What Is Communication?

Communication is any action that transmits information from the sender to the receiver. This is an incredibly broad definition, and while it's true that the most used form is through speech there are many other ways people broadcast messages about themselves. Body language tells you a lot about someone, from the way they look at you, to their gestures, posture, and how far they will sit or stand near you. Facial expressions are incredibly indicative of how someone feels towards you. Whereas it is easy for someone to say something they don't mean, it's much harder to fake a smile or hide a frown. These are all ways in which people share information with each other, and though we may not consciously think about it, we are constantly absorbing and analyzing them.
As technology has advanced, the ways in which we communicate have changed. We no longer have to face the person we are addressing, and as a result ideas have become increasingly less subtle. Mass communication enables us to spread controversial ideas to vast amounts of people, all anonymously. However, the mass media is responsible for the majority of information spread throughout the world. In this way, although they seem to give us an unbiased source of information, they are biased in that we don't know what they are leaving out. Hardt describes the media as claiming they "adhere to the values and freedoms of the individuals, but they "fetter the individual" to prescribed thoughts, attitudes and buying habits instead. In other words, the media makes it easy to choose from their range of ideas and beliefs instead of taking time to come up with original thought. In this way, people are exposed to far more information than in the past, but it's all information which is given out for a specific purpose.