Functions of Non-Verbal Communication in One-Way Media Communication Processes(Case study: IRIB’s 21:00 News)

Among the communication processes, communication science considers an important role for non-verbal communication. This role becomes important in one-way communications; like the News in which receiving feedback from the audience and correcting the sender’s moves is not possible when sending the message. In this research, 18 21:00 programs of IRIB’s TV channel 1 have been systematically selected and studied using qualitative analysis method to identify the six types of known non-verbal communications (approval, completion, denial, repetition, control, and succession) used in 21:00 news and relate to the text read by the anchor. Five parameters of “the anchors’ posture”, “gestures”, “facial expressions”, “eye contact” and “paralinguistic features” were selected as the main parameters totally shaping 38 sub-categories. After qualitative analysis of the extracted categories and subcategories, we concluded that most of the non-verbal communications used by the anchors are restricted to the movement of the head and facial expressions, and the movement of hands and different postures have barely been used. In general, the anchors select the “stone face” (stilt) position as their base position for news reading and when reading the news, they try to use body movements and phonetic techniques in order to refrain from monotony, but incorrect usage of this technique or overusing non-verbal movements can reduce the validity and attractiveness of 21:00 news. Also, the function of emphasizing the speech by non-verbal communication is used as the mostly-used function by the anchors after which completion and control are the most important functions.