Ridicules fellow trailing manure aboard ship (6)
I believe the answer is:
spoofs
'ridicules' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to communication as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'fellow trailing manure aboard ship' is the wordplay.
'fellow trailing manure' becomes 'poof' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'aboard' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'ship' becomes 'SS' (prefix in ship names eg SS Great Britain).
'poof' put inside 'ss' is 'SPOOFS'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for spoofs that I've seen before include "Slangy hoaxes or imitations" , "Lampoons" , "Tricks" , "Satirical imitations, parodies" , "Hoaxes or humorous imitations" .)