The purposes of communication are defined as all those objectives that man has in mind when generating mechanisms, instruments, and strategies to transmit his ideas. The human being is a social being, consequently, communication with their peers has the immediate purpose of reaffirming this condition.

In general, communication is understood to be an interaction between a sender and a receiver. The shared message can be a fact, thought, or sensitive state.

At first, the man burned the center of a log and put an animal skin on it. Thus he obtained a drum and was able to transmit sound messages at considerable distances.

Parallel to the evolution of primitive man, his need for communication became increasingly complex. The adoption of common patterns of signs (language) represented an advance in the communicational fact. In the same way, the purposes of communication diversified and became more elaborate.

Currently, there are very advanced means of communication that are used for communicative purposes that are also advanced. Now the purposes of proposing, entertaining, influencing, and creating opinions are added.

The list continues to grow as both the language and the media become more sophisticated and specific.

Communication purpose list

-Report

Newscasts

One of the oldest and most common purposes of communication has been to report facts. Since the beginning of humanity, people share knowledge about the world around them, thus participating in informative communication. By releasing facts, what is known as news is transmitted.

The newscasts, means used to spread the news, have not been excluded from the great development of communications. Starting from the heralds to the large news networks, they have come a long way to improve the collection and dissemination of news.

In general, their objective is to try to present an impartial and objective view of the news they spread. All this requires a lot of dedication and care in the collection.

It is important that only news that can be verified is transmitted. The dissemination style is direct and concrete, avoiding presenting the interpretive side of the news.

On the other hand, immediacy represents one of the most notable achievements in the evolution of the news information process.

Today, the newscasts manage resources that allow them to broadcast the event simultaneously with its occurrence. This has reduced the distances in time and space for its collection and dissemination.

Opinion articles

Opinion articles consist of the development of an opinion or point of view of a person or institution in relation to a topic of public interest.

This person or institution, duly identifying itself as the author of the text, develops a series of ideas that lead it to a conclusion.

These articles can be the opinion of the author or that of someone different. Despite the fact that the language used is objective, the article privileges the opinion of the writer or interviewee. As a frame of reference for the analysis, real facts are used.

Journalistic editorials

Editorials represent the opinion of the news media in relation to an event that shocks or motivates a community. His style is characterized by being argumentative and expository.

The responsible source (author) of the editorial is not identified. However, it is always assumed that the news medium is in solidarity with the concepts issued.

Other information

Other means of disseminating information are grouped under this modality. The topics of the information are varied as are the styles and the language. Among them, the means used to transmit scientific and academic information stand out.

Thus, there are several ways to fulfill one of the most important purposes of communication: to inform. These include yearbooks, white papers, and conferences.

-Entertain

Among the many purposes of communication, entertaining is the most varied. Entertainment is linked to a sense of humor and pleasure, which are cultural facts. In this sense, there are as many forms of entertainment as there are cultures in the world.

Furthermore, this number increases exponentially because, even within the same culture, not everyone entertains in the same way.

It means then that entertainment is cultural and personal. Hence the wide variety of forms of entertainment.

Being so varied and so personal, the language used in entertainment is specialized and specific. It can be highly enriched with stimulating visual and auditory resources such as color, geometry and sounds to achieve your goal.

Today, training companies use cutting-edge technology derived from computer advances.

-Persuade

Commercial campaigns

Commercial campaigns are all those aimed at influencing the decision of a person or group of people towards a particular option over an available group of them.

These serve one of the purposes of communication: to highlight the benefits of a product or service over an available range of them.

One of its peculiarities is that it is overloaded with both words and graphics, privileging the effect on the content of the message.

The combination of images and texts carries the intention that the recipients can name, count, assimilate the idea and opt for a preferred option.

Advertising campaigns base their effectiveness on a specific and constantly evolving advertising language. Your main tool is slogans. These are short sentences or phrases, easy to remember and fully compatible with the product and the campaign.

Political campaigns

In the cases of political campaigns, the purposes of communication are to win elections or voting or selection processes. Unlike ad campaigns, the products here are reasons or ideas. Share with advertising the intention of fulfilling wishes and expectations.

On the other hand, its foundations are trust, sincerity and mutual commitment. This type of campaign is subject to permanent monitoring of results and projections due to the short time between it and the elections.

He also shares with advertising the use of slogans to concentrate in a few words the supposed benefits of the candidate.

Other campaigns

Within this line are all those campaigns that, without promoting ideas or products, seek to win the public’s preference by going over other similar campaigns.

This is the case of educational, cultural, fundraising campaigns and the so-called televised telethons.

In recent years and thanks to the advancement of the media (especially electronic media and social networks), new campaigns have emerged. They add a new variety of communication purposes.

These are the so-called “influencers” who, through their communication networks, try to position themselves as reliable products with a high potential for placing products or ideas.

-Express feelings

Expressing feelings represents one of the most complicated communication purposes to convey due to the variety of forms of expression.

In general, the work of expressing feelings falls on words. However, sometimes they are insufficient to transmit strong sensitive loads.

The message is often misinterpreted. Hence comes the complexity of its transmission. One of the ways to minimize this risk is to combine the primary (spoken) medium with other secondary means of reinforcement. These means are touch, facial expressions, body language, and sounds.

With the advancement of the media, the avenues for transmitting feelings have expanded. Emails, social networks and websites are part of the communications revolution.

This type of communication makes intensive use of audiovisual media such as videos, voice messages and emoticons, among others.