Communication studies

Scholarly communication theorists focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of communication, examining statistics to help substantiate claims. The range of social scientific methods to study communication has been expanding. Communication researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-20th century led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophic approaches towards the analysis of communication. Conversely, the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s have seen the rise of new analytically, mathematically, and computationally focused techniques.

As a field of study, communication is applied to journalism, business, mass media, public relations, marketing, news and television broadcasting, interpersonal and intercultural communication, education, public administration, the problem of media-adequacy—and beyond. As all spheres of human activity and conveyance are affected by the interplay between social communication structure and individual agency, communication studies has gradually expanded its focus to other domains, such as health, medicine, economy, military and penal institutions, the Internet, social capital, and the role of communicative activity in the development of scientific knowledge.

History

Origins

Communication, a natural human behavior, became a topic of study in the 20th century. As communication technologies developed, so did the serious study of communication. During this time, a renewed interest in the study of rhetoric, including persuasion and public address, emerged, ultimately laying the foundation for several forms of communication studies we know today. The focus of communication studies developed further in the 20th century, eventually including means of communication such as mass communication, interpersonal communication, and oral interpretation. When World War I ended, the interest in studying communication intensified. The methods of communication used during the war challenged many people's beliefs about the limits of war that existed before these events. During this period, innovations were invented that no one had ever seen before, such as aircraft, telephones, and throat microphones. However, new ways of communicating that had been discovered, especially the use of morse code through portable morse code machines, helped troops to communicate in a much more rapid pace than ever before. This then sparked ideas for even more advanced ways of communication to be later created and discovered.

The social sciences were fully recognized as legitimate disciplines after World War II. Before being established as its own discipline, communication studies was formed from three other major studies: psychology, sociology, and political science. Communication studies focus on communication as central to the human experience, which involves understanding how people behave in creating, exchanging, and interpreting messages. Today, this accepted discipline now also encompasses more modern forms of communication studies as well, such as gender and communication, intercultural communication, political communication, health communication, and organizational communication.

Foundations of the academic discipline

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 of the field worked after the Second World War.

Wilbur Schramm is considered the founder of the field of communication studies in the United States. Schramm was hugely influential in establishing communication as a field of study and in forming departments of communication studies across universities in the United States. He was the first individual to identify himself as a communication scholar; he created the first academic degree-granting programs with communication in their name; and he trained the first generation of communication scholars. Schramm had a background in English literature and developed communication studies partly by merging existing programs in speech communication, rhetoric, and journalism. He also edited a textbook, The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (1954), that helped define the field, partly by claiming Paul Lazarsfeld, Harold Lasswell, Carl Hovland, and Kurt Lewin as its founding fathers.

Schramm established three important communication institutes: the Institute of Communications Research (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), the Institute for Communication Research (Stanford University), and the East-West Communication Institute (Honolulu). The patterns of scholarly work in communication studies that were set in motion at these institutes continue to this day. Many of Schramm's students, such as Everett Rogers and David Berlo went on to make important contributions of their own.

The first college of communication was founded at Michigan State University in 1958, led by scholars from Schramm's original ICR and dedicated to studying communication scientifically using a quantitative approach. MSU was soon followed by important departments of communication at Purdue University, University of Texas-Austin, Stanford University, University of Iowa, University of Illinois, University of Pennsylvania, The University of Southern California, and Northwestern University.

Associations related to Communication Studies were founded or expanded during the 1950s. The National Society for the Study of Communication (NSSC) was founded in 1950 to encourage scholars to pursue communication research as a social science. This Association launched the Journal of Communication in the same year as its founding. Like many communication associations founded in this decade, the association's name changed as the field evolved. In 1968 the name changed to the International Communication Association (ICA).

In the United States

Undergraduate curricula aim to prepare students to interrogate the nature of communication in society and the development of communication as a specific field.

The National Communication Association (NCA) recognizes several distinct but often overlapping specializations within the broader communication discipline, including: technology, critical-cultural, health, intercultural, interpersonal-small group, mass communication, organizational, political, rhetorical, and environmental communication. Students take courses in these subject areas. Other programs and courses often integrated in communication programs include journalism, rhetoric, film criticism, theatre, public relations, political science (e.g., political campaign strategies, public speaking, effects of media on elections), as well as radio, television, computer-mediated communication, film production, and new media.

Many colleges in the United States offer a variety of majors within communication studies, including programs of study in the areas mentioned above. Communication studies is often perceived by many in society as primarily centered on the media arts; however, graduates of communication studies can pursue careers in areas ranging from media arts to public advocacy, marketing, and non-profit organizations.

In Canada

With the early influence of federal institutional inquiries, notably the 1951 Massey Commission, which "investigated the overall state of culture in Canada", the study of communication in Canada has frequently focused on the development of a cohesive national culture, and on infrastructural empires of social and material circulation. Although influenced by the American Communication tradition and British Cultural Studies, Communication studies in Canada has been more directly oriented toward the state and the policy apparatus, for example the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Influential thinkers from the Canadian communication tradition include Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Florian Sauvageau, Gertrude Robinson, Marc Raboy, Dallas Smythe, James R. Taylor, François Cooren, Gail Guthrie Valaskakis and George Grant.

Communication studies within Canada are a relatively new discipline, however, there are programs and departments to support and teach this topic in about 13 Canadian universities and many colleges as well. The Communication et information from Laval, and the Canadian Journal of Communication from McGill University in Montréal, are two journals that exist in Canada. There are also organizations and associations, both national and in Québec, that appeal to the specific interests that are targeted towards these academics. These specific journals consist of representatives from the industry of communication, the government, and members of the public as a whole.