Means of communication

Means of communication are the means with which people can communicate with one another.

Many aids are used in communication to make yourself understood. Maps, for example, save you tedious explanations of how to get to your destination. A means of communication is therefore a means to an end to make communication between people easier, more understandable and, above all, more unambiguous.

In everyday language, means of communication are often equated with “ medium ”. However, the word medium is used in media studies with a very large number of concepts, some of which do not correspond to everyday usage.

Concept history

Up until the 19th century, the term was mainly applied to traffic and messenger services , meaning primarily means of transport and traffic routes such as railways, routes, artificial roads, canals, but also mail riders and stagecoaches . 1861 the economist defines Albert Schäffle means of communication as a tool of the goods and values in circulation and summarizes including but not newspapers , telegraph (invented in the 1830s), mail , messenger services, Avis , invoices and bills of lading .

In the period that followed, the technical means of communication came more and more into focus, so that as early as 1895 the Deutsches Wochenblatt said that these technical means of communication had been improved to such an extent that “everyone around the world became our neighbor”.

It was not until the 20th century that the term medium was used as a synonym for this technical means of communication; in the 1920s, the term mass media was used in the English-speaking world, among other things in the context of the emergence of broadcasting, and a little later it was Germanized as mass media .

Differentiations

Means of communication are often distinguished in communication theory

• with a view to the accessibility and determinability of the recipients in the means of individual communication , group communication and mass communication ;
• with regard to the technology share in means of natural and technical communication
• with regard to the proportion of language used in verbal and non-verbal communication .

Media as a means of communication will be further differentiated in the following years:

• in storage media , transmission media and processing media (processing media ), more specifically also recording media , reproduction media (duplication media ), playback media .
• into primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary media, depending on the proportion of technology at the sender or receiver.

Means of natural communication

The means of natural communication , the "primary media" (see media theory ), include:

• Speech and other sounds formed by the mouth , e.g. B. the scream;
• Sign language through hand or body movements, e.g. B. wink;
• other non-verbal means of communication such as clothing (see dress code ), measures of body design itself and other forms of appearance up to different accents in living and building culture

Technical means of communication

• Characters written by hand or technical aids on paper or another surface as a written medium ( letter , message )
• print media produced using printing technology
• Playback of sounds or images by playback devices and demonstration devices such as tape recorders and projectors for slides or films ;
• Transmission of speech by telephone or writing by telegraph , mostly only to a single addressee; Satellite radio

Mass media

The term “ mass media ” is based on the fact that one or a few senders can reach a large number of addressees at the same time or almost simultaneously.

• Transfer of information through printed matter in various forms ( book , newspaper , leaflet , photocopy , poster , direct mail , serial letter )
• Transmission of speech, music or other sounds by radio waves ( radio );
• Transmission of sound and images by radio waves ( television );
• the most modern means of communication to date in a long chain of innovations is the Internet .

See also

• Media history
• publication
• Social media (social media)

literature

General

• Lothar Hoffmann, means of communication: technical language: an introduction , 1976
• Michael Franz , Electric Laocoon: Signs and Media, from Punch Cards to Grammatology , 2007, ISBN 978-3-05-003504-8
• Horst Völz , that is information. Shaker Verlag, Aachen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8440-5587-0 .

Natural means of communication

• Jean Werner Sommer, Means of Communication: Word and Language , 1970
• Beat Pfister, Tobias Kaufmann: Language processing: Basics and methods of speech synthesis and speech recognition , 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-75909-6
• Renate Rathmayr, Nonverbal means of communication and their verbalization , 1987

Means of mass communication (mass media)

• Jörg Aufermann, Hans Bohrmann, means of mass communication , 1968
• Fritz Eberhard, Optical and Acoustic Mass Communication Means , 1967
• Theodor Bücher, Pedagogy of the Means of Mass Communication , 1967
• Hans Kaspar Platte, Sociology of the Means of Mass Communication , 1965

Means of social communication

• Daniel Michelis, Thomas Schildhauer (Ed.): Social Media Handbook - Theories, Methods, Models . Nomos, Baden-Baden 2010, ISBN 978-3-8329-5470-3 , p. 327 .
• Daniel Michelis, Thomas Schildhauer (Ed.): Social Media Handbook - Theories, Methods, Models and Practice . 2nd updated and expanded edition. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2012, ISBN 978-3-8329-7121-2 , p. 358 .

Web links

Wiktionary: means of communication  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Image, language, writing - on the understanding of language in contemporary German-language image theory, Daniel Brockmeier, ISBN 3640575113 , p. 15 ff, Google Books
2. ^ Artificial Presence: Philosophical Studies in Image Theory, Lambert Wiesing, ISBN 0804759413 , p. 122 ff, Google Books
3. ↑ For example: Charles Franz Zimpel, road connection between the Mittelland and the Dead Sea ... , 1865, p. 3
4. ↑ Albert Schäffle, Die Nationalökonomie, 1861, p. 243
5. ^ Deutsches Wochenblatt, 8th year, 1895, p. 349