Communications: Communication Theory

Set of ideas, beliefs, and opinions about the nature of people and society, providing a framework for a theory about how people should live, as well as how society is or should be organized. A nation's ideology is usually reflected in the political system it creates.

Systematic manipulation of public opinion, generally by the use of symbols such as flags, monuments, oratory, and publications. Modern propaganda is distinguished from other forms of communication in that it is consciously and deliberately used to influence group attitudes; all other functions are secondary.

From Key Concepts in Body and Society
Representation is a functional aspect of the media – within any communication the message is implicitly and explicitly shaped by a variety of influences: authorial preference, editorial vision, political climate, and socio-cultural context.

In classical approaches to language, the study of effective or persuasive speaking and writing, especially as practised in public oratory.

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
An omnibus term to describe a wide range of socio-cultural analytic perspectives developed in the aftermath of the linguistic turn in the social sciences during the 1960s, at the broadest level, the domain of discourse analysis encompasses the study of language use beyond the level of the sentence or utterance, in relation to social or societal context. In this broad conception, discourse analysis embraces both speech and interaction and written texts as objects of study.

From Key Concepts in Radio Studies
This refers to the sense of belonging to a defined community (including the nation), which radio and other media are able to foster among listeners.

From Key Concepts in Media and Communications
Hegemony is perhaps the most enduring of the concepts contributed to media studies by the Marxian tradition, having survived the ‘post-Marxist’ intellectual fashions of the 1990s surprisingly well.

From Key Concepts in Marketing
The most commonly taught and widely used theory of communication is that proposed by Wilbur Schramm in the late 1940s. The Schramm model views communication as a process that takes place between a sender (transmitter) and a receiver: there will be also a message, and a medium through which the message can be transmitted.