Communications & Media posters
LearnPosters has 100 free printable communications & media posters, grouped into 7 topics: Media theory, Journalism, Public relations, Rhetoric & argument, Production. Media theory, journalism practice and the craft of persuasion. They are made for undergraduates, professionals and anyone revising the subject. Every one downloads as a vector PDF that prints sharp on US Letter, A4 or a copy-shop A1.
How messages are made, carried and received — from rhetorical appeals to newsroom method to platform algorithms.
100 free printable posters · 7 topics · vector PDF
Media theory
Effects, framing, agenda-setting and audiences.
How Effects Research Moved
A century of asking what media do to people, and what survived the asking.
Agenda-Setting
Media rarely say what to think; they shape what you think about.
Framing the News
Selecting some aspects of reality and making them more salient in a text.
Priming
Coverage changes the yardstick people judge leaders and institutions by.
Cultivation
Heavy viewing, over years, nudges beliefs toward television's world.
Uses & Gratifications
Not what media do to people, but what people do with media.
Two-Step Flow
Media reach opinion leaders, and opinion leaders reach everyone else.
Spiral of Silence
People who believe their view is losing tend to stop voicing it.
Encoding & Decoding
A message is made with one meaning and read with the reader's own.
Gatekeeping
Every stage between an event and an audience discards more than it passes.
Moral Panic
Concern out of all proportion to the threat that provoked it.
Who Owns the Media
Ownership, funding and market structure shape output before editors do.
The Public Sphere
Where private people reason together about common concerns.
Representation
Who appears, in what roles, and who does the deciding.
Signs & Meaning
Reading an image the way you would read a sentence.
Journalism
Sourcing, structure, verification and ethics.
What Makes News
The criteria that decide which events become stories.
The Inverted Pyramid
Most important first, then descending, so any cut from the bottom still works.
Writing the Lead
One sentence that carries the news and earns the second sentence.
Headlines
The part everyone reads, and often the only part.
Sourcing
Where information comes from, and how much weight each kind can carry.
On, Off & Background
The terms under which information is given, and what each one permits.
Verification
The discipline separating journalism from everything else circulating.
The Interview
Structure that gets past prepared lines to something new.
Beat Reporting
Covering one area long enough to notice what is missing.
Investigative Method
A hypothesis, tested against documents, that you are willing to lose.
Data Journalism
Finding the story in a dataset without inventing one.
Objectivity & False Balance
Method, not neutrality: balance between claims is not the same as accuracy about them.
Features & Long Form
Structures for stories that people choose to read rather than need to.
How a Story Gets Published
The path from idea to publication, and where things stop.
Corrections
How an outlet handles being wrong is what its accuracy claim rests on.
Public relations
Reputation, crisis and stakeholder communication.
What PR Actually Does
Managing relationships with the publics who can affect an organisation.
Mapping Your Publics
Sorting publics by the power they hold and the interest they take.
The Message House
One roof message, three supporting pillars, evidence under each.
The Press Release
A news story written for someone who will not read past line two.
Working With Journalists
A working relationship built on being useful and being accurate.
Media Training
Making a spokesperson clear under pressure without sounding trained.
Issues Management
Handling the slow-burning problem before it becomes the fast one.
Crisis Response
The first hours, when the facts are thin and silence is read as guilt.
The Holding Statement
What you can say truthfully in the first thirty minutes.
Apologising Well
The difference between an apology and regret that people were upset.
Reputation
What people have experienced and heard — held by them, not by you.
Internal Communication
Staff are a public, and the one most likely to be quoted.
Measuring PR
Counting outcomes rather than clippings.
PR Ethics & Disclosure
The line between advocacy and deception, and where it gets crossed.
Rhetoric & argument
Appeals, structure and fallacies.
Ethos, Pathos, Logos
The three appeals every persuasive text uses, usually all at once.
The Rhetorical Situation
No text persuades in the abstract. Every one answers a particular occasion.
The Five Canons
The classical production process for a persuasive speech.
Stasis Theory
Finding the actual point at issue before arguing about the wrong one.
The Toulmin Model
The parts of a real argument, including the assumption nobody states.
Kinds of Claim
What you are asserting decides what evidence could support it.
The Enthymeme
The argument with its premise left out, because the audience already supplies it.
Deduction & Induction
Two ways reasons support conclusions, with different standards of success.
Fallacies of Relevance
Moves that change the subject while appearing to answer it.
Fallacies of Evidence
Reasoning that fails on structure or sampling rather than relevance.
Refutation & Concession
Answering the other side without pretending it has nothing.
Figures of Speech
Patterns of arrangement and sound that make a line memorable.
Structuring a Speech
The classical arrangement, still the most reliable shape for spoken argument.
Delivery
The canon that decides whether the other four reach anybody.
Production
Shooting, editing, sound and story.
Shot Sizes
The standard ladder of framings, and what each one is for.
Angles & Height
Where the camera sits changes what the audience concludes.
Framing a Shot
Where to put the subject inside the rectangle.
The 180-Degree Rule
Keep the camera on one side of the line so screen direction stays consistent.
Continuity Editing
The invisible system that makes a sequence of shots read as one event.
Cutting on Action
Hide the cut inside a movement the eye is already following.
Three-Point Lighting
Key, fill and back: the interview setup that works in almost any room.
Exposure
Three controls set brightness, and each one costs you something else.
Recording Levels
Sound is half the picture, and the half an audience will not forgive.
Choosing a Microphone
Pattern and placement matter more than the price of the microphone.
Coverage
Shooting enough different material that the scene can actually be cut.
Structuring a Film Story
Shape for factual and short-form work, where material has to be found.
Setting Up an Interview
The physical arrangement that makes a talking head watchable.
Post-Production Workflow
The order that stops an edit collapsing in its final week.
Digital & platforms
Algorithms, metrics and attention.
How a Feed Ranks
A ranking system predicting what will hold you, not what you asked for.
Engagement Metrics
What each number counts, and what it cannot tell you.
The Attention Economy
When content is abundant, attention is the scarce thing being sold.
Filter Bubbles & Echo Chambers
A popular claim about isolation that the evidence only partly supports.
Why Things Spread
The properties shared by content that travels, and the survivorship trap.
Content Moderation
Rules, scale and the two kinds of error you must trade off.
The Creator Economy
Independent publishing at scale, and the economics underneath it.
Search & Discovery for News
Being findable without writing for machines instead of readers.
Network Effects
Why value rises with users, and why that produces very few winners.
Dark Patterns
Interface choices that win consent no one would give knowingly.
Feedback Loops
A system trained on its own output stops measuring what it set out to.
Reading Analytics
Getting a decision out of a dashboard rather than a mood.
How Platforms Make Money
Four models, each producing a different set of design pressures.
Synthetic Media
Generated images, audio and video, and what they change about evidence.
Media law & ethics
Defamation, privacy and public interest.
Frameworks for a Hard Call
Three ways of reasoning about a decision, and what each one asks first.
The Public Interest Test
The justification that can outweigh privacy or intrusion, and what it is not.
Defamation & Publication
What a claimant generally has to establish, in broad outline.
Defences in Outline
The broad families of defence, and what each demands of your evidence.
Privacy & Publication
Whether there was a reasonable expectation of privacy, and whether it is outweighed.
Minimising Harm
Publishing what matters while doing the least damage compatible with that.
Protecting Sources
A promise of confidentiality is close to absolute, and hard to keep in practice.
Conflicts of Interest
Interests that could be thought to affect judgement — disclose or avoid.
Plagiarism & Credit
Using other people's work honestly, in an industry built on aggregation.
Copyright in Practice
What you may use, from whom, and on what terms.
Reporting Trauma
Covering death, violence and disaster without adding to the harm.
Reporting Courts
Why active proceedings restrict what may be published, and the risks.
Deception & Undercover Work
Subterfuge as a last resort, justified only by what could not be got otherwise.
AI in the Newsroom
Where generated material can be used, and what readers must be told.
Questions about the Communications & Media posters
- What is the Communications & Media section of LearnPosters?
- Media theory, journalism practice and the craft of persuasion. How messages are made, carried and received — from rhetorical appeals to newsroom method to platform algorithms.
- What topics do the Communications & Media posters cover?
- 100 posters across 7 topics. Media theory — Effects, framing, agenda-setting and audiences. Journalism — Sourcing, structure, verification and ethics. Public relations — Reputation, crisis and stakeholder communication. Rhetoric & argument — Appeals, structure and fallacies. Production — Shooting, editing, sound and story. Digital & platforms — Algorithms, metrics and attention. Media law & ethics — Defamation, privacy and public interest.
- Who are the Communications & Media posters for?
- The communications & media charts are pitched at undergraduates and professionals — the frameworks and equations a course keeps returning to. Nothing here is tied to a school year, so a curious beginner and someone revising the same material for an exam are looking at the same communications & media chart.
- Which Communications & Media poster should I print first?
- How Effects Research Moved, Agenda-Setting and Framing the News are the ones people reach for first — they are the references the rest of the communications & media set assumes you already have on the wall.How Effects Research MovedAgenda-SettingFraming the News
- Are the Communications & Media posters free to print?
- Yes — all 100 of them. Each communications & media poster is a free vector PDF that needs no account, prints on US Letter or A4, and enlarges to A1 without softening. Home, classroom, library and tutoring use are all covered by the licence.Read the licence
Where the communications & media charts come from
These posters summarise. When you need the full account — or the normative text a chart is compressing — start here.
- National Communication Association — NCA. The field's professional body and its published standards.
- Communication theory — Wikipedia. Where each model on these charts comes from, and who contests it.