This book is about communication, a universal, yet particular, form of linking people and ideas. It details the growing and multiform uses, functions, interactions, and effects of communication in the contemporary "world-society", and highlights the dialectic between society and communication. It will also serve to stimulate critical thinking. The book is structured as a compendium of the sociology of communication, providing a practical and pedagogical-didactic resource especially for students, including case studies, summary-tables, questions for review, and excerpts from selected works and authors. This book is a major contribution to cultural, media, and digital studies, and will be of interest to those who live in an increasingly digital, technological, and global society, and want to understand a phenomenon as social as it is inevitable, spontaneous, and influential.