Historical Overview of Research in Communication Science - Comprehensive Notes

Laying a Foundation

  • Origin of modern communication studies traced to progressive historical era; Delia (1987) identifies that from 1900-1940 fragmentation occurred as investigations spanned multiple social science and humanistic disciplines; the only commonality across early work was a conception of direct, undifferentiated, and powerful effects (p. 21).
  • Delia (1987) identifies five major fields of early research, each with its own foundations and methodologies:
    • Research on communication and political institutions: includes propaganda analysis, notably Lasswell’s work, analysis of political and social themes in public communications, qualitative and quantitative analyses of messages, and public opinion research.
    • Chicago school of sociology influence: research on communication and social life; empirical field investigations; uses diverse methodologies yielding rich descriptions and sensitivity to social context (p. 31).
    • Social-psychological studies: introduced experimental approaches focusing on reception and effects, adopting mediational frameworks to understand communication outcomes (p. 39).
    • Research on communication and education: focused on impacts of new technology and instructional strategies.
    • Commercially oriented communication research: aimed at understanding audience size, composition, and effectiveness of marketing; often conducted by marketing faculty within business schools; some researchers drew on psychology and sociology to analyze advertising; stigma of applied research noted.
  • By 1940, Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia bridged academic and commercial interests and legitimized communication research as problem-driven and practically relevant (p. 51).
  • 1940–1965: Consolidation of interdisciplinary study. World War II spurred broad interest and collaboration across fields; but interpersonal contacts among key researchers (e.g., Lazarsfeld, Hovland) led to a coalescence around a core focus on theory development and a linear-effects framework as the organizing model (p. 69).
  • Tensions of the period:
    • US emphasis on survey, experimental, and statistical methods; European emphasis on historical, cultural, non-statistical approaches tended to be marginalized or excluded.
    • Theoretical work became increasingly insulated from practical communication education.
  • Delia emphasizes the integration of communication research into journalism schools and speech departments as a significant milestone, driven by the need for graduate faculties and the growth of organizations like the National Society for the Study of Communication (later the International Communication Association, ICA).
  • The period saw integration of humanistic research methods (historical analysis, rhetorical criticism) into the established process–and–effects framework.

A Contemporary Historical Synthesis and Other Overviews

  • Wartella (1996) surveys Delia’s history among several histories from the 1970s–1980s (the “received history”) and identifies commonalities across accounts:
    • The field’s early public concern with mass-media effects, which produced Lasswell’s direct-effect model.
    • The 1940s shift led by Lazarsfeld’s Columbia studies challenging the notion of powerful effects and contributing to the two-step flow concept.
    • The institutionalization of communication research in the 1950s–60s as the field settled into a more defined academic domain.
    • The received history tended to identify communication with mass-media studies, assume social-scientific methods as the default, treat the field as inherently American, and view core concerns as how messages influence audiences.
  • Wartella argues that this accepted history has been criticized for overlooking non-US scholarship and earlier influences, and for over-emphasizing powerful effects in public narratives while noting cyclical realities in academic beliefs about media power.
  • Wartella (1996) augments the picture in Dennis & Wartella (1996) by expanding the geographic and scholarly scope:
    • Lang (1996) emphasizes European roots and techniques (e.g., 19th‑century German influence) in shaping research methods.
    • Robinson (1996) highlights continuous transcontinental borrowing and intellectual transfer among German, Canadian, French, and British scholars since the late 19th/early 20th centuries (p. 165).
    • Glander (2000) situates postwar institutionalization within the broader Cold War context and identifies major figures (Berelson, Stanton, Cantril, Hovland, Dodd; Lazarsfeld and Schramm as pivotal in popularizing and institutionalizing the field).
    • Rogers (1994, 1996) emphasizes European roots, the Chicago school precursors, and Schramm as the decisive founder who institutionalized the field; he also notes the influence of new communication technologies (Innis, McLuhan) on popularizing the field in the 1970s.
  • Lang, Robinson, and Glander contribute to a more pluralistic, transnational picture in which distinct traditions persist and hybridize, and in which humanistic traditions re-emerge alongside empirical, theory-driven work.
  • Bryant & Miron (2007) extend the historical narrative across continents, tracing a long arc from antiquity to the present and highlighting an East–West dichotomy between rhetorical (often Western, classical) and relational (often Asian philosophical traditions) approaches.
    • They examine the emergence of mass entertainment and public relations, tracing modern advertising and PR origins to Classical rhetoric and later developments.
    • They stress the role of journalism departments in formal mass communication education, while noting the cross-disciplinary borrowing from other social sciences.
    • They identify a German influence in the early 20th century due to émigré scholars and German-derived ideas, and they argue that late-20th/early-21st-century theories increasingly treated communication as an interactive, ongoing process rather than a simple one-way diffusion from sender to receiver.
    • They highlight the shift toward recognizing new electronic media (Campbell & Ling, 2009) and new social issues such as generational divides, interdependence, class differences, and changing communication patterns as central concerns for contemporary inquiry.

Specialized Areas of Communication Inquiry

  • As the field matured, subdisciplines grew more independent, with distinct roots and developmental trajectories. Key areas and their outlines follow.

Interpersonal Communication

  • Roots in the 1920s–1930s: studies of social interaction and relationships in work settings, children’s interactions, symbolic interactionism, and semantics.
  • 1940s–1950s: growth in nonverbal communication and psychology of interpersonal relations; yet early emphasis remained on persuasion and social influence.
  • 1960s: shift to understanding how social interaction contributes to development, maintenance, and deterioration of personal relationships.
  • 1970s–1980s: rapid growth of theories and models; field consolidation and institutionalization (increased courses, textbooks, and associations).
  • 1990s–2000s: five broad theoretical foci emerged and later six:
    • interpersonal adaptation,
    • message production,
    • uncertainty,
    • deceptive communication,
    • dialectical issues,
    • computer-mediated social interaction (CMC) – a recent expansion due to ubiquitous new technologies.
  • Berger (2005) predicts continued growth in CMC and identifies future directions such as social interaction routines across contexts, the role of emotions, message reception/interpretation, and social interaction competence; he notes that theoretical development in some areas has lagged behind empirical work.

Language and Social Interaction (LSI)

  • Emerged within the past three decades as a multidisciplinary federation within the field; core theme is the meaningfulness of what individuals say to others in particular situations.
  • Subfields include: language pragmatics, conversation analysis, language and social psychology, discourse analysis, and ethnography of communication.
  • Institutional development:
    • 1970s–1980s: National Communication Association (NCA) division evolved toward Language and Social Interaction in 1987; ICA also established a division with the same name as LSI grew as a distinct area.
  • 1990s–2000s: LSI matured into a substantive, multidisciplinary field; scholars from organizational communication and rhetoric increasingly engaged with LSI to enrich their own fields, and vice versa.

Organizational Communication

  • Traces to ancient rhetoric; formal study begins in the first half of the 20th century.
  • Eras of development:
    • Era of preparation (1900–1950): focus on prescriptive and skills-based training for organizational communication.
    • Era of identification and consolidation (1940–1970): graduate programs, seminal articles, formation of professional organizations (NCA and ICA).
    • Applied-scientific phase: emphasis on the scientific method for understanding organizational communication processes.
    • Era of maturity and innovation (beginning in the 1970s): recognized as an established discipline with cross-field ties; global expansion of graduate programs; edited volumes on organizational communication (e.g., Goldhaber & Barnett, Jablin, McPhee & Tompkins).
  • Current focal concerns and challenges (Taylor, Flanagin, Cheney, Seibold, 2001):
    • Innovating theory and methodology,
    • Addressing ethics,
    • Moving from micro-level (individual) to macro-level (organization-wide) analyses,
    • Understanding new organizational structures and technologies,
    • Exploring organizational change and the role of communication in it,
    • Investigating diversity and intergroup communication.

Intercultural Communication

  • Origins in the US post–World War II, driven by a need to understand cross-cultural understanding in a global village (UN framework).
  • Early scholars include Peace Corps workers; term intercultural communication enters professional vocabulary via training materials for diplomats (Steinfatt & Christophel, 1996).
  • 1970s–1980s: organized field with dedicated divisions in the Speech Communication Association (now NCA) and ICA.
  • Theoretical and methodological pluralism: culture, communication competence, adaptation, and power dynamics are central themes; five major research themes highlighted by Kim (2005): psychological processes, intercultural competence, adaptation to unfamiliar cultures, cultural identity in intercultural contexts, and power inequality in intercultural relations.
  • Calls for a common foundational framework to harmonize disparate lines of inquiry.

Political Communication

  • Ancient roots in Plato and Aristotle, focusing on effects of communication on political and legal institutions; early propaganda studies and voting behavior (1940s–1950s).
  • 1950s: emergence of political communication as a discipline with dedicated courses, journals, and ICA division in the 1970s.
  • 1980s–1990s: accumulation of key books and resources (e.g., Kaid & Sanders; Nimmo & Sanders; Swanson & Nimmo).
  • Four guiding perspectives in political communication:
    • rhetorical/interpretive,
    • effects,
    • agenda setting,
    • uses and gratifications.
  • Major topics: political debates, political advertising, political rhetoric, media coverage of campaigns, media’s role in civic learning.
  • With new media technologies, research expands into policy formation, press freedom, media socialization, public information campaigns, usability, and network analyses.

Journalism

  • Definition ( Adams, 1993 ): journalism as a form of public expression reporting the events and ideas of the here and now.
  • History of formal journalism study:
    • 15th century pamphlets and broadsides informing publics;
    • 1870s: beginning of journalism programs; 1908: separate schools and departments of journalism; universities began offering PhD minors in journalism (Bryant & Thompson, 1999).
    • 1940s: growth of graduate education and formal journalism research; Lasswell’s propaganda research (1927) marks a turn toward social-scientific inquiry (1930s–1950s).
  • Currents shaping journalism studies (1930s–1980s): social histories (industrialization, urbanization, technology), process studies (communication processes), and press-in-society studies (press freedom, responsibility, influence on public opinion).
  • The 1950s–1980s: television emergence and 1960s social upheaval catalyzed methodological shifts toward uses and effects research.
  • Five main areas currently dominate journalism study:
    • Sociological research on relationships, behavior, and effects,
    • Historical inquiry,
    • Language and journalism,
    • The political role of journalism in the making of news,
    • Cultural analyses focusing on contextual factors shaping practice.
  • Zelizer (2004) critiques continuity and relevance of growing journalism scholarship, urging broader definitions of journalism to include new/diffuse media forms and cross-boundary collaboration to understand processes, products, and effects.
  • ICA’s journalism division growth in the 21st century, with significant contributions from non-US scholars, broadening the field’s geographic and methodological scope.

Health Communication

  • Early roots go back to 18th-century pamphlets and speeches promoting inoculation, but theory and research were minimal initially.
  • The ICA health communication interest group forms in the mid-1970s; Rogers (1996) cites the Stanford Heart Disease Prevention Program (SHDPP, 1971) as a seminal moment for health communication research, spawning a family tree of programs addressing prevention of heart disease, substance abuse, cancer, teenage pregnancy, and HIV/AIDS.
  • The AIDS crisis significantly spurred interest in health promotion and disease prevention.
  • 1971–1996: a proliferation of health communication programs at universities; research draws on multiple fields (communication, public health, medicine, marketing, social psychology, anthropology).
  • Core topics include doctor–patient communication, health campaigns (smoking cessation, HIV/AIDS), and the portrayal of health issues in news, advertising, and entertainment media; increased use of new technologies for health communication; broader topics include disease prevention, emergency preparedness, environmental health, workplace safety.
  • Parrott (2004) notes neglected topics for future study: mental health issues, health care economics, informed consent.

Visual Communication

  • Traces back to centuries of aesthetic criticism; formal study expands in the late 1950s.
  • 1960s–1970s: cross-disciplinary contributions from anthropology (nonverbal cues), advertising, and visual theory; AEJMC divisions and visual studies journals emerge.
  • 1990s: maturation period; ICA forms Visual Communication Interest Group (1993); special issues in journals dedicated to visual communication scholarship.
  • Three key theoretical strands emerging from visual communication research (Barnhurst, Vari, Rodriguez, 2004):
    • Rhetorical: images and designs as persuasive tools;
    • Pragmatic: production and reception processes;
    • Semantic: internal structures within a design or image.
  • Growth of research on new technologies as visual texts, but concerns about fragmentation across disciplines; trend toward integrating historical and semantic approaches as a cutting edge in visual studies.

Instructional and Developmental Communication

  • Longstanding focus on communication in instructional settings since the inception of academic communication departments.
  • 1950s: the journal Communication Education founded; 1972: ICA creates a division dedicated to instructional communication.
  • Early foci (1970s–1980s): teacher characteristics, student characteristics, teaching strategies.
  • 1990s: Waldeck, Kearney, and Plax (2001) identify 12 major theories and 6 research foci for instructional communication (in order of frequency):
    • student communication, teacher communication, mass media effects on children, pedagogical methods, classroom management, teacher–student interaction.
  • McCroskey & McCroskey (2006) anticipate continued growth and propose future areas: technologically mediated instructional communication, cross-cultural teacher–student communication, and cross-national instructional study.
  • Developmental communication (emerging in the mid-1980s): developed from a caucus on aging (1979 NCA) and draws on developmental psychology; seminal books (1988–1989) by Carmichael, Botan & Hawkins; Nussbaum; focus on communication across the lifespan.
  • Current outlook: future research should better address adolescents and midlife adults and develop methods that measure change over time and across the lifespan.

Communication and Technology (ICT)

  • Early history of transmission technologies: sound transmission from the 17th century; later, the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television as foundational ICTs.
  • 1970s: emergence of information and communication technology research, driven by the advent of personal computers and ARPANET (Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2002).
  • 1980s: researchers study the economics of information, ICTs and social change, transformation of old media with new media, and ICTs’ impacts on attitudes, behavior, organizations, and policy; this area quickly became dominant in American ICT research and remains central.
  • 1980s–1990s: rapid growth in ICT research, accelerated by the Internet’s diffusion; key characteristics of the Internet (multimedia, hypertext, packet-switching, synchronization, interactivity) drew attention but the field cautions that few new theories emerged; some studies rely on traditional medium-to-medium comparisons and fail to explicate Internet-specific dynamics (Walther, Gay, & Hancock, 2005).
  • Needs identified: internationalization of ICT research to enrich understanding of societal impacts across cultures (Lievrouw & Livingstone, 2002).

Public Relations (PR)

  • Public relations practices trace back to ancient civilizations; modern professional practice expands by the end of the 19th century.
  • Academic study of PR is relatively recent; significant growth over the last ~25 years, with foundational theory by J. E. Grunig (1984) on four PR models:
    • Press agentry/publicity,
    • Public information,
    • Two-way asymmetrical,
    • Two-way symmetrical.
  • Heath (2001, 2005) frames PR research within a spectrum of information, persuasion, critical, symmetrical, interpersonal, reflective, and relational perspectives.
  • Botan & Taylor (2004) describe a paradigm shift from PR as a tool to achieve organizational goals toward a cocreation paradigm—where PR builds relationships and shared meanings.
  • Globalization of PR research: while some scholars critique limited dominant theoretical development (Sriramesh & Vercic, 2003), empirical data from across the world illustrate PR practices and emphasize the need for a multicultural, global perspective.

Other Specializations Within Communication

  • The ICA’s numerous divisions (22 divisions) and the NCA’s divisions (51) indicate extensive subfield diversity; space constraints preclude exhaustive treatment of all areas, but the landscape reflects substantial progress and specialization across the discipline.

Reflections and Conclusions

  • When Delia (1987) wrote, communication was still a “debtor nation” in that much theory and research came from other disciplines. A 2007 citation analysis suggests this is no longer the case: most citations in major journals now come from communication journals, with 44 communication journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports, up from 13 in 1987. Moreover, theory from communication has migrated into psychology, sociology, and related fields (e.g., entertainment theory such as Zillmann’s excitation-transfer, mood management, etc.).
  • The discipline has grown more prolifically and specialized; the scope of journals has expanded, making mastery of all journals impractical and reflecting subdisciplinary diversification.
  • A notable shift in the late 1980s: macro-theory or a single unifying theory for communication was a major topic at conferences; by 2006–2007, such sessions declined, suggesting a more pluralistic and realistic acceptance of epistemological, methodological, and subdisciplinary pluralism.
  • The concluding assessment is affirmative: communication science has truly come of age in the digital era, with robust international growth, diversified theoretical perspectives, and a broadened scope of questions and methods.

Notable cross-cutting themes and implications

  • Interdisciplinary roots and ongoing cross-pollination: the field benefits from and continually integrates methods and insights from psychology, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, political science, public health, and more.
  • Methodological pluralism versus unifying theories: a move away from a single grand theory toward a plurality of theories and models tailored to subfields and contexts.
  • Globalization and cross-cultural validity: a sustained push for internationalization of theory and method to avoid American-centric biases and to better understand non-US contexts.
  • Ethical and practical considerations: as the field broadens (e.g., PR cocreation, health communication, organizational ethics), researchers must navigate ethical issues in intervention designs, public messaging, and cross-cultural research.
  • Technological change as both subject and driver: new media technologies continually redefine research questions, methods, and the very boundaries between interpersonal and mass communication.

Core references (selected)

  • Lasswell, H. D. (1927). Propaganda technique in the world war.
  • Lazarsfeld, P., & colleagues: Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia; bridge between academic and applied research (p. 51).
  • Wartella, E. (1996); Dennis, E. E., & Wartella (Eds.). American communication research: The remembered history.
  • Lang, K. (1996); Robinson, G. J. (1996); Glander, T. (2000); Rogers, E. M. (1986, 1994, 1996).
  • Bryant, J., & Miron, D. (2007); Bryant, J., & Thompson, S. (1999); Bryant, J., & Vorderer, P. (Eds.). (2006).
  • McCroskey, J. C., & McCroskey, L. L. (2006); McCroskey, J., & Richmond, V. P. (1996).
  • Kim, Y. Y. (2005); Steinfatt, T., & Christophel, D. M. (1996); Sriramesh, K., & Vercic, D. (Eds.). (2003).
  • Zelizer, B. (2004).
  • In addition, numerous handbooks and yearbooks cited within the chapter (e.g., Salwen, Stacks; Gudykunst; Hoyt, etc.).