Windahl And Signitzer's Communication Analysis

In this chapter, each part of the communication process is described, as outlined by Windahl and Signitzer’s concepts, and analysed in order to explain our findings from the case of the New Times magazine. Therefore, in this chapter the theories and the analysis of data are merged, which we find suitable for this research. We introduce the concepts and analyse them immediately, which we deem more appropriate than having a separate theory chapter.

Windahl and Signitzer’s communication model states as follows: the process of communication begins with a sender/communicator, who transmits a message to a receiver through a channel or medium (Windahl & Signitzer 2009: 12). In this research, several communication problems have been identified. There

The second section analyses the message, including the dimensions comprehension and discrimination. Furthermore, relevance in connection to motivation is also included in that section. Third section analyses the channel and medium, and the fourth section analyses the receiver. In this section, the relationship between the target population and receiver group is examined. The last section of the analysis concerns feedback and feedforward. These concepts enable us to identify the different aspects of the New Times magazine's communication

According to Windahl and Signitzer, there are three dimensions of the message: the first being simply a set of words and/or images expressed somewhere, which we analyse in accordance to the design of the magazine in the section about channel. The second dimension is the meaning of the message from the sender’s perspective. Here we introduce the goals of New Times presented by the editor of the magazine. The third dimension is the meaning as understood by the receiver (Windahl & Signitzer 2009: 17-18). Discrepancies often arise between the intended message (the sender) and the way people make sense of their surroundings and themselves (the receiver) (Windahl & Signitzer 2009: 17-18). With this in mind, the data is analysed accordingly by looking for such gaps, which is illuminated in the following sections. It is relevant to note that in this section regarding message, we do not go into depth of the specific content of the magazine, but rather analyse it as a part of the process of communication. This section is therefore to be understood as a macro-level analysis of the message, rather than a micro-level approach that analyses the specific