Communication Case

Communication can be described in the following words, "Any act by which one person gives to or receives from another person information about that person's needs, desires, perceptions, knowledge, or affective states. Communication may be intentional or unintentional, may involve conventional or unconventional signals, may take linguistic or non-linguistic forms, and may occur through spoken or other modes." (National Joint Committee for the Communicative Needs of Persons with Severe Disabilities(1992), as cited in De Valenzuela,2002). In other words, communication is a process where a source encodes a message and sends it through a channel to the receiver, and the receiver decodes the message upon receiving it and sends feedback to the source where the source now receives the feedback as a receiver and so forth and so on (Dominick, 2011). As we can see, the key elements of the communication process are the source(the sender), the encoding, message,channel, decoding(done by receiver) and feedback. And also another element in the communication process is noise which can be considered as the final factor. Noise can be defined as any form of interference while the message is delivered. One type of communication is mass communication. "Mass communication refers to the process by which a complex organization with the aid of one or more machines produces and transmits public messages that are directed at large , heterogeneous scattered audiences (Dominick, 2011, p9). In other words, it's the process of carrying out a message to people in larger groups instantaneously with the help of a media such as newspaper, radio etc (Wisegeek, 2012).

The history of mass communication can be dated back to 100,000 B.C. when language was first developed as a form of communication. Writing was introduced around 3,500 B.C. followed by printing at around 1500 A.D. The Chinese civilization can be considered as the pioneer of printing as they were the first to develop paper and block printing. The next significant invention was of the development of a printing press initiated by Johann Gutenberg. And thus the first bible was published in the printed form around 1453 by Gutenberg, and after that numerous other printing presses appeared in Europe and started the printing revolution, which made books available to the masses, and thus a significant form of mass communication was established , books (Dominick, 2002).

Another major invention in the history of mass communication was the invention of telegraph, which introduced the use of technology and changed the world. With the use of telegraph messages could be sent with the speed of light, which means distance is not a barrier anymore for communication. The use of wire and electricity was used in this invention which also opened the door for other form of mass communication such as radio and telephone. After this the world was never the same again, it played a major role in world politics,war, world business, government and media, as now information was easily accessible. The first telegraphic message was sent on late 1830s. The telegraph was immediately followed by telephone which also used wire to communicate. After that came photography which open new doors of communication. As we know, a picture can relate to everybody unlike language which may differ from place to place but photos and pictures have no barrier in communication. As time passed by, technology became more developed, motion picture were introduced, which we now call film, movies, cinema very much popular to this day. Motion pictures played a very important role in mass communication. As movies are a form of story telling with live characters, it has a great effect on people. When some people are only seeking entertainment through movies messages are being passed through them. Movies are a great way to communicate with the masses, and to this day we can see the effect of movies on us, which is a big part of a culture, are used as a great form of mass communication.

Movies open the way of giving away messages, sharing one's ideas through a form of storytelling.

And along with that came radio and television, which was a big advancement on technology and a new advance way of communication. What makes radio and television so unique is their accessibility. Most of the people has at least a radio or TV at home, which makes them open to communication, as they can receive messages from different sources sitting in their homes. The invention of radio and TV had a great impact on that past society, Radio played a great role in World War II, radio and TV are the primary source of news and entertainment still to this day (Dominick, 2002).

To understand the modern trend in communication we have to begin with the evolution of internet. During the cold war, back in the 1970's a system called the Arpanet was used by the pentagon. The Aparnet can be described as an interconnected computer network web where every computer is able to connect to any other computer. And the information will be combined in a package that was initially called as the "Internet Protocol packet". The packet can be sent by the other computers as the packet contains the information about it's destination. At the same time, a software was developed which connects computers to local area networks called LAN. Then later in the 1980's National Science Foundation used the Internet Protocol to to create their own system where they hooked the protocol with regional networks connected to a supercomputer. This could be considered as the primary source of internet. Then in 1990 Internet as we know it today was developed. Some engineers in Switzerland interconnected computers that uses identical communication program. They used hypertext and linked electronic document to each other and created a web page. And thus modern day internet was introduced. 1990's can be considered as the flourishing time for internet (Dominick, 2002).

And along with it, came search engines for scanning the internet, which gives the users the option to select their predetermined criteria and search results according to relevance. The most dominant search engines are Google, Bing and Yahoo which turned internet into a very useful tool for the general people and helped them to make the most use of it (Dominick, 2002)

Email was also another form of modern trend in communication, where millions of people connect to each other through this media According to Dominick (2002, p284) "In 2008, more than 50 trillion e-mail messages moved through the net." that easily shows the vast use of email in our time, and the number is increasing every year. The significance of the use of email is huge compared to the old way of telegraphing and hand written letters. Email is saving a lot of time and energy regards to our