What are the stages in the process of communication, from stimulus to feedback?

In one line

The communication process is the chain of steps through which an idea moves from the sender's mind to the receiver's understanding and back as feedback.

Explained simply

Think of ordering food online. You feel hungry (stimulus), decide on a pizza (idea), type the order (encoding), the app carries it (channel), the restaurant reads it (decoding) and you get 'Order confirmed' (feedback). If any link breaks, you stay hungry.

Technically, the process has these elements: stimulus, sender, encoding, message, medium, channel, receiver, decoding and feedback, with noise able to disturb any stage.

How it works

1. Stimulus: an internal or external trigger that creates the need to communicate (a machine breakdown, a new idea).
2. Sender (encoder): the person who starts the communication and forms the idea.
3. Encoding: converting the idea into words, symbols, numbers, pictures or gestures the receiver can understand.
4. Message: the encoded idea itself, the actual content sent.
5. Medium: the form of the message: spoken, written, visual or non-verbal.
6. Channel: the vehicle or route that carries it: face-to-face talk, telephone, letter, e-mail, video call, notice board.
7. Receiver (decoder): the person for whom the message is meant.
8. Decoding: interpreting the symbols to get meaning; it depends on the receiver's knowledge, language and attitude.
9. Feedback: the receiver's response, which tells the sender whether the message was understood and makes communication two-way.
10. Noise: any disturbance (physical, mechanical, semantic, psychological) that distorts the message at any stage.

Quick example

A site engineer notices a crack in a beam (stimulus). He decides to inform the structural consultant (sender), writes a short description with a photo (encoding), forming a written-visual message (medium) sent by e-mail (channel). The consultant reads it (receiver), understands the crack is structural (decoding) and replies 'Stop loading, I will inspect at 3 p.m.' (feedback). A poor-quality photo would be noise.

Common mistakes

• Treating medium and channel as the same; medium is the form (written), channel is the route (e-mail).
• Leaving out stimulus or feedback; MU's syllabus lists both explicitly.
• Drawing the diagram as a one-way arrow without a feedback loop.

How MU asks it

Typical form: 'Explain the process of communication with a neat diagram' (5 or 6 marks). For full marks: draw a labelled cyclic diagram (stimulus, sender, encoding, message, medium/channel, receiver, decoding, feedback, with noise shown), explain each element in one or two lines, and add a short workplace example traced through all stages.