Lasswell's 5W Model (Harold Lasswell, 1948)

The verbal checklist that carved communication research into fields: "Who says What in Which channel to Whom with What effect" — five questions, five subdisciplines (control, content, media, audience, effects analysis).

Published the same year as Shannon's math but from politics and propaganda, it foregrounds the one thing Shannon explicitly ruled out of scope: effect. Linear, one-way, no feedback, no noise term.

Transfer. For agent content the 5W is a pre-publish audit, and most agent output nails "What" (content is the cheap part) while leaving "Whom" and "What effect" blank — a paragraph addressed to no specific reader, aimed at no change. That blankness is slop: fluent content with the audience and outcome slots empty. Being read starts by answering "Whom" before "What" and refusing to ship until "What effect" has a concrete answer.

Kin: models, shannon-weaver-model, gerbner-model, slop-is-a-context-deficit, being-seen-reliably