Means of communication or media are used by people to communicate and exchange information with each other as an information sender and a receiver. Diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication are called mass media.

Many different materials are used in communication. Maps, for example, save tedious explanations on how to get to a destination. A means of communication is therefore a means to an end to make communication between people easier, more understandable and, above all, clearer. In everyday language, the term means of communication is often equated with the medium. However, the term "medium" is used in media studies to refer to a large number of concepts, some of which do not correspond to everyday usage.

Means of communication are used for communication between sender and recipient and thus for the transmission of information. Elements of communication include a communication-triggering event, sender and recipient, a means of communication, a path of communication and contents of communication. The path of communication is the path that a message travels between sender and recipient; in hierarchies the vertical line of communication is identical to command hierarchies. Paths of communication can be physical (e.g. the road as transportation route) or non-physical (e.g. networks like a computer network). Contents of communication can be for example photography, data, graphics, language, or texts.

Means of communication in the narrower sense refer to technical devices that transmit information. They are the manifestations of contents of communication that can be perceived through the senses and replace the communication that originally ran from person to person and make them reproducible.

Up until the 19th century the term "means of communication" was primarily applied to traffic and couriers and to means of transport and transportation routes, such as railways, roads and canals, but also used to include post riders and stagecoachs. In 1861, the national economist Albert Schäffle defined a means of communication as an aid to the circulation of goods and financial services, which included, among other things, newspapers, telegraphy, mail, courier services, remittance advice, invoices, and bills of lading.

In the period that followed, the "technical means of communication" increasingly came to the foreground, so that as early as 1895 the German newspaper "Deutsches Wochenblatt" reported that these technical means of communication had been improved to such an extent that "everyone all over the world has become our neighbor".

Not until the 20th century was the term medium also a synonym for these technical means of communication. In the 1920s the term mass media started to become more popular.

A distinction can be made between oral, written, screen-oriented transfer of information and document transport: