Communication in Modern Social Ordering investigates the modern history of communication in relation to the thinking of the political community in the United States. By illustrating the intertwining of the technological developments in communication methods and its community-building effects, the different representations of society and their political implications are examined against the development of communication systems from the telegraph, to the telephone, to computer networks. It was the telegraph that made communication a continual process, thus freeing it from the rhythmical motion of the postal service and from physical transportation in general, and provided both a model and a mechanism of control. Using the theories of both Foucault and Heidegger to provide a lens for new investigation, the author studies not the meanings of communication and its logic as such but rather the conditions and structures that allow meanings and logic to be formulated in the first place. The book offers an original combination of historical analysis with an ontological discussion of the evolution of telecommunications in the U.S. as a phenomenon of modern social ordering.

In this highly influential study of art forms as models for a theory of communications, Hugh Dalziel Duncan demonstrates that without understanding of the role of symbols in society, social scientists cannot hope to develop adequate models for social analysis. He reviews critically major contributions to communication theory during the past century: Freud's analysis of dream symbolism, Simmel's concept of sociability, James' insights into religious experience, and Dewey's relating of art to experience.

A great deal of attention has been devoted to risk research. Sociologists in general have limited themselves to varying recognitions of a society at risk and have traced out the paths to disaster. The detailed research has yet to be undertaken. In Risk, now available in paperback, Niklas Luhmann develops a theoretical program for such research. His premise is that the concept of risk projects essential aspects of our description of the future onto the present. Risk is conceived as the possibility of triggering unexpected, unlikely, and detrimental consequences by means of a decision attributable to a decision maker.

The principal processes involved in language production and communication are explored in depth, and their effects on all main social psychological phenomena revealed.

This book presents a comprehensive framework for disaster communication, with a main focus on earthquake-related communication, building on a previously fragmented, single-case study approach to analysing the role of social media during natural disasters.

How do the communication practices of governments, NGOs and social movements enhance opportunities for citizen-led change? In this incisive book, Thomas Tufte makes a call for a fundamental rethinking of what it takes to enable citizens’ voices, participation and power in processes of social change. Drawing on examples ranging from the Indignados movement in Spain to media activists in Brazil, from rural community workers in Malawi to UNICEF’s global outreach programmes, he presents cutting-edge debates about the role of media and communication in enhancing social change. He offers both new and contested ideas of approaching social change from below, and highlights the need for institutions – governments and civil society organizations alike – to be in sync with their constituencies. Communication and Social Change provides essential insights to students and scholars of media and communications, as well as anyone concerned with the practices and processes that lead to citizenship, democracy and social justice.

Suitable for students and scholars of political communication and mass media in democracies, this book challenges the traditional scholarship on various issues such as: comparative political and media systems; theories of democracy, representation and the public sphere; and, political party communication, marketing and elections.

Examines four notable thinkers in the field of modern social and political theory, with a view to determining how far it is possible to create and maintain a non-coercive but sustainable political order under conditions of diversity in contemporary Western democracies.