This introduction to communication theory offers an historical account of the development of all major theoretical approaches by summing up the range of existing theories, and explaining how and why the diverse currents of thought emerged.

The task of this book is to reconstruct the genealogy of the sphere of world communication. We will follow a multidimensional approach, analyzing the ways in which technologies and networks have taken root since the nineteenth century and have ceaselessly pushed back to light the concepts, doctrines, theories, and controversies that have marked the construction of the scientific field known as international communications.

In the age of satellites and the Internet, worldwide communication has become increasingly unified amid overblown claims about the redemptive possibilities of international networks. But this rhetoric is hardly new. As Armand Mattelart demonstrates in Networking the World, 1794-2000, globalization and its attendant hype have existed since road and rail were the fastest way to move information.

Mattelart plates contemporary global communication networks into historical context and shows that the networking of the world began much earlier than many assume, in the late eighteenth century. He...

In the age of satellites and the Internet, worldwide communication has become increasingly unified amid overblown claims about the redemptive possibilities of international networks. But this rhetoric is hardly new. As Armand Mattelart demonstrates in Networking the World, 1794-2000, globalization and its attendant hype have existed since road and rail were the fastest way to move information.

Mattelart plates contemporary global communication networks into historical context and shows that the networking of the world began much earlier than many assume, in the late eighteenth century. He...