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International communication (also referred to as global communication or transnational communication) is the communication practice that occurs across international borders. As a field of study, international communication is a branch of communication studies, concerning with the scope of "government-to-government", "business-to-business", and "people-to-people" interactions at a global level. International communication "encompasses political, economic, social, cultural and military concerns".

Communication and Empire
Efficient communication networks played crucial roles in establishing ancient imperial authority and international trade. The extent of empire could be used as an 'indication of the efficiency of communication'. Ancient empires such as Rome, Persia and China, all utilized writing in collecting information and dispersalling, creating enormous postal and dispatch systems. As early as in fifteenth century, news have been disseminated trans-nationally in Europe. 'The wheat traders of Venice, the silver traders of Antwerp, the merchants of Nuremberg and their trading partners shared economic newsletters and created common values and beliefs in the rights of capital.'

The Advent of Telegraph and Time–space Compression
In 1837, Samuel Morse invented telegraph. Provided its speed and reliability in delivering information, telegraph offered opportunities for capital and military expansion. As showed in Table 1.1, the establishment of cable hardware signifies global power order in late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Table 1.1 Cabling the world

The Era of News Agencies
The newspaper industry and international telegraph networks mutually facilitated each other. As the supply and demand of newspaper industry rapidly increased in nineteenth century, news agencies were established successively. The French Havas Agency was founded in 1835, the German agency Wolffin 1849 and the British Reuters in 1851. These three European agencies, which started to operate internationally, were all subsidized by their respective governments.

Radio Broadcasting
Western countries seized the chances to implement radio communication after the first radio transmissions of human voice in 1902. But the two mechanisms of radio broadcasting were distinctively different. In the USA, the Radio Act of 1927 confirm its status as an advertising-funded commercial enterprise, while in Britain, the public broadcasting pioneer British Broadcasting Corporation set up in the same year. During the First World War and the Second World War, radio broadcasting played a significant role in both domestic public opinion management and international diplomacy propaganda abroad. Even in the Cold War times, this radio-dominated international communication still featured in propaganda respective ideologies. The prominent example is the Voice of America, which ran a global network to indoctrinate "American dream" to its international audience.

Demanding a New Communication Order
Since the cold war officially ended in 1990, the intense relations of super powers halted with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of the Third World countries, the unequally developed communication order can no longer existed. The Third World called for ceasing their marginalized communication status. Especially when international communications stepped into the information age, 'the convergence of telecommunication and computing and the ability to move all type of data - pictures, words, sounds - via the Internet have revolutionized international information exchange.'

Scope and Approaches of International Communication Research
International communication is widely spread and multilayered in contemporary society, however it is not considered as a separate academic discipline because of its overlapping with other subjects. International communication is 'a topic field rather than a discipline field' and international communication studies is a mode of 'organizing inquiry'.

John D. H. Downing proposed ten categories within which international communication should be conducted
 * 1) theories of international communication
 * 2) core international communication processes
 * 3) global media firms
 * 4) global media policies
 * 5) global news flows
 * 6) world cinema
 * 7) development communication
 * 8) the Internet
 * 9) intellectual property law
 * 10) non-hegemonic communication flows

Mehdi Semati listed the wide range of research subjects in international communication, which includes, but not limited to the followings.
 * Communication and development(development communication)
 * Technology transfer
 * Development journalism
 * Modernization theory
 * Dependency theories
 * Nation, nationalism, and national cultural
 * State, nation-state, and sovereignty
 * International relations and communication
 * Global communicative access
 * Cultural imperialism
 * Media imperialism
 * Transnational corporations, transnational media corporations
 * International organizations and communication
 * International television and radio broadcasting
 * Broadcasting and propaganda
 * Theories of the press
 * Free flow of information
 * International traffic in media content
 * Global news flow
 * International news agencies
 * Trans-border data flow
 * International (tele) communication technology
 * International (tele) communication policy and regulation
 * Cross-cultural media receptions studies
 * Globalization

Hamid Mowlana stated four key interrelated approaches to international communication
 * 1) idealistic-humanistic
 * 2) proselytization
 * 3) economic
 * 4) the political

One of the most obvious manifestations of international communication are world news, when the media of one country cover news from abroad. But, apart from journalism, international communication also occurs in other areas (culture, technology, sciences) and the nature of the "information" that is circulated can be classified in a wide variety of categories, such as cultural (music, films, sports, TV shows from one country to another), scientific (research papers published abroad, scientific exchange or cooperation), and intelligence (diplomacy reports, international espionage, etc.).

Typically the study of international communication includes a deep attention to the circulation of news among different countries (and the resulting imbalances, from which came the concept of news flow), the power of media organizations (such as conglomerates and news agencies), issues such as cultural imperialism and media imperialism, and the political role that international cooperation can have in enhancing the media industry (and society as a whole) in a given region, such as proposed by development communication or Communication for Development.

Some renowned scholars in international communication include Wilbur Schramm, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Johan Galtung, Anthony Smith, Robert Stevenson, Jeremy Tunstall, Armand Mattelart, Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Ali Mohammadi, Annabelle Sreberny, Cees J. Hamelink, Daya Kishan Thussu and Chris Paterson. The International Communication Gazette, the Journal of International Communication and the Global Media Journal are reference journals in this field.