The collective representations aspect of communication is one of two aspects; although – as I have stated numerously – for the culturalist perspective it is the key aspect. The second aspect I call the media aspect of a given communication, although the medium is understood here as an integration of the means and the form of communication. This means that the medium is the carrier of the sign, i.e., it is a tool used by communicators during the operation of the communication. A typical example of the medium is, therefore, a voice, a telephone, a radio channel or a volume of a journal. What is important is that the means of communication is used to implement some form of communication. The form may be oral, literate, video or audiovisual. This way the form of communication can be understood as a kind of symbolization. Therefore, when I write about the medium as an integration of the means and the form I refer to the two dimensions of the medium: its materiality (means of communication) and the type of symbolization (form of communication) which also results from the materiality of the medium itself.
Each communication action gains validity, i.e., it is realized through communicators’ cultural knowledge, for it is a rational action that needs to be interpreted so that it could “occur as communication”. In other words, any communication takes place in a specific place and time, in a specific context. However, the conditions of how this action is performed are not at the individual level, but on the social one (e.g., included in the collective representations on communication). This means that we, as communicators, can perform communication actions – i.e., to recognize that someone wants to communicate with us and on this basis, for example, decide to continue this relation – due to our cultural knowledge. We use it mostly in a habitual, learned, ritual manner. This knowledge is a part of a given social practice, therefore communication is seen as an individual realization (through action) of social practice. Any such practices and actions find their intersubjective applicability in culture – which is the foundation of all cultural actions.
