Western Classics of Journalism and Communication Studies: A Selected Reading

Author: Xiong Chengyu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: Today, most of us gain our understanding of communication studies primarily through the media around us. From traditional means like telephone, fax, books, newspapers, periodicals, radio, and television, to emerging technologies such as the internet, mobile communication, and artificial intelligence, the development and evolution of communication media and methods have closely linked communication studies with the lives of every individual. Communication studies is an interdisciplinary field that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, focusing on the study of human social information communication activities. Its main research scope includes communicators, communication content, communication media, communication processes, audiences, communication effects, communication systems and regulations, etc. Political communication, news communication, educational communication, cultural communication, and science communication are among the more influential branches of communication studies. Influenced by the globalization trend of information communication, communication studies has become one of the fastest-growing disciplines worldwide. Since its inception, communication studies has faced a tumultuous journey in China. Before the Cultural Revolution, it was labeled as Western bourgeois ideology and excluded from academic discourse. In the late 1980s, it was associated with bourgeois liberalization and was marginalized. It was not until 1997, when it was included in the disciplinary directory of the Ministry of Education, that communication studies gained official recognition in university campuses. A discipline that drives the formation of the information society and attracts the attention of numerous politicians, scientists, artists, and the general public worldwide has finally been formally accepted by Chinese society at the turn of the 20th century—a bittersweet moment.