‘Western Communication’: Eurocentrism and Modernity: Marks of the Predominant Theories in the Field

Abstract

The main communication theories in use have been developed pri-1 This article is a translation of Erick R. Torrico Villanueva, "La 'comunicación occidental': Eurocentrismo y Modernidad: Marcas de las teorías predominantes en el campo," Journal de Comunicación Social 3, no. 3 (2015). The original article carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.marily by American and European authors, reflect the characteristics of the industrialized societies of the North, and are framed within the parameters of scientificity as established by modernity. They focus on mass communication, its technological means and its effects. Thus, with a framework constituted above all by positivist epistemology, empirical-quantitative research strategies, and functionalist sociological theory, communication, as a field of knowledge, has structured its profile of scientificity to conform to modern procedural requirements as well as the expansionist objectives of the civilizational model in which it was born. Such theories have reached, in practice, a "universal" scope, a "canonical" recognition and level, and are reproduced in the most diverse latitudes in both training processes and professional practice, as well as in mainstream discourse. Faced with the predominance of this "Western" communication, Latin American critical communicational thought is challenged to seek a new understanding of the phenomenon of communication and its study in the perspective of its de-Westernization.