Noting that since democratization of communication is part of the broad social process, and that any given form of democratic communication is the result of a dialectical tension between the social factors tending toward concentration of social power and contrary factors tending toward redistribution of that power, this paper argues that it is important to define democratization of communication in terms of a social process of structural change. To this end, the paper first summarizes the major objectives of current proposals for democratic communication. It then outlines an analytic model of the communication patterns within a social process of concentration-redistribution of social power. The paper next examines some of the major trends in contemporary communication policies in light of this model of structural change in order to determine to what extent the social logic of these policies actually does lead away from an authoritarian pattern of communication and toward the objectives of more democratic communication. (FL)