Communication studies was born in the United States. American scholars explored communication theories from different angles and proposed a wide variety of communication models, such as various models expressed in words, graphics, and mathematical formulas.

Communication scientists use different models to explain the mechanism of information communication and the nature of communication, to indicate the communication process and effects, and to predict the situation and structure of future communication.

It is generally believed that there are five founders of communication studies: 1. Harold Dwight Lasswell, Lasswell (1902-1980) is one of the founders of modern political science in the United States.

Proposed the famous 5w model of communication studies 2. Kurt Lewin, Lu Yin (1890-1947) German Jew.

The concept of "gatekeeper" in information dissemination was proposed.

3. Carl Hovland, Hovland (1921-1961) Professor of Experimental Psychology at Yale University.

Introducing psychological experimental methods into the field of communication and revealing the conditions and complexity of the formation of communication effects.

4. Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Lazarsfeld (1901-1976), an Austrian Jew.

Rogers pointed out that Lazarsfeld, more than anyone else, led communication studies in the direction of empirical research.

5. Wilbur Schramm (1907-1988) was an American. He established the world’s first communication institute and edited the first batch of German communication textbooks.

It has opened up several new research fields such as the impact of television on children and adolescents.

He is considered to be a master.

The reason why it originated in the United States is that in the first half of the 20th century, Eurasia suffered the scourge of two world wars in succession, and the United States became a safe haven for many scientists due to its unique geographical advantages.

Moreover, the United States itself has always been a leader in the invention and application of technology because its homeland has not been destroyed.

For example: the opening of Pittsburgh Wireless Television in 1920, the establishment of the national broadcaster NBC in 1926, etc.

In terms of social conditions, American politics and social life have a tradition of attaching great importance to the mass media. In the political mechanism, the mass media is one of the forces that checks and balances with legislative bodies and government agencies. Newspapers were once called the Second Congress.

From the perspective of academic tradition, pragmatism philosophy is prevalent in the United States, and academic research places special emphasis on solving practical problems.

A large amount of practical information is available to people, which facilitates people's lives, work and the operation of society.

However, there is also a large amount of commercial promotion, political propaganda, deception, pornography, violence and other cultural garbage.

These problems or potential problems have become topics that the American academic community must face and study.

The above conditions all determine that communication studies originated in the United States.

After the advent of communication science in the United States, it quickly spread to Western Europe and Japan.

British communication research has flourished since the 1960s, and can be divided into four major schools in terms of methodology: the sociological school headed by McGuire; the social psychology school represented by Holloran; and the school of psychology represented by Cheeseman and Garnham.

The political economy brand represented by Leeds University; the functional school represented by the Television Research Center of the University of Leeds.

Japanese communication studies began after the Second World War and have two major characteristics: First, they followed foreign theoretical systems, mainly the United States, and focused on the development of social participation theory that emphasized the audience’s right to directly participate in the communication process; second, they practiced

Prioritize theory.

Since the 1960s, the Soviet Union has begun to pay attention to the study of communication theory.

Soviet scholars proposed their own communication models based on their own research. The more famous ones are the Firsov Communication Model and the Alexeev Communication Model.

It should be noted that Western communication scholars have obvious limitations in their research.

For example, they improperly place communication as the most important thing for human beings, thus rejecting the main symbol of human production capacity; they attribute the occurrence and development of communication behavior to human instinct and science and technology respectively.

progress without examining them in connection with social production methods; when studying the social control of communication, they often fail to fully reveal the profound contradictions within society, etc.

Communication science was born in the 1930s and 1940s. As an emerging discipline, it was developed on the basis of drawing on the three theories (information theory, cybernetics and systems theory), as well as sociology, psychology, political science and other disciplines.

of.

Up to now, communication research can be divided into three basic schools: cybernetic school, empirical functional school and structuralist semiotic school.

The cybernetics school values ??the rational functional design of human-machine communication, the empirical functional school examines persuasion and suggestion to the public for established political and economic purposes, and structuralist semiotics explores the mutual operation between symbols, knowledge, and power.

1. The empirical functional school: The media is regarded as a new tool for modern democracy and a decisive mechanism for social adjustment, thus becoming a theory advocating the reproduction of the values ??of Western social systems and the existing state of things, which is called "management research".