The subject aims to familiarise students with the major issues in the communication and information environments in which we live, and to introduce different ways of approaching and analysing those issues. It asks questions like: what is communication?; how do societies and individuals create meanings?; and how do communication technologies in their social and industrial settings structure such meanings? The subject also explores the nature of information for daily life, social interaction, change and development. Some of the current major issues in the communications and information sphere are explored, e.g. convergence, the nature of the Information Society, globalisation, questions of ownership of and access to the channels of communication and information, the division between public and private and the role of the state, and the development of new media and information forms. The subject also begins to examine the various theoretical paradigms and frameworks for analysing these issues, in preparation for the second subject in the Disciplinary Strand.

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