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Models of Communication | 111

labour turnover, employee morale reports, and so on as feedback responses.
If the autocrat in a bureaucratic organization receives feedback responses at
all, the situation is probably attributable to an overtly restrictive gatekeeper
mediating the response to the autocrat from the worker. Probably some
such situation developed in the last phases of the World War II just before
the fall of Berlin. The generals who were close to Hitler in the chancellery
kept the grim reports from the battlefronts and the imminent collapse of the
German Army away from the dictator till the last, and patiently listened to
his hysterical tirades of the German superiority and so on.
Branlund traces a major change in the field of communication when
theorists began viewing communication as a process. Branlund considers pro-
cess to emphasize the actual operations involved in communicating. Process,
thus, stresses the significance of the communicative functions—that is what
goes on during communication—rather than simply visualizing the struc-
tural components of the phenomenon of human communication in relative
isolation. Thus, process inherently refers to events or occurrences—actions
and behaviours fundamental to the process of human communication.

Rogers and Kincaid Model (1981)
One of the more recent models of the communication process is provided
by Everett Rogers and D. Lawrence Kincaid in Communication Networks:
Toward a New Paradigm for Research, published in 1981 (Figure 5.26). The
authors described what they termed a convergence model of communication
that stressed the importance of information and the manner in which infor-
mation link individuals together in social networks. They described commu-
nication as a process in which individuals create and share information with
one another in order to reach mutual understanding.
This cyclical process involves giving meaning to information that was
exchanged between two or more individuals as they move towards one
another, and to unite in a common interest or focus. In explaining the matter
in which the convergence process was thought to operate, they indicated
that communication always begins with ‘and then’- to remind us that some-
thing has occurred before we begin to observe the process. Participant A
may or may not consider the past before he shares information (I ) with
1
participant B. This individual must perceive and then interpret the informa-
tion which A creates to express his/her thoughts, and then B may respond
by creating information (I ) to share with A individual. A interprets this new
2
information and then may express himself again with more information (I )
3
about the same topic. Individual B interprets this information, and they con-
tinue the process (I ........I ) until one or both become satisfied that they have
n
4
reached a sufficient mutual understanding or one another about the topic
for the purpose at hand. As in a number of early views, the convergence

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