A History of Communication Studies
Around the Communication
In 1950, the science of communication, centered in the media, was established.
Traditionally considered, the first research on mass communication in the U.S. was made in the period between the wars, with clear objectives and economic policy audiences. These studies began in the 1930s, addressing content analysis, effects, and hearings. However, these studies gained further impetus from 1945-1950.
Cybernetics and Functionalism
By 1942, the notion of communication related to cybernetics (Wiener was the founder) was developed. Designed to unify a set of communicative practices hitherto scattered, it intended to unite in the same sport events that were seen in different disciplinary fields (telephony, electronics, neurophysiology). Cybernetics was devoted to investigating the laws of communication between natural and artificial elements, animate or inanimate, individuals or corporations.
In the 1950s in the USA, the functionalist perspective developed, overturning previous research and analysis of interdependent factors related to public behavior. In the functionalist notion, two strong beliefs were held: the relationship that the view had with the social situation and the will to influence through the media in favor of democracy and maintaining the international balance.
Functionalism provides a confidence vote in favor of balancing communication, essential to an intellectual class, politically, economically making its voice heard on the anonymous public. This gives mass communication a central role in the political, economic, and educational spheres.
The Frankfurt School and Semiotics
The strongest attacks on mass communication came from the Frankfurt School, which sought to identify and describe the power lines that sustain the discourse of the media, cultural institutions, and educational programs.
During the 1960s, interest in communication studies in Europe began to awaken, which was centrally linked to Semiology and Semiotics. The visual image quickly caught the attention of analysts who began to consider communication from different theoretical positions: Abraham Molles, for example, distinguishes two types of information present in the work: the semantics and aesthetics. The first coded message is composed of translatable signs, and the second, while noticeable, is ineffable.
The Ulm School and Visual Communication
The Ulm School incorporated these theories into their programs. Since 1953, its teachers led courses that included teaching Visual Communication and Information. A few years later, Maldonado introduced the study of Semantic Visual Materials, Perception Theory, and Symmetry. The visual language became a common expression that applied the categories of general linguistics and semiotics, both to the object itself and in terms of shapes.
Studies on art or the image developed on a dizzying scale, and visual communication became central to the study of form.
This move was highly significant for the overall design, and graphic design in particular. From there, and due to the lability of both fields, visual communication in relation to graphic design is understood in several ways: either it was a formal syntax with laws similar to those of language, or verbal communication was the message.
Munari’s Perspective
Munari argues that visual communication includes all graphics, all graphic expressions, from a character point to the layout of a newspaper, the limit of readability of a word to all means to facilitate the reading of a text. But all aspects of visual communication have in common one basic thing: objectivity. If the image used for a particular message is not objective, it has much less chance of visual communication.
Communication and Design: A Complex Relationship
By the 1970s, design had obtained its communicational value for the company, and teaching consolidated the fundamentals of visual language and its laws, understanding, and communication. The different origins of both lines retained their independence for a while, but the union, aided by the breadth and vagueness of the notion of “communication,” began to set up a field where form and function go their separate ways, leaving aside the overly general notions of communication that do not favor either of the two fields.
Thirty years later, little has been done in this field. Today we talk about communication in relation to design without clarifying that it comes from different origins and that, under the umbrella of communication, materials and concepts are grouped in a range from perceptual to social imaginary phenomena, from the work of art to the channels and supports of the message. In short, it is rarely clear to think of communication as a visual language structure, which is quite different from thinking of it as a cultural practice in which the visibility of political ranks is important.