1. What is Communication?
Güven Selçuk

2. The Definition of Communication
“Communication ranges from the mass media (i.e. newspapers, magazines, radio and television) and popular culture (books, music, films), through language to individual and social behaviour.” (J. Fiske)

3. As John Fiske says, ''it is talking to one another, it is television, it is spreading information, it is our hair style, it is the way we dress, it is literary criticism.''

4. As one of the vital features of human beings, communication is experienced from the cradle to the grave and includes all of the intentional and unintentional dimensions in our relations with ourselves, with others, and with our environment.

5. Definition of communication:
To share;
To transmit;
To exchange;
Messages;
Meanings;
Information.

6. Some Dictionary Definitions
Communication
a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs or behaviour (Longman Dictionary)
Communicate
to transmit information, thought or feeling so that it is satisfactorily received or understood.

7. Why do we communicate. To survive. To work with others (cooperation)
Why do we communicate? To survive. To work with others (cooperation). To satisfy our personal needs. To be involved with other people, to form and maintain relationships. To persuade other people to think in the way we do or to act in the way we do. To gain/exert power or to rebel against power. To give and receive information. To gain economic benefits. To make sense of the world and our experience of it. To decide on what we think and what we do. To express our imagination and ourselves to others.

8. Importance of communication
As a social being one cannot not communicate.
Through communication, and through the relations of communication, we define individual and collective identities  we become who we are in and through communication.

9. Features of Communication
It is everywhere.
It is continuous.
It involves the sharing of meaning.
It contains predictable elements.
It occurs at more than one level.
It occurs amongst both equals and unequals.

10. Levels of communication
Intra-personal
Inter-personal
Group
Organizational
Mass

11. Communication science and the study of mass communication
Concerns of communication theory and research
Who communicates to whom? (sources and receivers)
Why communicate? (functions and purposes)
How does communication take place? (channels, languages, codes)
What about? (content, references, types of information)
What are the outcomes of communication (intended or unintended)?

12. For Example: physicalize a phone conversation

13. The picture can be described as:
A man (speaks)
Message (to)
A telephone (connected by)
Cables (to a)
Receiver

14. In communications studies, this can be put as:
Sender
Code (Message)
Medium
Channel
Receiver

15. Sender The information source
Can be individual, group, and institution
Image, credibility, and techniques of the sender have an effect on the outcome of the communication process

16. Code A system of meaning
Sign: the basic physical vehicle of meaning in a language
Encode: making code
Decode: interpreting code

17. Medium
The technical or physical means of converting the code (the message) into something that can be transmitted along the channel.
Of course, media in their historical sense are quite different from today’s media.
John Fiske distinguishes three types of media:
The presentational media
The representational media
The mechanical media

18. The presentational media: the voice, the face, the body, and spoken words and gestures. These media are particularly important in face-to- face communications, but they can also be represented in other communications.
The representational media: books, paintings, photographs, writing, films and, more recently, web-based information.
The mechanical media: telephones, radio, television, computer, etc. Mechanical media are the transmitters of the two other media.

19. Channel The physical means of transmission
Light waves, sound waves, radio waves, telephone cables, the nervous system, and the like

20. Receiver The destination of information
Audience: the collective word for receivers in mass communication process
Feedback: the transmission of the reaction of the receiver back to the sender
Effect: changes on action and attitude of the receiver

21. Why is it difficult to define communication?
Communication is as many-sided and complex as life itself.
Therefore, the complexity of communication defies a simple definition.
Every definition—by definition—necessarily leaves out and excludes some other aspect of our social communication network by drawing the boundary of communication in one way or another.

22. Also, new socio-cultural and technological developments are—necessarily—not included in older definitions.
Definitions, necessarily, give a limited perspective. limit = boundary

23. Harold Lasswell’s famous 5W formula of 1948 asks a number of simple questions that may be applied to any communication act:

24. Elements (Factors) of Communication
a message
an initiator (sender) (source, transmitter, encoder, addresser, author)
a medium (or media)
a mode/vehicle (channel)
a recipient (receiver) (decoder, addressee, reader)
an effect

25. Process of Communication
Sender decides message
Sender encodes message (encoding)
Receiver decodes message (decoding)
Receiver returns a signal to let the sender know whether the message has or has not been understood. (feedback)