International communication and international relations
Communication processes have always been at the core of relations between peoples, organizations, and countries. International relations as an academic discipline has begun to grapple with the relationship between relations and communication over the past few decades, especially with the expansion of what has been termed the “information age.” This essay documents some of the progress in beginning to understand international communication and international relations, summarizing early scholars who analyzed communications in the context of international relations, identifying scholars who have been more recently “discovered” by international relations scholars, and providing an overview of some of the historical, current, and emerging areas of research. The contemporary and potential research agenda in the relationship between these two disciplines is the definition of interdisciplinarity.
