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1978 TheoriesofCommunicationandTheoriesofSociety MURDOCK
1978 TheoriesofCommunicationandTheoriesofSociety MURDOCK
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[339]
THE CRITIQUE
’
exciting, arenas, and he cites, in particular, Hovland, Lasswell,
and Lazarsfeld, as well as the late Kurt Lewin. The resulting con-
ceptual stagnation Berelson believed had prevented further
development of existing lines of inquiry. This verdict did not go
unchallenged, and spirited replies pointed out the important
contributions of students of these major figures and the con-
tinuing vigour of many areas of communication studies. But the
force of Berelson’s verdict continued to trouble observers puzzled
by the dearth of theory in the field.
In looking at the evolution of mass communications studies, a
third line of argument traced the problem to the practical begin-
nings and pragmatic intentions of the discipline’s forbears. The
need of the American commercial radio industry to chart its
audience, and the demands of war-time propaganda research
were important determinants of the directions studies took.
Hovland headed the research branch of the U.S. Army Information
and Education Division. War-time food consumption patterns
were the focus and stimulus to the communication studies of
Lewin and his students, and of course the commissioned market
research at the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia
produced many influential studies of media consumption in the
New York area. The practical concerns with manipulation, effects,
and influence were not without a theoretical yield, especially at
the level of social psychology. But later observers came to see
these interests as administratively rather than theoretically
guided, and as inviting elaboration of quantitative techniques to
measure effects rather than more general elucidation of com-
munications theory. Not least among such observers, incidentally,
gie. In the former &dquo;the strong concern with empirical test leads
prematurely to a curbing of imaginative hypotheses: the nose is
held soclose to the empirical grindstone that one cannot look up to
see beyond the limits of the immediate task&dquo; (Merton, 1957: 443).
Further, such research deals with separate problems in the short-
term, applying an array of research techniques to the solution of
pragmatic problems in market and military research as they arise,
with little attempt to accumulate a body of relevant theory in an
academic context. Others have noted how this scatter of interests
guided by professional, commercial or political requirements has
remained too diverse to respond to or promote a unity of theory.
In these different ways, then, mass communications studies
have been attacked for theoretical immaturity. It is important,
however, to put these evaluations in perspective. It is too often
assumed that mass communications research has steadily ad-
vanced from conceptual infancy to its present fully fledged vigour.
We are assumed to have spotted the gaps ignored by earlier
pioneers and become more aware of the limitations of their vision.
From a concentration on &dquo;with what effects?&dquo; we are deemed to
have gradually moved on to the other links in Lasswell’s famous
paradigm. This optimistic view ignores two factors. First, critical
awareness was not altogether absent among early researchers. In
1941, for example, Lazersfeld was arguing for critical com-
munications research, and calling for analysis of organisations
and control, and for a reformulation of effects and content studies
in a broader social context (Lazarsfeld, 1972). The second, and
related factor, is that mass communications, like other disciplines,
has not had a linear development from the simple to the subtle,
the limited to the comprehensive. If ,we historically situate the
perspectives and interests that have successively dominated the
REFERENCES
(Summer): 17-25.
——— (1973) "Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory." New Left
Rev. 82 (November/December): 3-16.
(1961) The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus.
———