Models of Communication: Theoretical and Philosophical Approaches

Models of Communication offers a timely reassessment of the significance of modelling in media and communication studies. From a rich variety of different perspectives, the collected essays explore the past, present, and future uses of communication models, in ordinary discourses concerning communication as well as in academic research.

This book challenges received views of communication models and opens up new paths of inquiry for communication research. By zooming in on the manifestations and purposes of modelling in ordinary discourses on communication as well as in theoretical expositions, the essays collected in this volume cast new light on the problems and prospects of models crafted for the benefit of communication inquiry. Complementing earlier studies of models of communication, the volume digs deep into fundamental epistemological and ontological questions concerning modelling in the communication disciplines; but it also presents several novel models that promise to be of practical use in empirical studies of media and communication.

The book is intended for communication scholars and students of media and will also be of interest for related disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.

Mats Bergman is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki. His primary research areas include the philosophy and social theory of pragmatism, the thought of C. S. Peirce, the philosophy and theory of communication, and the ethics of media and communication. Bergman is the author of Peirce’s Philosophy of Communication (2009).

Kęstas Kirtiklis is an associate professor at the Faculty of Communication Vilnius University, Lithuania. His research interests are philosophy and theory of communication. He recently co-edited (with Renata Sukaityte) of Socialines tikroves mediacija. Kultūra, politika ir visuomene [Mediation of Social Reality. Culture, Poetics, Society] (Vilnius University Press, 2018).

Johan Siebers is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Middlesex University London. He is also Director of the Ernst Bloch Centre for German Thought, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Johan is founding editor and principal editor of Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication.