ARD 5112: Communication and Information Technology

Prof. Dr. Md. Kamrul Hasan

2025-08-17

Introduction to communication

Communication brings common understanding

Source: ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub

Introduction to communication

  • Information is asset, and communication skill is wealth.
  • Communication and human relations skills are currencies in professional and personal life.
  • Human is a social being because they communicate with each other not because only they live in a society.
  • Communication controls human’s existence and development.
  • By communication one mind affects another.
  • Communication is imperative (it controls action).
  • Your communication abilities shape your personality.

Concept of Communication

  • Communication = transfer of meassage from source to receiver
  • Communication is a process by which message is transferred from source to receiver for common understanding.
  • It is not linear — it’s reciprocal and iterative.
  • It involves feed-forward (message sent) and feed-backward (message received).

Concept of Communication

  • Leagans (1961): Communication is a process by which two or more people exchange ideas, facts, feelings or impressions in ways that each gains a common understanding of the meaning, intent and use of message.
  • Communication is a process of sending and receiving messages through channels, which establishes common meanings between a source and a receiver.

Flow of Communication

  • Sender initiates a message.
  • Receiver responds with a feedback.
  • Shared understanding is the goal.

Communication is completed only when mutual understanding is achieved.

Communication Cycle Example

Sender: "Hello" (Feed-forward)
Receiver: "Hi!" (Feedback = feed-backward)
  • Feedback makes the process interactive and meaningful.
  • If someone slaps a boy (Feed-forward), and the boy cries (Feedback), is it communication?

Yes, this is non-verbal communication. Even in negative or chaotic situations, messages are exchanged and feedback occurs.

Chaotic or Silent Communication

  • Conflict, violence, or silence can also be forms of communication.

Even no feedback is a form of feedback.

  • Example: A phone rings but no one answers — we assume they are unavailable.

  • Calling someone who doesn’t respond — we interpret that as absence or disinterest.

A dead person cannot provide feedback — this ends the communication loop.

Types of Communication

  • Verbal (~30% by seeing and hearing)
    • Written
    • Spoken
    • Interactive (e.g. using device)
  • Non-verbal (~70% by touching, tasting, seeing, smelling)
    • Posture and gesture
    • Proximity, closeness
    • Eye contact and facial expressions
    • Voice tone (alas! hurrah! yeaaaa!)

Importance of Communication

  • About 70% of our time is spent for communication.
  • Present age is called information age.
  • Adoption of innovation by farmers
  • Identification and solution of problems of farmers
  • Create conducive situation for professional development
  • Bring desired behavioural changes among farmers
  • Social development (relations, values, norms, culture)
  • Effective communication improves trust, cooperation, conflict resolution, teamwork and collaboration

Communication and human behavior

Functions of communication:

Communication builds human relationships through:

  • Persuasion
  • Negotiation
  • Diplomacy
  • Dispute resolution

Elements of Communication

Five elements of communication:

  • Source/communicator/sender
  • Message
  • Channel
  • Receiver/audience/respondent
  • Feedback

Elements - Source

Communicator/source/sender

  • Communicator acts as an originator of the message
  • They start the communication process
  • Task of a communicator ⇒ message selection and treatment
  • Homophilous source and receiver enjoy comfort in communication
  • Homophilous means similar in beliefs, values, education, social status, etc.

Qualities of a Good Communicator

  • Knowledge level: Must know the message, objectives, needs, audience aspiration
  • Faith of the receiver: More credible source leads to greater acceptance
  • Interest: Adequate efforts and devotion to communicate the message
  • Communication skill: Efficient message selection and treatment
  • Language and culture: Compatible language helps proper treatment and interpretation

Qualities (Continued)

  • Attitude and presentation:

    • Positive attitude towards message and receiver. Inattention, vocabulary differences, poor pronunciation, poor articulation, plural meanings, improper association should be avoided.

  • Message treatment:

    • Handle message to make it clear, understandable and realistic
    • logically arranged message gets better reception
    • Understand the audience for proper treatment
    • Message treated for the audience, not for the communicator
    • Rational/reward appeals for literate farmers; fear appeal for illiterate farmers

Elements - Message

  • Important information communicated by the source
  • Good message makes individual feel a need that can be satisfied by action
  • Should be valid, unambiguous, comprehensive and of utility
  • Valid message comes from credible source and conforms with intentions

Criteria of a Good Message

  • Communicableness - easy to communicate
  • Less social and economic risk
  • Aligned with beliefs, values and economic capabilities
  • Simple - easy to understand and practice
  • Divisibility - permits small scale trial before full adoption
  • Relative advantage - higher benefits than existing
  • Accuracy - relevancy and suitability well-tested under local conditions

Elements - Channel

  • Medium or vehicle which carries the message
  • Physical bridge between source and receiver
  • Extension teaching methods are communication channels
  • Person, mobile phone, newspaper, radio are examples
  • Must be used in right way, right time, for right actions with right audience
  • Can be local or cosmopolitan, and interpersonal, group or mass
  • Early adopters use mass communication; late majority uses interpersonal channels

Criteria for Selecting Channel

  • Availability - Locally available, common and familiar
  • Cost - Simple, cheap and easy to obtain and handle
  • Preference of communicator - Must be skilled in using selected channels
  • Suitable content and receiver - Receiver should understand message and use channels
  • Frequency of use - Repetition enhances acceptability; multiple channels in parallel works better
  • Effectiveness - Should effectively bring together sender and receiver

Nearly extinct local media - e.g. folk music, theatres can be used

Elements - Audience

  • Receiver of the message (men, women, village leaders, farmers, etc.)

  • Factors affecting desirable response:

    • Needs - Should be studied before initiating communication
    • Knowledge level - Deliver message considering receiver’s knowledge
    • Attitude - Form favorable attitude; message decoding depends on attitude

Audience (Continued)

  • Available resources - Message actions need resources; align with available resources
  • Socio-cultural systems - Message should be compatible with social systems
  • Experience - New learning built upon previous experience; satisfactory experience leads to fast learning

Elements - Feedback

  • Reaction given by receivers in response to message
  • Return process where receiver acts as source
  • Communication process ⇒ feed forward and feedback backward
  • Self-communication: message encoded is fed back into system by decoding
  • Action - Reaction interdependence is feedback
  • Both sender and receiver can encode and decode simultaneously

Elements - Feedback (cont’d)

  • Provides source information about success in accomplishing objectives
  • Controls encoding of next messages
  • Feedback can be:
    • Intentional (e.g., nodding to show understanding)
    • Unintentional (e.g., yawning from boredom)
    • A student raising hand = intentional
    • Looking distracted = unintentional

Importance of Feedback

  • Clarify message - Feedback helps adjust or clarify the message
  • Removes barriers - source can learn adoption barriers
  • Facilitates proper action - to make message understandable
  • Rectifies transmission errors - identifies channel noise to minimize
  • Increases accuracy - reduces message distortion, improves adoption

Importance of Feedback (cont’d)

  • Enhances confidence - improves rapport between source and receiver
  • Improves learning - both active and passive feedback enhances knowledge
  • Improves communication - rewarding feedback results in continued adoption

Problems in Getting Feedback

  • Limitation of the channel
  • Shyness of the receiver
  • Discouraging by the communicator
  • Socio-economic barriers
  • Untimely message
  • Language and cultural barriers

Analysis of communication models

Definition of Communication Model

  • Model: Miniature (drawings, charts, diagrams) of complex process to show relationships, flows, structures
  • Help simplify complex ideas for teaching and evaluation
  • Offer organised way of looking at complex process
  • Should show all important elements with minimal text
  • Models: Berlo (1960), Shannon-Weaver (1949), Leagans (1963), Rogers and Shoemaker (1971)

Types of Communication Models

  • Action/linear/one-way Model – One-way transmission (e.g., TV broadcast, Shannon-Weaver’s model, Berlo’s model)

  • Interactive/two-way Model – Sender ↔︎ Receiver with feedback (e.g. News blog, Rogers and Shoemaker’s model, Leagan’s model)

  • Transactional or interpersonal Model – Both parties simultaneously sender and receiver (e.g. Interview, Barlund’s Model, mindful model)

Modern communication favors transactional, real-time exchange — especially in interpersonal and professional settings.

Berlo’s Model of Communication

Source: ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub

Shannon-Weaver’s Model of Communication

Leagan’s Model of Communication

Rogers and Shoemaker’s Model

Mindful (transactional) communication model

Source: ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub

Mindless communication: distraction, e.g. scrolling smartphone while listening.

Typical Communication Model (M. K. Hasan)

Noise/Disruption in Communication

Communication cycle disrupted by noise due to:

Internal causes

  • Physiological: Hunger, fatigue, discomfort
  • Psychological: Good or bad emotion or feelings
  • Semantic: Meanings of words or symbols not matching

External causes: Noisy room, temperature extremes, broken devices, distractions

Notes:

  • Encode ⇒ organization of information as message
  • Message ⇒ encoded information
  • Decode ⇒ interpretation of message

Causes of Noise in Communication

  1. Failure of channel to reach intended audience - not all attend meetings or access mass media
  2. Failure to handle channels skillfully - not everyone may hear message in meeting
  3. Failure to select appropriate channels - wrong method for objectives
  4. Failure to use channels according to audience abilities - written materials for illiterate
  5. Failure to avoid physical distraction - moving people, noise, heat, lighting, crowdedness

Causes of Noise (Continued)

  1. Failure of audience to listen/look carefully - undivided attention needed
  2. Failure to use enough channels in parallel - 5-6 channels may be needed for impact
  3. Use of too many channels in series - More channels in series increases distortion risk

Good communicator should identify and eliminate sources of communication noise

How to Minimize Channel Noise

Use channels based on:

  1. Specific objectives of message
  2. Nature of message - direct vs abstract, difficulty, scope, timing
  3. Audience - size, need, interest, knowledge
  4. Availability of channels and logistic support
  5. Combination of channels - parallel vs series
  6. Relative cost of channels
  7. Time available of audience and communicator
  8. Nature of channels - seeing, hearing, or doing
  9. Extent of cumulative effects of message
  10. Skills of communicator

Source Credibility

Concepts of source credibility

  • Acceptance depends partly on “who said it”
  • Set of perceptions about sources held by receivers
  • Includes competence and trustworthiness
  • May include: age, education, sex, language, ideology, socioeconomic status, etc.

Dimensions of source credibility

  1. Safety: Trustworthiness, kind, friendly, honest, just, dependable
  2. Qualifications: Expertness, experience, knowledge, skilled, communicability
  3. Dynamisms: Active, energetic, emphatic, fast, frank, bold
  4. Sociability: Gentle, accommodative, approachable, hospitable, attractive, pleasant

Importance of Source Credibility

In persuasive communication, vital role in message acceptance

Impacts:

  • Participation in meeting - better/poor
  • Attention of audience - sufficient/inadequate
  • Message acceptance - low/high
  • Implementation of message - desired/undesired
  • Feedback of audience - affects understanding

Personal cosmopolite sources perceived as more credible than mass media

Message Management

Characteristics of a Message

  • Technology orderly organized and encoded for information, instruction or persuasion
  • Recommendations/contents affecting socioeconomic life

Characteristics:

  • Relevant to objective
  • Clearly understandable
  • Aligned with mental, social, economic, physical capabilities
  • Socially and economically significant
  • Specific - no irrelevant material

Characteristics (Continued)

  • Simply stated
  • Accurate and scientifically valid
  • Timely in relation to practice
  • Appropriate to channel used
  • Appealing and attractive
  • Applicable to user system
  • Adequate and complete
  • Manageable by source and receiver
  • Persuasive - affects affective domain for changes

Treatment of a Message

  • Encoding message to make it understandable for desired feedback
  • Necessary to carry intended meaning
  • Organized message produces more comprehension and retention
  • Disorganized message may foil communication functions

For effective persuasion:

    1. Pattern of organization
    1. Ordering of arguments
    1. Nature of arguments
    1. Message style

A. Pattern of Organization

  1. Space Pattern - geographical order (e.g. AEZ, soil tracts)
  2. Time order - historical perspective (e.g. Agricultural development)
  3. Deductive order - general to specific (e.g. role of communication)
  4. Inductive order - specific to general (e.g. impact of compost use)
  5. Psychological order - based on attitude, need, satisfaction, visualization, action
  6. Problem-solving order - cultivation process
  7. Climax order - key points at end
  8. Anticlimax order - key points at beginning
  9. Pyramidical order - key points at middle

B. Ordering of Arguments

Agreeable vs disagreeable parts

  • Agreeable parts at beginning draw attention (pleasant materials help persuasion)
  • Disagreeable parts at beginning can deter audience, causing avoidance

C. Nature of Arguments

One-sided vs two-sided message

  • Limiting disfavourable parts suitable for illiterate audience
  • Example: Family planning helps welfare (favourable) but may contradict religion (disfavourable)
  • Two-sided message more effective with higher education receivers

D. Message Style

  1. Message repetition - Increases awareness but continued repetition may cause boredom
  2. Message comprehension - Receivers must understand to accept; correlated with agreement/retention
  3. Source evaluation - Communicator evaluated based on message contents affecting credibility

Message Appeals

Psychological features that invoke feelings

1. Fear appeal

  • Creates threats affecting affective/cognitive domains to motivate behavior change
  • Example: Get vaccinated because cholera epidemic causing 90% death
  • Principle: Uncomfortable drive state motivates action to minimize/remove it
  • Moderate fear effective; higher level causes anxiety and confusion

Message Appeals (Continued)

2. Reward appeal

  • Message organized with possible benefits from innovation
  • Blended with relative merits/advantages
  • Example: Binashail vs Nazirshail - taller plants, 20% higher yield, earlier maturity, better recovery, rainfed cultivation, high demand
  • Conclusion drawing: Explicit conclusions by source more effective than implicit by receivers

Message Appeals (Continued)

3. Emotional appeal

  • ‘Pathos’ appeals creating appropriate feeling using values/emotions
  • Argue for belief by pointing out rewards from holding belief
  • Example: Clean homestead for safe environment for kids/parents
  • Example: Bangabandhu’s speech on 7 March 1971

Message Appeals (Continued)

4. Rational appeal

  • ‘Logos’ appeals presenting empirical/logical evidence
  • Result demonstration is rational appeal
  • Emotional and rational appeals often complementary
  • Emotional for politicians; rational for elite/educated voters
  • Association with known facts, visual elements, non-verbal cues works well

Message Reception - ‘Selective’/‘Partial’

  • Process of exposure/attention, perception and retention
  • Effects depend on attention, learning, and perception as intended
  • Audience reaction explained by selective exposure, perception, retention
  • People attend to (selective exposure), understand (selective perception), remember (selective retention) parts supportive of existing knowledge/attitude/beliefs
  • Knowledge-gap hypothesis: Farmers with better knowledge have better attention/perception/retention

Source Evaluating Variables of Message

  1. Listenibility/readability - Economy of words; short active sentences (8-10 words); short words
  2. Human interest - Related to receivers
  3. Vocabulary diversity - Avoid repetition in formal/informal communication
  4. Realism - Empirical message more accepted than abstract
  5. Verifiability - Property of being scientifically tested

Level and Pattern of Communication

Three Types of Communication

  • Interpersonal: Communicator meets individual audience (face-to-face, meeting, visit, letter, phone, video call)
  • Group: Communicator reaches group with known identities (group discussion, method demonstration)
  • Mass: Communicator reaches large number with unknown identities (mass gathering, radio, TV, newspaper)

Intrapersonal communication: Communicating with onself

Persuasive communication: Art to convince using skills, credible source, convincing arguments, relevance

Inerpersonal Communication

  • Non-verbal cues vital in interpersonal, classroom, group, mass communication
  • Non-verbal can be stronger than verbal
  • Strong skills needed in personal/professional life
  • In business: speak clearly/confidently to build rapport/convince
  • Conflicts are common in interpersonal communication

Guidelines for Interpersonal Communication

  • Professionals should follow guidelines in all audience settings
  • Some inherently expert; others need to learn guidelines
  • Strong skills needed in personal/professional life
  • In business: speak clearly/confidently to build rapport/convince

Skills needed for Interpersonal Communication

Source: ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub

  • Listening skill: mindful listening, careful and thoughtful attention
  • People skill: sympathy and empathy, see the context from others’ perspectives
  • Emotional intelligence: knowing own emotion, showing careful emotions and reactions

Stick to the ethical values while communicating.

Guidelines for Verbal Communication

  • Think before speaking
  • Be clear and concise; make simple considering audience
  • Speak with confidence using proper voice, body language, eye contact
  • Vary vocal tone; use inflection for emphasis, pitch for emotion
  • Be active listener (receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating, responding)
  • Be aware of non-verbal cues; read audience body language

Guidelines for Non-verbal Communication

  • Facial expression - Relax muscles, smile, avoid frown, conform with emotion
  • Eye contact - Binds speaker/audience, conveys honesty/respect; roam gaze, don’t stare
  • Tone, pitch, speed - Speak slowly/clearly with modulation
  • Appearance - Proper dress/make-up/hairstyle for context; formal outlook for seriousness
  • Gesture - Using body parts (head, hands, thumbs, legs, whole body)

Non-verbal Guidelines (Continued)

  • Body postures - Appropriate sitting/walking/standing

    • Introvert: Folded hands, crossed legs
    • Tired/lack confidence: Dropping shoulder
    • Hiding mentality: Hands behind
    • Standing on one foot: Personality issues

  • Touch - Hug, handshake, light tap

  • Space - Distance shows affection/domination

  • Getting rid of distracting mannerism - Vocal impediments, finger tapping, lip biting/licking, toying with objects, frowning, throwing hands, shaking legs, adjusting dress/hair, head wagging

Non-verbal Guidelines (Continued)

  • Difficult to improve because faults arise unconsciously
  • Video record self-presentation and review with colleague/friend
  • If audience notice mannerism, they focus on it rather than message
  • Gestures should be graceful and unobtrusive

Conflicts in interpersonal communication

  • Conflicts are common and normal
  • Conflicts can be both constructive and destructive
  • Difference in attitude, values, expectations, power and status cause conflicts
  • Well resolved conflict brings stronger relationship and better problem solving
  • Poorly managed conflict brings stress and damages relationships

Conflict resolution

  • Improve communication skill
  • Solve conflict mindfully and thoughtfully
  • Find points of both the parties’ actions
  • Identify common parts of the both parties
  • Use empathy: see from others’ perspective
  • Understand your own perspective
  • Point towards to area of common agreement
  • Recommend mutually beneficial ways by compromise and collaboration

Functions of group communication

  • Problem indenfication
  • Problem solving
  • Information sharing
  • Decision making
  • Collaboration and cooperation
  • Motivation
  • Conflict management

Communication strategy

Effective communication is a function of:

  1. Source credibility – Trustworthiness, expertise
  2. Audience characteristics – Age, education, values, needs
  3. Channel availability – Face-to-face, phone, email
  4. Feedback mechanism – Immediate or delayed, verbal or non-verbal
  5. Message treatment – Tailoring the message improves effectiveness.

Persuasive Communication

  • Empathy: Put yourself in others’ shoes
  • Clarity: Use clear, precise language
  • Relevance: Match audience interest
  • Respect: Be polite and culturally sensitive

Objectivity & Subjectivity

  • Objective: Facts, data, neutrality
  • Subjective: Emotions, experience, opinion
  • Important vs Urgent: Don’t miss the important ones becuase of many other urgent issues.

Good communication blends all thoughtfully.

Usual things don’t make headlines — unusual does!

Avoid Biases in Communication

  • Avoid prejudices and bias
  • Don’t rely only on past experience
  • Incorporate latest and accurate information

Mass Communication

System Approach

Information Technology

Resources