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[1965-1980] From mere entertainment, mass media were obviously taking over in shaping popular culture; English professor Marshall McLuhan popularized the catch phrase, "the medium is the message."
[1980] European critical theory (connection between communication and culture; Marxist analysis of the media's role in shaping societal values) reached the United States.
[1970-1980] Two decades of empirical research and still no scientific breakthrough--diversifying rhetoricians and consolidating communication scientists felt the need to discover the single grand theory that would focus all research efforts. Although successfully redefining the field as "communication" and assuming leadership in the newly titled departments, researchers still could not claim a unifying theory/approach that would guarantee academic respectability.
[1977] The Communication Quarterly spring issue featured a debate among advocates of three types of theory: covering laws, interpretive rules and systems theory (human communication as a set of interdependent people who work together to adapt to a changing environment).
[1980-present] Saw the increase of communication majors and graduates, departments, references and researches.
FIVE RECENT TRENDS IN COMMUNICATION STUDY:
increasing interest in interpretive research, especially cultural studies and feminist critiques that seek to unmask and redress power imbalances;
more studies using ethnographic methods; less on content, more on how messages are interpreted by individual viewers;
attempts to penetrate the "black box" of the mind by modeling the mental structures and cognitive processes that guide communication behavior;
interpersonal scholarship converging on the study of personal relationships; and
wildly diverse interests and research agendas within the field of communication.
SOURCES: E.M. Griffin, A First Look at Communication Theory, 1997.
James Anderson,Communication Research: Issues and Methods, 1987.
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December 2001
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