User:CMarch02/History of communication studies

1900s–20s
Early twentieth-century work by Charles Horton Cooley, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey has been important to the academic discipline as it stands today.

In his 1909 Social Organization: a Study of the Larger Mind, Cooley defines communication as "the mechanism through which human relations exist and develop—all the symbols of the mind, together with the means of conveying them through space and preserving them in time." This idea that all human interaction and relations depend on communication, gave processes of communication a central and constitutive place in the study of social relations. ''''''

Published in 1922, Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann couples Cooley's view with a fear that the rise of new technologies in mass communication allowed for the 'manufacture of consent,' and created a gap between the idealized concept of democracy and its reality. ''''''

John Dewey's 1927 The Public and its Problems draws on the same view of communication as Lippmann, but instead takes a more optimistic reform agenda, arguing famously that "communication can alone create a great community," as well as "of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful." ''''''

Cooley, Lippmann, and Dewey capture themes like the central importance of communication in social life, the impact of changing technology upon culture, and questions regarding the relationship between communication, democracy, and community. These concepts continue to drive scholars today. Many of these concerns are also central to the work of writers such as Gabriel Tarde and Theodor W. Adorno, who have also made significant contributions to the field.

In 1925, Herbert A. Wichelns published the essay "The Literary Criticism of Oratory" in the book Studies in Rhetoric and Public Speaking in Honor of James Albert Winans. Wicheln's essay attempted to "put rhetorical studies on par with literary studies as an area of academic interest and research." Wichelns wrote that oratory should be taken as seriously as literature, and therefore, it should be subject to criticism and analysis. Although the essay is now standard reading in most rhetorical criticism courses, it had little immediate impact (from 1925 to 1935) on the field of rhetorical studies.