Communication Studies

Communication studies is a multifaceted academic field that deals with the production, transmission, and consumption of symbols and messages through different media and in different contexts. Because communication is a primary activity in the social life of humans, communication processes encompass a wide range of activities, including speech and face-to-face conversation, journalism and news making, uses in mass media and consumption, interaction using new media, and professional and political communication.

Although the way people communicate with one another has been the subject of reflection since ancient times, organic studies of communication mainly developed in the twentieth century and only took on the form of a discipline after World War II. Today, communication studies is an interdisciplinary field that embraces several theories and methodologies in both the social sciences and the humanities, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, economics, semiotics, literary studies, linguistics, and rhetoric. Differences of context and the variety of disciplines involved are the reasons for both the fragmentation of the field and for the interest shown in it by various different academics, from many traditions and subfields. Consequently, it suffers from a lack of scientific consensus regarding common paradigms and a shared historical narrative.

In the initial period of the development of communication studies, theoretical approaches, content analysis, and historical works were prevalent, and the increasing maturity of the discipline has brought a further expansion of its methods and perspectives over the past thirty years, especially in the fields of ethnography and qualitative research. Moreover, a more complex relationship between production and consumption has been developed, specifically regarding the role of the audience and the situated media consumption processes. For this reason, the subfields of media applications and audience research are also relevant to consumer culture in today's world, in that they consider the material and cultural processes involved in the consumption of communication and the role of communication in shaping the same consumer practices.