Great Readings in Communication Studies
This curated collection gathers field-defining primary monographs, landmark theoretical essays, and breakthrough empirical papers in Communication Studies. These works represent paradigm shifts in how scholars understand human interaction, symbolic reality, media ecology, cultural power, and public discourse.
Foundational Theory, Models & Rhetorical Thought
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Rhetoric | Aristotle |
| The Mathematical Theory of Communication | Claude E. Shannon & Warren Weaver |
| Communication Theory as a Field | Robert T. Craig |
| Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method | Kenneth Burke |
| The Philosophy of Rhetoric | I. A. Richards |
Interpersonal Interaction, Pragmatics & Social Construction
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life | Erving Goffman |
| Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes | Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin Bavelas, & Don D. Jackson |
| Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist | George Herbert Mead |
| The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge | Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann |
| Relating: Dialogues and Dialectics | Leslie A. Baxter & Barbara M. Montgomery |
| Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience | Erving Goffman |
Organizational Communication, Systems & Sensemaking
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Sensemaking in Organizations | Karl E. Weick |
| Democracy in an Age of Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life | Stanley Deetz |
| Communication and Organizations: An Interpretive Approach | Linda L. Putnam & Michael E. Pacanowsky (Eds.) |
| Communication as Organizing: Empirical and Theoretical Explorations in the Dynamic of Text and Conversation | François Cooren, James R. Taylor, & Elizabeth J. Van Every |
Media Ecology, Network Society & Platform Studies
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man | Marshall McLuhan |
| Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business | Neil Postman |
| Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society | James W. Carey |
| Communication Power | Manuel Castells |
| Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media | Tarleton Gillespie |
| The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power | Shoshana Zuboff |
Critical Cultural Studies, Hegemony & Semiotics
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse | Stuart Hall |
| Mythologies | Roland Barthes |
| The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society | Jürgen Habermas |
| Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media | Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomsky |
| Subculture: The Meaning of Style | Dick Hebdige |
Public Opinion, Agenda-Setting & Media Effects
| Title | Author(s) |
|---|---|
| Public Opinion | Walter Lippmann |
| The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media | Maxwell E. McCombs & Donald L. Shaw |
| The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion — Our Social Skin | Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann |
| Living with Television: The Violence Profile | George Gerbner & Larry Gross |
| Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications | Elihu Katz & Paul F. Lazarsfeld |
| Diffusion of Innovations | Everett M. Rogers |