Lasswell’s communication model, a universal paradigm

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Laswell’s communication model offers us a series of guidelines to communicate successfully. These guidelines are followed daily by the main media outlets when they face the challenge of informing citizens about different events of social interest.

Lasswell’s communication model is a classic, and also one of the most used formats in the media around the world. It is a scheme that allows the most relevant data in a message to be analyzed, so that its origin, transmission and objective are understandable.

This communication model also allows people to be informed about what is essential, whether it is a fact or a situation.. At the same time, this format makes it possible to develop information in an orderly and coherent manner.

There are many news publications that are organized around the world following this model. What makes it so versatile is its simplicity and universality. In fact, it is considered an application of the behaviorist postulates of psychology at the level of mass communication. Let’s see what this is about.

“Therein lies the true power of mass media: they are capable of redefining normality”.

-Michael Medved-

Lasswell proposed that communicative processes have five elements: sender, content, channel, receiver and effect.

Lasswell’s communication model

The Lasswell communication model, or Lasswell communication formula, is the description of a basic act of communication. Its purpose is to address and analyze the components that are part of a communicative action. This model has not had so much theoretical value as practical value. In fact, it has been used more as a technique than as a conceptual body.

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The model was devised by Harold Lasswell and was first published in 1948, in an article titled Structure and Function of Mass Communication. Lasswell was a political scientist and law professor at Yale Law School.

Initially, the objective was to reduce the communication gap that existed between the community and the government. Lasswell’s communication model has been used both to produce acts of communication and to analyze them. In fact, its creator worked during World War II as an analyst of Hitler’s speeches, following the lines of his own theory.

The five key elements of mass communication

According to Lasswell’s communication model, In communicative acts there are five components: sender, content, channel, receiver and effect. Based on these elements, five questions can also be asked: Who says? What does it say? On what channel? Who do you tell? With what effect or intention?

When Lasswell’s communication model is applied to the field of analysis, it motivates a reflection on the five components and the five questions. From that point of view, what he does is address the following aspects:

Control analysis (who?). It refers to the sender or the person who initiates the communicative act. That is, the author of a message.Content analysis (what?). It refers to everything that comprises the message.Media analysis (how?). It has to do with the channel, that is, with the vehicle that is used to get the message from the sender to the receiver.Audience analysis (to whom?). It corresponds to the receiver, that is, the recipient of the message that has been issued.Analysis of effects (for what?). It refers to the intentions or objectives of a communicative act.

This model establishes the areas of analysis of communicative acts.

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Other applications of the model

Based on the basic questions of Lasswell’s communication model, the scheme known as “the five ws” in journalism was designed. This points out that The first paragraph of a news story must answer similar questions: what, who, how, when, where and why. They are such powerful questions that, by answering them, we make sure to tell the most important details of an event.

Almost all the media in the world, in different ecosystems and forms, apply this scheme to the first paragraph of the information. They do it for a reason: it’s very functional. This, of course, is a scheme that can be applied to all types of texts, whether journalistic or not. Ideally, the first paragraph answers the basic questions and the following paragraphs develop each of the questions in more detail..

Lasswell’s communication model has been questioned for addressing communication in a single way, that is, from sender to receiver, without taking into account the response of the latter – it is not a passive entity. Thus, we can speak of a model that is still valid in essence, but that has been surpassed by others that understand the communicative act in a more complete way. However, it remains a reference to understand what we understand by communication today, as well as to identify the parameters that give us information about its quality.