicate.

Redundancy relies on convention
Entropy is radical/shocking

Tracy Emin
-some would understand and get alot from it
-some others wouldn't class her work as art

Hawaii
- sterotype - grass skirts - cocktails - cocunut bra's

Book - 'Introduction to Communication Studies - John Fisk

Portfolio Task 3 - Essay Ideas

I have chosen to focus my essay on the idea of the passive female, and how the idea of this has been constructed throught he use of female orientated advertising/marketing.

I will focus on:
-The Gaze, specifically the male gaze and how men percieve women - and the power it gives them
-Active male/Passive female
-Objectification of women - sex objects
-Consumerism - 'you are what you have' (Berger)

The advertisements that I will discuss:

Lynx TV Ad:
-the man is shown to have power over women
-it invites the spectator to want to be like him
-the way in which the girls are percieve, at first they are shown as sexy, aggressive in competition with eachother, but when it is shown that they are running towards a man it makes them look needy and dependent.

Tom Ford Fragrance Ad:
-woman is objectified and dehumanised
-spectator has the power and can envisage himself were the perfume bottle has been placed
-'lf you do not measure up, you won't be loved',
-the beauty myth
-women allow themselves to be passive, because when they make themselves look beautiful they are allowing/wanting, others to look at them and be attracted to them.

Key text:

Books -

Berger, J (1972) Ways of Seeing, London, British Broadcasting Corporation
Coward, R (1984) The Look, London, Patadin
Lupton, E (1993) Mechanical Brides, New York, Cooper-Hewitt
Wolf, N (1991) The Beauty Myth, London, Vintage
Loeb, L.A (1994) Consuming Angels, New York, Oxford University Press
Tillotson, K (2004) retro Housewife, Singapore, Collectors Press

Internet -

Chandler, D (2000) Notes on 'The Gaze',
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze01.html