Communication Theory

The term theory, in communication research, as well as elsewhere, gets used in a number of ways, ranging from what is essentially a guess to a well-explored scientific area of study. In a general sense, it can be defined as an explanation for how and why something works as it does, in a given circumstance. People theorize about everyday things such as when to text and when to talk face to face, to more complex notions such as what is the relationship between human communication and reality. Scientists, philosophers, and everyday people have developed a massive number of theories to explain everything from how the universe came into existence to the best way to cook eggs. However, theory as developed in everyday lives is different from that created in the scholarly process. In daily lives, people create theories about how they should talk to their family or how they should talk to others to be liked, for example. These theories can be based on what people generally think they know, their past experience, what others they trust have told them, or simply their best guess. Often, people do not even consider the basis for their theorizing as they choose a course of action.

[Page 212]Scholars, on the other hand, create theory through a more deliberate process, generally involving a substantial amount of research. This can arise from searching through the research others have conducted, examining archival data, through observation, or from the creation of specific experimental conditions designed to test some aspect of communication. The process of such formal theorizing is subjected to scrutiny all along the way by others, such as in the formal peer review of papers submitted to journals, by research conducted in the community of scholars that either supports, modifies, or rejects the theory in favor of another, and by comparison with other theories that purport to explain the same phenomenon but in a different way. As a consequence, while people all theorize in their lives, scholarly research undergoes a lot more investigation, scrutiny, and is constantly subject to revision, regardless of the opinion of those who created the theory in the first place.

This entry further explains the role of theory in communication research, including how certain logic governs the theory chosen, and how that theory then dictates the methods of research conducted. Theory development and testing are then reviewed, and the relationship between theory and research is further investigated. The entry concludes with an examination of some issues researchers must consider when determining the practicality of a theory within a given research project.