Interactional Model Of Communication In The Film Wag The Dog

The most apparent model of communications that could be used to describe what happened when the message becomes problematic, in the film ‘Wag the Dog’, is the Interactional Model, even though it is not very clear until comprehensively analysed. There is a stage in the film, where there are two parties who are trying to send opposing messages; the White House trying to send a message of war to the general public of America, and then the CIA, who sends a message of peace, both to the White House and to the general public. The interactional model of communications is the most useful when looking to illustrate how the parties respond and how they give feedback to the message received.
The best way to begin explanations is to summarise briefly what is going on in the film. Just days before the next general election, the President of the USA at the time was accused of misconduct of a sexual nature with a ‘firefly girl’ who was touring the White House. His PR team were desperately seeking a way to distract the public’s attention from the career jeopardising scandal, so they looked for anything that

Woods, for instance, feels that everyone who is involved in communication plays both the role of sending a message, and receiving a message. She does not think that Schramm’s model captures the fact that time can change the way in which we communicate, nor does she agree with how it excludes the notion of semantic noise and how that can effect communication. However, in this film, the message is clearly being sent and responded to in a bilateral way; the CIA picked up the message, decoded it, and responded with a message, which made the original message problematic. The film does not show two people communicating over a long period of time and how their relationship is has grown over this period, as the transactional model suggests, it shows a message being sent to the masses and being responded to by the figures of authority with another message, within a few