The Importance of Critical Analysis when Communicating

      Communication can often be confusing and subtle, with the true message lying below the surface and requiring human interpretation to decipher. It is important to critically analyze all communication in order to determine its relevant message. As different forms of communication can contain multiple messages or their single message may have very different meanings to different recipients, critical analysis is essential in order to work out just what the correct message is.

      This idea can be vividly illustrated when looking at the field of steganography. Steganography is the practice of hiding a communication inside of another communication (Johnson and Jajodia 1). This includes such things as invisible inks, microdots (nearly microscopic pieces of film with messages on them) and more recently, digitally imbedding messages inside of picture files on a computer. Digital steganography is a shining example of how critical analysis is essential to determining the correct message.

      When one employs digital steganography, a message is encoded into a seemingly unrelated piece of communication using special software. Commonly this is done by placing a message inside of an image file. When the file is opened, an uncritical viewer sees only the actual image, say of a cat or dog. The intended recipient does something completely different. Using a software decoder, the recipient loads the image and the ‘real’ message appears. To a political dissident or potential terrorist this real message is vital and missing it would be to suffer a complete communication failure. Without critical analysis, the dissident does not receive the message, nor does law enforcement find the hidden message on the terrorist’s computer. Without critical analysis, it would be impossible to communicate with a high degree of efficacy.



Johnson, Neil and Sushil Jajodia. “Exploring Steganography: Seeing the Unseen”. IEEE Computer February 1998, vol. 31, no. 2: 26-34.