oa Geesteswetenschappen en de communicatiewetenschap

Humanities and communication science

In an earlier article, I concluded that there is no fundamental difference between communication and information science (CIS) and social science communication. Carel Jansen argued that there is a difference: CIS focusses on how – mainly linguistic – characteristics of a message influence message effectiveness. I propose to integrate humanities and social science communication. Social science has had a big positive impact on communication science over the last decades. Collaboration with humanity scholars can help answer questions that until now have remained unanswered: “what happens when you change a text (for instance: choosing different words, shortening sentences)? What happens when you make a sign more beautiful or creative?” The effect of creativity on effectiveness of non-commercial messages has not yet been studied. Another research subject that requires a humanities point of view is the phenomenon that we understand and comprehend what words and sentences mean, but interpret the meaning in completely different ways.