And The Response Is... (Third Response)

     The main focus of this unit during this six weeks was the focus of mass communication. We discussed group and individual communication as well, but we did not have as many in-depth conversations about those communication types. Mass communication involves a form of technological media that has the capability to reach a lot of people. Also, during the mass communication process, there is no immediate feedback. This means that if President Obama addresses the nation on television, many people watch it, but it is impossible for Obama to get immediate feedback as soon as the address is completed. Types of forms of mass communication include televisions, radios, public websites such as blogs and social media (this is the Internet), smartphones, magazines, newspapers, and billboard advertisements. These are just a selected group of mass communication types, as I am sure there are other ways and forms to spread mass communication. 

     There are five steps of mass communication: stimulus, encoding, transmission, decoding, and internalization. Stimulus is where an idea or thought develops in the brain. That thought is the converted into a message, which does not have to be spoken but can also be written down along with other ways to represent the message through a process called encoding. The message then travels through time and space to it's receiver, thus being the listener. This is transmission. The message is then decoded, or translated, through the decoding process to a language the receiver can understand. The final step is internalization, which is when a message is understood or interpreted by the receiver. 

     There can be times when this mass communication process is interrupted. The interruptions are made up of filters and impediments. Impediments are all of the noise distractions, such as environmental noise, channel noise, and semantic noise. Filters are when people are unable to receive a message due to a disability or mental issue. Filter types include physical, informational, and physiological types.