The establishment of the
dominant paradigm
End of the ‘powerful effects’ model
of media influenc
During the early 20th century, two
major schools of thought
• Chicago School
–
–
–
–
–
–
liberal pluralist political orientation
concern with the loss of community
Need to create “Great Community”
Organismic view of society
Focus on the press
Symbolic interactionism
• Mass society theorists
–
–
–
–
Fear of popular tyranny
Vision of isolated, anomic society
Focus on propaganda
Freudian psychology
Columbia School
• Paul Felix Lazarsfeld emigrated from Austria to
the U.S. in the 1930s.
– A mathematician
• Interested in the application of mathematics, especially the
new statistics, to study of social problems
– His main theoretic concern was how
individuals make decisions
Lazarsfeld
• Set up research programs at Princeton (Radio
Research Bureau) and at Columbia (Bureau of
Applied Social Research) that combined study of
practical problems with academic methods of
research
– Collaboration between academy and industry
– Research team with multiple scholars/researchers
each with special talents tackling a research area
– Became a model for research efforts in the field
• The earliest studies focused on audience size,
reactions to and use of radio programming
– As well as a wide array of social concerns that were
not communication-oriented
Features of the approach
• Took the existing media system for granted
(could not accommodate Theodor Adorno, a
critical scholar brought to the school to add
some critical theory to the approach)
• Looked at society as a conglomeration of
individuals
• Interested in individual behavior/attitudes/
knowledge resulting from exposure to media
messages/campaigns
• Focus groups, interviews and surveys were the
usual methods of study
The People’s Choice
• Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet
– went to the Rockefeller foundation, Roper agency
(provided money and interviewing), Life magazine
(had money)
• Study of the1940 election in Erie County
(Sandusky), Ohio
– Franklin Delano Roosevelt v. Wendell Willkie
Research Questions
:
• How do people decide to vote as they do?
• What were the major influences on them?
– "Social characteristics determine political preference."
Erie County
• Population 43,000
• mix of urban and rural voters--no really big cities, not
many poor, minorities
• Sandusky, the main city, and Ohio were both Republican
• 1 strongly Republican newspaper, 1 neutral, 1 mildly and
belatedly Democratic, Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed
Willkie
• Radio stations came in from other places
• National publications--Time, Life, Townsend farm
journals
• Stable politically
• Relative lack of interest groups
Timetable
May
June
July
August
September
October
Republican Democratic
Convention Convention
Interview
number
1
2
Total
Main
Poll
Panel
(3,000) (600)
November
Election
3
4
5
6
7
Main
Panel
(600)
Main
Panel
(600)
Main Panel
(600)
Main
Panel
(600)
Main Panel
(600)
Control A
(600)
Control B
(600)
Group
Control
C (600)
1940 election
• Result: country still overwhelmingly for Roosevelt, but
less than in 1936
• Vote overwhelmingly by SES, religion
• SES:
Hi
71% GOP
•
Lo
35% GOP
• Protestant 60% GOP
• Catholic 23% GOP
• Rural
• Urban
• Level of Interest in October strongly predictive of voting.
• Lazarsfeld could predict with 76% accuracy
which candidate the person would vote for by
his/her demographics. That was better than the
people themselves could predict.
– Prediction is taken as criterion of validity of theory.
– "Cross-Pressures"
Interpersonal influence
• Opinion Leaders 21%
– ("Have you tried to influence someone
on a political issue recently?"; "Has
anyone asked your advice recently on a
political issue?")
– opinion leaders were thought to be a rather
small group of influential people, although
influence was not actually shown
Changers
• Whenever a person in the sample changed his/her vote
intention, the interviewer asked why.
• Democrats mentioned radio most often (30% vs. 20% for
newspapers)
• Republicans mentioned newspapers (31% vs. 17% for
radio).
• Magazines--Saturday Evening Post, Farm Journal
before nominations
• Slight difference in exposure to the media in the same
direction as changers above.
– Helpful
–
– Most Important
–
--66% newspaper
--68% radio
--38% radio
--23% newspaper
• Over half the voters rated media most
important, 2/3 rated news media helpful
• However, Lazarsfeld et al. identified a
“Two-step flow” and concluded that
interpersonal communication was most
important
Selective exposure
• Those most likely to be predisposed to vote
Democratic were exposed to more proDemocratic propaganda (with the analogous
situation true for Republicans)
• Lazarsfeld decided this indicated that those who
were predisposed to vote one way or another
chose to expose themselves to propaganda that
was positive toward the party
Cross-over voters
• Criteria:
1) Had to vote for FDR in 1936
•
2) Had to vote for Willkie in 1940
•
3) Had to think Roosevelt had done a good job
•
4) Had to delay their decision until after nominations
•
• Results: Found only 15 people who qualified
– Only 9 recalled issue
– Only 6 mentioned 3rd term issue
(very stringent requirements to find issue importance)
• Conclusion: Issues do not show much power in voter
decision
Time of decision
• 1/2 made up their minds before May
• Once they knew the nomination, another
1/4 made up their mind
• 1/4 made up their mind between
nomination and election
• Columbia did another study in 1948, then
got out of campaign studies
Generalizability?
• A particular presidential campaign
– FDR and the Depression, Nazi rise in
Germany
– 1932 & 1936 Democratic victories
(Republicans became tightly knit, ended
factional fighting)
– no strong Republican candidate (Wendell
Willkie nominated by default)
– FDR not nominated till late (August) because
of unprecedented 3rd term (3rd term an issue)
• Lazarsfeld was not looking at nonvoters
• Lazarsfeld did not look at influences
outside of the campaign
• There has been a significant increase in
formal education since that time
• Political campaigns have become
professionalized
• Partisanship has declined
• Television is now the main political
information source
• Movement of news toward entertainment
Even so
• The Columbia studies became the gospel
of political campaign communication
theory and research for the following 30
years
• Campaign studies of this size declined
significantly until the University of
Michigan began their massive, longrunning series in the 1950s
– Did not even study media influence in early
years
• (Chaffee and Hochheimer, 1982)
• Assumptions of the model:
1. The act of voting is a consumer decision
equivalent to the purchase of a product in the
marketplace.
2. That politics and communication can be
assessed in contrast to an idealized system,
in which all people should be concerned,
cognizant, rational, and accepting of the
political system, and in which the institutions
of communication should be comprehensive,
accurate, and scrupulously fair and politically
balanced. (Used sociological method of ideal
types in the absence of comparative data).
3. That communication and politics are
appropriately viewed from the top or
power center rather than the bottom or
periphery of the system. (media-centric
and elite-centric rather than audiencecentric)
4. That the processes involved in political
communication are approximately
equivalent across time and space.
(General theory)
• Structure of data collection was individual,
studying decision-making, although authors
concluded that voting was primarily a group
process.
– "This led to a research agenda that looks at politics
and voting as the sum of individual interactions with
the media, "opinion leaders", and so forth, rather than
the social networks through which information and
influence flow." (Chaffee and Hochheimer, 1985).
Thus, the study design was inappropriate for the
study of the dynamics of political behavior.
• "While the total effect is often large, the net
effect is usually quite small."
Katz and Lazarsfeld
• Personal Influence: The Two-Step Flow of
Communication
• Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955)
– based on ideas originating in the "People's Choice"
• Concerned with the movement of information
from media through interpersonal networks
• Decatur study of opinion leaders conducted by
the Bureau of Applied Social Research at
Columbia
• Assessing opinion leaders’ role in four areas of
influence:
–
–
–
–
marketing
fashion
public affairs
film choice
• Delineating the characteristics of opinion leaders
– position in the life cycle, SES, social contacts
Contributions
• Theory: expanded notions about the way mass
communication works encompassing secondary
movement of information and interpersonal
network mediation
• Prompted thinking about indirect communication
effects
• Fostered the transition to modern era of mass
communication research
• The first real focus on the role of social
relationships in mediating communication effects
Klapper’ Five Generalizations
1. Mass communication ordinarily does not
serve as a necessary and sufficient cause
of audience effects, but rather functions
among and through a nexus of mediating
factors and influences.
2. These mediating factors are such
that they typically render mass
communication a contributory agent,
but not the sole cause, in a process of
reinforcing the existing conditions.
3. On such occasions as mass
communication does function in the
service of change, one of two conditions is
likely to exist. Either:
– a. the mediating factors will be found to be
inoperative and the effect of the media will be
found to be direct; or
– b. the mediating factors, which normally favor
reinforcement, will be found to be themselves
impelling toward change.
4. There are certain residual situations in
which mass communication seems to
produce direct effects, or directly and of
itself to serve certain psycho-physical
functions.
5. The efficacy of mass communication,
either as a contributory agent or as an
agent of direct effect, is affected by
various aspects of the media and
communications themselves or of the
communication situation (including, for
example, aspects of textual organization,
the nature of the source and medium, the
existing climate of public opinion, and the
like).
Selective Influence Theories
(Lowery & DeFleur)
• people are active, not passive receivers of information
• there are individual differences in needs, attitudes and
personality
• these notions were triggered by the development of
psychology as a prominent field of social science
eventually there developed three theories of selectivity:
1. Psychological
2. Sociological
3. Social relationships
Psychological selectivity
1. Media present messages to the members of
mass society but these messages are received
and interpreted selectively
2. The basis of this selectivity lies in variations in
habits of perception among members of the
society
3. Variations in habits of perception occur because
each individual has a unique personal
organization of beliefs, attitudes, value, needs
and modes of experiencing gratification that has
been acquired through learning
4. Because perception is selective, interpretation,
retention and response to media messages are
also selective and variable.
5. Thus, the effects of the media are neither
uniform, powerful, nor direct. Their influences
are selective and limited by individual
psychological differences
-this research was concerned with finding the keys to
shaping behavior so that people could be persuaded
to buy, vote, donate, behave and think in desire ways
Sociological selectivity
1. Media present messages to the members
of mass society but they are received and
interpreted selectively.
2. An important basis of this selectivity lies in
the location of the individual in the
differentiated social structure
3. That social structure is composed of
numerous categories of people, defined by
such factors as age, sex, income,
education, and occupation
4. Patterns of media attention and response
are shaped by the factors that define these
categories, making response to mass
communication somewhat similar in each
5. Thus, the effects of the media are neither
uniform, powerful, nor direct, but are
selective and limited by social category
influences
Social relationship selectivity
Individuals are also exposed to and affected by
media differently based on their patterns of
social interaction and affiliation with various
groups
1. Media present messages to members of the
mass society but they are received and
interpreted selectively
2. An important basis of the selectivity lies in
distinctive patterns of social influences on
people from others with whom they have
meaningful ties
3. Such social influences are brought to bear
when an individual's decisions regarding
behavior toward mass communication are
modified by family, friends, acquaintances,
or others
4. Patterns of media attention and response
uniquely reflect the networks of meaningful
social ties of each individual in the society
5. Thus, the effects of the media are neither
uniform, powerful, nor direct; they are
greatly limited and shaped by the person's
social interactions with others
• “Notions of selectivity are a movement away from
notions of mass society. It reflects a more sophisticated
understanding of social organization. These three levels
of selectivity represent somewhat different levels of
analysis which reflect the influence and development of
the disciplines which contributed to the knowledge and
development of mass communication research.”
• this type of research contributed to the notion that the
mass media have only limited effects
• because they were looking only at short-term effects
• reliance on quantitative methodology
• Notions of selectivity were being developed such as
selective exposure, attention, perception and recall.
Thus individuals were seen as mediating the effects of
mass communication so that the media acted mostly to
confirm political existing views.
• These notions of psychological selectivity came to
dominate thinking about media effects during the 1950s
and most of the 1960s.
– Social-psychological balance theories were adapted to the
explanation of ‘distortion’ of communication, etc.
• Dissonance theory
• Most such views of selectivity were based on a Freudian
ego-defense mechanism.
• An excellent example of this is provided by
Kendall and Woolf's analysis of reactions
to anti-racist cartoons. The cartoons
featured Mr Biggott whose absurdly racist
ideas were intended to discredit bigotry. In
fact 31% failed to recognise that Mr
Biggott was racially prejudiced or that the
cartoons were intended to be anti-racist
(Kendall & Wolff (1949) in Curran (1990)).
Selective perception
• Another study referred to by Curran was conducted by
Hastorf and Cantril in 1954. Subjects were showed film
of a particularly dirty football match between Princeton
and Dartmouth and asked to log the number of
infractions of the rules by ether side. The Princeton
students concluded that the Dartmouth players
committed over twice as many fouls as their team. The
Dartmouth students concluded that both sides were
about equally at fault. The authors concluded that it is
not accurate to say that different people have different
attitudes to the same thing, as in fact, 'the thing is not the
same for different people, whether the thing is a football
game, a presidential candidate, communism or spinach.'
As Curran suggests, it might be more accurate to say
'believing is seeing' rather than 'seeing is believing'.
Critique of Dissonance (Berger
and Chaffee, 1986):
•
In the 1960s further experimentation in
pursuit of dissonance-theoretical predictions
proved disappointing. Some of the most
interesting implications of Festinger's theorizing
turned out not to hold up empirically. The range
of applicability of the theory, which assumed
such a high degree of involvement of the person
with the topic of communication plus a very low
tolerance for inconsistency, was eventually
recognized as quite narrow. In addition, no
satisfactory operational definition for the
observation of the hypothetical construct
"dissonance" was ever developed; this made it
difficult to falsify the theory.
• For a while it was a highly productive
stimulus to communication research, but
tests soon laid bare its limitations. The
term "dissonance" today is part of the
vocabulary of the field, but active research
has passed on to other concepts. It holds
an honored place in the history of the field
because of its productive character.
Hardt’s critique
• The Decline of the Critical
• American communication research was
becoming more and more empirical, scientific,
and interested in individual behavior
– “during the 1940's, the critical elements of American mass
communication research virtually disappeared”
• these studies tended to make an assumption of
consensual unity throughout American society
• Hardt feels that they "reduced complex
social and political issues of power and
authority to an examination (and
legitimation) of the dominant social system
(normative functionalism)."
• the major concern was for the scientific
status of the field
• explanations of communication shifted
from the cultural/historical to the social
scientific