What is a model?

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A model could be a pattern, a sample or a specimen in any shape or style. It could be a blue-print, a diagram or even a three dimensional object that represents some structure on a smaller scale than the original. It is created to apply a theory or to explain a process or to help in the understanding of how a particular system works.

A Communication model is usually a diagram that shows communication as a process. It is a simplified representation that is useful in analysing the inter-relationships, complexities, steps and elements that are involved in the multifaceted human process that we call communication.

George E.P.Box, Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin famously described the fundamental paradox at the core of all models when he said in his 1987 book, Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces, co-authored with Norman R. Draper that “essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful.”