Communication Theory

CONTENTS
List of Tables and Figures ix
Preface x
Acknowledgements xv
1 Introduction – A Second Media Age? 1
Communication in cybercultures 3
The overstatement of linguistic perspectives on media 4
The first and second media age – the historical distinction 7
Broadcast mediums and network mediums – problems
with the historical typology 11
Interaction versus integration 15
2 Theories of Broadcast Media 20
The media as an extended form of the social – the rise
of ‘mass media’ 21
Mass media as a culture industry – from critical theory to
cultural studies 23
The media as an apparatus of ideology 25
Ideology as a structure of broadcast – Althusser 29
The society of the spectacle – Debord, Boorstin and Foucault 31
Mass media as the dominant form of access to social
reality – Baudrillard 36
The medium is the message – McLuhan, Innis and Meyrowitz 38
3 Theories of Cybersociety 44
Cyberspace 44
Theories 50
Social implications 72
4 The Interrelation between Broadcast and
Network Communication 83
The first and second media age as mutually constitutive 83
Broadcast and network interactivity as forms of
communicative solidarity 86
viii COMMUNICATION THEORY
Understanding network communication in the
context of broadcast communication 97
Understanding broadcast communication in the
context of network communication 101
Audiences without texts 111
The return of medium theory 113
Recasting broadcast in terms of medium theory 118
5 Interaction versus Integration 122
Transmission versus ritual views of communication 122
Types of interaction 135
The problem with ‘mediation’ 138
Medium theory and individuality 140
Reciprocity without interaction – broadcast 144
Interaction without reciprocity – the Internet 149
The levels of integration argument 151
6 Telecommunity 167
Rethinking community 167
Classical theories of community 168
The ‘end of the social’ and the new discourse of community 171
Globalization and social context 173
The rise of global communities of practice 174
Sociality with mediums/sociality with objects 177
Post-social society and the generational divide 186
Network communities 188
Broadcast communities 206
Telecommunity 221
References 226
Index 244