Communication in Social Development: Issues and Perspectives

Communication denotes a process that is both interactive and purposeful. The word communication is derived from the Latin "Communis" which means "to make common, to share, to impart, to transmit". Through communication people control on another's behavior and unite themselves in groups. Thus communication is a means for breaking down the barriers to human Interaction. It is a means for achieving mutual understanding.

Communication is a fundamental Per-requisite of all living beings. The development of human civilisation is directly dependent upon reflinement and growth of forms mechanisms and quality of the contents of communication sociologically it is possible to construct both processes and structure of culture and society through communicational contents and net works. The categorization of societies and cultures can be adequately undertaken through identification of farms and features of communication.

At the individual level communication is significant instrument of self expression and at group level it provides frame of shared cognitive and cathetic experience the institutional dimensions of communication reveal its divergent media which have significantly influenced the coverage, content and forms of communication in the wake of technological advancement the dimensions of indirect communication, audio-visual communication passive participation as spectators and universalization of information ensued, as a consequence of technological revolution in communication.

The Traditional instrumentalities of communication have been giving way to the new ones and traditional messages are being converged through contemporary and new channels of mass communication.

The quality of two cultures on based on traditional person to person communication and the other based on Technological instrumentalities are basically different. Theoretically communication has raised antological and epistemological questions of meaning of reality and processes of comprenending the reality. Communication encompasses the totality of one's being cognitive, cathetic and aesthetic, social cultural and transcedental individual, group and collectivity of power and suppression, of creativity and imitation of simplicity and complexity, of formalism and spontaneity, of survival and liberation. It has importance both for continuity and change in society. It significance in the process and programmes of development has been duly recognized. Long ago, meier (1956) suggested that communication involves the following categories (1) Face to face communication as in the family gossiping with neighbours, meeting, seminans and conferences (2) Reading newspaper, magazines, books bill boards, etc. (3) man machine in reading instruments, guages, drials, microscope, etc. (4) Person- person with machine interposed as in telephone, movies, radio, television, etc. and finaly (5) Machine machine as in feedbacks, interlcoks automation, etc.