International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Communication theory is heir to classic issues in the history of ideas. If philosophy has traditionally asked how human knowledge of reality may be possible, communication theory addresses the media, modalities, and messages by which humans exchange, reflect on, and enact different perspectives on reality. Revisiting a number of key epistemological, ethical, and political issues, while responding to the increased importance of information and communication technologies throughout society and culture during the twentieth century, communication research emerged at the crossroads of social philosophy and scientific theory. Communication became established as a distinctive category of human activity following the rise of new electronic communication media during the latter half of the nineteenth century (→  Communication: History of the Idea ). These developments encouraged scholars and other commentators to think of diverse practices of social interaction – in the flesh, through wires, and over the air – in terms of their family resemblances. In Peters' (1999 , 6) felicitous formulation, “mass communication came first,” promoting explicit and sustained attention to the varieties of communication in research as well as in society at large (→  Communication: Definitions and Concepts ). Until the invention of the telegraph, “transportation and communication were inseparably linked” ( ... log in or subscribe to read full text