Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Communication Theory And The Construction Of Meaning : A Constructive Developmental Approach, Merri Lee Fraser

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

In recent years the field of communication has been experiencing a movement toward newer non-tradtional approaches to the study of communication and information. Among these newer approaches is a growing body of research that focuses on interpretive behavior in the communication process.

Brenda Dervin's Sense-Making model of communication/information has been the most widely used interpretive theory of information to date. Sense-Making focuses primarily upon the role of the receiver in the communication process and how individuals construct meaning in specific situations. As a result, Sense-Making has not attended adequately to larger shared frameworks of meaning and the effects that they …