New Challenges in the European AreaYoung Scientist’s 1st International Baku Forum

The Relevance of Media Coverage

Bashar Ibrahim AlHadla

The central concept of media audience is the relationship between the sender and the

receiver.

The relationship in the mediated and especially mass-mediated communication, always

involves a spatial and social distance between the participants.

Bridging the gap of distance is done by a “complex web of conventions and understandings shared between communicators and audiences”.

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So, understanding means the mutual comprehension process between the sender

and receiver.

Still, the web, for most people, present the society-wide and cross-cultural communication as problematic.

So, a solution that tackles human psyche is needed.

The researchers proposed a new understanding theory under the name of ‘Reception Theory’

Reception Theory says:

the messages proposed by the sources are always being decoded by the audiences

“according to their own perspectives and wishes, although often within some shared

framework of experience”

The shared experience is what is called Background Knowledge that is organised in our

long-term memory in structures known as schema.

(schema is a pre-existing knowledge structure in memory, or what

is generally called norm)

Norm is the reduction of

“choices a person has to make about how to behave” and the expectation about

“how others in the culture will behave”.

Evoking a different schema from the one intended by the communicator leads to miscommunication; i.e., irrelevance.

Miscommunication is tackled by

Sperber and Wilson - the founders of the

‘Relevance Theory’.(the relevant interaction of somebody’s existing beliefs/thoughts

with the information given in a special context)

Relevance can be achieved by modifying the context by having some effect on it –

contextual effect (stimulus)

The less processing effort being done to recover a fact, it is the greater relevance

So,

Relevance = Contextual Effects / Processing Effort

In a successful communication, maximal relevance is not sought, it is the

optimal relevance.

How to reach out the optimal relevance?

Sperber and Wilson suggest the combination of

ostensive behaviour (evidence of one’s thoughts), with the guarantee of relevance

(what is most relevant to people).

For Sperber and Wilson

Perception: ostention + relevance =

principle of relevance

They said:“We believe that it is this principle of relevance that is needed to

make the inferential model of communication explanatory.”

Principle of Relevance

is best achieved by the appropriate choice of words

for according to Sperber and Wilson

“the intended concept is the very one encoded by

the word, which is therefore used in its strictly

literal sense.”

Conclusions:

1- Media communicators are best be understood by making themselves relevant

to their audience.

2- The news has us in mind even before it is written, as Michael Schudson

stated in his book, The Power of News.

3- Revealing the connection between people’s information sharing and

perception.

Thank you