Eriksson, Kai

kai.eriksson@helsinki.fi

Signs and Signals: the conception of communication in US telecommunications rhetoric

(2001)

This thesis investigates communication and its changing conditions with respect to the thinking of the political community in the United States.

The central aim is to deliberate upon the relationship between communication and specific telecommunication systems during the period ranging from the telegraph to computer networks. Together with related discourses and practices, systems of communication have formed an environment wherein 'communication' as such has become thought about. That is, taken as both the object and the means of administrative practices, communication has come to be regarded as communication. It is in these practices that the inherent relationship between communication and control can be found, which makes them the main focus for an administrative history of communication and a history of the administration of communication.

Thus, we analyse the relationship between historical forms of communication and the ontology of communication to the extent that this relationship is built up through socially institutionalised communication systems and related discourses.

Supervisor: Dr L Introna

Kai Eriksson is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

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