John Fiske in his book Introduction to Communication Studies has distinguished

between two approaches of school of thought of communication theory: the semiotic school
and process school.

In Fiskes own words there are two main schools in the study of communication. The first
sees communication as transmission of messages. It is concerned with how senders and
receivers encode and decode with how transmitters use the channels and media of
communication. It is concerned with matters like efficiency and accuracy. It sees
communication as a process by which one person affects the behavior or state of mind of the
other. If effect is different from or smaller than what is intended, this school tends to talk in
terms of communication failure and look to the processes to find out where the failure
occurred. This is referred to as process school.

The second school sees communication as production and exchange of meanings. It is

concerned with how messages or texts interact with people in order to produce meanings: it is
concerned with role of texts in our culture. It uses terms ;like signification and does not
necessarily regard misunderstanding as evidence of communication failure- they may result
from the difference in culture between sender and receiver. For this school the study of
communication is the study of text and culture. The main method of study is semiotics and
that label is used to identify the approach.

The process school tends to draw upon the social sciences, psychology and sociology in
general and tends to address itself to acts of communication.
The semiotic school tends to draw upon linguistics and the arts subject and tends to identify
itself to works of communication.
Each school interprets the definition of communication as social interaction through
messages in their own way. The first defines social interaction as the process through which
one person relates himself to other or affects the behavior, state of mind of another and vice
versa. Semiotics however defines social interaction as that which constitutesthe individual as
a member of his culture and society.
The two schools differ in their understanding of what constitutes the message. The process
school sees a message as that which is transmitted by the communication process. Many of its
followers believe that intention is the crucial factor in deciding what constitutes the message.
For semiotics message is the construction of signs which through interaction with receivers
produce meanings. The sender defined as transmitter declines in importance and the emphasis
shifts on text and how it is read. And reading is the process of discovering meanings that
occurs when the reader interacts or negotiates with the text.

REFERENCES
http://zach.tomaszewski.name/uh/cis701/paper4.html
http://www.slideshare.net/suchi9/communication-concepts-theories-and-models1presentation
https://litedaiblog.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/fiskes-typology-the-semiotic-and-processschools-of-communication-theory-2/
http://www.peoi.org/Courses/Coursesen/mass/mass2.html