圣地亚哥加州大学的传播学是一个研究领域，强调语言和电视，互联网以及其他领域的传播技术和传播机构在调解人类经验方面的作用。它取材于人类学，心理学，社会学和政治学等社会科学学科，以及戏剧，文学和视觉艺术等人文和美术。交流学生将对影响他们日常生活的交流力量形成批判性意识。传播专业不是设计为广告，新闻，制作或公共关系方面的培训课程。它为学生提供扎实的文科背景，这对于传播学和其他学科的研究生学习，以及包括初等和中等教育在内的许多与传播相关的领域的专业工作必不可少。尽管专业的重点不是技术性的，但传播学系的教授认为，学
Communication occupies an especially exciting position in contemporary scholarship and education. We have seen over the past generation the emergence of new media forms as fundamental to the fabric of our social, economic, scientific, and cultural life as was the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. The ever-expanding centrality of information technology and communication industries, the mass migration of social interactions to the digital world, the substitution of mass media for other institutions of socialization and intermediation, the life-altering impact of globalization, which makes mediated relationships across distance and community boundaries increasingly important, and the growing attention to how built and digital environments assume and shape as well as foster particular forms and practices of life - all have motivated increased attention across the social sciences and humanities to mass media, information technology, and processes of mediation. The linguistic turn in many disciplines, subsequently broadened to include visual and other discourses, have similarly increased the centrality of our discipline and the range of its connections to other fields.