Mass Communications students all over the world define their craft as the study of communications between people (coding and decoding) information. They also believe their duty is to disseminate such an information through the approriate media like print or broadcast.
Human Communications on the other hand is not restricted to words, it includes the study of time (Cronemics) and space, settlement pattern, event communications, body languages and other signs of communication amongst humans which depicts status, culture, tradition, mores and norms etc
Human Communication is also interested in extra mundane communications, security behavioural communications, proactive and reactionary communications, silent communications and so
many other forms of communications amongst people.Settlement communications for example will if understood allow a stranger to a community to identify the most important people in the community, the richest people in the community etc without having to ask questions. While Chronemics will help a human communications expert to understand the value a particular culture place on time and its usage.
Mass Communication on the other hand dwells mostly on spoken (Verbal) or written information
which has the disadvantage of being misleading and inaccurate because the speaker may be lying or disseminating misinformation in order to protect his or her interest.A good Mass Communications student will endeavour in his or her own interest to study Human Communications as it helps to clarify information and serves to protect him or her from being misled or misused as a powerful tool in the hands of media manipulators and propaganda experts.
To a Mass Communication expert like a journalist, research and beat coverage could become such a routine that very soon the zeal of telling the world the truth is replaced by becoming the unwilling puppet in the hand of the puppeteer.
The duty of a journalist is not just to write, it is primarily to discover the very thing that some would rather prefer hidden at the expense of the many who will benefit from such a revelation.