Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“Communication” derives from the Latin term communicare meaning to share or impart and to make common (→  Communication: Definitions and Concepts ). “Popular communication” refers to those efforts of, by, and for the people that establish and maintain this sharing and commonality (→  Popular Communication ). In this sense, communication is the basic requirement for sustaining any social group. “The people” are generally understood as the average or common members of a society, the masses, and are contrasted with elite sub-groups that possess an unusual degree of power, wealth, or information. “The people” are also distinguished from “others,” who are nonmembers of any particular group at issue but are members of their own social groups (→  Popular Culture ). “Religion” has a more obscure etymology, with Latin and Old French derivations pointing to binding and reconnection, reverence, rereading, gathering, and care. From a philosophical perspective, religions are belief systems or worldviews that posit a divine order for both human life and the universe as a whole. There is significant diversity of belief among world religions regarding the structure of this divine order, but human recognition of a spiritual “depth dimension” is universal. From a communication perspective, a religion is a more or less organized social movement working to unify a people by advocating and passing ... log in or subscribe to read full text