What even is Communications? And is it a useful college major?

Cover image by Riley Wong

Recently, I’ve come across several TikTok videos of communications, at the university level, being denigrated as “useless” or “dumb.”

Communications studies is often construed as a “Mickey Mouse degree”, a dysphemism for academic fields that putatively lack rigour and industry relevance. Undertaking these subjects is commonly seen as a frivolous endeavour, rather than one that offers students a specific career path.

Indeed, this underestimation unfolds within my experience in NUS. Case in point: the number of first-year students who attended the Communications & New Media (CNM) orientation camp dropped from about 40 in my cohort (which is already rather low to begin with) to a little over 20 the following year. This means that, excluding students who have already made up their mind about skipping all orientation programmes, there is a low/lowering number of undergraduates wanting to pursue Communications from the start.

But I believe this is less a sign of declining interest in the field, and more a symptom of the knowledge gap about what communications really is. In the TikTok above, someone quite literally thinks that all we learn in this major is “speaking”. And speaking from personal experience: introducing my major to other schoolmates would many a time be followed by questions on what I actually do in Communications. Yet, why are there students who, on the contrary, deliberately switch to CNM after having pursued another discipline?

So I’m setting out to demystify what communications really is, and why it’s an important and viable major and career path. I’ll also offer the perspectives of a friend of mine who transferred from Data Science to Communications. This is by no means professional advice; I just hope this resonates with those contemplating a major in CNM.

What is communications?

First, let’s distinguish communication and communications — with an ‘s’ behind. The contours of these two are somewhat fuzzy and overlapping, but generally, communication refers to the processes of meaning-making, while communications refers to the tools, systems and platforms of such meaning-making. In other words, the former addresses how, on the theoretical level, communication is achieved on different levels, from personal to mass communications, and the effects they exude on these parties. The latter is more concerned with the praxis of communication: for example, the institution of media as a predominant channel of exchanging information with the public and its industry applications such as content production, public relations (PR), marketing, etc. Communications is also sub-divided into sectors like business and healthcare, where the exchange of information is central but following different norms, structures and ideologies.

In the academic world, it is typical for these to be collectively referred to as Communications as a broad field of study. There are several more sociological areas often attached to Communications: for example, cultural studies and media studies. Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that incorporates critical theory to interpret the various cultural forms of modern society, from film and television to social media and pop music, as well as how they interplay with broader power structures to produce meanings, with a focus on their historical, social, cultural and political contexts. Meanwhile, media studies critically analyses the history, content and effects of various modalities of the media as technologies of communication, involving a closer reading of the media and encompassing textual analysis, genre conventions, audience studies, etc.

More often than not, though, inquiries in these areas intersect with each other: examining media representation, for example, involves both an understanding of how the medium shapes specific meaning (media studies), and how this meaning is situated in larger power-based constructions of ideology and identity (cultural studies). Because of its ideological location, every piece of media, from a short-form advertisement video to the latest hit song on the radio, is a text to be analysed and deconstructed. For example, even an ostensibly frivolous advertisement by fashion brand American Eagle promoting its blue jeans with American actress Sydney Sweeney (playing on the homophones “jeans” and “genes”) putatively has the power to spread problematic discourse about essentialised white privilege. Communication studies therefore has, at the very least, the instrumental value of helping us understand and critique media texts, and concomitantly progress towards more inclusive, less stereotypical media.

Why communications?

To be clear, I do not believe that there are “Mickey Mouse” degrees: at the baseline, university majors teach students skills such as critical thinking and written or oral communication that are important in every industry. Furthermore, career preparedness is but one objective of a degree; university is also an academic endeavour and knowledge is an end in itself. Therefore, having immanent academic interest in a field justifies pursuing it. Regardless, below are even more reasons why communications is viable.

Media is everywhere and inescapable: from the messaging apps we use to connect with each other in real time, to the physical advertisements on the streets; from the memes we mindlessly scroll through on Instagram, to the feature-length productions we experience in the cinema. In an increasingly mediatised landscape, having a critical understanding of the often backgrounded media processes trains us, as the audience, to be more sensitive to patterns in information and dissect the presentation of meaning in different media texts, potentially denaturalising certain narratives – especially ones circulated in seemingly innocuous modalities such as social media.

Needless to say, studying communications is even more useful if you decide to embark on a communications-related career path, which is varied and diverse. The skills of interpreting and producing platform-specific messages and content, forging interpersonal relations, and strategically crafting and deploying information are extremely versatile and transferable to professional scopes such as marketing, PR, corporate communications, journalism, media production, UI/UX designer, human resources (HR) and more. The best part is that communications, especially marketing and HR, is essential to every public-facing organisation, and while several tasks could be automated by AI, the need for nuanced, strategic and oftentimes empathetic information makes human involvement essential in such jobs.

The path of a data-science-turned-CNM student

When I’m reflecting on the appeal of Communications, a friend of mine, Hongyi, immediately comes to mind. He’s a Year 3 CNM student, though his academic path is somewhat unconventional: he used to major in Data Science & Analytics. However, within his first year, he soon realised that he was not suited for the field and, being a “business-minded” individual, started seeking for a major that prepares him for roles that are essential in most industries. To him, it was about the long term: “I asked myself, ‘What can I see myself doing in 40 years?’” It was down to either Business Administration or CNM, he told me, but coming from a humanities and sciences pedigree, he chose the latter.

This switch was not all smooth-sailing. When Hongyi took the introductory course (NM1101E) that serves as a precursor of the more detailed learnings to come, he found the major to be more theory-focused than he’d anticipated. Expecting to learn more tangible, vocational skills, Hongyi started doubting his career-altering decision. Fortunately, he stayed the course and now finds the higher-level classes more fruitful, especially NM2101 (on media and communication science theories) and NM3243 (an introduction to UI/UX design). One thing he appreciates about CNM’s content is its freshness: “The lecture slides are always updated with the latest happenings,” he said. (I can attest to this, as my CNM lecturer covered the 2024 Charli XCX phenomenon Brat summer in the semester immediately following it.) This encapsulates the practicality of communications: it is extremely adaptive and applicable to the real world.

I then asked, “What does your future look like as a CNM major?” This question is likely to stump most undergraduate students, who are still figuring life out. Hongyi replied optimistically that he’s still exploring his interests, but he can be assured that communications affords a more flexible life. “You have the choice to be a jack of all trades, or a master of one,” he said – I feel like I need to frame this quote and hang it on a wall. “Communications is needed everywhere, so you can move around.”

“A common pushback,” I continued, “is that the barrier to entry for communications is low. (I.e., you don’t have to study it to be able to get a job in it.) What would you say to this?” Here, Hongyi drew a clear line between the vocational and epistemic values of the discipline: “But then, you don’t really understand the theory behind it, do you? And it only seems like the barrier to entry is low because it’s very human. But again, the ceiling is very high too.” Hongyi also attributed this misconception to the obfuscation of the more deliberate, complex processes that go into producing and managing the naturalised content we consume every day. “Do you see what goes behind the scenes?” he questioned.

When it comes to choosing one’s academic and career trajectories, Hongyi believes that there are multiple factors to consider: management of expectations, workload considerations, interest in the content and career viability. “I actually see a clearer career path for myself,” Hongyi proclaimed, now that he’s in CNM.

So, whether Communications is useful depends on a multitude of other considerations – at the very least, college is a structured space for one to explore their options. It's only “useless”, though, as long as you think that understanding the world beyond face value is.