Thinking Through Communication

The 9th edition of this textbook for hybrid introductory communication courses provides a balanced introduction to the fundamental theories and principles of communication.


The book explores communication in a variety of contexts—including interpersonal, group, organizational, and mass media—and provides students the theoretical knowledge and the research and critical thinking skills they’ll need to succeed in advanced communication courses and communication professions. The first section explores the history of communication study and explains basic perspectives used by scholars in the field. The second looks at how communicators decode and encode messages, while the third examines channels and contexts, from interpersonal to mass media. This edition devotes attention to how new technologies are changing the ways we think about communication, with revised and updated examples, and gives special attention to relevant critical theory. Two appendices give users the flexibility to tailor their courses to the unique interests and needs of their students, offering guidelines for preparing and presenting public presentations and giving examples of major research methods.


Thinking Through Communication is an ideal textbook for Introduction to Communication course that aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the field.


A companion website for instructors containing PowerPoint slides, test questions, and an instructor’s manual is available at https://routledgetextbooks.com/textbooks/9780367857011.