【正文】 s picture of significant relationships, and the picture of the expert and the leader (p. 98). Summary The munication process in society performs three functions: (a) surveillance of the environment, disclosing threats and opportunities affecting the value position of the munity and of the ponent parts within it。 that is, in reference to categories of relationships that are recognized objects of gratification. In America, for example, it requires no elaborate technique of study to discern that power and respect are values. We can demonstrate this by listening to testimony, and by watching what is done when opportunity is afforded. It is possible to establish a list of values current in any group chosen for investigation. Further than this, we can discover the rank order in which these values are sought. We can rank the members of the group according to their positions in relation to the values. So far as industrial civilization is concerned, we have no hesitation in saying that power, wealth, respect, wellbeing, and enlightenment are among the values. If we stop with this list, which is not exhaustive, we can describe on the basis of available knowledge (fragmentary though it may often be) the social structure of most of the world. Since values are not equally distributed, the social structure reveals more or less concentration of relatively abundant shares of power, wealth, and other values in a few hands. In some places this concentration is passed on from generation to generation, forming castes rather than a mobile society. In every society the values are shaped and distributed according to more or less distinctive patterns (institutions). The institutions include munications which are invoked in support of the network as a whole. Such munications are the ideology。 in any case he is an assembly point of news and ment.More detailed equivalences The munication processes of human society, when examined in detail, reveal many equivalences to the specializations found in the physical organism and in the lower animal societies. The diplomats, for instance, of a single state are stationed all over the world and send messages to a few focal points. Obviously, these ining reports move from the many to the few, where they interact upon one another. Later on, the sequence spreads fanwise according to a fewtomany pattern, as when a foreign secretary gives a speech in public, an article is put out in the press, or a news film is distributed to the theaters. The lines leading from the outer environment of the state are functionally equivalent to the afferent channels that convey ining nervous impulses to the central nervous system of a single animal, and to the means by which alarm is spread among a flock. Outgoing, or efferent, impulses display corresponding parallels. The central nervous system of the body is only partly involved in the entire flow of afferentefferent impulses. There are automatic systems that can act on one another without involving the higher centers at all (p. 88). The stability of the internal environment is maintained principally through the mediation of the vegetive or autonomic specializations of the nervous system. Similarly, most of the messages within any state do not involve the central channels of munication. They take place within families, neighborhoods, shops, field gangs, and other local contexts. Most of the educational process is carried on the same way.A further set of significant equivalences is related to the circuits of munication , which are predominantly oneway or twoway, depending upon the degree of reciprocity between municators and audience. Or, to express it differently, twoway munication occurs when the sending and receiving functions are performed with equal frequency by two or more persons. A conversation is usually assumed to be a pattern of twoway munication (although monologues are hardly unknown). The modern instruments of mass munication give an enormous advantage to the controllers of printing plants, broadcasting equipment, and other forms of fixed and specialized capital. But it should be noted that audiences do talk back, after some delay。 (2) the correlation of the parts of society in responding to the environment。 of radio engineers and other technicians associated with broadcasting. Such message handlers may be contrasted with those who affect the content of what is said, which is the munication of editors, censors, and propagandists. Speaking of the symbol specialists as a whole, therefore, we separate them into the manipulators (controllers) and the handlers。 note the reluctance with which many visual devices have been adopted. And despite research on vocabulary, many mass municators select words that fail. This happens, for instance, when a foreign correspondent allows himself to bee absorbed in the foreign scene and forgets that his home audience has no direct equivalents in experience for left, center, and other factional terms (p. 94).Besides skill factors, the level of efficiency is sometimes adversely influenced by personality structure. An optimistic, outgoing person may hunt birds of a feather and gain an uncorrected and hence exaggeratedly optimistic view of events. On the contrary, when pessimistic, brooding personalities mix, they choose quite different birds, who confirm their gloom. There are also important differences among people which spring from contrasts in intelligence and energy. Some of the most serious threats to efficient munication for the munity as a whole relate to the values of power, wealth, and respect. Perhaps the most striking examples of power distortion occur when the content of munication is deliberately adjusted to fit an ideology or counterideology. Distortions related to wealth not only arise from attempts to influence the market, for instance, but from rigid conceptions of economic i