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DRAFT: DISCUSSION ONLY

Of media and Communication (3.2) Roman Onufrijchuk I. A very odd thing, a field concerned with communication, a form of social sharing and participating (if we follow the etymological crumbs), cannot agree on something apparently central to it, that is, a shared definition of communication and media. To be sure, a definitional umbrella would have to cover a lot. A shared definition must somehow integrate the now wide diversity of theorists, critics, researchers, commentators, activists and scholars labouring in the field. This should come as little surprise, of course, due to the diversity of professional academic guilds, specialties, social exigencies related to, and journals published for, the field. If thought about communication and media are a species of intellectual endeavour, then weve been sub-speciating with some abandon over the past 50 years. We have critical theorists, rhetoricians, speech therapists, humanists, hermeneutists, semioticians, media activists, and media ecologists, all working in the field producing research and training new generations of scholars. Each of these guilds and sub-species has their own, perfectly workable definition of communication and the roles played by mediation (by media and practices). Each is nuanced to suit the overall needs of their academic milieu. Sometimes the discussion of communication is implicit; sometimes communication and media appear as an unnoticed elephant in the middle of the table. With each nuancing, we get an exercise in the fluidity of thought, ending in accepting our own guild-definition of what we mean, study, look at, critique, advance under the rubrics communication and media. Specialization is the order of the day, and the pedagogical doctrine embraced by the universities and associations. Not only have we much specialization, and speciation, but also reams of research filling academic peer reviewed journals, books and monographs. Not being able to agree on a definition is liberating, in the extreme. For example we have no agreed upon canon: There is no one body of literature that every student, especially those going on into graduate work and research, are expected to have encountered. This also suggests that no agreement exists on who and what constitutes communication theory either. Theres even no accepted canonic version of the history of the field is the origin the rhetorical thought of Ancient Greece or the insights arising out of the emergence of social thought in the French Enlightenment, perhaps more recently still with the discovery of social psychology by Le Bon, Tarde and Freud, or perhaps from Bacon? The upside of this is that there is no authority or role model to set the disciplinary standards or horizons, meaning the field can take in all comers. Nor is there any specific approach that legitimizes practitioners. Hybridization is to be expected and welcomed, even if it leads to sterile eclecticism. Of course, as Robert Craig notes, this can also be seen as productive fragmentation, which can engender a communication theory, of which according to him we have none. There is a downside too. We produce students who cannot explain what communication is, cannot agree on what constitutes a medium, media, and mediation II. Two undergraduate textbooks, both published in 2007, can serve as an illustration: Theorizing Communication edited by Robert E Craig and Heidi Muller (2007), and Dan Lugheys Key Themes in Media Theory (2007); the former an American text, the latter British. Both texts are concerned with theory, the foundation of our field. Both refer to communication and media theory presenting currently dominant approaches to understanding the meaning of media and communication. Neither of them, however, tells us what is meant by these farfrom-transparent terms. True, they do provide quite fine mappings of the field (Laughey) and
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some of the key foundational texts (Craig & Muller) of the (selected) currently taught approaches, which, with a bit of trouble, can be combined into a paradigm, a bona fide body of communication and media theory. The authors certainly do so, but that paradigm itself offers no definition. Communication or media are used as if these were perfectly transparent qualifiers for the theory both seek to elucidate or present. At issue, according to Craig and Muller, is the apparent absence of a uniquely communication theory a problem they mean to solve by recommending an integrative theory combining a dialogic approach to the corpus of original texts they bring together. If we are in need of a uniquely communication theory, as Craig suggests, then what exactly is this theory to be about? The absence of definition is insignificant according to Craig, what does matter is that each of the seven traditions of Craigs list speak to communication, dovetail in significant ways with commonsense metadiscourse on communication. By rubbing them together, to pouch one of McLuhans percepts, something of an integrated communication theory can emerge. In the practical lifeworld, [ . . . ] communication is already a richly meaningful term, Craig writes. The nature of richness and meaning are not elaborated or developed. Supporting this absence of discussion, he points out that scholars have long agreed that arguing over the meaning of the term is pointless. In building his list of the seven traditions, Craig skips over the history of communication. To get on the list, the tradition has to appeal to the pragmatic issues in communication practice, thereby adding to a pragmatic communication theory: Rhetoric, semiotics, phenomenology, cybernetics, sociopsychological and sociocultural analyses and critical theory, as he shows, all do. The history of media and communication apparently brings nothing to identifying and resolving practical problems of communication. After all, of what practical use would understanding orality be today? Theorizing Communication, grounded by Craigs essay Communication Theory as a Field, does supply four readings rooted in the historical tradition, or at least that can be passed under the section title Historical and Cultural Sources of Communication Theory. With contributions dating between 1979 and 1999, the editors cannot be accused of being present-minded, as Harold Innis might have said, although surprisingly, neither he, nor Ong, Elstein, Goody, nor Havelock make an appearance. Innis and McLuhan get a few pages in Laugheys book, Ong gets a mention, no Havelock. So, Laughey acknowledges the historical tradition but fails to name it, incorporating it into a discussion of modernity and media theory. But, just as Craig fails to tell us what the communication, in communication theory is, so Laughey, almost in counterpoint fails to tell us what exactly the media in media theory are. Media clearly have no straightforward definition, he tells us, after insisting that before we can engage media theory we have to agree on what media are. In both cases its left to the undergrad to piece together a paradigm, and to struggle with the inevitable question, So what do you study? without much assistance from all that studying. For, every time s/he answers, the listener immediately classifies the discipline as sociology, or political science, or political economy. Its not communication, as apparently no such definable field exists. III. Communication in practice, when thought through the filters offered by Craigs list, does have something to offer that crosses among them, and probably crosses and incorporates all the definitions scholars have given up inventing and arguing about. Communication is about the articulation, activation and actualization of relation. Seems a platitude. Whence such a definition? From answering a simple question, to wit: What is communication for? At the bottom of any conceivable answer to this question, what emerges is relation. Any form of association or participation is relational, as is all human reality. We are the products of the relationship between two people. And, unless we somehow manage to isolate ourselves, we live in a relational world (but even then you have to eat which pushes you right back into a relation with the world). Some of the dynamics of this world we can control, others like tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions we cannot. That said, it is the ontogenetic capacity of human communication that produces a human world, and it is a world of and enmeshed in relationships and relations.

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Everyone knows communication is about social relation. But, what exactly is relation? Relation, suggests two meanings on the one hand the telling of a story, on the other as referring to something or someone else, a carrying back. It suggests a mutual interdependency, a connection, what the narration is about. The aboutness can take many forms, stories, commands, reports, gossip, chatter, and be about many things, but usually it is about the relationship of the participants in the interaction and the communication climate the interaction either brings about, or is asserted, or lingers after the interaction is done. Even the so-called intention debate can it be communication if only one person perceives another and projects their own interpretation on the state and behaviour of that other is relational, for, the one projecting is already rousing a relationship with his/her past, expectations, interpretations, anticipations onto the facticity of the existence or presence (or absence) of another whose mind and intentions may have no inkling that theyre being included in this relational loop. Why can we imagine communication in this way, relation as the common ground? Lets take Craigs seven key traditions in communication as examples. Can the rhetorical tradition be said to trade on relation? Is the speaker not building a relation in an audience to a position, a belief, and identification with his or her concern? In the semiotic tradition, what if not relation is the point of analysing the role of elements of representation if not to ask about their relationship to the whole, to the receiver and the sender? What are we to understand in the phenomenological interest in authenticity and the noema-noesis connection, if not an interest in the relation of the speaker to the interlocutor, the speaker with him/herself and the world as given in a interactional situation? Cybernetics, if we take it to mean guidance and control, then are we not really focused on the relation between a plan and the execution relative to the constraints and opportunities afforded by a medium, a project, or a situation? Sociopsychological studies are concerned with the effects of social contexts on the cognitive and emotional functioning of individuals, as well as the as well as the emotional and cognitive behaviour of human aggregates the relation between the individual mind and group will produced by the collective moment. In the sociocultural realm, the interest is in the relation between social contexts and the creation, transmission and adoption of values, beliefs, ideologies and practices. And, critical theory is focused on the relation between consciousness and its place in economies of social power, subordination, and domination. In all cases the use of the word relation is inevitable and inexorable. If relation lies at the conjuncture of these traditions, then what of media and mediation? Lets consider what each of the traditions trades in, the coin, koine of their realms. Rhetoric, the skill at discourse, use of words to persuade and instruct, but originally as an art of eloquence, it suggests that in addition to words, organization and embodied performance add to the effectiveness of discourse. In this case we see that it is the conductivity provided by these media that advance the aims of rhetorical performance, conductivity here meaning the ability to guide or lead consciousness and attention. Semiotics, on the other hand, deals in the micro-morphological units of discourse and how they guide attention and understanding. Phenomenology of communication is concerned with how the embodied presence and interaction with an interlocutor guides or conducts the achievement of authenticity in relations and apprehension of otherness. Cybernetics, as noted above, is concerned with the conduct and control of preplanned orientations and plans; the question concerning mediation is one of resistance and affordance, the conductivity. In the sociopsychological context, the medium can again be thought as a form of conductivity of emotion and cognition, as it can in the sociocultural context where the medium and its concrete properties (affordances) shape the way values and ideologies can be transmitted and received. Critical theory, with its concerns with reification, false consciousness and the misinterpretation of labour-generated materiality into fetishism, can implode media and technology in each case assessing their ability to conduct or misconduct apprehension, perception, cognition and social alliance. In each of the seven traditions, mediation is central to the larger question of communication, whether explicitly stated or implicit in the argumentation. VI.

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In all the cases above, the medium of communication can be anything whatsoever affording certain conductivity to attention and consciousness. If we understand communication to be the articulation of relation, then the mode of conductivity afforded between the attention and consciousnesses of the interlocutors can become a crucial factor in the kind of relation that unfolds in, and emerges from, the participation or sharing. Why a certain conductivity? Perhaps to answer this wed need history, and the evolution of media, formats, forms of communication, and, the social orientations and practices that emerge around them as noted by Marshall T Poes taxonomies in his extended footnote to Innis and McLuhan. If nothing else, the history of communication teaches us that different media forms encourage different dynamics in and modes of relation. So, a proposal: When were asked what we study, wherein the peri archon, the organizing principle, the point of departure for the inquiries in the field, the simple answer could be relation. How does communication relate us to others, to ourselves, to our understanding and making of a world? This leaves an enormous amount of room for debate, but the debate is over what is related to what, whom to whom, why, when, and how and by which means is this enabled by media and mediation; in short, a debate over the nature and effects of communication. And, when asked what media are, we accord them a wider taxonomy than weve favoured in the past. In the past media have been understood as either print or, among the informed few, orality. Now we must open ourselves, and our inquiries, to things and material culture, to architecture, to languages, to the wide diversity of codes. Just because a question implies unparsimoniousness doesnt necessarily make it either wrong or impossible challenging, yes. A medium, as weve noted, whether its a bit of leather, clay, plastic, paper, situation or another person, is anything affording conductivity of attention and consciousness, and leading to enacting and realizing relation. And consciousness is born of relation social, intrapersonal, as embodied, as associated, as apart. With grounding in relation, we may be able to cohere the various traditions and theories into an integrated field of inquiry. We will certainly be able to accommodate the interdisciplinary impulse driving many of us into questions and research, yet find a point at which we can agree and disagree, and perhaps, add something to the universal discourse that can assuage the difficulties plaguing our societies, civilizations, and relations. --Bibliography Craig, Robert T. Communication Theory as a Field, in Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Eds. Craig, Robert T. and Heidi L. Muller. Sage, 2007, pp. 63-97. Laughey, Dan. Key Themes in Media Theory. McGraw Hill/Open University Press, 2007. Poe, Marshall T., A History of Communication: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Theorizing Communication: Readings Across Traditions. Eds. Craig, Robert T. and Heidi L. Muller. Age, 2007.

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