Outline of communication

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to communication:

Communication – purposeful activity of exchanging information and meaning across space and time using various technical or natural means, whichever is available or preferred. Communication requires a sender, a message, a medium and a recipient, although the receiver does not have to be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space.

Essence of communication

 * Communication theory
 * Development communication
 * Information
 * Information theory
 * Semiotics

Types of communication by scope

 * Intercultural communication
 * International communication
 * Interpersonal communication
 * Intrapersonal communication
 * Mass communication
 * Nonverbal communication
 * Verbal communication
 * Organizational communication

Types of communication by mode

 * Computer-mediated communication
 * Conversation
 * Mail
 * Mass media
 * Book
 * Film
 * Journalism
 * News media
 * Newspaper
 * Technical writing
 * Video
 * Telecommunication  (outline)
 * Morse Code
 * Radio
 * Telegraphy
 * Telephone
 * Television
 * Internet
 * Verbal communication
 * Writing
 * Social Network

Fields of communication

 * Communication studies
 * Cognitive linguistics
 * Conversation analysis
 * Crisis communication
 * Discourse analysis
 * Environmental communication
 * Health communication
 * Interpersonal communication
 * Linguistics
 * Mass communication
 * Mediated cross-border communication
 * Organizational communication
 * Political communication
 * Pragmatics
 * Risk communication
 * Science communication
 * Semiotics
 * Sociolinguistics

Theories, schools, and approaches
Theories of communication
 * Agenda-setting theory
 * Content analysis
 * Community structure theory
 * Conversation analysis
 * Coordinated management of meaning
 * Critical theory
 * Cues-filtered-out theory
 * Cultivation theory
 * Cultural studies
 * Cybernetics
 * Decision downloading
 * Diffusion of innovations
 * Elaboration likelihood model
 * Ethnomethodology
 * Framing
 * Hermeneutics
 * Hypodermic needle model
 * Heuristic-Systematic Model
 * Hyperpersonal Model
 * Information theory
 * Knowledge gap hypothesis
 * Media ecology
 * Narrative paradigm
 * Network analysis
 * Nonviolent Communication
 * Opinion leadership
 * Political economy
 * Priming
 * Problematic Integration Theory
 * Relational dialectics
 * Scheme (linguistics)
 * Social learning theory
 * Social construction of reality
 * Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE)
 * Social Information Processing theory
 * Social Penetration Theory
 * Spiral of silence
 * Structuralism
 * Symbolic interactionism
 * Technology acceptance model
 * Theory of cognitive dissonance
 * Theory of Planned Behavior
 * Theory of Reasoned Action
 * Third-person effect
 * Two-step flow of communication
 * Uses and gratifications
 * Uncertainty reduction theory

History of communication
History of communication
 * Cave painting
 * Early postal systems
 * Heliograph
 * Historical linguistics
 * History of alphabet
 * History of the book
 * History of computer science
 * History of computing (see also Timeline of computing)
 * History of computer hardware
 * History of Internet
 * History of linguistics
 * History of mass media
 * History of radio
 * History of telegraphy
 * History of telegraph
 * History of telephone
 * History of television
 * History of writing
 * Ideograms
 * Origin of language
 * Petroglyphs
 * Pictograms
 * Proto-language
 * Semaphore line
 * Smoke signals

General topics of communication

 * Autocommunication
 * Empathy
 * People skills
 * Persuasion
 * Propaganda
 * Public speaking
 * Reading
 * Rhetoric
 * Small-group communication
 * Speech
 * Translation
 * Writing

General communication terms

 * Censorship
 * Community structure
 * Cultural imperialism
 * Democracy
 * Dialectic
 * Digital divide
 * Freedom of the press
 * Freedom of speech
 * Hegemony
 * Identity
 * Imagined community
 * Information society
 * Late capitalism
 * Media imperialism
 * Morpheme
 * Nationalism
 * Phoneme
 * Postmodernity
 * Public sphere
 * Semiotics
 * Social capital
 * Social network
 * Sophist
 * Stereotyping
 * Stigma
 * Syllable
 * Transactive communication
 * Universal service
 * Avatar (virtual reality)

Communication scholars

 * Theodor Adorno
 * Aristotle
 * Roland Barthes
 * Gregory Bateson
 * Walter Benjamin
 * Kenneth Burke
 * Manuel Castells
 * Cicero
 * Noam Chomsky
 * Karl W. Deutsch
 * Walter Fisher
 * George Gerbner
 * G. Thomas Goodnight
 * Jürgen Habermas
 * Max Horkheimer
 * Harold Innis
 * Roman Jakobson
 * Irving Janis
 * Wendell Johnson
 * D. Lawrence Kincaid
 * Walter Lippman
 * Juri Lotman
 * Niklas Luhmann
 * Herbert Marcuse
 * George Herbert Mead
 * Marshall McLuhan
 * Desmond Morris
 * Maxwell McCombs
 * Walter J. Ong
 * Vance Packard
 * Charles Sanders Peirce
 * Chaïm Perelman
 * Plato
 * Neil Postman
 * Nora C. Quebral
 * Quintilian
 * I. A. Richards
 * Everett M. Rogers
 * Wilbur Schramm
 * Thomas Sebeok
 * Claude Shannon
 * Deborah Tannen
 * James W. Tankard, Jr.
 * Warren Weaver
 * Bob Woodward