Various authors make a distinction between the action vision and the interaction vision on communication, a third vision can be added: communication as “making common“. These are three ways of looking at communication; you can compare this with three different “lenses” to look at communication. These three visions are explained below, in short they can be summarised as follows:
- in the action vision, ‘achieving‘ is central,
- in the interaction vision, ‘involving‘ is central,
- in communication as making common, ‘sharing‘ is central.
Both the action vision and interaction vision fit what De Moor calls “communicatio“: transmission of information. On the other hand ‘making common‘ is equivalent to what he calls “communicare“.
Action vision
“The action vision is based on theoretical views that see communication as” information transfer “, the efficient and effective transfer of information to target groups.” (Reijnders 2015 p57)
In short: Action Vision is based on conveying the message to the target group.
Interactive vision
If you look at communication through the ‘glasses’ of the interaction vision, you will see that people communicate and interact with each other anyway, as a communication expert you can at best adjust this. In the interaction vision, informal communication is therefore important and in the interaction vision the bottom-up and the outside-in approaches are central.
Keywords in the interaction vision:
- dialogue
- discussion
- to advise
- facilitate
- to organize
- coaching
Making common
In addition to the action and interaction vision, there is a third vision on communication: making information common (of information, experience, values, etc.).
The result of interaction can be that people start to share information, experiences, values, etc. with each other, creating a group with a we-feeling and possibly even a common (sub-)culture.
In this third vision, communication is seen as commun-ication: group formation.
This article is based on ‘Actie, interactie en gemeenschappelijk maken‘ on ComunicatieKC.com
Harry's Head 