Communication theory

(communications) The mathematical theory of the communication of information from one point to another.

For more information on information theory, visit Britannica.com.

Communication is the production and exchange of information and meaning by use of signs and symbols. It involves encoding and sending messages, receiving and decoding them, and synthesizing information and meaning. Communication permeates all levels of human experience and it is central to understanding human behavior and to nearly all public health efforts aimed at fostering health behavior change among individuals, populations, organizations, communities, and societies.

Communication may be studied empirically and critically at different levels of interaction. These levels, often described on a "micro-to-micro" continuum are "intra-personal" (how individuals process information), "inter-personal" (how two individuals interact to influence one another), group (how communication dynamics occur among many individuals), formal and informal "organizations" (how communication occurs and functions in the context of organizations such as hospitals, schools, or public health agencies), and "community" and "society" (how communication builds or changes the agenda of important issues).

Empirical study means applying scientific methods to the study of communication; as in the study of behavior change resulting from exposure to a communication campaign. Critical study means applying methods of cultural, literary, or normative criticism to the study of communication; as in the analysis of how media content creates health-related meaning and influences behavioral norms through commercial advertising or entertainment.

Many fields emphasize the importance of communication theory as a basis for understanding human behavior. For the field of public health, the use of applied communication perspectives involves how communication activity positively or negatively contributes to health behavior, and how the planned use of communication influences health behavior within the context of health education and health promotion.

Organization of Communication Studies

Communication scholar George Gerbner describes three main branches of communication study. The first is "semiotics," the study of signs and symbols and how they combine to convey meaning in different social contexts. This branch is mainly concerned with how verbal, nonverbal, visual, and aural signs and symbols combine to create messages.

The second branch, media effects, is the study of behavior and interaction through exposure to messages. It emphasizes measuring, explaining, and predicting communication effects on knowledge, perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and public opinion. It is strongly influenced by scientific methods from the fields of psychology and social psychology.

The third branch, message production, is the study of the large-scale organization of communications through social institutions and systems (mass media, political organizations, government, advocacy groups), their history, regulation, and policy-making impact. It is strongly influenced by scientific methods from the field of sociology, but also by the methods of political science, history, and public affairs.

Just as no single behavioral theory explains and predicts all human behavior, no communication theory explains and predicts all communication outcomes. Some view this as a fragmentation in understanding the role of a communication in human affairs. Others view this as a productive theoretical diversity, conducive to the understanding of human activity in many complex dimensions. Communication researchers have increasingly sought to connect and to integrate effects across levels of analysis, from the "micro" to the macro. For example, health campaign planners may study the effects of a media campaign in generating interpersonal discussion. They might look at media story about a new drug or treatment to see if it causes patients to raise the issue with their health care providers.

Communication Theory and Health Behavior Change Strategies

How does communication theory inform health behavior change strategies?

Major theories of health behavior change all include communication processes. Value expectancy theories such as the health belief model and the theories of rational behavior and planned behavior depend on communication processes to catalyze health behavior change. The health belief model holds that individuals will be more likely to change their health-related behavior if they recognize a health risk or condition as important, if they view themselves as susceptible to the risk or condition and if they regard the benefits of change as outweighing barriers to making change. Communication strategies play a key role in influencing these perceptions. Similarly, communication plays an important role in influencing perceptions critical to the theories of reasoned action and planned behavior. In these theories, behavior is principally influenced by intentions to change. Intentions are influences by people's attitudes toward a specific behavior as well as their perceptions of what important referent groups think about the behavior. Communication may play a key role in influencing perceptions on both counts and thereby raise the likelihood of behavior change.

While communication dynamics in these theories are aimed principally at catalyzing health behavior change among individuals, other theories include the use of communication to affect change at the level of the community and society as well. The social cognitive theory of Albert Bandura (1986) and the transtheoretical model of Jams Prochaska et al. (1994), for example, recognize that an individuals' behavior is formed in the context of the larger community and social environment. Therefore planned interventions must include efforts to change the larger environment as well. From this perspective, communication has a role to play in influencing community and societal change in areas such as building a community agenda of important public health issues, changing public health policy, allocating resources to make behavior change easier, and legitimizing new norms of health behavior.

Community-based approaches to public health interventions and campaigns gained currency in public health during the last quarter of the twentieth century. This approach recognizes the need to seek change in health behavior across multiple levels of human experience—from the individual to the community level. Campaigns are planned efforts that seek different dimensions of change that will lead to health improvement throughout the population.

The Role of Media Communication

Because public health is interested primarily in populations, media communication is a key part of multistrategy, community-based campaigns. This is the case whether the object is to build a community's agenda for prevention, to change public policy, to educate individuals about specific health behavior changes, or all of these. Media institutions play a crucial role in health behavior change because of their role in disseminating information. As agents of socialization, like other major institutions, they also have a powerful impact in legitimizing behavioral norms. Popular and academic perspectives both hold that media communication plays a powerful role in promoting, discouraging, or even inhibiting healthy behaviors.

One type of research with applied implications for public health deals with message production. It seeks to understand the social and organizational factors that may impinge on the creation of media messages. Public health interest in this research centers around how it may influence message production processes in ways more conducive to creating messages about healthful behavior. The definition of a public health problem influences how the public understands it, the actions individuals or communities are likely to take to affect the problem, and the attention given the problem by different groups. The same processes may be used to influence entertainment content as well. The Harvard School of Public Health, for example, mounted a successful campaign to persuade television producers to include messages about the importance of the designated driver in reducing alcohol-related traffic accidents in there programs.

The second type of research studies the consequences of media exposure on individuals, groups, institutions, and social systems. The focus here is on major media effects hypotheses and their relevance to health behavior change. At the level of the individual, for example, researchers have studied learning hierarchies in which knowledge change affects attitudes, which in turn affects behavior. Others have noted different hierarchies, including dissonance-attribution, in which behavior change precedes attitude change, which in turn affects knowledge, and the low-involvement hierarchy, in which knowledge change precedes behavior, which in turn affects attitudes. Researchers, such as S. Chaffee and C. Roser (1986), have suggested that there are not three distinct hierarchies of effects, but a single continuum. The order of effects depends on where individuals or groups are positioned on this continuum with respect to a given outcome. In public health campaign settings, intervention and communication strategies will depend on an assessment of audience characteristics and needs, and on the development of appropriate messages.

Similarly, persuasion studies have focused on the chain of individual-level communication processes leading to behavior change. Early studies focused on opinion or attitude change in the context of such variables as the credibility of the information source, fear, organization of arguments, the role of group membership in resisting or accepting communication, and personality differences. Since the 1960s, however, research has emphasized cognitive processing of information leading to persuasion. This change occurred partly because of the interest Latin American scholars shown in developing new approaches to the use of mass communication in order to guide social change projects in developing countries.

Social structure has played an increasingly important role in the application of communication strategies to health behavior change. A continuing and perplexing issue involves the influence of social structure on communication and media use, and how this affects health behavior change. Epidemiological studies suggest, for example, that the health "gap" between higher and lower socioeconomic status groups in the United States is worsening rather than improving. Communication contributes to these circumstances insofar as structural barriers of access and exposure are frequently ignored or overlooked. Research has long demonstrated that knowledge and information are not equally distributed across populations. Early studies, such as those of Hyman and Sheatsley (1947), and Mosteller and Moynihan (1972), showed that people with more formal education learned and knew more about many issues, including health, than people with less formal education. These findings were formally presented as the knowledge gap hypothesis by Minnesota researchers P. J. Tichenor, G. A. Donohue, and C. N. Olien (1970). They proposed that increasing flow of information into a social system is more likely to benefit groups of higher socioeconomic status. The disturbing implications were, of course, that public campaigns would only perpetuate inequities. Because this called into question the entire basis of guided social change efforts, it attracted the attention of scholars and policy makers alike. Fortunately, subsequent studies found that knowledge gaps were not intractable. Researchers discovered a variety of contributory conditions that could reduce knowledge gaps. These conditions include content domains (some subjects are intrinsically more relevant to people, such as their health), channel influence (some channels are used more, and have greater impact, on certain groups), social conflict and community mobilization, the structure of communities, and individual motivational factors.

Future Directions

The use of communication to achieve health behavior change is now a staple of public health intervention methods, and will continue to be influential in the twenty first century. Researchers are interested in how communication at each level of analysis may influence or link to communication at other levels to affect health outcomes. Social cognitive theorist Albert Bandura recently suggested that the "power" of any single channel of communication (mass media or interpersonal) may depend on the complexity of the behavior change being sought. The less complex the change, the more the influence of a single channel may lead to performance of the behavior. On the other hand, the more complex the behavior, the greater the individuals' need for multiple exposure to multiple sources.

The emergence of new communication technologies also provides opportunities and challenges to public health. The World Wide Web, newsgroups, and other Internet innovations offer information on an array of topics from diverse sources. The nature of the medium also permits information to be available "on demand" to users. Thus, it appears that users can exert a greater degree of control in obtaining the information they seek. However, there is a potentially serious problems that warrant closer examination. New media technologies have the potential to widen the gap between those who can pay for access and gain the necessary skills, and those who cannot. If so, a significant portion of the population may once again be "out of the loop" of important health information and consequently health behavior change.

(SEE ALSO: Advertising of Unhealthy Products; Health Educater; Health Promotion and Education)

Bibliography

Bandura, A. (1986). Social Cognitive Theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

—— (1994). "Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication." In Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, eds. J. Bryant and D. Zillman. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Beniger, J. R., and Gusek, J. A. (1995). "The Cognitive Revolution in Public Opinion and Communication Research." In Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent, eds. T. L. Glasser and C. T. Salmon. New York: Guilford.

Donohue, G. A.; Tichenor, P. J.; and Olien, C. N. (1975). "Mass Media and the Knowledge Gap: A Hypothesis Reconsidered." Communication Research 2:3–23.

—— (1995). "A Guard Dog Perspective on the Role of Media." Journal of Communication 45 (2):115–132.

Ettema, J. S.; Brown, J.; and Luepker, R. V. (1983). "Knowledge Gap Effects in a Health Information Campaign." Public Opinion Quarterly 47:516–527.

Ettema, J. S., and Kline, G. G. (1977). "Deficits, Differences and Ceilings: Contingent Conditions for Understanding the Knowledge Gap." Communication Research 4:179–202.

Finnegan, J. R.; Viswanath, K.; Kahn, E.; and Hannan, P. (1993). "Exposure to Sources of Heart Disease Prevention Information: Community Type and Social Group Differences." Journalism Quarterly 70:569–584.

Gerbner, G. (1985). "Field Definitions: Communication Theory." In 1984–85 U.S. Directory of Graduate Programs.

Hawkins, R. P.; Weimann, J. M; and Pingree, S., eds. (1998). Advancing Communication Science: Merging Mass and Interpersonal Processes. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Hyman, H. H., and Sheatsley, P. B. (1947). "Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail." Public Opinion Quarterly 11:412–423.

Lasswell, H. D. (1948). "The Structure and Function of Communication in Society." In The Communication of Ideas, ed. L. Bryson. New York: Institute for Religious and Social Studies.

McCombs, M. E., and Shaw, D. (1972). "The Agendasetting Function of the Mass Media." Public Opinion Quarterly 36:176–187.

McGuire, W. J. (1984). "Public Communication As a Strategy for Inducing Health Behavior Change." Preventive Medicine 13:299–319.

—— (1989). "Theoretical foundations of Campaigns." In Public Communication Campaigns, 2nd edition, eds. R. E. Rice and C. K. Arkni. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

Prochaska, J.; Redding, C. A.; Harlow, L. L.; Rossi, J. S.; and Velcier, W. F. (1994). "The Transtheoretical Model of Change and HIV Prevention: A Review." Health Education Quarterly 21 (4):471–486.

Rogers, E. M. (1962; 1995). Diffusion of Innovations. New York: The Free Press.

Sigal, L. V. (1987). "Sources Make the News." In Reading the News, ed. K. Manoff and M. Schudson. New York: Pantheon Books.

Tichenor, P. J.; Donohue, G. A.; and Olien, C. N. (1970). "Mass Media Flow and Differential Growth in Knowledge." Public Opinion Quarterly 34:159–170.

—— (1980). Community Conflict and the Press. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

Tuchman, G. (1978). Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: The Free Press.

Turow, J. (1992). Media Systems in Society: Understanding Industries and Power. New York: Longman.

Viswanath, K., and Finnegan, J. R. (1995). "The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis: Twenty-five Years Later." In Communication Yearbook, Vol. 19., ed. B. Burleson. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Wallack, L.; Dorfman, L.; Jernigan, D.; and Themba, M. (1993). Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.

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— JOHN R. FINNEGAN,JR.; K. VISWANATH

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: the discipline that studies the principles of transmiting information and the methods by by which it is delivered (as print or radio or television etc.)
  Synonym: communications

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There is much discussion in the academic world of communication as to what actually constitutes communication. Currently, many definitions of communication are used in order to conceptualize the processes by which people navigate and assign meaning. Communication is also understood as the exchanging of understanding. Additionally the biocommunication theory investigates communicative processes within and among non-humans such as bacteria, animals, fungi and plants.

We might say that communication consists of transmitting information from one person to another. In fact, many scholars of communication take this as a working definition, and use Lasswell's maxim, "who says what to whom in what channel with what effect," as a means of circumscribing the field of communication theory.

A simple communication model with a sender transferring a message containing information to a receiver.

Other commentators suggest that a ritual process of communication exists, one not artificially divorceable from a particular historical and social context.

Communication stands so deeply rooted in human behaviors and the structures of society that scholars have difficulty thinking of it while excluding social or behavioral events. Because communication theory remains a relatively young field of inquiry and integrates itself with other disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, and sociology, one probably cannot yet^[update] expect a consensus conceptualization of communication across disciplines.

Currently, there is no paradigm from which communication scholars may work. One of the issues facing scholars is the possibility that establishing a communication metatheory will negate their research and stifle the broad body of knowledge in which communication functions.

Contents 1 History of Communication Theory 2 Communication Theory Framework 3 Mapping the theoretical landscape 3.1 Contexts 3.2 Assumptions 4 Some realms of communication and their theories 5 More information 6 References 7 See also 8 Bibliography 9 External links

History of Communication Theory

Aristotle

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The nature of communication has been argued about since the beginning of Western culture. Socrates and Plato reflect on language and communication in the Socratic dialogues, particularly in the Cratylus. Aristotle attempted to work out a theory of communication and language; in The Rhetoric he primarily focused on the art of persuasion, and in De Interpretatione he discusses the elements of language and the relation of language and logic.

Theological, humanistic and rhetorical viewpoints and theories dominated the discipline prior to the twentieth century, when more scientific methodologies and insights from information theory, psychology, sociology, linguistics and advertising began to influence communication thought and practice.

Communication Theory Framework

It is helpful to examine communication and communication theory through one of the following viewpoints:

• Mechanistic: This view considers communication as a perfect transaction of a message from the sender to the receiver. (as seen in the diagram above)
• Psychological: This view considers communication as the act of sending a message to a receiver, and the feelings and thoughts of the receiver upon interpreting the message.
• Social Constructionist (Symbolic Interactionist): This view considers communication to be the product of the interactants sharing and creating meaning. The Constructionist View can also be defined as, how you say something determines what the message is. The Constructionist View assumes that “truth” and “ideas” are constructed or invented through the social process of communication. Robert T. Craig saw the Constructionist View or the constitutive view as it’s called in his article, as “…an ongoing process that symbolically forms and re-forms our personal identities.”(Craig, 125). The other view of communication, the Transmission Model, sees communication as robotic and computer-like. The Transmission Model sees communication as a way of sending or receiving messages and the perfection of that. But, the Constructionist View sees communications as, “…in human life, info does not behave as simply as bits in an electronic stream. In human life, information flow is far more like an electric current running from one landmine to another”(Lanham, 7). The Constructionist View is a more realistic view of communication because it involves the interacting of human beings and the free sharing of thoughts and ideas. Daniel Chandler looks to prove that the Transmission Model is a lesser way of communicating by saying “The transmission model is not merely a gross over-simplification but a dangerously misleading representation of the nature of human communication”(Chandler, 2). Humans do not communicate simply as computers or robots so that’s why it’s essential to truly understand the Constructionist View of Communication well. We do not simply send facts and data to one another, but we take facts and data and they acquire meaning through the process of communication, or through interaction with others.
• Systemic: This view considers communication to be the new messages created via “through-put”, or what happens as the message is being interpreted and re-interpreted as it travels through people.
• Critical: This view considers communication as a source of power and oppression of individuals and social groups.^[1]

Inspection of a particular theory on this level will provide a framework on the nature of communication as seen within the confines of that theory.

Theories can also be studied and organized according to the ontological, epistemological, and axiological framework imposed by the theorist.

Ontology essentially poses the question of what, exactly, it is the theorist is examining. One must consider the very nature of reality. The answer usually falls in one of three realms depending on whether the theorist sees the phenomena through the lens of a realist, nominalist, or social constructionist. Realist perspective views the world objectively, believing that there is a world outside of our own experience and cognitions. Nominalists see the world subjectively, claiming that everything outside of one’s cognitions is simply names and labels. Social constructionists straddle the fence between objective and subjective reality, claiming that reality is what we create together.

Epistemology is an examination of how the theorist studies the chosen phenomena. In studying epistemology, particularly from a positivist perspective, objective knowledge is said to be the result of a systematic look at the causal relationships of phenomena. This knowledge is usually attained through use of the scientific method. Scholars often think that empirical evidence collected in an objective manner is most likely to reflect truth in the findings. Theories of this ilk are usually created to predict a phenomenon. Subjective theory holds that understanding is based on situated knowledge, typically found using interpretative methodology such as ethnography and also interviews. Subjective theories are typically developed to explain or understand phenomena in the social world.

Axiology is concerned with what values drive a theorist to develop a theory. Theorists must be mindful of potential biases so that they will not influence or skew their findings (Miller, 21-23).

Mapping the theoretical landscape

A discipline gets defined in large part by its theoretical structure. Communication studies often borrow theories from other social sciences. This theoretical variation makes it difficult to come to terms with the field as a whole. That said, some common taxonomies exist that serve to divide up the range of communication research. Two common mappings involve contexts and assumptions.

Contexts

Many authors and researchers divide communication by what they sometimes called "contexts" or "levels", but which more often represent institutional histories. The study of communication in the US, while occurring within departments of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology (among others), generally developed from schools of rhetoric and from schools of journalism. While many of these have become "departments of communication", they often retain their historical roots, adhering largely to theories from speech communication in the former case, and from mass media in the latter. The great divide between speech communication and mass communication becomes complicated by a number of smaller sub-areas of communication research, including intercultural and international communication, small group communication, communication technology, policy and legal studies of communication, telecommunication, and work done under a variety of other labels. Some of these departments take a largely social-scientific perspective, others tend more heavily toward the humanities, and still others gear themselves more toward production and professional preparation.

These "levels" of communication provide some way of grouping communication theories, but inevitably, some theories and concepts leak from one area to another, or fail to find a home at all.

Assumptions

Another way of dividing up the communication field emphasizes the assumptions that undergird particular theories, models, and approaches. While this approach also tends to have as its basis institutional divisions, theories within each of the seven "traditions" of communication theory that Robert Craig suggests tend to reinforce one another, and retain the same ground epistemological and axiological assumptions. His traditions include:

• rhetorical - practical art of discourse
• semiotic – intersubjective mediation through signs in order to mediate between different perspectives
• phenomenological - experience of otherness, dialogue
• cybernetic - information processing and explains how all kinds of complex systems, whether living or nonliving, macro or micro, are able to function, and why they often malfunction
• sociopsychological - expression, interaction and influence
• critical - discursive reflection
• sociocultural - reproduction of social order (Miller, 13)

Craig finds each of these clearly defined against the others, and remaining cohesive approaches to describing communicative behavior. As a taxonomic aid, these labels help to organize theory by its assumptions, and help researchers to understand why some theories may seem incommensurable.

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While communication theorists very commonly use these two approaches, theorists decentralize the place of language and machines as communicative technologies. The idea (as argued by Vygotsky) of communication as the primary tool of a species defined by its tools remains on the outskirts of communication theory. It finds some representation in the Toronto School of communication theory (alternatively sometimes called medium theory) as represented by the work of Innis, McLuhan, and others. It seems that the ways in which individuals and groups use the technologies of communication — and in some cases are used by them — remain central to what communication researchers do. The ideas that surround this, and in particular the place of persuasion, remain constants across both the "traditions" and "levels" of communication theory.

Some realms of communication and their theories

• message production: Constructivist Theory, Action Assembly Theory
• message processing: Elaboration Likelihood Model, Inoculation theory
• discourse and interaction: Speech Acts Theory, Coordinated Management of Meaning
• developing relationships: Uncertainty Reduction Theory, Social Penetration Theory
• ongoing relationships: Relational Systems Theory, Relational Dialectics
• organizational: Structuration Theory, Unobtrusive and Concertive Control Theory
• small group: Functional Theory, Symbolic Convergence Theory
• media processing and effects: Social Cognitive Theory, Uses and Gratifications Theory
• media and society: Agenda Setting, Spiral of Silence, Symbolic Convergence Theory
• culture: Speech Codes Theory, Face-saving Theory
• making social worlds: Coordinated Management of Meaning

More information

There is a wealth of information available about communication and communication theory. Included here are some examples of texts, journals, and organizations focusing on communication theory.

The following list is a survey of Communication Theory texts:

• Communication Theory: Epistemological Foundations by James A. Anderson
• Communication Theories: Origins, Methods and Uses in the Mass Media (5th Edition) by Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard
• Theories of Human Communication (9th Edition) by Stephen W. Littlejohn and Karen A. Foss
• Communication: Theories and Applications by Mark V. Redmond
• Communication Theories: Perspectives, Processes, and Contexts by Katherine Miller
• Communication Theory: Media, Technology and Society by David Holmes
• Building Communication Theory by Dominic A. Infante, Andrew S. Rancer, and Deanna F. Womack
• The Communication Theory Reader by Paul Cobley
• Clarifying Communications Theories: A Hands-On Approach by Gerald Stone, Michael Singletary, and Virginia P. Richmond
• An Introduction to Communication Theory by Don W. Stacks, Sidney R. Hill, and Mark, III Hickson

Scholarly journals are also a great source for recent research and academic discussion of theory. Some communication journals that emphasize theory are as follows:

• Argumentation
• Asian Journal of Communication
• China Media Research
• Communication Abstracts
• Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies
• Communication Education
• Communication Monographs
• Communication Quarterly
• Communication Research Reports
• Communication Research
• Communication Studies
• Communication Theory
• Communications and the Law
• Continuum - Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
• Critical Discourse Studies
• Critical Studies in Media Communication
• Discourse Studies
• Howard Journal of Communications
• Human Communication: A Journal of the Pacific and Asian Communication Association
• Human Communication Research
• Intercultural Communication Studies
• Journal of Applied Communication Research
• Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
• Journal of Communication
• Journal of Communication Inquiry
• Journal of Intercultural Communication Research
• Journal of Language Identity and Education
• Journal of Mass Media Ethics
• Journal of Multicultural Discourses
• Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
• Journal of Public Relations Research
• Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
• Journalism - Theory Practice and Criticism
• Journalism History
• Journalism Studies
• Keio Communication Review
• Language in Society
• Listening - Journal of Religion and Culture
• Mass Communication and Society
• Media Asia
• Media, Culture and Society
• Multilingua - Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication
• New Media and Society
• Philosophy and Rhetoric : Paper for Muse Participants
• Political Communication
• PR Reporter
• Public Relations Quarterly
• Qualitative Research Reports in Communication
• Review of Communication
• Rhetoric and Public Affairs
• Rhetorica
• Southern Communication Journal
• Studies in Communication Sciences
• Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse
• Vital Speeches of the Day
• Western Journal of Communication
• Women's Studies in Communication
• Word and Image
• Written Communication

Finally, there are many Communication Organizations that create a network of scholars who actively pursue and test theories. These organizations usually hold an annual conference showcasing the latest and best research in the field, as well as publish scholarly Journals. Examples of Communication Organizations with contact information are:

• American Communication Association
• Central States Communication Association
• Eastern Communication Association
• International Communication Association
• National Communication Association
• Southern States Communication Association
• Western States Communication Association

References

1. ^ Littlejohn, S.W. and Foss, K.A. (2008). Theories of human communication, 9th edition. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

See also

• List of basic communication topics
• Metacommunicative competence
• Rogerian argument
• Time- and space-bias and Harold Innis's communications theories
• Tetrad of media effects

Bibliography

• Littlejohn, S. W.,Theories of human communication. 7th edition, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2002.
• Emory A Griffin, A first look at communication theory. 3rd edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997. ISBN 0-07-022822-1
• Miller, K., Communication Theories: Perspectives, processes, and contexts. 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005.
• Werner, E., "Cooperating Agents: A Unified Theory of Communication and Social Structure", Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 2, L. Gasser and M. Huhns, eds., Morgan Kaufmann and Pitman Press, 1989. Abstract
• Werner, E., "Toward a Theory of Communication and Cooperation for Multiagent Planning", Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge: Proceedings of the Second Conference, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, pp. 129–143, 1988. Abstract PDF
• Witzany, G, "The Logos of the Bios 2. Bio-Communication", Helsinki, Umweb, 2007.

Robert , Craig T. "Communication." Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (2001): 125.

Lanham, Richard A. Analyzing Prose 2nd (2003): 7.

Chandler, Daniel. Transmission Model of Communication (1994). Http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/trans.html. Daniel Chandler, 1994. Web. 10 Oct. 2009.

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Communication Theory

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