# Outline of communication

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to communication:
Communication – purposeful activity of exchanging information and meaning across space and time using various technical or natural means, whichever is available or preferred. Communication requires a sender, a message, a medium and a recipient, although the receiver does not have to be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space.

## Essence of communication

* Communication theory
* Development communication
* Information
* Information theory
* Semiotics

## Branches of communication
### Types of communication
#### Types of communication by scope

* Intercultural communication
* International communication
* Interpersonal communication
* Intrapersonal communication
* Mass communication
* Nonverbal communication
* Verbal communication
* Organizational communication

#### Types of communication by mode

* Computer-mediated communication
* Conversation
* Mail
* Mass media
** Book
** Film
** Journalism
** News media
** Newspaper
** Technical writing
** Video
* Telecommunication (outline)
** Morse Code
** Radio
** Telegraphy
** Telephone
** Television
** Internet
* Verbal communication
* Writing
** Social Network

### Fields of communication

* Communication studies
* Cognitive linguistics
* Conversation analysis
* Crisis communication
* Discourse analysis
* Environmental communication
* Health communication
* Interpersonal communication
* Linguistics
* Mass communication
* Mediated cross-border communication
* Organizational communication
* Political communication
* Pragmatics
* Risk communication
* Science communication
* Semiotics
* Sociolinguistics

## Theories, schools, and approaches

Theories of communication
* Agenda-setting theory
* Content analysis
* Community structure theory
* Conversation analysis
* Coordinated management of meaning
* Critical theory
* Cues-filtered-out theory
* Cultivation theory
* Cultural studies
* Cybernetics
* Decision downloading
* Diffusion of innovations
* Elaboration likelihood model
* Ethnomethodology
* Framing
* Hermeneutics
* Hypodermic needle model
* Heuristic-Systematic Model
* Hyperpersonal Model
* Information theory
* Knowledge gap hypothesis
* Media ecology
* Narrative paradigm
* Network analysis
* Nonviolent Communication
* Opinion leadership
* Political economy
* Priming
* Problematic Integration Theory
* Relational dialectics
* Scheme (linguistics)
* Social learning theory
* Social construction of reality
* Social Identity model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE)
* Social Information Processing theory
* Social Penetration Theory
* Spiral of silence
* Structuralism
* Symbolic interactionism
* Technology acceptance model
* Theory of cognitive dissonance
* Theory of Planned Behavior
* Theory of Reasoned Action
* Third-person effect
* Two-step flow of communication
* Uses and gratifications
* Uncertainty reduction theory

## History of communication

History of communication
* Cave painting
* Early postal systems
* Heliograph
* Historical linguistics
* History of alphabet
* History of the book
* History of computer science
* History of computing (see also Timeline of computing)
* History of computer hardware
* History of Internet
* History of linguistics
* History of mass media
* History of radio
* History of telegraphy
** History of telegraph
* History of telephone
* History of television
* History of writing
* Ideograms
* Origin of language
* Petroglyphs
* Pictograms
* Proto-language
* Semaphore line
* Smoke signals

## General communication concepts
### General topics of communication

* Autocommunication
* Empathy
* People skills
* Persuasion
* Propaganda
* Public speaking
* Reading
* Rhetoric
* Small-group communication
* Speech
* Translation
* Writing

### General communication terms

* Censorship
* Community structure
* Cultural imperialism
* Democracy
* Dialectic
* Digital divide
* Freedom of the press
* Freedom of speech
* Hegemony
* Identity
* Imagined community
* Information society
* Late capitalism
* Media imperialism
* Morpheme
* Nationalism
* Phoneme
* Postmodernity
* Public sphere
* Semiotics
* Social capital
* Social network
* Sophist
* Stereotyping
* Stigma
* Syllable
* Transactive communication
* Universal service
* Avatar (virtual reality)

## Communication scholars

* Theodor Adorno
* Aristotle
* Roland Barthes
* Gregory Bateson
* Walter Benjamin
* Kenneth Burke
* Manuel Castells
* Cicero
* Noam Chomsky
* Karl W. Deutsch
* Walter Fisher
* George Gerbner
* G. Thomas Goodnight
* Jürgen Habermas
* Max Horkheimer
* Harold Innis
* Roman Jakobson
* Irving Janis
* Wendell Johnson
* D. Lawrence Kincaid
* Walter Lippman
* Juri Lotman
* Niklas Luhmann
* Herbert Marcuse
* George Herbert Mead
* Marshall McLuhan
* Desmond Morris
* Maxwell McCombs
* Walter J. Ong
* Vance Packard
* Charles Sanders Peirce
* Chaïm Perelman
* Plato
* Neil Postman
* Nora C. Quebral
* Quintilian
* I. A. Richards
* Everett M. Rogers
* Wilbur Schramm
* Thomas Sebeok
* Claude Shannon
* Deborah Tannen
* James W. Tankard, Jr.
* Warren Weaver
* Bob Woodward