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The "Communication", a conceptual model being based on CIDOC CRM, has been developed in an ontology engineering process in which historians, software developers and digital humanists were involved. It formalizes the interpretation of a communication (rta:Kommunikation). The conceptual model of the communication takes up theoretical considerations from communication sciences and sociolinguistics (Vgl. Keller/Knoblauch/Reichertz, Konstruktivismus. Knoblauch, Konstruktivismus. Reichertz, Konstruktivismus. Hymes, Sociolinguistics.) and applies them to the interactions in Early Modern assemblies of estates (the data model refers only to those assemblies that claim to be representative in the understanding of the era: see Historische Einführung). It can be described as follows: Communication manifests itself physically or in material acts. Physical acts are verbal or non-verbal. Material acts are written or unwritten. Communication is performed in a regular or contingent mode.

"Institutionalization processes, which in the case of the Imperial Diet around 1500 gain momentum (Historical Introduction), go hand in hand with the fact that ideas of order and assertions of validity are repeatedly expressed and generated anew in the procedures of repetition - in other words: in their practices obeying "logics of appropriateness" (Schäfer). The logic of appropriateness as an expression of institutionalized normative expectations of behavior shapes the procedure. It produces a practice that "runs" in a regular way by forming action patterns and, indissolubly connected to them, role assignments that produce interaction routines (that relieve the actors). Specific spatial and media-performative settings stabilize the trust in the arrangement of order - in the 16th century among the participants, since the saddle period (1750-1850) also among the audience. These rules can be described as organizational myths in the sense that they appear to the actors as the given and unquestionably valid. In this sense, the "formal structure (...) is the self-description of the social system of the organization." (Vgl. Kieserling, Interaktion, S. 172). This formal structure is written down in the "Traktat vom Reichstag" (tract) in the 1570s from an electoral perspective. The individual communications of this formal structure are listed here.

This practice of Estates assemblies, which obeys implicit rules, has a complementary relationship to the forms of communicative interaction that cannot be "derived" from formalized normative expectations (informal) and that impinge on these assemblies from the institutional environment. In concreto, for example, the networks of relationships and contacts that actors "bring" with them into the assembly arena, or their professional (and already highly professionalized legal) knowledge.

In order to model the tension between what appears to be an appropriate way of dealing with each other in the context of the Reichstag and what we encounter in the sources as communicative interaction, we use the tract as a heuristic instrument. Communication is brought into existence by face-to-face (corporal, oral) or written exchange. Communication can be part of other communications, and they can follow each other. There are agents participating in communications. Most of them are political agents, as they are part of the process of making resolutions binding a larger group of persons.

A political agent can be an individual person. Persons can gather in groups. Groups are considered in generic terms including institutionalized forms of interactions as well as informal social aggregations.

The participants in the communication can be mandated by political agents absent. Communication partners address others.

An event (i. e. a specific situation) happens at a geographic place (where) and at a time (when).

The communication is dealing with a specific subject. The subject can be a political issue, a political agent or a place.