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Communication studies is an academic discipline that deals with processes of communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols over distances in space and time. Image File history File links Mergefrom. ... Media Studies is the study of the constitution and effects of media. ... Image File history File links Mergefrom. ... Communication sciences refers to the schools of scientific research of human communication. ...

Hence, communication studies can deal with, for instance, the transmission of messages from one point to another through some medium of dissemination, such as face-to-face or television, but also with how institutions like libraries maintain information over time.

The discipline is institutionalized under many different names at different universities and in various countries, including “communications”, "communication studies", "speech communication", “communications science”, “media studies”, “mass communication”, or even “mediology”, and often overlaps with academic programs in journalism, film and cinema, radio and television, advertising and public relations and performance studies. Media Studies is the study of the constitution and effects of media. ...

The National Communication Association (NCA) recognizes 9 distinct but often overlapping sub-disciplines within the broader communication discipline: Communication & Technology, Critical-Cultural, Health, Intercultural-International, Interpersonal-Small Group, Mass Communication, Organizational, Political, and Rhetorical.

Communication studies is often considered a part of the social sciences or the humanities, but sometimes draws on other disciplines as well, including engineering, architecture, mathematics, sociology, psychology, computer science, gender and sexuality and economics. The vast breadth and interdisciplinary nature of communication studies has understandably made it difficult for students to place it within the broader educational system.

Despite this, it draws large numbers of students, sustains a continuing academic discussion, a large number of scholarly journals, and several professional associations, and communications scholars have provided educators, lawmakers, businesses, and reformers with advise on various issues.

Background

Communication can be seen as a cornerstone of society. In what is called the “transmission” view, communication 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. A more recent “ritual” view holds that communication is a central daily ritual that helps form and sustain communities.

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 for the ubiquity of communication studies, as well as for the resulting confusion about what does and does not constitute communication. The field of organization development (OD) has had several definitions. ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... Sociology (from Latin: socius, companion; and the suffix -ology, the study of, from Greek λόγος, lógos, knowledge [1]) is the scientific or systematic study of society, including patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture[2]. Areas studied in sociology can range from the analysis of brief contacts between anonymous... {redirect|Psychological science|the journal|Psychological Science (journal)}} Not to be confused with Phycology. ... This article is about the social science. ... Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. ... Face-to-face trading interactions on the New York Stock Exchange trading floor. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political Science is the field concerning the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. ...

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 science (e.g., political campaign strategies, public speaking, effects of media on elections), or Radio, Television or Film production. Graduates of formal communication 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 practitioners, 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. For other uses, see Communication (disambiguation). ... Communication Arts is a magazine that highlights and features articles about graphic design, photography, and advertising. ... Communication sciences refers to the schools of scientific research of human communication. ... Organizational communication, broadly speaking, is: the transactional, symbolic process in which the activities of a social collective are coordinated to achieve individual and collective goals. ... Interpersonal communication is the process of sending and receiving information or communication with another person. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral, visual, or written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ... Mass communication is the term used to describe the academic study of various means by which individuals and entities relay information to large segments of the population all at once through mass media. ... // Journalism is the discipline of gathering, writing and reporting news, and broadly it includes the process of editing and presenting the news articles. ... Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. ... Serge Sudeikins poster for the Bat Theatre (1922). ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political Science is the field concerning the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. ... Film production on location in Newark, New Jersey. ... For the community in Florida, see University, Florida. ... The meaning of the word professor (Latin: [1]) varies. ... Next big thing redirects here. ... For the suburb of Melbourne, Australia, see Research, Victoria. ... Editing is the process of preparing language, images, or sound through correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media. ... Designer is a broad term for a person who designs any of a variety of things. ... Speech therapy is the corrective or rehabilitative treatment of physical and/or cognitive deficits/disorders resulting in difficulty with verbal communication. ... A journalist is a person who practices journalism. ... This article is about human resources as it applies to business, labor, and economies. ... A corporate trainer is a specialized skill development position in a corporation where the goal is to help improve the soft skills or people skills of the workers in the corporation. ... For the Arrested Development episode, see Public Relations (Arrested Development episode). ... he is the best in the world, some call him the junior jose, special 1 version 2 ... A consultant is a professional that provides expert advice in a particular domain or area of expertise such as accountancy, information technology, the law, human resources, marketing, medicine, finance or more esoteric areas of knowledge, for example engineering and scientific specialties such as materials science, instrumentation, avionics, and stress analysis. ... Life coaching is a practice of assisting clients to determine and achieve personal goals. ... A modern day speaker addressing an audience through microphones Public speaking is the process of speaking to a group of people in a structured, deliberate manner intended to inform, influence, or entertain the listeners. ... For other uses, see Organization (disambiguation). ... “Electioneering” redirects here. ... Issue management is the process used to align organizational activities and stakeholder expectations. ... Public policy is a course of action or inaction chosen by public authorities to address a problem. ...

History, pre-20th century

Various aspects of communication have long been the subject of human study. In ancient Greece and Rome, the study of rhetoric, the art of oratory 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. This article is about modern humans. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral, visual, or written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ... Oratory is the art of eloquent speech. ... For other uses, see Persuasion (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Student (disambiguation). ... Sophism was originally a term for the techniques taught by a highly respected group of philosophy and rhetoric teachers in ancient Greece. ... This page is about the Classical Greek philosopher. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Cicero (disambiguation). ... This article is about the European Renaissance of the 14th-17th centuries. ... For the rules of the English language, see English grammar. ... Rhetoric (from Greek , rhêtôr, orator, teacher) is generally understood to be the art or technique of persuasion through the use of oral, visual, or written language; however, this definition of rhetoric has expanded greatly since rhetoric emerged as a field of study in universities. ... Logic (from Classical Greek λόγος logos; meaning word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle) is the study of the principles and criteria of valid inference and demonstration. ... For any other uses see, see Trivium (disambiguation). ...

History, North America

1900s-1920s

Though the study of communication reaches back to antiquity and beyond, early twentieth-century work by Charles Horton Cooley, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey has been of particular importance for the academic discipline as it stands today in the United States. In his 1909 Social Organization: a Study of the Larger Mind, Cooley defines communication as “the mechanism through which human relations exist and develop—all the symbols of the mind, together with the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time.” This view, which has subsequently been largely marginalized in sociology, gave processes of communication a central and constitutive place in the study of social relations. Public Opinion, published in 1922 by Walter Lippmann, couples this view of the constitutive importance of communication with a fear that the rise of new technologies and institutions of mass communication allowed for the manufacture of consent and generated dissonance between what he called ‘the world outside and the pictures in our heads’ on a scale that made democracy as classically conceived almost impossible to realize. John Dewey’s 1927 The Public and its Problems drew on the same view of communications, but coupled it instead with an optimistic progressive and democratic reform agenda, arguing famously “communication can alone create a great community”. Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929) was an American sociologist. ... Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 - December 14, 1974) was an influential American writer, journalist, and political commentator. ... John Dewey (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly influential in the United States and around the world. ... Public Opinion is a book on media and democracy by Walter Lippmann. ... The Public and Its Problems is a book by John Dewey, an American philosopher, written in 1927. ...

Cooley, Lippmann, and Dewey capture themes like the central importance of communication in social life, the rise of large and potentially powerful media institutions and the development of new communications technologies in societies undergoing rapid transformation, and questions regarding the relationship between communication, democracy, and community. All these remain central to the discipline of communication studies. Many of these concerns are also central to the work of writers such as Gabriel Tarde and Theodor W. Adorno, which has been central to the development of communication studies elsewhere. Gabriel Tarde (March 12, 1843 in Dordogne, France – May 13, 1904 in Paris) French sociologist and social psychologist who conceived sociology as based on small psychological interactions among individuals (much as if it were chemistry), the fundamental forces being imitation and innovation. ... Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno (September 11, 1903 – August 6, 1969) was a German sociologist, philosopher, pianist, musicologist, and composer. ...

The first decades of the twentieth century also saw the development of parallel currents of cultural criticism that drew less on the social sciences and more on the humanities. Though trained as a sociologist, the work of W.E.B. Du Bois on art and spirituals stands out here. This article or section needs additional references or sources to facilitate its verification. ...

1930s-1950s

The institutionalization of communication studies in U.S. higher education and research has often been traced to Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where early pioneers and institutionalizers like Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Harold Lasswell, and Wilbur Schramm worked. Alma Mater Columbia University is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. ... For other uses, see University of Chicago (disambiguation). ... The University of Illinois is the set of three public universities in Illinois. ... Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (1901-1976) was one of the major figures in 20th century American Sociology. ... The cover of Harold Lasswell on Political Sociology from the University of Chicago Press. ... Wilbur Schramm was professor of communication, and founder of the Institute for Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ...

The Bureau of Applied Social Research was established in 1944 at Columbia University by Paul F. Lazarsfeld. It was a continuation of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Radio Project that he had led at various institutions (University of Newark, Princeton) from 1937, which had been at Columbia as the Office of Radio Research since 1939. In its various incarnations, the Radio Project had involved Lazarsfeld himself, and people like Adorno, Hadley Cantril, Gordon Allport, and Frank Stanton (who went on to be president of CBS). Lazarsfeld and the Bureau mobilized substantial sums for research, and produced, with various co-authors, a series of books and edited volumes that helped define the discipline, such as Personal Influence (1955) which remains a classic in what is called the ‘media effects’-tradition. At Columbia, communications studies have traditionally been closely aligned with sociology, and people like Robert Merton and others from the sociology program were at times involved. The university did only recently, in the 1990s, establish an actual degree-granting graduate program in communications, illustrating how much important research on communications continues to take place outside the discipline that carries the name. The Bureau, and Lazarsfeld’s research more generally, exemplifies the close relations that have sometimes existed between communication studies and the media industries. Frank Nicholas Stanton (March 20, 1908 – December 24, 2006) served as the president of CBS between 1946 and 1971 and then vice chairman until 1973. ...

From the 1940s and onwards, the University of Chicago was home to several temporary but important committees and commissions on communications, programs that also educated several leading communication scholars. In contrast to what took place at Columbia, these programs explcitly claimed the name 'communications' for themselves. The Committee on Communication and Public Opinion, also funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, was staffed with, in addition to Lasswell, people such as Douglas Waples, Samuel A. Stouffer, Louis Wirth, and Herbert Blumer, all of whom held positions elsewhere at the university. They formed a committee that essentially served as a scholarly and educational extension of the federal government’s increasing interest in communications during times of war, and was in particular closely linked to the Office of War Information. The committee is a reminder of connection as important as the Bureau’s with the industry, namely the connection between communication studies and government interests and funding. Chicago later provided an institutional home for The Hutchins Commission on the Freedom of the Press and the Committee on Communication (1947-1960). The latter was a degree-granting program that counted Elihu Katz, Bernard Berelson, Edward Shils, and David Riesman amongst its faculty, and produced graduates like Herbert J. Gans and Michael Gurevitch. The committee also produced publications like Berelson and Janowitz’ Public Opinion and Communication (1950) and the journal Studies in Public Communication. Louis Wirth was born in Germany, but studied in the United States and became a leading figure in Chicago School sociology. ... Herbert Blumer (born March 7, 1900 in St. ... The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. ... Elihu Katz (b. ... Edward Shils (1911-1985) was a Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and in Sociology at the University of Chicago and one of the worlds most influential sociologists. ... David Riesman (born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, September 22, 1909; died in Binghamton, New York, May 10, 2002), was an United States sociologist, attorney, and educator. ... Herbert J. Gans (1927– ) is an American sociologist. ...

The Institute for Communications Research was founded at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1947 by Wilbur Schramm, who was a key figure in the post-war institutionalization of communication studies in the U.S. Like the various Chicago committees, the Illinois program claimed the name 'communications' and granted graduate degrees in the subject. Schramm, who, in contrast to the more social science-inspired figures at Columbia and Chicago, had a background in English literature, developed communication studies partly by merging existing programs in speech communication, rhetoric, and, especially, journalism under the aegis of communication. He also edited a textbook The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (1954) that helped define the field, partly by claiming the Lazarsfeld, Lasswell, Carl Hovland, and Kurt Lewin as its founding fathers. He also wrote several other manifestos for the discipline, including The Science of Human Communication 1963. Schramm and the Institute moved on to Stanford University in 1955. Many of Schramm's students, such as Everett Rogers, went on to make important contributions of their own. Carl Iver Hovland (1912-1961) was a psychologist working primarily at Yale University and the US Army during World War II who studied attitude change and persuasion. ... Kurt Zadek Lewin (September 9, 1890 – February 12, 1947) was a German psychologist and one of the pioneers of social psychology. ... Everett M. Rogers (1931 in Carroll, Iowa - Albuquerque, New Mexico, 21 October 2004), communications scholar, pioneer of diffusion of innovations theory, writer, and teacher. ...

1950s-1960s

From the 1950s onwards, communications studies branched out in several new and often very different directions. Numerous new programs opened up at various universities, and new journals were established.

The work of what has been called ‘medium theorists’, arguably defined by Harold Innis’ (1950) Empire and Communications grew increasingly important, and was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in his Understanding Media (1964). This perspective informs the later work of Joshua Meyrowitz (No Sense of Place, 1986). Harold Adams Innis (November 5, 1894-November 8, 1952) was a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of many seminal works on Canadian economic history and on media and communications. ... “McLuhan” redirects here. ... Joshua Meyrowitz is a renowned professor of communications at the department of media studies, at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. ...

Cybernetics and information theory, as formulated by Norbert Weiner in his Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) and by Claude E. Shannon and Warren Weaver in their The Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949) was widely appropriated, and offered to some the prospect of a general theory of society. Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 - March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician, known as the founder of cybernetics. ... Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 - February 24, 2001) has been called the father of information theory, and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory. ... Warren Weaver is an author of the well-known work on communication, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (together with Claude Shannon). ...

The tradition of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School was, as in Europe, an important source of influence for many researchers. While done out of sociology departments, the work of Juergen Habermas, the US-based Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, and Siegfried Kracauer, as well as earlier figures like Adorno and Max Horkheimer continued to inform a whole tradition of cultural criticism that often focused both empirically and theoretically on the culture industry. In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. ... For related articles, see Critical theory and Critical theory (Frankfurt School) Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist critical theory, social research, and philosophy. ... Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas (born June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory. ... Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993) Lowenthal was born in Frankfurt in 1900, the son of assimilated Jews (his father was a physician), and he came of age during the turbulent early years of the Weimar Republic. ... Herbert Marcuse (July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-born philosopher, sociologist and a member of the Frankfurt School. ... Siegfried Kracauer (February 8, 1889, Frankfurt am Main, Germany – November 26, 1966, New York) was a German-American writer, journalist, sociologist, and cultural critic, particularly of media such as film, as well as the urban form. ... Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg Max Horkheimer (February 14, 1895 – July 7, 1973) was a Jewish-German philosopher and sociologist, known especially as the founder and guiding thinker of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. ... Culture industry is a term coined by Theodor Adorno (1903-1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895-1973), who argued that popular culture is akin to a factory producing standardized cultural goods to manipulate the masses into passivity; the easy pleasures available through consumption of popular culture make people docile and content...

1960s-1970s

The 1960s and 1970s saw the development of cultivation theory, pioneered by George Gerbner at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. This approach shifted emphasis from the short-term effects that had been the central interest of many earlier works on the media, and instead tried to track the effect of exposure to, for instance, television over time on viewers' perceptions of reality. Cultivation theory, developed by Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, derived from several large-scale projects concerned with the effects of television programming (particularly violent programming) on the attitudes and behaviors of the American public (Miller, 2005, p. ... George Gerbner (August 8, 1919 - December 24, 2005) was a communication theorist, the founder of cultivation theory, and a poet. ... The Annenberg School for Communication is the communications school at the University of Pennsylvania. ...

1970s-1980s

Neil Postman founded the media ecology program at New York University in 1971. Media ecologists draw on a wide range of inspirations in their attempts to study entire media environments in an even broader and more cultural fashion than the work done in the Canadian medium theory tradition. This perspective is the basis of a separate professional association, the Media Ecology Association. Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 - October 5, 2003) was an American professor, media theorist, and cultural critic who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. ... Media ecology is an interdisciplinary field of media theory involving the study of media environments. ... New York University (NYU) is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational research university in New York City. ...

In 1972, Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw published a path-breaking article that offered an agenda-setting theory of media effects that gave new ways of conceptualizing the short-term media effects that earlier work had generally deemed limited. This approach, organized around additional ideas such as framing, priming, and gatekeeping, has been highly influential, especially in the study of political communication and news coverage. Maxwell McCombs is a communication theorist who propounded the agenda setting theory. ... Donald Shaw is the co-author of the Agenda-Setting theory along with Maxwell McCombs. ... The Agenda-setting theory,is the theory that the mass-news media have a large influence on audiences by their choice of what stories to consider newsworthy and how much prominence and space to give them. ...

The 1970s also saw the development of what became known as uses and gratifications research, developed by scholars such as Elihu Katz, Jay G. Blumler, and Michael Gurevitch. Insteading of looking at communications processes simply as a one-way flow from senders to receivers, this approach began scrutinizing what audiences get out of communications, what they do with it, why they engage with it--especially with mass media. Uses and gratifications, also known as usage and gratifications or needs and gratifications, is not a single approach but a body of approaches to media analysis that developed out of many varied empirical studies, beginning in the mid 20th century. ... Elihu Katz (b. ... Jay Blumler (b. ...

History, Germany

Communication studies in Germany has a rich hermeneutic heritage in philology, textual interpretation, and historical studies. The post-world war II era, however, has seen the rise of a number of new paradigms.

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann pioneered work on the spiral of silence in a tradition that has been widely influential across the world and has proven to be easily compatible with the dominant paradigms in for instance the U.S. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (born December 19, 1916) is a German political scientist. ... The spiral of silence is a political science and mass communication theory propounded by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. ...

In the 1970s, Karl Deutsch returned to Germany, and his cybernetics inspired work has been widely influential here as elsewhere. This article needs cleanup. ... For other uses, see Cybernetics (disambiguation). ...

The work of the Frankfurt School has been a cornerstone of much German work on communication, in addition to Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas, figures like Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge has been important in the development of this strand of thought. Oskar Negt (born August 1, 1934 in Kapkeim) is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory. ... Alexander Kluge (born February 14, 1932 in Halberstadt, in the vicinity of Magdeburg, Germany) is a noted film director and author. ...

An important competing paradigm has been the systems theory developed by Niklas Luhmann and his students, such as Dirk Baecker and others. Niklas Luhmann (December 8, 1927 - November 6, 1998) was a German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist, as well as one the most prominent modern day thinkers in the sociological systems theory. ...

Finally, from the 1980s and onwards, people like Friedrich Kittler has led the development of a 'new German medium theory', aligned partly with the Canadian medium theory of Innis and McLuhan and partly with post-structuralism. Friedrich A. Kittler (born 1943 in Rochlitz, Saxony) is a literary scientist and a media theorist. ... Post-structuralism encompasses the intellectual developments of continental philosophers and critical theorists that wrote with tendencies of twentieth-century French philosophy. ...

Professional Associations

• National Communication Association (NCA): The main national professional organization covering many of the areas of communication studies in the U.S.
• European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR) and the European Communication Association(ECA) are the main European associations for communication studies
• The International Communication Association is the main international association for communication studies, which combines an older focus on quantitatively based social science studies with newer critical and cultural studies of communicative phenomena.
• Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

The National Communication Association (NCA) is the American national professional organization for the Communication Studies discipline. ... This article or section should be merged with professional association A professional body or professional organization is an organisation, usually non-profit, that exists to further a particular profession, to protect both the public interest and the interests of professionals. ... The mission statement of the International Communication Association states its purpose and goals to be the following: The International Communication Association aims to advance the scholarly study of human communication by encouraging and facilitating excellence in academic research worldwide. ... The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) is a major international membership organization for academics in the field, offering regional and national conferences and refereed publications. ...

See also

• Mass communication
• Media ecology
• Media studies
• Communication basic topics
• Communication sciences

Mass communication is the term used to describe the academic study of various means by which individuals and entities relay information to large segments of the population all at once through mass media. ... Media ecology is an interdisciplinary field of media theory involving the study of media environments. ... Media Studies is the study of the constitution and effects of media. ... These should be the most basic topics in the field--topics about which wed like to have articles soon. ... Communication sciences refers to the schools of scientific research of human communication. ...

Bibliography

Peters, John Durham 1986, 'Institutional Sources for Intellectual Poverty in Communication Research', Communication Research, 1986.

Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin 2004, 'How Not to Found a Field: New Evidence on the Origins of Mass Communication Research', Journal of Communication, September 2004.

--221.120.209.170 (talk) 05:01, 11 June 2008 (UTC)[[Image:[Example.jpg]Bold text]]Insert non-formatted text here==External links==

• NancyTobler.com A wiki specifically devoted to communication studies
• Search Communication Based Websites
• College of Communication Arts & Sciences
• [1] A useful database of terms and authors devoted to communication, cultural, and medi

== Headline text ==Italic text a and studies.