Introduction 

Ever find yourself filling out a job application with a drop-down menu to select your major — scrolling down and down until you find it — ‘Communications & Media Studies?’ Employers and schools alike tend to click together the terms, whether for ease of pairing the two related terms or for a lack of understanding into the nuances that define the disciplines. Are there even differences if those who confer degrees write them on the same line?

Realistically, communications is both a critical dimension & point of study for media studies and also an entirely separate field. It’s why Bruce Clarke uses his chapter on Communication in Critical Terms for Media Studies to both introduce how the word and concept shapes the two disciplines (2010).s

A Definition to Work With

Communication — as a word, not a discipline —  is derived from the Latin word communicare, referring to the act of imparting or making something common. The Oxford English Dictionary builds their definition from this; “the imparting, conveying, or exchange of ideas, knowledge, [and] information (OED.”) While the English verb implies the intentional transmission of a conception, the noun word refers instead to the material and spatial object of such an impartation. Put in other words, the object of communication is what a medium is (Clarke 2020). 

Development into Disciplines

Prior to the Industrial revolution of the mid-1800s, the study of communication was otherwise incorporated in other disciplines such as philosophy (Peters 1999). Mechanical technology flourished unprecedentedly and expanded human’s intellectual, spatial, and temporal boundaries similarly. Foreign colonies and countries became connected by their media, transitioning the globe into a community through innovations like telegraphs, phones, and radios. Around a century later, Marshall McLuhan argued the two as distinct realms of study, both equally deserving of attention. To the time of Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver (1949) formalizing their namesake transmission-reception model of communication — a system built around media having their meanings embedded and static until received  —  McLuhan wrote such media are vessels of “information movement” in a society, constituting “extension[s] of man” in the physical world (1994, 89-90).

Published during a period when television became common in households, McLuhan’s attention to mediums themselves proved inspiring to those fascinated by the abundance of these multisensory devices. Contemporaries began conceiving contrasting frameworks, presenting one with meanings driven by reflexive aspects instead of solely by messages encoded (Craig, 2001). This constitutive model, defined by its recognition of social factors, opposes the media-focussed model. With this said, the line between communication studies and media can be said as focus being paid to these social factors in the former and to the technology and formal contents itself. 

Transmission as a Framework of Control

The transmission model is often simplified to the movement of information from one place to another, but this understanding is too narrow. As McLuhan reminded us, every medium not only carries content but also subtly reshapes the roles of the sender and receiver, altering the structures of power and control. From this perspective, transmission is not merely about delivering a message—it organizes the entire process of communication by establishing expectations for clarity, directionality, and authority. It is precisely this organizing function that enables institutions like journalism, education, and the military to treat communication as something that can be standardized and managed.

Transmission in Everyday Communication

When you send a text message to a friend, you compose the message, press send, and wait for it to appear on their phone. If the message is successfully delivered, communication is considered to have succeeded. If it does not arrive, for example, due to signal failure, it is regarded as a breakdown. This simple process reflects the logic of the transmission model, in which communication is viewed as the creation, sending, and receiving of a message.

As Chang points out, this model has limitations. It gives the impression that communication only succeeds when the receiver gets the message exactly as the sender intended. However, in real life, messages are often interpreted in different ways. Even a simple text can be misunderstood depending on tone or context. Chang reminds us that the transmission model values perfect sameness, but actual communication is often full of small differences. This gap reveals both the usefulness and the limitations of transmission in explaining how we connect with each other.

Linking Communication and Media

The transmission model also clearly reveals the intrinsic coupling between communication and media: communication is the act of sending and receiving information, while media is the technical means that enables this act. In practice, the two are inseparable. Whether it is print, telegraph, or digital platforms, the chosen channel not only determines the reach and speed of information dissemination but also fundamentally shapes the form of communication. Thus, the media is by no means a passive or neutral conduit—it actively defines the patterns and boundaries of communication.

Constitutive Model — MEANING is not “SENT” but “CREATED” 

In the previous chapter, we pursued an idea of communication, which is  “a sender sends a message, a receiver receives it.” However, Clarke’s approach explains the quite different communication from this ── “Constitutive Model.” This model fundamentally challenges this premise and offers a perspective that interprets communication itself as a process of creating reality and constructing meaning. In other words, rather than viewing communication as the “transmission of a fixed meaning,” he emphasizes “what is created through communicative interactions.”

Example of Constitutive Model

In this blog post, I would like to explain an example I couldn’t explain in my presentation to make  the “Constitutive Model” easier to understand. One example is news reporting. When considering a news report, even if it appears to convey the same facts in all press, interpretations can vary greatly depending on the choice of vocabulary, context, and audience, and social relationships are shaped accordingly. In other words, even if it appears to convey the facts, the meaning can change significantly depending on the choice of expression.

Thus, in the constitutive model, the sender, receiver, and message are not pre-fixed but are reconstructed within the act of communication itself. This model has been proposed as an alternative framework by contemporary theorists such as Robert Craig (1999). Researchers such as Craig have positioned communication as a reflective and dynamic process.

Communication and Digital Media

What I wanted to add to this constitutive model is an insight into communication and digital media. Real-time communication technologies such as telephone and television enable instant interaction. On the other hand, storage media such as text and video preserve information for later reference. Amid the emergence of these media, it has been argued that digital media possessed the characteristics of both.

Considering this in conjunction with Craig’s constitutive model, we can conclude that digital media enable the simultaneous transmission and preservation of information, with meanings constantly changing during the communication process.

Communication in Larger Society 

Subsequently in this chapter, we are introduced to Jürgen Habermas’ theories by Bruce Clarke, along with those of Briankle Chang and Niklas Luhmann. These were not presented as merely scholarly differences but as methods of framing a deeper question around how we could possibly understand communication within society in general. In our presentation, we were only able to present a brief overview due to time limitations, but here I would like to dig a little deeper.

Habermas and the Public Sphere

Habermas’s communicative rationality theory is especially important as a foundation for democratic public spheres. In Habermas’s opinion, people use language to exchange ideas, critique each other and bargain for mutual understanding. This goes beyond individual subjectivity and aims to create common rationality in public life. We did touch on this during our presentation but did not get a chance to connect it to the digital public sphere. On social media, the people of today now criticize and quarrel with each other in real time, but at the same time, these platforms tend to break down into echo chambers and polarization. The gap between Habermas’s idea of consensus and the fragmented reality of discussion online is worth noting.

Chang and the Limits of Intersubjectivity

Chang’s own critique of intersubjectivity must also be addressed with some additional attention. He asserts that communication can’t be a copying of ideas from mind to mind. Instead there is always difference, slippage and ambiguity between understanding. In our presentation we have only alluded to his claim that intersubjectivity is circular. What I would prefer that we had emphasized more is that Chang’s account renders difference a productive resource. Meaning lies not in sameness but in difference. News reporting is one such area. Facts are the same but interpretation varies based on vocabulary, framing and audience. These generate new discourse and not shut them off.

Luhmann and Social Systems

Luhmann develops this concept further with his theory of social systems. Society, he states, is not a space of shared meaning but is the ever-present continuation of communication itself. Only communication can communicate, he states. Messages in this model are not transmitted whole from one brain to another. Instead each system generates meaning internally. Communication goes on as long as one message produces another. Misunderstanding or conflict does not stop society, it keeps it going. We can see this quite clearly in social media arguments, where misunderstanding often gives rise to new rounds of controversy and interpretation.

Connecting to Networks

Here Clarke’s chapter overlaps with another in Critical Terms, Alexander Galloway’s “Networks.” Networks characterize society as a network of nodes and connections, where each message gets its meaning based on how it relates to the others. Based on this perspective Habermas’s aspiration for consensus can only be seen in fragments, and Chang’s emphasis on difference aligns with the diversity of nodes in a network. Luhmann’s chain of communication is consistent with Galloway’s view that decentralized and distributive structures put society in motion. Together, Communication and Networks reveal that meaning is not the fixed transmission of ideas but the ongoing generative process in the web of social relations.

Thank you for reading this blog ⭐️!