Communication studies

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The European tradition of communication studies partly builds on the work of the Frankfurt School. The American tradition is better known for, but not limited to, Communication Sciences. In the United Kingdom the subject is often called media studies or media and communication studies.

[edit] History

Various aspects of communication have long been the subject of human study. In ancient Greece and Rome, the study of rhetoric, the art of effective speaking and persuasion, was a vital subject for students. One significant ongoing debate was whether one could be an effective speaker in a base cause (Sophists) or whether excellent rhetoric came from the excellence of the orator's character (Socrates, Plato, Cicero). Through the European Middle Ages and Renaissance grammar, rhetoric, and logic constituted the entire trivium, the base of the system of classical learning in Europe.

In the early 20th century, many specialists began to study communication as a specific part of their academic disciplines. Communication studies began to emerge as a distinct academic field in the early 20th century. In 1914 the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking, now called the National Communication Association, was founded. Herbert Wichelns was an early pioneer. Business Communication, initially focusing on how managers could obtain compliance by their employees, developed in parallel with and in some cases merged with Speech Education or Rhetoric. Propaganda and media effects theorists, including Harold Lasswell, Kurt Lewin, and Paul Lazarsfeld also had an important impact on the field early on. Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan developed influential analyses of communication and technology in the 1950s and 1960s. A critique of commodified communications emerged with the writings of Theodor W. Adorno and Guy Debord.

The main national professional organization covering many of the areas of communication studies in the U.S. is the National Communication Association (NCA). The main European associations for communication studies are the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR) and the European Communication Association(ECA). The main international association for communication studies is the International Communication Association, which tends to focus more on quantitatively based social science studies of communicative phenomenon.

The formal study of communication has always moved across academic disciplines. Those who study the act of producing speech are known as Speech Therapists or Communication Therapists. Some students of information processing call their subject communication, as do some electrical engineers and those who study telecommunications systems such as those which internationally link telephone and computers.

Most USA graduate programs in Communication today trace their history through Speech to ancient rhetoric. Programs in Communication, Communication Arts or Communication Sciences often include Organizational Communication, Interpersonal Communication, Speech Communication (or Rhetoric), Mass Communication, and sometimes Journalism, Film criticism, Theatre, Political studies (e.g., political campaign strategies, public speaking, effects of media on elections), or Radio, Television or Film production. Graduates of formal Communications programs can be found in a wide range of fields working as university professors, marketing researchers, media editors and designers, speech therapists, journalists, human resources managers, corporate trainers, public relations and media managers and consultants in a variety of fields including, media production, life coaching, public speaking, organizational, political campaign/issue management and public policy.

Communication can be seen as a cornerstone of society. It links the ways messages are transmitted and received via technology with the composition of these messages (or more broadly, as communicative relationships), and with the analysis of the effects of these communicative acts.

Today the study of communication thus interfaces/overlaps with areas such as business, organizational development, philosophy, languages, composition, theatre, debate (often called "forensics"), literary criticism, sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, semiotics, international policy, economics and political science, among others. The breadth and the primacy of communication in many areas of life is responsible both for the ubiquity of communication studies, and for the resulting confusion about what does and does not constitute communication.