Wiio's Laws of Communication

I am finally going to start a blog although I’ve read somewhere that blogs are no longer “fashionable”, micro blocks are.  Anyway, with all this “connectedness” do we really understand each other better? I’m not referring to the innuendo, the rumours and the downright misleading stuff but to the genuine attempts at “getting the message across”. Why? - because of Wiio’s “Laws of Communication”.

I first came across these Laws in February 1979.  They were presented in an article actually written by Professor Wiio for the World Paper, published in Melbourne, Australia, by The Age.

At that time Professor Wiio was the Director of the Institute for Communication Research at the University of Helsinki and a member of the Finnish Parliament.

Professor Wiio explained that he named these laws after himself out of modesty because he “does not want to blame anyone else”.  He did admit however that he is in debt to the unknown originator of Murphy’s Law: “If something can go wrong, it will”.

1        Communication usually fails –except by chance.
Corollary
If you are satisfied that your communication is bound to succeed, then the communication is bound to fail

2        If a message can be understood in different ways it will be understood in just the way which does the most harm.

3        There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.

4        The more communication there is the more difficult it is for the communication to succeed.
Corollary
The more communication there is the more misunderstanding will occur.

5        In mass communication it is not important how things are; the important thing is how things seem to be.

6        The importance of a news item is inversely correlated with their square of distance.

My personal favourite is No. 3.

Whenever I’ve had to opportunity to present these “Laws”, I’ve concluded with:
“This means that even the simplest message will be misunderstood,and attempts to overcome it, no matter how ingenious, will fail.”

And since “a picture is worth a thousand words”, I’d illustrate this by a couple of cartons of “Denis” by Hank Ketcham.  
An interesting take on Wiio can be found at: A Commentary on Wiio Laws

By the way, following Wiio, this piece of “communication” has - not succeeded!?