Westley–MacLean Model: Audit Selection Before Judging the Message

Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 466

Most events never reach the audience

The Westley–MacLean Model shows how mediated communication constructs an available environment by selecting among more events, advocates, and signals than any audience can receive

Premise

Mass communication begins with scarcity of attention, not with a finished message. The Westley–MacLean Model starts from a field containing more events and signals than any communicator or audience can process. Selection is therefore constitutive: some events enter the communication system, some advocates promote them, professional communicators admit or transform a subset, and audiences encounter only part of the original field.

This shifts executive scrutiny upstream from publication quality to selection architecture. A polished briefing can still be systematically incomplete if the wrong events entered the channel, if one advocate dominates the inputs, or if the organization mistakes available audience feedback for evidence of understanding.

What the model is: Westley–MacLean Model in Knowledge →