Communication Theory
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Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationships among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about and analyzing key events, processes, and commitments that together form communication. Theory can be seen as a way to map the world and make it navigable; communication theory gives us tools to answer empirical, conceptual, or practical communication questions.
Communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
is defined in both
commonsense ''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arg ...
and specialized ways. Communication theory emphasizes its symbolic and social process aspects as seen from two perspectives—as exchange of information (the transmission perspective), and as work done to connect and thus enable that exchange (the ritual perspective). Sociolinguistic research in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated that the level to which people change their formality of their language depending on the social context that they are in. This had been explained in terms of social norms that dictated language use.The way that we use language defers from person to person. Communication theories have emerged from multiple historical points of origin, including classical traditions of oratory and rhetoric, Enlightenment-era conceptions of society and the mind, and post-World War II efforts to understand propaganda and relationships between media and society. Prominent historical and modern foundational communication theorists include
Kurt Lewin Kurt Lewin ( ; 9 September 1890 – 12 February 1947) was a German-American psychologist, known as one of the modern pioneers of social, organizational, and applied psychology in the United States. During his professional career Lewin applied hi ...
,
Harold Lasswell Harold Dwight Lasswell (February 13, 1902December 18, 1978) was an American political scientist and communications theorist. He earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics and was a PhD student at the University of Chicago. He was ...
,
Paul Lazarsfeld Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (February 13, 1901August 30, 1976) was an Austrian-American sociologist. The founder of Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, he exerted influence over the techniques and the organization of social resea ...
,
Carl Hovland Carl Iver Hovland (June 12, 1912 – April 16, 1961) was a psychologist working primarily at Yale University and for the US Army during World War II who studied attitude change and persuasion. He first reported the sleeper effect after studying th ...
, James Carey,
Elihu Katz Elihu Katz (Hebrew: אליהוא כ"ץ, 21 May 1926 – 31 December 2021) was an American and Israeli sociologist and communication scientist, usually associated with uses and gratifications theory. He is known for his work with Paul Lazarsfel ...
,
Kenneth Burke Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burke ...
,
John Dewey John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
, Jurgen Habermas,
Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...
,
Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blueger, ...
,
Antonio Gramsci Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , , ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosopher, journalist, linguist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, political theory, sociology, history, and linguistics. He was a ...
,
Robert E. Park Robert Ezra Park (February 14, 1864 – February 7, 1944) was an American urban sociologist who is considered to be one of the most influential figures in early U.S. sociology. Park was a pioneer in the field of sociology, changing it from a pas ...
,
George Herbert Mead George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American philosopher, Sociology, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatism, pragmati ...
,
Joseph Walther Joseph B. Walther (born 1958) is the Mark and Susan Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society and the Director of the Center for Information Technology & Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on ...
,
Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American people, American mathematician, electrical engineering, electrical engineer, and cryptography, cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-o ...
and Stuart Hall—although some of these theorists may not explicitly associate themselves with communication as a discipline or field of study.


Models and Elements of Communication Theory

One key activity in communication theory is the development of models and concepts used to describe communication. In the Linear Model, communication works in one direction: a sender encodes some message and sends it through a channel for a receiver to decode. In comparison, the Interactional Model of communication is bidirectional. People send and receive messages in a cooperative fashion as they continuously encode and decode information. The Transactional Model assumes that information is sent and received simultaneously through a noisy channel, and further considers a frame of reference or experience each person brings to the interaction. Some of the basic elements of communication studied in communication theory are: *
Source Source may refer to: Research * Historical document * Historical source * Source (intelligence) or sub source, typically a confidential provider of non open-source intelligence * Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute o ...
: Shannon calls this element the "information source", which "produces a message or sequence of messages to be communicated to the receiving terminal." * Sender: Shannon calls this element the "transmitter", which "operates on the message in some way to produce a signal suitable for transmission over the channel." In Aristotle, this element is the "speaker" (orator). * Channel: For Shannon, the channel is "merely the medium used to transmit the signal from transmitter to receiver." * Receiver: For Shannon, the receiver "performs the inverse operation of that done by the transmitter, reconstructing the message from the signal." * Destination: For Shannon, the destination is "the person (or thing) for whom the message is intended". * Message: from
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''mittere'', "to send". The message is a
concept Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...
, information, communication, or statement that is sent in a verbal, written, recorded, or visual form to the recipient. * Feedback * Entropic elements, positive and negative


Epistemology in Communication Theory

Communication theories vary substantially in their
epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...
, and articulating this philosophical commitment is part of the theorizing process. Although the various epistemic positions used in communication theories can vary, one categorization scheme distinguishes among interpretive empirical, metric empirical or post-positivist, rhetorical, and critical epistemologies. Communication theories may also fall within or vary by distinct domains of interest, including information theory, rhetoric and speech, interpersonal communication, organizational communication, sociocultural communication, political communication, computer-mediated communication, and critical perspectives on media and communication.


Interpretive Empirical Epistemology

Interpretive empirical epistemology or interpretivism seeks to develop subjective insight and understanding of communication phenomena through the grounded study of local interactions. When developing or applying an interpretivist theory, the researcher themself is a vital instrument. Theories characteristic of this epistemology include
structuration The theory of structuration is a social theory of the creation and reproduction of social systems that is based on the analysis of both ''structure'' and '' agents'' (see structure and agency), without giving primacy to either. Furthermore, in str ...
and
symbolic interactionism Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and alludes to particular effects of communication and interaction in people to make images and normal implications, for deduction and correspondence w ...
, and frequently associated methods include
discourse analysis Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is an approach to the analysis of written, vocal, or sign language use, or any significant semiotic event. The objects of discourse Analysis ( discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event ...
and
ethnography Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...
.


Metric Empirical or Post-Positivist Epistemology

A metric empirical or post-positivist epistemology takes an axiomatic and sometimes causal view of phenomena, developing evidence about association or making predictions, and using methods oriented to measurement of communication phenomena. Post-positivist theories are generally evaluated by their accuracy, consistency, fruitfulness, and parsimoniousness. Theories characteristic of a post-positivist epistemology may originate from a wide range of perspectives, including pragmatist, behaviorist, cognitivist, structuralist, or functionalist. Although post-positivist work may be qualitative or quantitative, statistical analysis is a common form of evidence and scholars taking this approach often seek to develop results that can be reproduced by others.


Rhetorical Epistemology

A rhetorical epistemology lays out a formal, logical, and global view of phenomena with particular concern for persuasion through speech. A rhetorical epistemology often draws from Greco-Roman foundations such as the works of Aristotle and Cicero although recent work also draws from
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
,
Kenneth Burke Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burke ...
,
Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
,
second-wave feminism Second-wave feminism was a period of feminist activity that began in the early 1960s and lasted roughly two decades. It took place throughout the Western world, and aimed to increase equality for women by building on previous feminist gains. Wh ...
, and
cultural studies Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...
. Rhetoric has changed overtime. Fields of rhetoric and composition have grown to become more interested in alternative types of rhetoric.


Critical Epistemology

A critical epistemology is explicitly political and intentional with respect to its standpoint, articulating an ideology and criticizing phenomena with respect to this ideology. A critical epistemology is driven by its values and oriented to social and political change. Communication theories associated with this epistemology include
deconstructionism The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences w ...
,
cultural Marxism The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture. The conspiracy theory misrepresents the ...
,
third-wave feminism Third-wave feminism is an iteration of the feminist movement that began in the early 1990s, prominent in the decades prior to the fourth wave. Grounded in the civil-rights advances of the second wave, Gen X and early Gen Y generations third-wav ...
, and resistance studies.


New modes of Communication

During the mid-1970's, presiding paradigm had passed in regards to the development in communication. More specifically the increase in a participatory approach which challenged studies like diffusionism which had dominated the 1950s. There is no valid reason for studying people as an aggregation of specific individuals that have their social experience unified and cancelled out with the means of allowing only the attributes of socio-economic status, age and sex, representative of the them except by assuming that the audience is a mass.


Communication Theory by Perspective/Subdiscipline

Approaches to theory also vary by perspective or subdiscipline. The communication theory as a field model proposed by Robert Craig has been an influential approach to breaking down the field of communication theory into perspectives, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and trade-offs.


Information Theory

In information theory, communication theories examine the technical process of information exchange while typically using mathematics. This perspective on communication theory originated from the development of information theory in the early 1920s. Limited information-theoretic ideas had been developed at
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
, all implicitly assuming events of equal probability. The history of information theory as a form of communication theory can be traced through a series of key papers during this time.
Harry Nyquist Harry Nyquist (, ; February 7, 1889 – April 4, 1976) was a Swedish-American physicist and electronic engineer who made important contributions to communication theory. Personal life Nyquist was born in the village Nilsby of the parish Stora Ki ...
's 1924 paper, ''Certain Factors Affecting Telegraph Speed'', contains a theoretical section quantifying "intelligence" and the "line speed" at which it can be transmitted by a communication system.
Ralph Hartley Ralph Vinton Lyon Hartley (November 30, 1888 – May 1, 1970) was an American electronics researcher. He invented the Hartley oscillator and the Hartley transform, and contributed to the foundations of information theory. Biography Hartley was ...
's 1928 paper, ''Transmission of Information,'' uses the word "information" as a measurable quantity, reflecting the receiver's ability to distinguish one sequence of symbols from any other. The natural unit of information was therefore the decimal digit, much later renamed the hartley in his honour as a unit or scale or measure of information.
Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
in 1940 used similar ideas as part of the statistical analysis of the breaking of the German second world war
Enigma Enigma may refer to: *Riddle, someone or something that is mysterious or puzzling Biology *ENIGMA, a class of gene in the LIM domain Computing and technology * Enigma (company), a New York-based data-technology startup * Enigma machine, a family ...
ciphers. The main landmark event that opened the way to the development of the information theory form of communication theory was the publication of an article by
Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American people, American mathematician, electrical engineering, electrical engineer, and cryptography, cryptographer known as a "father of information theory". As a 21-year-o ...
(1916–2001) in the ''
Bell System Technical Journal The ''Bell Labs Technical Journal'' is the in-house scientific journal for scientists of Nokia Bell Labs, published yearly by the IEEE society. The managing editor is Charles Bahr. The journal was originally established as the ''Bell System Techn ...
'' in July and October 1948 under the title "
A Mathematical Theory of Communication "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is an article by mathematician Claude E. Shannon published in '' Bell System Technical Journal'' in 1948. It was renamed ''The Mathematical Theory of Communication'' in the 1949 book of the same name, a sm ...
". Shannon focused on the problem of how best to encode the information that a sender wants to transmit. He also used tools in
probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set o ...
, developed by
Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher i ...
. They marked the nascent stages of applied communication theory at that time. Shannon developed
information entropy In information theory, the entropy of a random variable is the average level of "information", "surprise", or "uncertainty" inherent to the variable's possible outcomes. Given a discrete random variable X, which takes values in the alphabet \ ...
as a measure for the uncertainty in a message while essentially inventing the field of information theory. "The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point." In 1949, in a declassified version of Shannon's wartime work on the mathematical theory of
cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...
("
Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems" is a paper published in 1949 by Claude Shannon discussing cryptography from the viewpoint of information theory. It is one of the foundational treatments (arguably ''the'' foundational treatment) of modern c ...
"), he proved that all theoretically unbreakable ciphers must have the same requirements as the
one-time pad In cryptography, the one-time pad (OTP) is an encryption technique that cannot be cracked, but requires the use of a single-use pre-shared key that is not smaller than the message being sent. In this technique, a plaintext is paired with a ran ...
. He is also credited with the introduction of sampling theory, which is concerned with representing a continuous-time signal from a (uniform) discrete set of samples. This theory was essential in enabling telecommunications to move from analog to digital transmissions systems in the 1960s and later. In 1951, Shannon made his fundamental contribution to
natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...
and
computational linguistics Computational linguistics is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field concerned with the computational modelling of natural language, as well as the study of appropriate computational approaches to linguistic questions. In general, comput ...
with his article "Prediction and Entropy of Printed English" (1951), providing a clear quantifiable link between cultural practice and probabilistic cognition.


Interpersonal Communication

Theories in interpersonal communication are concerned with the ways in which very small groups of people communicate with one another. It also provides the framework in which we view the world around us. Although interpersonal communication theories have their origin in mass communication studies of attitude and response to messages, since the 1970s, interpersonal communication theories have taken on a distinctly personal focus. Interpersonal theories examine relationships and their development, non-verbal communication, how we adapt to one another during conversation, how we develop the messages we seek to convey, and how deception works.


Organizational Communication

Organizational communication theories address not only the ways in which people use communication in organizations, but also how they use communication to constitute that organization, developing structures, relationships, and practices to achieve their goals. Although early organization communication theories were characterized by a so-called container model (the idea that an organization is a clearly bounded object inside which communication happens in a straightforward manner following hierarchical lines), more recent theories have viewed the organization as a more fluid entity with fuzzy boundaries. Given that its object of study is the organization, it is perhaps not surprising that organization communication scholarship has important connections to theories of management, with
Management Communication Quarterly ''Management Communication Quarterly'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals ser ...
serving as a key venue for disseminating scholarly work. However, theories in organizational communication retain a distinct identity through their critical perspective toward power and attention to the needs and interests of workers, rather than privileging the will of management. Organizational communication can be distinguished by its orientation to four key problematics: voice (who can speak within an organization), rationality (how decisions are made and whose ends are served), organization (how is the organization itself structured and how does it function), and the organization-society relationship (how the organization may alternately serve, exploit, and reflect society as a whole).


Sociocultural Communication

This line of theory examines how social order is both produced and reproduced through communication. Communication problems in the sociocultural tradition may be theorized in terms of misalignment, conflict, or coordination failure. Theories in this domain explore dynamics such as micro and macro level phenomena, structure versus agency, the local versus the global, and communication problems which emerge due to gaps of space and time, sharing some kinship with sociological and anthropological perspectives but distinguished by keen attention to communication as constructed and constitutive.


Political Communication

Political communication theories are concerned with the public exchange of messages among political actors of all kinds. This scope is in contrast to theories of political science which look inside political institutions to understand decision-making processes. Early political communication theories examined the roles of mass communication (i.e. television and newspapers) and political parties on political discourse. However, as the conduct of political discourse has expanded, theories of political communication have likewise developed, to now include models of deliberation and sensemaking, and discourses about a wide range of political topics: the role of the media (e.g. as a gatekeeper, framer, and agenda-setter); forms of government (e.g. democracy, populism, and autocracy); social change (e.g. activism and protests); economic order (e.g. capitalism, neoliberalism and socialism); human values (e.g. rights, norms, freedom, and authority.); and propaganda, disinformation, and trust. Two of the important emerging areas for theorizing about political communication are the examination of civic engagement and international comparative work (given that much of political communication has been done in the United States).


Computer-Mediated Communication

Theories of computer-mediated communication or CMC emerged as a direct response to the rapid emergence of novel mediating communication technologies in the form of computers. CMC scholars inquire as to what may be lost and what may be gained when we shift many of our formerly unmediated and entrained practices (that is, activities that were necessarily conducted in a synchronized, ordered, dependent fashion) into mediated and disentrained modes. For example, a discussion that once required a meeting can now be an e-mail thread, an appointment confirmation that once involved a live phone call can now be a click on a text message, a collaborative writing project that once required an elaborate plan for drafting, circulating, and annotating can now take place in a shared document. CMC theories fall into three categories: cues-filtered-out theories, experiential/perceptual theories, and adaptation to/exploitation of media. Cues-filtered-out theories have often treated face-to-face interaction as the gold standard against which mediated communication should be compared, and includes such theories as social presence theory, media richness theory, and the Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE). Experiential/perceptual theories are concerned with how individuals perceive the capacity of technologies, such as whether the technology creates psychological closeness (electronic propinquity theory). Adaptation/exploitation theories consider how people may creatively expand or make use of the limitations in CMC systems, including
social information processing theory Social information processing theory, also known as SIP, is an interpersonal communication theory and media studies theory developed in 1992 by Joseph Walther. Social information processing theory explains online interpersonal communication witho ...
(SIP) and the idea of the hyperpersonal (when people make use of the limitations of the mediated channel to create a selective view of themselves with their communication partner, developing an impression that exceeds reality). Theoretical work from
Joseph Walther Joseph B. Walther (born 1958) is the Mark and Susan Bertelsen Presidential Chair in Technology and Society and the Director of the Center for Information Technology & Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on ...
has been highly influential in the development of CMC. Theories in this area often examine the limitations and capabilities of new technologies, taking up an 'affordances' perspective inquiring what the technology may "request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, and allow." Recently the theoretical and empirical focus of CMC has shifted more explicitly away from the 'C' (i.e. Computer) and toward the 'M' (i.e. Mediation).


Rhetoric and Speech

Theories in rhetoric and speech are often concerned with discourse as an art, including practical consideration of the power of words and our ability to improve our skills through practice. Rhetorical theories provide a way of analyzing speeches when read in an exegetical manner (close, repeated reading to extract themes, metaphors, techniques, argument, meaning, etc.); for example with respect to their relationship to power or justice, or their persuasion, emotional appeal, or logic.


Critical Perspectives on Media and Communication

Critical social theory in communication, while sharing some traditions with rhetoric, is explicitly oriented toward "articulating, questioning, and transcending presuppositions that are judged to be untrue, dishonest, or unjust."(p. 147) Some work bridges this distinction to form critical rhetoric. Critical theories have their roots in the
Frankfurt School The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
, which brought together anti-establishment thinkers alarmed by the rise of Nazism and propaganda, including the work of
Max Horkheimer Max Horkheimer (; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militari ...
and Theodor Adorno. Modern critical perspectives often engage with emergent social movements such as post-colonialism and queer theory, seeking to be reflective and emancipatory. One of the influential bodies of theory in this area comes from the work of Stuart Hall, who questioned traditional assumptions about the monolithic functioning of mass communication with his Encoding/Decoding Model of Communication and offered significant expansions of theories of discourse, semiotics, and power through media criticism and explorations of linguistic codes and cultural identity.


Axiology

Axiology Axiology (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ''axia'': "value, worth"; and , ''wiktionary:-logia, -logia'': "study of") is the Philosophy, philosophical study of value (ethics), value. It includes questions about the nature and classification of values ...
is concerned with how values inform research and theory development. Most communication theory is guided by one of three axiological approaches. The first approach recognizes that values will influence theorists' interests but suggests that those values must be set aside once actual research begins. Outside replication of research findings is particularly important in this approach to prevent individual researchers' values from contaminating their findings and interpretations. The second approach rejects the idea that values can be eliminated from any stage of theory development. Within this approach, theorists do not try to divorce their values from inquiry. Instead, they remain mindful of their values so that they understand how those values contextualize, influence or skew their findings. The third approach not only rejects the idea that values can be separated from research and theory, but rejects the idea that they should be separated. This approach is often adopted by
critical theorists A critical theory is any approach to social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to reveal, critique and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from socia ...
who believe that the role of communication theory is to identify oppression and produce social change. In this axiological approach, theorists embrace their values and work to reproduce those values in their research and theory development.


References


Further reading

* Chandler, Daniel
Transmission Model of Communication
(1994). Daniel Chandler, 1994. Web. October 10, 2009. * Cooren, F. (2012). Communication theory at the center: Ventriloquism and the communicative constitution of reality, Journal of Communication, Volume 62, Issue 1, 1 February 2012, 1–20. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01622.x * Dainton, M., Zelley, E. D. (2019). Applying communication theory for professional life: A practical introduction. 4th ed., Page 17. Thousand Oaks, CA, US: Sage Publications. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NjtEDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Dainton+2004+Communication+Theory+Sage+Publication&ots=ZFKmtfQg9W&sig=7tuPShBWxhvF1cbSQRKrmaK3Jik#v=onepage&q&f=false * Goffman, Erving. ''The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.'' New York, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1959. 73. * Lanham, Richard A. ''Analyzing Prose 2nd (2003): 7, 10. * 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 McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...
, 1997. * Miller, K., Communication Theories: Perspectives, processes, and contexts. 2nd edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2005. * Pierce, T., Corey, A. M., ''The Evolution of Human Communication: From Theory to Practice''. 2nd edition, Ontario: Etrepress, 2019. Retrieved from https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/evolutionhumancommunication/chapter/chapter-1/ * 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 Morgan Kaufmann Publishers is a Burlington, Massachusetts (San Francisco, California until 2008) based publisher specializing in computer science and engineering content. Since 1984, Morgan Kaufmann has published content on information technology ...
and
Pitman Press Pitman may refer to: * A coal miner, particularly in Northern England * Pitman (surname) * Pitman, New Jersey, United States * Pitman, Pennsylvania, United States * Pitman, Saskatchewan, Canada * Pitman Shorthand, a system of shorthand * Pitman ar ...
, 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
PDF
* Robert, Craig T. "Communication." Encyclopedia of Rhetoric (2001): 125. * Rothwell, J. Dan. "In the Company of Others: an introduction to communication." 3rd Edition, New York, NY; Oxford University Press, 2010. 11–15. * A First Look At Communication Theory by Em Griffin (Published by McGraw-Hill) * 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 * Introducing Communication Theory by Richard West and Lynn H. Turner *


External links


American Communication AssociationAssociation for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Central States Communication AssociationEastern Communication AssociationInternational Communication AssociationNational Communication AssociationSouthern States Communication Association
{{Authority control, state=expanded Communication