By Sreedhar Nemmani
As a PhD Candidate in Media and Communication Studies who is just back from a nine-month immersive ethnographic fieldwork among the Buddhist communities residing in the greater Himalayan ranges, I am often occupied by the question, what is communication?
While the field of communication studies has branched out into an umbrella of numerous sub-fields, this question is often not engaged with in any particular depth. Almost all textbooks that engage with communication in any form start with a customary acknowledgment that communication is a (linear) act of exchanging information using some form of medium/media. Once this aspect is reiterated, authors often delve into the multitudinous roles envisaged for communication in human societies. How did we end up with this consensus that communication is a linear act of exchanging information?
In my dissertation project, I trace the evolution of this consensus from the European Enlightenment period to the modern 21st century scholarly iterations on the concept of communication. As a Graduate Extern at the Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio (LCDSS) for this academic year 2024-25, I trace the genealogy of scholarship surrounding the concept of communication so that we can visualize how we came to a near-universal consensus that communication is a linear act of exchanging information. I extend this genealogy project in my larger dissertation project, where I delve into the implications of such a consensus on human society.
Comprehending the field of communication studies in its entirety is difficult, particularly with the field branching out into several sub-fields. Hence, at the LCDSS, I am embarking on a project I call Cartographies of Communication. Through this project, I hope to achieve two specific outcomes. First, I am to trace a genealogy of the term ‘communication’ and the fascinating intellectual journey it took so far to reach the inexplicable, distended, and unbounded form it presents itself today. To this end, I will start by generating a timeline tracing the evolution of scholarship.
Second, since all forms of knowledge generation practices are rooted in specific social, cultural, and other forms of traditions/worldviews/contexts, which often can be traced to specific geographies, I hope to complement the timeline by tracing the physical location to which scholars were related – the places they were born at, the schools they attended, the traditions they belonged to, and the places where their thoughts took shape or were best articulated at.
A Network Analysis of Communication Studies
At the core of this project is a network analysis where I plot key/influential scholars/thinkers connected through time, place, and traditions. To borrow from the analogy of a relay race, and if we see the evolution of scholarship surrounding communication as a process of scholars handing down the batons of traditions, then this project tries to trace the eras (via the timeline analysis) and places (by locating their journeys on a map) through which the field of communication studies emerged. For example, Marx, who wrote influentially on the importance of communication channels and media institutions in modern society, was born in continental Europe, but developed his critique of capitalist ideologies after observing the precarious conditions in which factory workers lived in Ireland.
Then, by locating Marx and his intellectual journey, perhaps it will be possible to trace the traditions/worldviews that influenced his thought and the context in which he conceives human communication through capitalist and state-led institutions. Similarly, through the Cartographies of Communication project, I hope to connect key thinkers with the geographies, map their scholarly connections, and the contexts in which they engage with the concept of communication.
That is the rationale behind the Cartographies of Communication. How do we realize it? At LCDSS, I learned that any form of visualization is essentially, at the very core, a spreadsheet, and in the last few weeks, I have been learning how to make a good spreadsheet and, by extension, a good dataset. As a scholar and researcher, I privilege ethnographic fieldwork, so thinking about the world and its contents, including thought, as a dataset has been an intellectually generative exercise. Considering a spreadsheet as a two-dimensional representation of the world, plotting the independent and dependent variables on the X-Y axis paradigm took me some time to figure out. For example, is an era, for example, a year, say 1850, important as that year several theorists worked in tandem across the world? Or should it be the scholars/thinkers who should be the independent variable?
After much thought, I am inclined to test the initial version of the project to consider scholars/thinkers as the independent variable. This choice is primarily based on the fact that at the initial phase, it is convenient to trace the baton of traditions passing from one scholar to another rather than look at the eras and geographies. There is a possibility that in the later phase, I might find that eras and geographies might be better anchors; hence, I aim to make three different spreadsheets from the inception – plotting scholars, key years, and geographies as independent variables.
Tracing a Timeline of Communication Studies
Making a timeline is not a difficult endeavor, and there are a plethora of tools available online, such as Canva, Online Timeline Maker (time.graphics), SmartDraw, and Adobe. I am quite familiar with the Canva and Adobe tools, so I plan to try these two platforms for the first set of timelines and, in the meantime, keep searching for more such timeline-making tools. While the timeline would help us about the eras and key thinkers in those eras, possibly with some context mixed in it, to trace the connections between the scholars, timelines might not be very helpful. Hence, I plan to dabble with family tree makers. One possible contender at this point is the Family Tree Maker. Draw.io is another. I am, however, yet to experiment with these platforms.
Finally, with timelines in place and with genealogical diagrams to establish the scholarly connections, I hope to plot these two on a map using platforms like QGIS or ArcGIS to visualize the geographical areas that played a venue in the emergence of the concept of communication. Given the profusion of schools and sub-fields that engage with the concept of communication, to make this project manageable, I aim to limit my explorations to the four broad traditions: North American-based social scientific traditions that include the fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology; Europe-based critical studies traditions; British cultural studies traditions; Science and Technology Studies and Cybernetics. I hope to extend this project to include postcolonial scholarship emerging from Asia and decolonial scholarship emerging from Latin America in the next phase of the project.