Communication models & formulas — the map

Parent: communication. The delivery-craft notes sit ON TOP of this layer; this is the science substrate. Each item below is its own atomic note (one formula / one model = one note). This parent carries only the organizing view; the substance lives in the children.

The three through-lines (why the field is shaped this way)

1. The whole history is people adding back what Shannon deliberately stripped. 1948's engineering skeleton (source→channel→receiver, "meaning is irrelevant to the engineering problem") had no meaning, no context, no active audience, no power. Every later model re-inserts one piece Shannon dropped: Schramm adds the shared field of experience + feedback; Hall adds the audience that re-makes meaning; the propaganda model adds power. The real math lives only at Shannon's layer (§2); the rest are lenses, not equations.
2. The pendulum on media power never settled — ELM is its verdict. Powerful (hypodermic needle) → limited (two-step flow, the active selecting audience) → powerful-but-subtle (agenda-setting, cultivation, framing: media set not what you think but what about and what feels normal). The unresolved knot — is the audience a chooser or a vessel? — is answered by involvement: high → central route, low → peripheral. ELM adjudicates the whole quarrel.
3. Only the diffusion/virality group has predictive teeth. Most theories explain after the fact; Bass (p + q), the viral coefficient K=i×c, and SIR's R₀ are the ones you can actually estimate and falsify.

The eight families (child notes; four now live in their home sciences and are linked, not owned — reclassified 2026-08-05)

§1 Transmission / process models — lasswell-5w · shannon-weaver-model · schramm-model · berlo-smcr · osgood-schramm-circular · westley-maclean · gerbner-model · newcomb-abx · dance-helix §2 Information theory (the actual math — lives at wiki/math/ information-theory) — shannon-entropy · channel-capacity · mutual-information · redundancy · zipf-law · heaps-law §3 Effects & mass-communication theories — agenda-setting · framing-theory · priming · cultivation-theory · spiral-of-silence · uses-and-gratifications · two-step-flow · knowledge-gap · third-person-effect · encoding-decoding · propaganda-model §4 Persuasion / attitude change — elm · heuristic-systematic-model · yale-attitude-change · inoculation · social-judgment-theory · narrative-transportation · cialdini-principles · monroe-motivated-sequence · compliance-tactics · borrowed from cognitive-science: cognitive-dissonance · reactance §5 Advertising / marketing response formulas — aida · hierarchy-of-effects · dagmar · purchase-funnel · fcb-grid §6 Diffusion & virality — diffusion-of-innovations · bass-diffusion-model (marketing-native, stay here); the growth math lives at wiki/math/ spreading-dynamics: viral-coefficient · sir-information-epidemic · network-scaling-laws · tipping-point-critical-mass §7 Memory & attention effects (lives at cognitive-science) — serial-position · peak-end-rule · von-restorff-effect · mere-exposure · zeigarnik-effect · picture-superiority · processing-fluency §8 Linguistic–pragmatic layer (pragmatics lives at linguistics) — grices-maxims · speech-act-theory · relevance-theory · semiotics · rhetoric

Coverage diagnosis (where to dig)

Already developed as their own notes: ELM/two-routes, three appeals, Cialdini/peripheral cues, inoculation, narrative transportation, semiotics, growth-stages (Rogers/Moore). Least column coverage, most transfer to agent-produced content: §3 mass-effects, §2 information-theory math, §6 diffusion equations, §7 memory effects. Paired reference: the communication-jargon-glossary.