Hi, and welcome to the communication theory course.

In this first lecture,

we will discuss a few approaches to the communication itself.

So, what is communication?

Why do we have to study it,

and what is theory,

and how it can be useful and applicable to the practice?

But before we start,

let us outline a few starting tips which will be useful for you during your classes.

So first of all, we want you to go through the suggested books and materials.

We prepared quite a set of them which will be very helpful,

if you want to get some more insights about the particular theories or

you want to understand the communication process itself quite deeper.

The second tip would be recalling to your previous experiences.

As there is nothing more practical than a good communicational theory,

we want you to think a little bit about what happened to you and how

this theory might be applicable to the situations you've been into.

And maybe, it will help you to enhance the future communication situations in general.

The third tip is all about sharing.

We want you to share your thoughts in the comments

so we can understand how the studying process goes,

how do you understand the material,

and how do you take it for your personal life,

and how it is useful for you there.

So, if you don't mind,

please provide us with some feedback and provide us with illustrations on the way

how do you apply the theories we discuss in your regular life.

Don't give up if it gets complicated.

Some theories are more difficult to understand and to

process than the others, but maybe, altogether,

we can go through them and we can provide a proper understanding of

the theoretical background of the communication theory and communicate.

We hope that this course would attract many students from

the various backgrounds from

different professions and from different studying backgrounds as well.

We hope that intercultural aspect of this communication will be

helpful for overall theoretical understanding of the communicative process.

So communicate, as what we are doing here,

is studying communication theory.

So now, we are getting closer to the communication study itself

and before we jump into the course and talk about theory,

let us think above the communications.

How did humans develop their ability to communicate?

Are we the only creatures that exchange messages and

symbols in order to create this communicative environment?

What is communication itself and how we can approach it?

How do we process this process of exchange with the creation of the meaning as itself?

So, what can be the weaknesses and what are the strengths of the theoretical approaches?

This would be the major questions of this class,

and why do we study communication in the very beginning?

Well, communication and communication theory in particular,

can be called the most practical of the academic disciplines.

As we do communicate on an everyday basis

from the early morning until the very late evening,

we communicate from person-to-person.

We communicate online.

We communicate when we give public speeches.

What can we actually call communication?

At some moment, we can think about the medium through which we

communicate with people and writing an article

for your blog or writing an article to

the local newspaper can be considered as a mass communication as well.

Also, communication happens when we just think about the way how

things go and we can understand our society through

communicative processes much better when we just think about

the different bodies and organisations who somehow interact with each other.

In this case, we talk about

this global communication perspective which

helps us to understand the whole nature of the society.

So basically, this course would be about all parts of

this communicative process which happens to us and part of which we become.

But the first thing to do is to define what communication actually is.

Within the academic discipline,

there are more than 200 definitions of the communication.

In here, we can outline just a few of them.

So here, what we found in one of the textbooks,

communication is a relational process of creating

an interpretive messages that elicit in the response.

So here, Griffin speaks about the process which kind of works

towards the relationship-building between individuals and is well,

during this process, they create and interpret the messages which have been sent.

The response as a feedback is also one

of the very important features of the communication.

Let's take a look at another definition.

Systemic process in which individuals interact with

each other through symbols to create and interpret meanings.

Again, we speak about meanings which are created during this process

of the interaction which also is called systemic in this case.

Well, if you think about the communication,

it is quite systemic and in different contexts,

it occurs during the special processes which we usually have some goal to imply in.

The third definition of the communication,

what we want to present here,

is the process of generating meaning by sending and receiving

verbal and nonverbal symbols and signs that are influenced by multiple contexts.

So here we dive deep into the context which is important for this particular definition.

Again, we see communication as a process of generating meaning.

So here, we think about the purpose of the communication,

to exchange these meanings and exchange these ideas between

individuals sending and receiving another part of the process.

So basically, in all three definitions,

we do speak about the process.

Verbal and non-verbal symbols,

they occur as they are part of our communication and this is the particularly message

which we exchange but it's more broken into particular particles.

So, as we've seen three different definitions of

the communication which basically talk also about the communication,

we can outline the key characteristics.

The key points of which authors focus during

all of the process discussing what communication basically is.

So, this is the process.

Communication never stops and it happens.

It can begin at some point and it continues through

the relationship building or through this delivery

of the message but it also have to be extended,

and it's never seen as a part or is something what happens once and it

cannot be understood without

the relation to what happened before and what are going to happen next.

Within this process, we always have at least two individuals or

two groups of people who are involved into the communicative process.

This can be called sender and the receiver.

Sender is the one who encodes the message, crafting the message,

implying the key ideas, and the meaning,

which supposed to be transferred and transported to the audience.

What is this case can be one individual or

a group of individuals but we call them a receiver.

A receiver is the one who decodes the message and try to understand what

was meant to be said and implies this idea to himself or herself.

But basically, think about what happens when you like the book.

You go through the book,

you read the book, and you see the main ideas.

You probably would have some thoughts about the way how the main characters look,

where do they leave,

how do they interact with each other?

And then, you see the screen adoption of this book and the director would choose

different characters who look exactly not the

same as you thought about them when you were reading the book.

So here, we see the main problem of this decoding and encoding of

the message because people would understand and process the messages differently.

The next point would be verbal and non-verbal symbols.

These are the basic tools we use within the communication.

Yes, like we can speak.

We speak with the words but what about our gestures?

What about our body language?

What about emojis?

Can they be interpreted as a text?

Can they be pronounced somehow out loud?

No. So verbal and non-verbal symbols as elements of this communicative process.

The next part, creating meaning in the message.

The message can be seen as another important element

here as what happens between send and receive when they communicate, right?

We usually have some particular goal which

we want to achieve during our communication process.

That's why we created this message which will be transferred from sender to the receiver.

But implying this meaning and decoding this meaning,

what was to be sent or what was said actually and how it was interpreted by the public?

It's a big question of the communication and we don't have to

forget that communication always happens within particular context.

When you're doing a public speech,

this is a one context.

In other conversation between you and your partner

during some everyday routine objectives, that's different context.

So in this case,

the same person would communicate differently.

So, we need to consider the context while we are discussing the process of communication.

Defining Communication

Communication theory: bridging academia and practice

Meet the Instructors