Features of social communication. Types of social communication History and concept of social communication

The human ability to communicate, including through language, is unique. Over the past 200 years, the ability to exchange information across time and space has expanded enormously. For modern man distances have been "shrinked" and he can send messages over long distances at high speed. Today, the communication process is a necessary prerequisite for the formation and functioning of all social systems. In life modern society and for every person, social communication occupies a special place. Almost all spheres of life of a modern person are directly or indirectly connected with it. Social communication makes possible connections between generations, ensures the accumulation and transmission of social experience, its enrichment, and the transmission of culture. With the help of social communication, joint activities are built. It is through social communication that management is carried out, therefore it represents a social mechanism through which power arises and is realized in society.

Modern science offers an understanding of communication formed on a social basis, on a linguistic basis and on the communicative basis itself. The concept of “social communication” covers all three of these approaches. The first approach is focused on the study of communication means for the sake of their application (implementation social functions communications); the second approach is related to problems of interpersonal communication; the third - with the problems of the impact of mass communication on social relations.

The term “communication” is used by many social, natural, and technical sciences. Usually we mean an elementary communication scheme, which presupposes the presence of at least three components - the communicator (transmitting subject), the message (transmitted object), and the recipient (receiving subject). We can say that communication is the interaction between subjects through some object. Social communication is distinguished from other processes by:

O the presence of two subjects, which can be two people, a group of people or society as a whole;

About the presence of a transmitted object, which in turn can have a material form - a gift, a book, a speech, or be of a psycho-emotional nature, for example, the communicator can inspire sympathy, trust, antipathy in the recipient;

About expediency, when the result of the interaction of subjects is the exchange not only and not so much of material objects, but the transmission and understanding of information transmitted through signs, symbols, texts, which have both a sensory form of perception and internal speculative content.

So, social communication is an indirect and purposeful interaction between two subjects.

In expedient social communication, participants in the process pursue three goals:

O cognitive - dissemination or acquisition of new knowledge;

O incentive - stimulating others to take some action;

O expressive - expressing emotions or receiving them.

Social communication is a very complex process, which results in the assimilation of meanings conveyed by the communicant. They can be expressed in two ways - in the form of either communicative messages (speech, writing, drawing), or utilitarian products (weapons, clothing, dishes), which also embody human knowledge and skills. It seems that the recipient may well use both types of messages to achieve meaning, but both cases have their own pitfalls. The meaning embedded in a product must be able to be extracted, “decoded” and only then comprehended, and this process is undoubtedly more difficult than understanding a text written in one’s native language. The recipient’s ignorance of the codes, symbols, and signs used by the communicant when transmitting information reduces the communication process to almost zero.

But understanding the text is associated with many problems. Let us highlight three forms of communicative understanding: communicative cognition, when the recipient receives new knowledge; communicative perception, when the recipient received a message, but could not understand its full depth (I read the poem, but did not understand its meaning); pseudo-communication, when the recipient remembers and repeats the message, but does not even superficially understand the meaning (this is called “cramming”); often pseudo-communication becomes the cause of many misunderstandings leading to conflicts.

Any communication is a creative process, since the recipient not only understands the superficial and deep meaning of the transmitted message, but also gives it his own assessment, guided by personal ethical principles and an understanding of practical benefits.

Social meanings are subject to aging, i.e. over time they lose their value. Thus, some meanings, for example, the laws of physics, remain relevant for centuries, while others, for example, the names of clothing items of the last century, are of no interest to anyone, and a rare person will remember them now. The study of social communication comes down to studying how knowledge, skills, emotions, and incentives are transmitted to recipients, how they are understood, and how long they retain their value for society.

The functions of social communication are determined both for the process as a whole and for individual communicative acts, and even in one separate communication process several functions can be combined.

For example, R.O. Jacobson, a Russian and American linguist and literary critic, considers the functions associated with the participant or element of communication and identified based on the analysis of the communicative model he developed:

• 0 emotive, associated with the addresser and aimed at expressing his attitude to what he says;
• 0 connative, directly affecting the interlocutor;
• 0 referential, context-oriented and representing a reference to the object referred to in the message;
• 0 poetic, aimed at a message. This is a central function for verbal art, which is characterized by greater attention to the form of the message than to its content;
• 0 phatic, contact-oriented, for her it is not the transfer of information that is important, but maintaining contact; this is, for example, talking about the weather;
• 0 metalinguistic, associated with the code: without knowing the word, we can ask about its meaning and get an answer. The answer can be given descriptively, using other words, or maybe simply by showing an object.

Other scientists minimize the number of functions, highlighting the main ones. Thus, psychologist and linguist Karl Bühler formulates three functions of language that manifest themselves in any speech act:

• 0 expressive (expression);
• 0 appellative (appeal), which relates to the listener;
• 0 representative (message), which correlates with the subject of speech.

In other words, the communicator expresses himself, appeals to the recipient and represents the subject of communication.

In social communication, it is customary to distinguish three more functions of language:

• 0 cognitive (cognitive) or information function, which serves to convey ideas, concepts, messages to participants in a communicative act;
• 0 evaluative, which expresses personal relationships and assessments;
• 0 affective, which conveys feelings and emotions.

American sociolinguist Roger T. Bell correlates three areas with these functions of language humanities- linguistics and philosophy (cognitive function), sociology and social psychology (evaluative function), psychology and literary criticism (affective function).

In the introduction, without extensive argumentation, the initial definition of social communication was proposed. Now let us dwell on two important points for its understanding: firstly, the generic concept of “communication” and types of communication; secondly, on varieties of social communication.

The evolution of the concept of “communication” in the Russian language can be easily traced in reference literature. IN Explanatory dictionary living Great Russian language V. I. Dahl, the word “communication” was written with one “m” and was interpreted as “paths, roads, means of connecting places.” It was in this sense that N.V. Gogol wrote: “Nevsky Prospekt is the universal communication of St. Petersburg.” Before the revolution, the term “communication” had no other meanings (since the beginning of the 20th century, it began to be written with two letters “m”). Soviet encyclopedic Dictionary(M., 1979) indicates two meanings:

1. transport, communications, underground utility networks;
2. communication, transfer of information in the process of activity, including signaling methods of communication in animals. Is the concept of communication exhausted by what has been said?

Let us begin with an elementary scheme of communication, which has the virtue of being accepted by all known definitions and concepts.

Communication presupposes the presence of at least three participants: the transmitting subject (communicant) - the transmitted object - the receiving subject (recipient). Thus, communication is a type of interaction between subjects mediated by some object. To distinguish communication from other processes, let us pay attention to its following distinctive features:

1. The participants in communication are two subjects, which can be: an individual or a group of people, up to society as a whole, as well as animals (zoocommunication). In the role of the subject of communication, one can think of God, to whom one turns in prayer. Inanimate objects are excluded from the concept of communication: thus, the interaction of the sun with the earth is not a communication process.
2. There must be a transmitted object, which may have a material form (book, speech, gesture, alms, soccer ball, etc.) or not, for example, hypnosis. The communicator can unconsciously influence the recipient, instilling in him sympathy, antipathy, trust, love. A degenerate form of communication is the communication of a person with himself (inner speech, thoughts, etc.).

3. Communication is characterized by expediency, or functionality, therefore nonsense is not a communication act. Expediency can manifest itself in three forms:
3.1. Moving a material object in geometric space from point A to point B - this is the goal of transport or energy communication;
3.2. The goal of interacting subjects is not to exchange material objects, but to communicate to each other meanings of an ideal nature. The carriers of meaning are signs, languages, symbols that have an external, sensually perceived form, and an internal, comprehended speculative content;
3.3. The elementary communication diagram is suitable for genetic connection"parents - children". As is known, this connection is carried out through genetic information (transmitted object), which is a specially encoded program for the reproduction (biosynthesis, replication) of a certain organism. The specificity of the situation is that children, i.e. recipient, are absent before the appearance of genetic information and are synthesized on its basis. Zygote, i.e. a fertilized cell, which marks the formation of an embryo, can also be considered as a union of parts of the parent’s body in the form of sex cells - gametes, but the child is not a part of his parents, but their likeness. IN in this case the purpose of communication is to transfer this similarity from generation to generation, for example, the transfer of “horse-likeness” from a horse to a foal.

Based on the above, we can give the following interpretation: Communication is an indirect and purposeful interaction of two subjects, implemented in three different forms:

1. movement (transportation) of material objects, including energy, pathogenic viruses, migrating population, vehicles, cargo, etc.;
2. sharing meaningful messages;
3. genetic inheritance of biological images. Accordingly, three types of communication emerge: spatial (transport); semantic (semantic); genetic. For example, travel, trade, mail, electrical and radio communications are phenomena of spatial communication; handshake, dance, sacrifice, political demonstration, transfer cultural heritage, dialogue of cultures, translation from language to language - manifestations of semantic communication; mestizoization, mixing of races and ethnic groups, genetic inheritance - refer to genetic communication. Of course, we are interested in semantic communication, but it is connected with other types of communication, and therefore we must not lose sight of the latter.

Depending on the recipient, two types of semantic communication are distinguished: internal communication (more precisely, intrapersonal), when the communicator and the recipient coincide, and external communication, when the addressee is another person, a group of people or society as a whole (mass audience). We will call external semantic communication social communication.

In connection with the development of a general typology of communication, it is appropriate to quote the words of the greatest ethnographer and anthropologist of the 20th century, C. Lévi-Strauss, who wrote:

“In any society, communication is carried out at least on three levels: communication of women; communication of property and services; communication of messages... Research on each of these sin systems is subject to the same method; they differ from each other only at the strategic level, which corresponds to them within a certain unified world of communications... Culture consists... of rules applicable in all kinds of communication games that occur both in nature and in culture."

Three communication levels (systems), which K. Levi-Strauss talks about, as genetic, spatial and semantic communication.

Let us also pay attention to the relationship between social and intrapersonal communication. The intellectual development of a child, as psychologists have shown, begins with egocentric speech out loud, which is then transformed into silent inner speech. But an indispensable condition for the appearance of egocentric speech, as well as its further transformation into inner speech, is the child’s presence in a social-communication environment. They say that intrapersonal (internal) communication is interiorized social communication. Thanks to this internalization, an adult becomes a full participant in natural dialogue, i.e. acts as a communicator and recipient of external messages. In this case, inner speech performs two functions:

• firstly, the function of a “semi-finished product” of external statements, the meaning of which is finally “completed in the word” (L. S. Vygotsky);
• secondly, the function of a special communication channel addressed to the “self” of the individual, his “inner voice”.

It is this hidden dialogue with oneself that causes mental disorders (phobias, depression, mania) that psychiatry deals with.

From the above it follows that the distinctive features of social communication are that the object of interaction between the communicator and the recipient is a meaningful message, and this interaction takes place not in mental space (as in the case of intrapersonal communication), but in the social environment, i.e. in social time and space. The message, as a rule, has a sensually perceived form (sound, image), but it may not have hypnosis, mental infection, parapsychology, etc., so we will refrain from indicating how the meaning of the message is expressed. We get: Social communication is the movement of meanings in social time and space. This is the most general philosophical definition of social communication, which has methodological significance in further discussions.

Depending on the participants in social communication, we will distinguish the following types:

• microsocial (interpersonal) communication, where participants directly contact each other on a psychological level;
• midisocial (group) communication, where the roles of communicants and recipients are not individual personalities, and social groups within a given society (society), for example, communication “teachers and students”;
• microsocial communication, where the communication subjects act as: either society as a whole, not divided into groups (mass communication), or state entities(international communication), or historically established civilizations (intercivilizational communication).

It is clear that types of social communication have different goals and objectives, use different communication means, are different in specificity and require special consideration. At the same time, in all cases, their main content is the exchange of meanings (spiritual values), which allows us to consider them as types of social communication.

The communication process is a necessary prerequisite for the formation, development and functioning of all social systems, because it is it that ensures the connection between people and their communities. With its help, it becomes possible to connect between generations, accumulate and transfer social experience, enrich it, divide labor and exchange its products, organize joint activities, and transmit culture.

Every real socio-psychological phenomenon has its roots in communication . If one person intends to influence another in any way, it is necessary that the source of influence address the object of influence with some kind of message, be it an eloquent convincing argument, a fleeting angry glance, or a message transmitted over a long distance using modern means communications.

The term “communication” is used in many sciences; an elementary communication diagram common to all sciences is shown in Fig. 2.4.

Fig.2.4 Elementary communication diagram

The above communication scheme justifies itself in the field of wired and radio communications, information theory, telecommunications and other technical applications, but it is not a social communication scheme. Its limitation is that it does not show how new meanings are generated in the process of communication. That's why it's called elementary.

The elementary diagram shows that communication presupposes the presence of at least three participants: the transmitting subject (communicator) - the transmitted object (message) - the receiving subject (recipient).

According to this scheme, communication is a type of interaction between subjects, mediated by some object. To distinguish communication from other processes, let us pay attention to its following distinctive features:

1. The participants in communication are two subjects, which can be: an individual person or a group of people, up to society as a whole, as well as animals. According to this criterion, the interaction of inanimate objects is excluded from the concept of communication

2. The presence of a transmitted object is required, which may or may not have a material form (book, speech, gesture, gift, etc.).

3. Communication is characterized by expediency or functionality. Expediency can manifest itself in three forms:

Moving a material object in space from point A to point B - this is the goal of transport or energy communication.

The goal of interacting subjects is not to exchange material objects, but to communicate to each other meanings of an ideal nature.

An elementary communication diagram (Fig. 1) is suitable for understanding the genetic connection “children - parents”. In this case, the purpose of communication is to transmit the genetic image from generation to generation. For example, like the transfer of “horseness” from a horse to a foal.

Based on the above, we can give the following definition: communication is an indirect and purposeful interaction between two subjects.

Depending on the spatio-temporal environment, a typification of communication is obtained, presented in Fig. 2.5.

Fig. 2.5 Typification of communication

As can be seen from the figure (Fig. 2.5), there are four types of communication, i.e. indirect and expedient interaction of subjects:

material (transport, energy, population migration, epidemics, etc.);

genetic (biological, species);

mental (intrapersonal, autocommunication);

social ( public).

The last three types are semantic. Here, the transmitted message is not a thing or material property given in sensations, but a speculatively comprehended meaning. In this case, the following law of communication is observed: messages of semantic communications always have ideal content and, as a rule, but not always, a material, sensually perceived form.

It is important to pay attention to the fact that all types of semantic communication are interconnected through the individual, that is, the subject of social communication. Thanks to genetic communication, we obtain the neurophysiological and anatomical prerequisites for mental and speech activity. We can say that heredity makes a person capable of social communication.

Intrapersonal communication is formed during the intellectual development of a person in the social environment. It is believed that intrapersonal communication is internalized social communication. In this case, inner speech performs two functions:

firstly, the function of a “semi-finished product” of external statements, the meaning of which is finally “completed in the word”;

secondly, the function of a special communication channel addressed to the “self” of the individual, his “inner voice”.

It is this hidden dialogue with oneself that is activated when perceiving works of art, which must not only be comprehended as a message about something, but experienced as a personal experience.

So, social communication is inextricably linked with genetic and psychological semantic communications, which serve as its necessary prerequisites. At the same time, it influences their formation and formation.

Now we can give a scientific definition of social communication: social communication is the movement of meanings in social time and space . This movement is possible only between subjects who are somehow involved in the social environment, therefore the obligatory presence of communicants and recipients is implied.

To gain a deeper understanding of the definition of social communication, we will look at three points:

what is meaning , forming the content of messages;

how is this meaning understood? recipient;

how social time and social space differ from astronomical time and geometric space.

The problem of meaning

We will focus on the meanings contained in social-communication relationships.

In expedient, rather than chaotic, social communication, communicants and recipients consciously pursue three goals:

cognitive - dissemination (communicator) or acquisition (recipient) of new knowledge or skills;

incentive - stimulating other people to take some action or receiving the necessary incentives;

expressive - expression or acquisition of certain experiences, emotions.

The initial source of knowledge, skills, incentives, and emotions is the individual psyche. In it, these stimuli originate and move in mental time and space. In order for social communication to begin, the communicant must objectify, reify his meanings. They need to be expressed in the content of the communication message. A communication message moves through material space and time, eventually reaching its recipient. In order for social communication to be completed, the recipient needs to disentangle the semantic content of the message. He must understand it and incorporate the understood meanings into his psyche, into his individual memory.

Social communication is a very complex process. In it, operations of objectification and deobjectification of meanings and the transition of meanings from the mental level to the material and again to the mental level take place.

Problem of understanding

Up to this point, we paid attention to the semantic processes in the mind of the sender of messages - the communicator. Now let's turn to the recipient of the message - the recipient. It is the recipient who is the final link that determines the effectiveness of semantic communication.

The only way to master the meaning of a message is to understand it. Understanding is present in two mental processes: cognition and communication. When it comes to understanding the cause-and-effect relationship, the motives of human behavior, and the characteristics of the current situation, cognitive understanding takes place. When we talk about understanding a message, we mean communication understanding. Cognitive understanding is the subject of study of epistemology (the theory of knowledge), and communication understanding has been studied by hermeneutics since antiquity.

Speech understanding is a process in which, on the basis of some message, a mental image (representation) of the information contained in this message is created. The sequence of sounds we pronounce must correspond to the meaning of what is being communicated if we want to be understood. In addition, the "sender" and "receiver" must have a common knowledge of word meanings and grammar rules. Since speech is always incomplete, the “receiver,” in order to create a correct mental image of what is being communicated, must rely on his prior knowledge, context or setting, and other “clues” that facilitate understanding.

Communication understanding can take three forms:

the recipient receives new knowledge; communication understanding merges with cognitive understanding and communication cognition takes place;

the recipient who receives the message does not comprehend its deep meaning, limiting itself to communication perception for example, the text of a fable is understood, but the moral is not comprehended;

the recipient remembers, repeats, rewrites individual words or phrases without even understanding the superficial meaning of the message; then pseudo-communication takes place, since there is no movement of meanings, but only movement of the material shell of signs.

Communication cognition is a creative cognitive act, because the perceiver not only realizes the surface and deep meanings of the message, but also evaluates them from the point of view of ethical obligation and pragmatic benefit.

The thought that arose in the mind of the “addressee” is an internal structure. She is known only to him. The task of the “addresser” is to create a surface structure based on his deep understanding, while the task of the “receiver” is to return from the surface structure to the deep representation of the speaker, or the author of the text.

Various criteria for recognizing the level of understanding are put forward. Some scientists consider human behavior as a criterion. If one person asked another to turn off the light, then the cognitive and communication operations in the heads of the interlocutors are not important, what is important is whether the light will be turned off. If the light is turned off, then communication cognition takes place.

Others believe that a message is understood correctly if the recipient can make reasonable affirmative statements about its content. For example, discuss the disclosure of the topic, ideological and artistic merits, style of presentation, usefulness of the message, and so on.

Still others reject such simplified criteria, believing that they are not suitable for assessing an adequate understanding of an artistic, religious, or scientific work. To understand a perfect work of art means to re-create it in your inner world. The point is that deep understanding includes empathy. It is necessary not only to recognize the signs and understand the superficial and deep meaning of the message, but also to discover and experience the emotional state that possessed the author during the creative process. Of course, not every person can recreate works of art in his soul, and certainly not any work of art.

From the point of view of an inflated, practically unattainable level of communication knowledge, the possibility of people understanding each other is viewed with skepticism.

Our contemporary Yu. B. Borev says that: “Understanding is not at all a contact of souls. We understand the author’s thought to the extent that we are congenial with him. The volume of the author’s spiritual world is wider than the most extensive author’s text. Understanding deals with the text, not with spiritual world of man, although they are not alien to each other."

The problem of understanding is further aggravated by the fact that it is always accompanied by an “attribution of meaning” on the part of the recipient. The result is a situation of “superunderstanding,” which A. A. Potebnya described as follows: “The listener can understand much better than the speaker what is hidden behind the word, and the reader can comprehend the idea of ​​his work better than the poet himself. The essence, the power of such a work is not in what the author meant by it, but in how it affects the reader." Indeed, a hermeneutic scientist can read in the treatise of a medieval alchemist such revelations that he did not even suspect.

Without getting to the deep motives and intentions of the communicant, the recipient is able to maintain a dialogue with him and even understand the author’s thought to the extent that his inner world is in tune with the author’s world. As for pseudo-communication, in general, it is a common phenomenon in our lives and is the cause of many misunderstandings and conflicts.

Social space and time

There are different chronotopes or space-time coordinates. Now we need to explain why for social communication we choose a social chronotope, and not material three-dimensional space and astronomical time. After all, members of society live in a geographical space of three dimensions and time is counted according to calendars coordinated with the movement of the heavenly bodies. Why was it necessary to move away from the tangible and familiar material chronotope into a speculative chronotope?

It's all about the ideal nature of the meanings with which social communication operates. Meanings belong not to material, but to ideal reality, therefore their movement cannot be traced or measured with an ultra-precise chronometer. It needs to be fixed with ideal, not material instruments. Such “ideal tools” are the concepts of social space and social time.

Social space is a system of social relations between them that is intuitively felt by people. Social relationships are numerous and varied: family, work, neighbors, casual acquaintances, and so on. Therefore, social space must be multidimensional. When they say that a person “went up” or “sank to the bottom of life,” they mean social space.

Social time is an intuitive sense of the flow of social life experienced by contemporaries. This feeling depends on the intensity of social change. If there is little change in society, social time flows slowly; If there are a lot of changes, time speeds up. According to the "social clock", decades of stagnation are equal to a year of revolutionary restructuring.

Social meanings: knowledge, emotions, incentives have the property of aging, that is, they lose their value over time. But this does not apply to calendar-astronomical time, which we measure in days, years, centuries. What is meant here is social time, which is measured by the speed of social transformations. Meanings become obsolete because new, more relevant meanings appear and capture the attention of society. Therefore, such meanings as, for example, mathematical theorems retain their value for centuries, while others, such as weather forecasts for tomorrow, no longer interest anyone after one day. The movement of meanings in social time.

For large or small audience groups. It is conveyed through symbols and signs. With the rapid development of technology, this has acquired various forms, which, unfortunately, does not mean an increase in its effectiveness. Also, some theorists consider this phenomenon as a way of influencing large audience groups, with the help of which the goals of those who broadcast information are realized.

Social communication: characteristics

The communication process involves 5 elements, without which it cannot be realized:

• Communicator - the one who initiates the transmission and forms it into speech, text, audio and video form;
• The message itself;
• A channel through which communication with the audience is established;
• The audience to which the information is sent;
• The purpose of the transmission and the level of effectiveness of the message (impact).

Thus, social communication is characterized by the presence of certain information that is disseminated through a wide audience, its purpose is to influence the behavior, emotions and feelings of people. There is also a presentation of information that is focused exclusively on the intellectual development of the masses and broadening their horizons. This presentation is characterized by neutrality and the maximum possible objectivity without evaluative elements.

Types of social communication

Some researchers understand social communication not only as the large-scale dissemination of a message, but also as an individual exchange occurring between two people. Its usual form is conversation. Despite the fact that this fits the “social” characteristic, the social group is most often used in this meaning when talking about a group or mass of people. Therefore, in this article we use the more common meaning.

• Based on the type of audience, social communication is divided into specialized and mass. The second category does not imply any specifics and is ready to perceive any socially significant information.
• According to the source of the message, it can be formal or informal: official statements from the authorities correspond to the first type, and, for example, rumors about stars belong to the second.
• The transmission channel can be verbal and non-verbal.

Social communication and its intention

Intention is a goal. A very important element because the quality of perception depends on it. IN modern communication There are several types of intentions:

• Spread knowledge about the environment, inform people;
• Popularize ideas of goodness, draw the attention of the audience to disseminate culture and reliable information about it;
• Impact on public opinion and consciousness, as well as the audience;
• Support and help in solving difficult tasks, clarification of situations;
• Striving for neutral and pseudo-objective coverage of events;
• Establishing a dialogue between the audience and the broadcast source.

Social communication and criteria for its effectiveness

The basis of any type of communication is the establishment of a dialogue between the addressee and the addressee. If it is poorly installed, or if the interpretation of the recipient of information is incorrect, then there is no talk about the effectiveness of communication. Therefore, this topic is important when covering any type and type of communication.

There are a number of criteria by which the effectiveness of this phenomenon is established:

• A prerequisite is the desire of the communicator to clearly convey to the audience why he is publishing information, what is the purpose of broadcasting certain events.
• The next criterion is trust. If the audience trusts the author-communicator and the medium through which the message is conveyed, then the dialogue can be successful. The goals of the author and the audience must correspond to each other.
• The desire to build material on the basis of universal human values, making the right accents.
• Messages should not be intrusive or presented in an overly neutral form: this violates their naturalness, and therefore reduces the effectiveness of the impact by being associated with lies.

Thus, it is easily achievable if you follow a number of principles for presenting information and clearly indicate your attitude towards the audience. Despite the fact that there are various types of communication, this article describes the most universal characteristics and tips that will be useful to everyone associated with the QMS.

The communicative process is a necessary prerequisite for the formation, development and functioning of all social systems, because it is it that ensures the connection between people and their communities, makes possible communication between generations, the accumulation and transmission of social experience, its enrichment, division of labor and exchange of its products, organization joint activities, transmission of culture. It is through communication that control is carried out, therefore it represents, in addition to all of the above, a social mechanism through which power arises and is realized in society.

There are many definitions of social communication. The most common of them are: social communication is the transfer of information, ideas, emotions through signs and symbols; is a process that connects individual parts of social media. systems with each other; - this is the mechanism through which power is exercised (power as an attempt to determine the behavior of another person).

There are several types of social communication:

By nature of the audience:

• interpersonal (individualized)
• · specialized (group)
• · massive

According to the source of the message:

• · official (formal)
• · informal

By transmission channel:

• · verbal
• · non-verbal

Communication is a complex multicomponent process.

Its main components are:

• 1. Subjects of the communication process - the sender and recipient of the message (communicator and recipient);
• 2. Communication means - a code used to transmit information in symbolic form (words, pictures, graphics, etc.), as well as channels through which the message is transmitted (letter, telephone, radio, telegraph, etc.);
• 3. The subject of communication (any phenomenon, event) and the message reflecting it (article, radio broadcast, television story, etc.)
• 4. Effects of communication - the consequences of communication, expressed in a change in the internal state of the subjects of the communication process, in their relationships or in their actions.

Social communication in the process of its implementation solves three main interrelated tasks:

• 1. Integration of individuals into social groups and communities, and the latter into a single and integral system of society;
• 2. Internal differentiation of society, its constituent groups, communities, social organizations and institutions;
• 3. separation and isolation of society and various groups, communities from each other in the process of their communication and interaction, which leads to a deeper awareness of their specificity, to a more effective performance of their inherent functions.

Models of social communication

In the process of sociological research of communication processes, various models of social communication have been developed. Any communication activity requires not only knowledge of the characteristics of the communicator, analysis of the content of information, but also analysis of the audience. To carry out such an analysis, the communicator needs psychological competence. Knowledge of psychotypes allows you to determine the strategy of the communication process and predict actions. Psychotype- a model of the behavioral structure of the individual and its interaction with environment. Psychologists identify five main psychotypes: square, triangular, circular, rectangular and zigzag. Knowing the various psychotypes, the communicator in the communication process uses this information to properly manage the communication process.

The effectiveness of the audience's perception of information is influenced by the cultural, educational, and social levels of the communicant. Important factors for successful communication are knowledge of the audience, respect for it, and the ability to communicate with it on equal terms, i.e. equality of psychological positions of the communicator and the communicant. In the 80s XX century J. Goldhaberg created a charismatic model of communication. He proceeded from the fact that TV affects emotions more than the mind. Therefore, the success of television programs is less related to the information content, and directly depends on the “charisma” of the personality on the screen. D. Goldhaberg identified three types of charismatic personality:

• · The hero is an idealized personality, looks “what we want”, says “what we want”.
• · An antihero is a “common man”, one of us. Looks “like all of us”, says the same “like all of us”. We feel safe with him. We trust him.
• · Mystical personality - alien to us (“not like us”), unusual, unpredictable. This type of communicator is suitable for late night broadcasts.

When studying the influence on the perception of information intellectual level audiences found that for audiences with a high level of education, two-way communication is preferable. Such a message is a text that, in addition to the communicator’s arguments, contains the arguments of the opposing party. This is explained by the fact that such an audience needs to compare views and independently evaluate them. For an audience with a low educational level, it is recommended to use a one-way message containing only the communicator’s arguments. A one-way message is also effective when the audience agrees with the communicator and has not been exposed to the opponent's arguments.

The specialist’s goal is to change the communicator’s values ​​and behavior. If it is possible to change the behavior of the communication object, then the actions of the communicator are considered as influence. Influence can be exerted in three ways: by coercion; manipulating the communicant’s consciousness; inviting him to cooperate. Since the specialist does not have formal power, his influence is built either on manipulation, or on cooperation, or on these two methods at once.

Manipulation of consciousness is understood as the actions of a communicator aimed at changing psychological attitudes, value orientations, and behavior of individuals and entire audiences, regardless of their desire. Among the reasons for manipulation are: a person’s conflict with himself (A. Maslow); distrust towards other people (E. Fromm); a feeling of absolute helplessness (existentialism); fear of close interpersonal contacts (E. Bern); uncritical desire to receive the approval of everyone; the desire for symbolic mastery of a communication partner (S. Freud); implementation of the compensatory desire for power (A. Adler).

The purpose of manipulation is control over the audience, its manageability and obedience. To achieve the goal, various manipulative technologies are used: targeted transformation of information (silence, selection, “distortion”, distortion of information, inversion); concealment of impact; targets of influence; robotization. These technologies are used in such types of manipulative influence as:

• · Manipulation of images - since images have a strong psychological impact, they are widely used in communication practice, especially in advertising.
• · Conventional manipulation - is based not on personal psychological attitudes, but on social schemes: rules, norms, traditions accepted in society, family.
• · Operational-subject manipulation - based on such mental characteristics of the individual as the force of habit, inertia, logic of action execution.
• · Manipulation of the addressee's personality - the desire to shift responsibility for some action to the addressee, while the manipulator remains the winner.
• · Manipulation of spirituality - manipulation higher levels psyche (meaning of life, spiritual values, sense of duty).

The linear model of communication, developed by the famous American sociologist and political scientist G. Lasswell and including five elements, has become widely recognized and widespread:

• 1. Who? (transmits message) - communicator
• 2. What? (transmitted) - message
• 3. How? (transfer in progress) - channel
• 4. To whom? (message sent) - audience
• 5. With what effect? - efficiency

Having found Lasswell's model applicable, although greatly simplified, some researchers began to develop it further. R. Braddock added two more elements of the communicative act to it: the conditions under which communication takes place and the purpose for which the communicator speaks. Lasswell's formula reflects characteristic feature early models of communication - it assumes that the communicator always tries to influence the recipient, and, therefore, communication should be interpreted as a process of persuasion. This assumption orients the model for use primarily in the field of analysis of political propaganda.

The Shannon-Weaver model also describes communication as a linear, one-way process. Mathematician Shannon worked on his communication model in the late 40s at the request of the Bell Telephone laboratory, and this largely determined the “technical” nature of the created model, its “remoteness.” The main goal was to reduce the “noise” and make the exchange of information as easy as possible. The model describes five functional and one dysfunctional (noise) factors of the communication process. Functional elements include: a source of information that produces a message; the sender, who encodes the message into signals; the channel carrying this message; recipient; goal, or destination.

A signal is only as vulnerable as it can be distorted by noise. An example of distortion is the overlap of signals passing through the same channel at the same time.

The advantage of this scheme is that it is obvious that the message sent by the source and the message reaching the recipient do not have the same meaning. Later, the provision on distortion of information was supplemented by other reasons for the initial and final information. In connection with work on the selectivity of perception, it became known that the communication channel includes a sequence of filters, leading to the fact that the amount of information at the input to the system is greater than the information that triggers the output [N. Wiener].

The failure of communication participants to realize that the message sent and received are not always the same is common cause communication difficulties. This important idea contained in the Shannon-Weaver model attracted attention and was developed in the research of DeFluer, who expanded the original model into a more extensive network:

In particular, he notes that in the communication process, “meaning” is transformed into a “message” and describes how the sender translates the “message” into “information”, which is then sent through the channel. The receiver decodes the "information" into a "message", which in turn is transformed into a "meaning" at the destination. If there is a correspondence between the first and second meanings, then communication has taken place. But according to DeFluer, complete compliance is a very rare case.

The DeFluer model takes into account the main disadvantage of the linear Shannon-Weaver model - the absence of a factor feedback. He closed the chain of information from source to goal with a feedback line that repeats the entire path in the opposite direction, including the transformation of meaning under the influence of “noise.” Feedback allows the communicator to better tailor his message to the communication channel to improve the efficiency of information transfer and increases the likelihood of a match between the sent and received meaning.

The inclusion of feedback as a full-fledged element in the model of such seemingly one-sided processes as television, radio broadcasting, and the press at first glance seems problematic. But one should distinguish between first-order feedback, when the communicator can receive it during the influence, and second-order indirect communication, obtained on the basis of an assessment of the results of the influence. In addition, the communicator begins to receive feedback not only from the recipient, but from the message itself (for example, from the sound and image on the monitor). The fundamental lack of feedback can only be noted in exceptional cases of communication between large social groups- for example, when sending probes with information into space, “towards” extraterrestrial civilizations.

But the final overcoming of the simplified interpretation of communication as a one-way linear process was the Osgood-Schramm circular model. Her main distinguishing feature- postulating the circular nature of the mass communication process. Another feature of it is determined by the fact that if Shannon was primarily interested in the channels - mediators between the communicator and the audience, then Schramm and Osgood turned their attention to the behavior of the main participants in communication - the sender and the recipient, whose main tasks are encoding, decoding and interpreting the message.

A review of the definitions of “communication” carried out by U. Schramm made it possible to highlight the common thing that unites them - the existence of a set of information signs. This set may include not only facts and objects, but also emotions, latent meanings (“silent language”).

The adequacy of message perception presupposes the existence of an area in which the experience of the communicator and the recipient is similar, in which certain signs are recognized by them in the same way. The communicator and the recipient have a "fund of used meanings", a "framework of correspondence" and the area in which they can successfully communicate is in the "overlap" of their "frameworks". The success of communication also depends on the expectations presented by the participants in communication to each other. Professor of the Department of Journalism at the University of Memphis J. DeMott points out that between the media mass media and their audience has developed a kind of silent agreement, an agreement (Mass Comm Pact), defining the responsibilities of the QMS in relation to the audience, and the responsibilities of the audience in relation to the QMS. The imperfection of this agreement lies in the fact that the points of view of information consumers and its producers on the scope of these responsibilities are not the same.

According to Schramm, it is wrong to think that the communication process has a beginning or an end. In fact, it is endless. “We are small switches that continuously receive and distribute an endless stream of information...” (Some researchers go even further in this direction, arguing that a person’s entire inner life consists solely of a unique combination of what he saw, heard and remembered throughout his life.)

A possible criticism of this model is that it creates the impression of “equality” of the parties in the communication process. Meanwhile, this process is often unbalanced, especially when it comes to mass communication. Under these conditions, the recipient and the sender are not such equal participants in communication and the circular model, which equates them as links in one chain, does not adequately reflect the share of their participation in the communication process.

Dance's spiral model does not claim to be a full-fledged model and arose only as a striking argument in discussions devoted to the comparison of linear and circular models of communication. Dance notes that at present, most researchers would agree that the circular approach is more adequate for describing communication processes. But the circular approach also has some limitations. It assumes that communication takes place full circle to the point from which it begins. This part of the circle analogy is clearly wrong. The spiral shows that the communication process is moving forward, and what is in this moment in the communication process will influence the structure and content of communication in the future. Most models provide a so-called “frozen” picture of the communication process. Dance emphasizes the dynamic nature of this process, which contains elements, relationships and conditions that continuously change over time. For example, in a conversation, the cognitive field is constantly expanding for those involved in it. Participants receive more and more information on the issue under discussion, about the partner, and his point of view. Knowledge in the discussion expands and deepens. Depending on the course of the conversation, the spiral takes different forms in different settings and for different individuals.

Dance's model is certainly not a convenient tool for a detailed analysis of the communication process. The main advantage and purpose of Dance's spiral model is that it recalls the dynamic nature of communication. According to this model, a person in the process of communication is an active, creative individual capable of storing information, while many other models describe him rather as a passive being.

The goal of the American mass communication researcher G. Gerbner was to create a model with a wide scope of application. It was first introduced in 1956.

A specific feature of this model is that it takes on different forms depending on what type of communicative situation is being described. The verbal description of Gerbner's model is similar in form to Lasswell's: Someone perceives an event and responds in a given situation by some means to create content accessible to others in some form and context and conveys a message with some consequences. The graphical representation of the model already has its original appearance:

This model implies that human communication can be viewed as a subjective, selective, changeable and unpredictable process, and the human communication system as an open system.

What people select and remember from a communication message is often related to how they intend to use the information. The behavioristic approach connects selectivity of perception with categories of reward and punishment. The probability of selecting information within the framework of this concept is determined by the formula:

Selection probability = ( V - N) / U

B is the expected measure of remuneration,

N - intended punishment,

Y is the expected expenditure of effort.

In addition to the variables mentioned in this formula, many other factors play a role in the choice of messages: random interference, impulsiveness, audience habits, etc. - what Gerbner calls context.

Gerbner believes that the model can be used to describe a mixed type of communication, including both a person and a machine, is dynamic, visual, and applicable to communication interactions of various scales - both at the level of individuals and at the level of large social communities.

Let us take a closer look at the simplest linear communication model of Lasswell. He identified three main functions of the communication process as an inherently managerial process:

• 1. observation of the environment to identify threats to the represented society and determine opportunities to influence the value orientations of this society and / or its components
• 2. correlation of the ratio of the components of this society in its response to the “behavior” of the environment;
• 3. transfer of social heritage from generation to generation.

So, this model identifies the following components of the communication process:

• · communication source (switch)
• · content
• · communication channel
• target (audience)
• · Effect