Communication and Society

What role does communication have in society? This chapter focuses on this question by engaging with the notions of labour and work, the dialectic of communication and production, and the relation of communication, knowledge and information. Communication and society are dialectically intertwined. Work is a dialectical process in which humans as subjects create products with the help of means of production. Communication is not fundamentally different from production and work, because it produces meanings and helps humans to attain goals, namely to inform themselves and understand the world. There is a dialectic of production and communication. Humans communicate productively and produce communicatively. In the production of communication, humans produce and reproduce social relations, social structures, social systems, societal relations, society as totality, and human sociality. Society shapes the human psyche in processes of socialisation. The social character is a level of mediation between the individual psyche and society. Humanism and authoritarianism are two antagonistic types of social character. A dominative and exploitative society is dominated by the logic of authoritarianism. It is also possible to distinguish between authoritarian and humanistic communication. Capitalism is modern society’s dominant form. Production takes place within its concrete societal relations. The same is therefore also true for the production of communication and knowledge.