Mass Communication: This area examines history, political economy, and social effects of the various channels of mass communication.

Communication Theory: This area examines attempts to devise explanatory and interpretive principles used to understand the role of communication in various social contexts.

Interpersonal Communication: This area focuses on the communicative behavior of dyads, or pairs of people, in a variety of social contexts and in the ways communication can help maintain healthy interpersonal relationships.

Communication Ethics: This area examines principles that can be used to devise responsive and moral communication practices in interpersonal, group, and mediated contexts.

Argumentation: This area examines patterns of reasoning in public and mediated discourse. Standard topics include the ways in which evidence is used to support arguments and the analysis of common fallacies in reasoning.

Public Address: This field examines historical and social contexts of speakers and speeches. STandard topics include the study of the communicative aspects of political campaigns and the rhetoric of social movements.

Political Communication: The subject of this area is the study of the various roles that communication plays within political systems. A standard topic is the governmental uses of propaganda.

Advertising: As taught in communication programs, this area encompasses the history and social repercussions of advertising institutions as well as training in the practices of advertising.

Health Communication: This area relates communication theory and research to the practices of health professionals and educators. Standard topics include the study of provider-client relationships in medical settings and the use of communication campaigns to diffuse health information.

Journalism: This area covers the social and politcal contexts of journalism as well as techniques of journalistic practice, such as newswrting and copy editing.

Family Communication: This field examines the types of communication patterns and dynamics that characterize family groups.

Media Literacy: This area of pedagogy examines the social, political, and economic factors that shape media products as a way to develop critical thinking skills relating to media use.

Small Group Communication: This area focuses on communication patterns and dynamics among three or more persons who are linked together for a common purpose or whose activities influence each other.

Rhetorical Criticism: This area of inquiry examines written and oral communication as a way to study the ways language creates relationships between speakers, or authors, and their audiences.

Communication Education: This area focuses on patterns and dynamics of communication in padagogical contexts, such as classrooms. A standard topic of this area of research is the effectiveness of different communication styles as ways of encouraging learning.

Language and Social Interaction: This field examines verbal and non-verbal behavior in various social contexts to study the relationships between communication and social organization.

Communication Law: This area of study focuses on governmental regulation of communication. Standard topics of research include First Amendment law and media regulations.

Media Technology: This area tends to explore technical aspects of media and trains students in their use. Typical courses of study include multimedia technologies and production courses.

Persuasion: This area of study examines the conditions under which communication leads people to accept a belief or take a course of action. Basic topics include attitude formation, theories of motivation, and the uses of propaganda.

Visual Communication: This field of study examines the communicative dimensions of the visual environment, by studying such items as photographs, architecture, paintings, and advertisements.

Mediation and Conflict Resolution: This field exmines ways in which communication can be used to resolve disputes, whether of an interpersonal, intergroup, or international nature.

Organizational Communication: This area of inquiry examines how communication shapes organizational processes and interpersonal relationships in work and other formal settings.

Intercultural Communication: This area examines similarities and differences in communication patterns associated with membership in specific cultures and processes of cross-cultural communication. A standard topic is the study of media as conveyors of cultural values.

Communication Disorders: This field studies physiological impediments that affect one's ability to communicate and develops techniques to counter these conditions.

Public Relations: This field trains students in the professional techniques of fostering goodwill toward a person, firm, or instituion.

Speech Communication: This is a general title for the field of research that examines the nature, processes, and effects of human symbolic interaction. Research in this area includes the study of non-verbal as well as verbal forms of communication.