Histories of Communication Online Chapter

Historiography Persuasive effect of writing history in particular ways. History written within contemporary political, social forces. Textbook offers histories rather than definitive history of communication discipline.

Importance of Communication All communication studies matter. Communication is central to conduct of society. Communication is affected by society. Multiple definitions of communication. Interconnections are as important as the differences. Relational basis underlies all kinds of communication.

Importance of Communication Relational Influences Faculty relationships formed, developed departments. Oral cultures as communication origin. Later literate cultures expanded freedom of ideas and expression. Printed word leads to social changes. Written word alters ability to remember.

Importance of Communication Relational influences (cont.) Today’s technologies make definition of communication more difficult. These technologies still used for social and interpersonal uses.

Configuration of Communication Departments There are numerous configurations. Theater and Art departments focused on performance. Radio, TV, and film separated from Speech departments. Speech departments combine with journalism and mass communication departments.

Configuration of Communication Departments Other formats exist as well, based on interpersonal relationships between faculty. Different styles developed based on social historical forces based on relationships of scholars.

Traditions: Rhetoric Originates with ancient rhetoricians. Also wrote about relationships and love, including role of relationships in persuasion. Centuries of discussion of “good people speaking well.”

Traditions: Rhetoric Organization of speech departments in late 1800s. Teaching speech led to study of nature of rhetoric and persuasion. Led to study of persuasive writing speaking, including developing media technologies. Development of professional organizations in early 1900s.

Traditions: Media Studies and Mass Communication Emerged from psychology, sociology, technology. Original focus on speech of “one to many,” but expanded with media technologies.

Traditions--Media Studies and Mass Communication Mass communication and media studies overlap. Rhetorician’s audience is large, but less than mediated. Media studies focuses on audience or technology. Media studies scholars focus on what counts as medium.

Traditions: Media Studies and Mass Communication Original focus on how technology connects, helps people. Today, a major focus on alienation and more sinister implications of technology.

Traditions: Performance Speech and drama at root. In oral cultures, drama was force for representing morality and ethics. Today, still a critical theme in dramatic performance studies. Symbolic Interaction: Mead & Goffman People perform identities in constraints and circumstances. Team, or cultural forces, construct and maintain identity.

Traditions: Communication Research Style, method of inquiry, derived from psychology and sociology. Early work focused on social influence, attitude change, persuasive messages, uncertainty reduction, influence of opinion leaders. Scholars of persuasion had rhetorical analyses, shifted to lab experiments.

Traditions: Interpersonal Communication Origins in personal influence. Some scholars shift from mass phenomena to micro-sociology and small group. Small group, organizational split from interpersonal to separate categories.

Major Perspectives: Social Science Assumptions Truth exists independent of the observer. Establishment of numerical patterns. Operationalization of terminology. Methods Direct measures of responses and communicative activities. Questionnaires, laboratory experiments, standard measures of occurrences over time.

Major Perspectives: Social Science Advantages Reduction of subjectivity of analysis. Theoretical explanation of patterns and new predictions. Making generalizations, explaining variance. Determination of cause-effect relationships to predict outcomes in untried circumstances.

Major Perspectives: Social Science Disadvantages Are results merely agreements between researchers using the same vocabulary? Experimenters may impose too much restriction on subjects’ reports. Is generalization really useful?

Major Perspectives: Interpretivist Assumptions There is no objective reality. People’s interpretations of experience are more important. Rejection of underlying global causal laws. Research cannot be value-free.

Major Perspectives: Interpretivist Methods Grounded theory focuses on observation grounded in data, developed systematically. Knowledge emerges from observation, reading data. Comparison with other data until valid interpretation obtained.

Major Perspectives: Interpretivist Advantages Draws attention to value laden nature of observation. Questions whether it is possible to separate knower, known.

Major Perspectives: Interpretivist Disadvantages What is real must reveal itself to an interpreter. If interpreter must be trained to recognize, interpretivism falls into trap of social science. Questions of ethics in selection of theory, methods. Can there be general interpretation of individual understanding?

Major Perspectives: Critical Theory Assumptions Inbuilt structure gives advantage to one set of people at expense of others. Power is absolute authority, used to oppress, devalue minority groups.

Major Perspectives: Critical Theory Methods Similar to interpretivists. Analysis of texts rather than interviews. Look for hidden undertones in which power dynamics are transacted.

Major Perspectives: Critical Theory Advantages Redirects thinking toward awareness of inequity. Disadvantages Critical theory gives itself power to comment on how communication is used, rather than discovering misuse. Ignores how power is accepted by those without it. What kinds of power matter more, less than others.

Major Perspectives: Post- Modernism Assumptions, Methods Discourse of representation Discourse of modernism, interpretivism Discourse of suspicion Discourse of vulnerability

Major Perspectives: Post- Modernism Advantages Does not assume there is one way to do things, as held by other scientists. Aware of power in construction of knowledge. Disadvantages Reducto ad absurdum

Future of Communication and Relational Perspective Development of discipline is not finished, is still continuing. All areas can use a relational approach. All topics contain presumption of nature of relationships. Future of discipline is to apply principle of relationships more broadly.