Toward a Resonance Theory of Communication
In discussing electronically based communication processes, it is very helpful to use auditory terms. Words like feedback…reverberation…tuning…overload…regeneration… fading describe many of the characteristics of social behavior in relation to electronic media. Similarly, the elements of electronic auditory systems serve as useful analogies for social communication problems. In a public address system, for example, too much output produces feedback. This “fed back” sound becomes re-amplified until the system overloads, producing distortion. Someone using such a system must learn to control the output and anticipate feedback. In mass communication, we experience a parallel problem. The interaction of program output with audience feedback can easily produce an information overload.
These analogies suggest a new theory of electronic communication, based on the patterning of information inherent in auditory communication. Transportation theory assumes that communication is difficult to achieve and that a message encounters resistance at each step in its movement across space, over a period of time. In our electronic communication environment, it is no longer meaningful to assume that communication is a low-efficiency process, or that messages must be pushed across a vast chasm in order to be received and understood. The space between phoning from one room in a house to another room in the same house is equivalent to the space between a caller in New York talking to someone in London. In both instances, space has no effect on the flow of information. Similarly, time is no longer relevant when communication takes place at electronic speed, and editing of film, sound, and video tape replaces the linear sequence of events in time with events juxtaposed in a time relationship established by the communicator.
In formulating a new theory of communication, it is valuable to build on Ray Birdwhistell’s finding that a state of communication is nearly always present in our environment. This state of communication is like an electric circuit that is always turned on. The juice is present in the line, and our problem is to make the current behave in such a way as to achieve the desired effect. Today, there is a nearly constant flow of information at all times. Indeed, one has to expend considerable effort hypothesizing a situation in our culture in which communication does not regularly occur. We take in electronically mediated auditory and visual information as part of our life process. It is part of our immediate physical surround, and we sit in it, absorbing information constantly. The vital question to be posed in formulating a new theory of communication is: What are the characteristics of the process whereby we organize, store, and act upon the patterned information that is constantly flowing into our brain? Further, given these processes, how do we tune communication to achieve the desired effect for someone creating a message?
In electronically mediated human communication, the function of a communicator is to achieve a state of resonance with the person receiving visual and auditory stimuli from television, radio, records, etc. Decoding symbolic forms such as pennants, drums, lantern signals, or written words is no longer our most significant problem. Words transform experience into symbolic forms. They extract meaning from perception in a manner prescribed by the structure of the language, code this meaning symbolically, and store it in the brain. But the brain does not store everything in this way. Many of our experiences with electronic media are coded and stored in the same way that they are perceived. Since they do not undergo a symbolic transformation, the original experience is more directly available to us when it is recalled. Also, since the experience is not stored in a symbolic form, it cannot be retrieved by symbolic cues. It must be evoked by a stimulus that is coded in the same way as the stored information is coded.
The critical task is to design our package of stimuli so that it resonates with information already stored within an individual and thereby induces the desired learning or behavioral effect. Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into our communication evoke meaning in a listener or viewer. That which we put into the communication has no meaning in itself. The meaning of our communication is what a listener or viewer gets out of his experience with the communicator’s stimuli. The listener’s or viewer’s brain is an indispensable component of the total communication system. His life experiences, as well as his expectations of the stimuli he is receiving, interact with the communicator’s output in determining the meaning of the communication.
A listener or viewer brings far more information to the communication event than a communicator can put into his program, commercial, or message. The communicator’s problem, then, is not to get stimuli across, or even to package his stimuli so they can be understood and absorbed. Rather, he must deeply understand the kinds of information and experiences stored in his audience, the patterning of this information, and the interactive resonance process whereby stimuli evoke this stored information.
The resonance principle is not totally new or unique to electronic communication, It has always been an element in painting, music, sculpture, and, to a limited degree, even in print. However, resonance is now a more operational principle for creating communication because much of the material stored in the brains of an audience is also stored in the brain of a communicator—by virtue of our shared media environment. Also, the process of evoking information is quite different today. It is much like the difference between riding a motorcycle under or over ninety miles per hour. Under ninety miles per hour, a driver should turn into a skid. Over ninety miles per hour, he should turn out with the skid. The physical forces working on a skidding motorcycle are reversed as the cycle crosses this speed barrier, so the driver has to reverse his behavior to pull out of the skid. Similarly, in communicating at electronic speed, we no longer direct information into an audience, but try to evoke stored information out of them, in a patterned way.
How to Strike a Responsive Chord
In the 1930s, a picture of a factory with smoke billowing from several smokestacks meant “prosperity.” Today, the same picture means “pollution.”
A photograph, film, tape, or book has no meaning outside the possible contexts in which a person might experience it, or outside the body of stored experiences a person will bring to the situation in making sense of what he sees or hears. The stimulus put into the environment will interact with all the elements present in a listening or viewing situation and become communication only through this resonance process.
To achieve a behavioral effect, whether persuading someone to buy a product or teaching a person about history, one designs stimuli that will resonate with the elements in a communication environment to produce that effect. The traditional communication process is thus reversed. A “message” is not the starting point for communicating. It is the final product arrived at after considering the effect we hope to achieve and the communication environment where people will experience our stimuli.
In developing a set of useful principles for communicating, it is necessary to abandon most of the traditional rules we were taught. A resonance approach does not begin by asking, “What do I want to say?” We seek to strike a responsive chord in people, not get a message across. This involves, first, examining how stored experiences are patterned in our brain, and how previous experiences condition us to perceive new stimuli. Second, we must understand the characteristics of the new communication environment, and how people use media in their lives. Only at the final stage do we consider the content of a message, and this will be determined by the effect we want to achieve and the environment where our content will take on meaning.
Patterning of Stored Auditory Experiences