Concept
SMCR model (Berlo)
The textbook short name for David Berlo’s 1960 model: source, message, channel, receiver, and the factors in each that determine the outcome.
In his 1960 book Berlo describes communication with six components: source, encoder, message, channel, decoder, receiver. When two people talk, source and encoder and receiver and decoder can be treated together; the initials of the four remaining elements give SMCR. (I could not find this acronym in the scanned text of the book; it looks like a later simplification.)
The factors inside the elements are the real subject of the model. For source and receiver: communication skills (writing, speaking, reading, listening, thought), attitudes (toward oneself, the subject matter and the other person), knowledge level, social-cultural system. For the message: code, content and treatment, each with elements and structure. For the channel: the senses. Berlo stresses “process”: the elements are not independent, and source and receiver are not separate entities but names of behaviours.
Popular summaries usually call the model linear and without feedback; Berlo’s own text takes up feedback in later chapters of the book.
Example
A salesman who does not believe in the product, and this showing in his message: the source’s attitude toward the subject matter. (One of Berlo’s own examples.)