Antennas in Space

One of the major things Comms Department is responsible on modern day naval vessels are antennas. Modern antennas come in all sorts of shapes and sizes as you can see here. Most of those antennas are maintained by divisions inside the Comms Department although some are maintained by divisions in the Operations Department if the only department to use that antenna is the Operations Department.
As you can see, the antennas are all outside the skin of the ship. One thing that has puzzled me is how antennas exist in space. I can’t think of a single ship design that shows antennas as obvious as they are today and yet the theory is that messages can’t be received without the proper receptor, or antenna. Antennas work today because they are positioned carefully around the ship so they are able to “face” open water in almost 360 degrees. Since that is rarely possible on ship, unless on the main mast or to level, antennas are placed carefully to get the maximum “visibility” to pick up the necessary frequencies.
The only conclusions I can come up with it that somehow the ship hull itself works as the antennas, with wires going from all the hull plates to a computer to separate the frequencies and send them to the necessary systems. Another idea would be that my ship could have a web of antennas, maybe a few inches off the hull held securely against the great speeds needed to make space travel viable, or a web firmly on the hull that would work as the antenna system, picking up signals and frequencies as it sped through space. Once you’ve figured out what type of antennas your fictional ship has you will need to decide how much maintenance is needed, who does it (crew or robots), how many are needed, and how often things need to get done.