WAITING FOR ORDERS — SOME CURRENT TRENDS IN

MASS COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH IN THE

UNITED STATES

BY

HERBERT I. SCHILLER

A market economy shapes social institutions to the specifications and

needs of the market. In the United States, where markets, however Influencia de
los intereses
monopolized, predominate, most social arrangements are created for de grupos de
poder
or adapted to facilitating the system-in-being. Certainly this is true for
the educational enterprise in general. And it is nowhere more apparent
than in the specialized area of mass communications research, itself a
relatively recent field of study. Contexto: Segunda Guerra Mundial
A review of mass communications research in the United States
reveals the pressures and vicissitudes of the market system. The research
has mirrored the early needs, changing strength and the enlarged scale
of operations of the American business system as it has pushed out
of its continental limits into international markets and global produc-
tion.
As the general system undergoes increasing stress, mass communica-
tions research too emits distress signals which are picked up in diverse
centers.
For example, Kaarle Nordenstreng, a critical observer of the com-
munications scene, writes: ’... in the middle of the seventies ... the
field is in a state of crisis or radical transformation’.’ So too, Ithiel Pool,
in the mainstream of social science activity, sees the emergence of a new
trend in communications research policy research as the outgrowth
- -

of crisis. He attributes it largely to ’the exponential growth in the rate

of technological change future shock’.22
...

Certainly there is crisis in the everyday world. And the tremors are
felt even in the distant and rarified terrain of scholarship. A brief exam-
ination of the social context in which mass communications research in
the United States has been conceived, developed, and currently proceeds
may explain both the character of its contemporary condition and its
present outlook.

Nordenstreng, ’Normative Directions for Mass Communication Research’,

1. Kaarle
paper presented at the first Nordic Conference on Mass Communication Research,
Oslo, Norway, June 18-21, 1973.
2. Ithiel Pool, ’The Rise of Communication Policy Research’, paper prepared for
the Annual Meeting of the International Broadcast Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus, Sep-
tember 14-18, 1973.

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12

Early development of mass communications researclz

The initial interests of mass communications research, apparent when

the field first emerged fifty years ago, document the central fact of the
discipline’s almost-total dependency on the corporate economy. The
United States’ productive system after World War I was, even then,
the leading force in the world capitalist system. Its developed industries
were already concentrated into vertically integrated corporations in the
national market.
This was the era too of the appearance of radio a communication -

medium of recognized promise for diverse human ends. Quickly and

completely, this powerful informational instrument was given an exclu-
sive commercial role, as the marketing tool of American industry. This
early identification and association of modern communication technol-
ogy with American business, marks the beginning of mass communica-
tions research and its entry into the company of the more prominent
behavioral sciences.
Paul Lazarsfeld, the dean of American communications researchers,
has commented on this:

’Commercial consumer studies had greatly contributed to the development of sampling

methods and had given rise to public opinion polling. Radio had come on the scene
and audience surveys were needed to parallel the circulation figures of magazines
and newspapers. These data became the raw material for the new field of communica-
tions and opinion research’.3 Comienza a ser necesario conocer la opinión del público
para pode satisfacer de mejor manera sus necesidades.

To satisfy corporate business’ need to reach customers with persuasive

messages has been, from the outset, the raison d’etre of most mass com-
munications research in North America. More recently, this assignment
has been extended, but more about this development further along.
Accordingly, audience research studies and media content analysis
were focal areas of early interest. Were the customers reacting properly
to the stimuli, and, could the stimuli be intensified?
It is instructive to read the justification for this kind of work offered
by communications theorists. Daniel Lerner, for one, transformed the
whole enterprise into an exercise in democracy and selfless service.
He wrote:

’The role of research in democratic regimes, where the governed must be consulted
and by none more solicitously than by the governors, operates quite differently [than
in socialist countries hs]. The process is illustrated by the remarkable growth, over
-

3. Paul Lazarsfeld, ’Some Problems of Organized Social Research’, in The Behav-

ioral Sciences: Problems and Prospects (Boulder: University of Colorado Institute of
Behavioral Science, August 1964), p. 11.

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 13

the past three decades, of what is called attitude research. This mode of consulting the
governed, for the instruction of the governors, developed integrally with the spread
of democratic institutions’.
z

Lerner observed the extent of this process of ’consulting the governed’.

’More than half of the American annual expenditure on all types of
social research in business, government, universities
-
is now spent -

on attitude research. So crucial, for our mode of self-observation, is

information about the will of the governed’. And, finally, ’The purpose Para poder
comprende
of consumer research, for example, is to find out what the consumer r y manejar
wants so that he can better be served’.4 el mercado

In Lerner’s harmonious and socially-motivated market model, the

interests of super business units and of individual consumers are totally
compatible. The disparity in power between the pollers and the polled,
which can reduce the consultative undertaking to a manipulative ex-
ercise is ignored. Corporations, the United States Government, and
other power-wielders, ’consult the governed’ so that the latter may
’better be served’. Incredible as it may seem, such tales are still told
and, in fact, provide the dominant account for most students, of what
mass communications research is all about.5 5

But as the extent of monopoly in American business intensifies and

the marketing drive accelerates, the actual practices of the research
community directly involved with corporate policy become more and
more extreme. Testimony before a United States Senate subcommittee Las
investigacio
on Consumer Affairs, in early 1973, offered some vivid details about nes tienen
how the governors are now consulting the governed and how this di- únicamente
fines
alogue ’serves’ those being consulted. económicos,
To begin with, the pollers consult children. One witness described no se
interesan en
the present scene as ’the child in the market place today’ and observed el verdadero
impacto
that ’In the last 10 years the United States has witnessed a vast expan- sobre la
sion in industry’s selling to and through children’.13 población.
Who carries on research about these not-so-trivial matters on what
is being done to the children’s minds and personalities? This is discussed
too: ’There is practically no information regarding the impact on the
under-12 child of the 22,000 to 25,000 commercials he sees on television
each year. All existing information is in the hands of industry sponsors,
agencies and broadcasters’ (p. 65). And, ’We are convinced that the
Grupos de poder
Orientación
empírica 4. Daniel Lerner, Editor, The Human Meaning of the Social Sciences, World,
Cleveland, 1959, pp. 25-26 and 31. Lerner’s emphasis in text.
5. There are, of course, other explanations of what is going on in the social and
political process. For example, Claus Mueller, The Politics of Communication.
6. Robert Choate, Chairman of the Council on Children, Media and Merchandising,
Advertising-1973, Hearings before the Consumer Subcommittee of the Committee
on Commerce, United States Senate, First Session on S.805, February 20 and 27,
1973, Serial No. 93-9, p. 55.

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14

impact of an advertisement on the child is really only known to those

who research it in secret f or business’ (p. 56). Additionally, ’the majority
of professors who have training and competence to study consumer
issues are on the side of industry trying to figure out how to get past
the consumer barrier’ (p. 67). And, ’all information is on one side. The
J. Walter Thompson Co. [the world’s largest advertising agency - hs],
about three years ago, tried to pull together who knows what about
motivating children. When they got it together, they realized it was so
hot that they sent it to the shredding machine’. (p. 73)v
Certainly, these are extreme conditions and children’s motivation is
but one facet of the mass communications research field though it -

must be acknowledged, a rather special one. Still the main point, insofar
as the entire discipline is concerned, remains valid: the character and
the direction of most of the research is one-dimensional and one-direc-
tional. The governors are the business and governmental power in
alliance, seeking to understand and influence the governed - the bulk
of the population so that the interest of those who govern may pre-
-

vail.
Stuart Hall describes the condition well: Dependencia de los intereses del mercado

‘... in societies like

ours, which remain societies of deep inequality, but where formal
democracy prevails, the shaping and winning of consent, the exercise of social and
cultural hegemony, is a necessary condition for the continuing exercise of power ...
stable societies can, in one sense, be defined by the degree to which, in them, open
coercion gives way to the management of consent. Consent is the process by which
the relatively powerless and un-organized grant to the powerful and organized the
right, the legitimacy, to act on their behalf ...’.77
No se critican los medios de comunicación solo pro que el resultado que dan beneficia a los grupos de poder
This condition is what mass communications research, with some hon-
orable exceptions, refuses to acknowledge or to study. It typifies the
state of affairs not only in the United States but in other market econ-
omies as well. Consider, for example, the conclusion of a Dutch com-
munications scholar with respect to the character of the mass com-
munications research in Holland:

’The research done so far on behalf of publishers, broadcasting organizations and

advertisers mainly consists of a statistical counting of readers, viewers, and listeners:
who is reading, listening and viewing what? The thus collected data serve to inform
publishers, programme makers and advertisers about the habits of their audiences:
Y’
Some recognition of the para-educational environment supplied by the cultural
industries which now dominate the actual system of learning, is given in Graham
Murdoch and Guy Phelps’ Mass Media and the Secondary School, Macmillan,
London, 1973
7. Stuart Hall, ’The "Structured Communication" of Events’, Paper for Com-
munications Symposium, UNESCO, October, 1973, pp. 34-35.
8. Frans Kempers, ’Mass Communication Studies and Research in The Netherlands’,
Zeszyty Prasoznance (Poland), Winter, 1973-’74.

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 15

this information, however, is not wanted to learn more about the fundamental ques-
tions with regard to the role and effects of the mass media in modem socicty, but in
order to get feedback which might be important from the point of view of planning
future programme and commercial policy’.8
Se requiere de una investigación cualitativa para comprender el fenómeno en su totalidad
While there have been some studies of the message-making side of the
mass communications system, for the most part, these have been con-
cerned with the micro details of journalism as a profession and other
considerations affecting low echelon ’gatekeepers’. A remarkable vac-
uum surrounds the structures and the power groups that hire the gate-

keepers. Buscan
justificar las
Perhaps with these facts in mind,Text
James Halloran, Director of the prácticas en
Centre for Mass Communication Research in Leicester University, urges vez de
cuestionarlas
a new focus for studying the mass media. He declares:

’It is necessary to study the production side the media industries

-
for from -

everything that could possibly be created or presented, only certain things are
produced and offered to the public, and what is offered is not a matter of chance ...
We must ask questions about organization and structure, and about ownership,
control, resources and technology as well as about the impact of media materials
-

from other countries ... The question &dquo;What interests are being served by the
media?&dquo; needs to be asked on the production side as well as on the use or consumption
side’.o

Halloran raises the questions that ought to be posed. But these are ad-
dressed to the governors, not to the governed. There is scant historical
evidence that governors in any age accept the obligation of accountabil-
ity.
International mass communications research -

Penetrating new mar-

kets

Though the commercial needs of the market system continue to exercise

the dominant influence over mass communications research, the system
itself has undergone far-reaching transformation. United States cap-
italism has expanded far beyond its continental boundaries. The so-
called multi-national corporation two-thirds of which are United
-

States-owned and controlled carry on their activities in dozens of

-

countries and affect, and are affected by, national policy wherever they
operate. The political climate in most areas, the opinion of foreign
publics, the tastes and preferences of various national audiences and the
susceptibilities of local elites these and many other questions are of
-

Entran en
vital interest to the super business units that must take these matters into juego los
intereses
account.
9. James D. Halloran, ’Mass Media and Society: The Challenge of Research’, An
Inaugural Lecture, University of Leicester, England, October 25, 1973, p. 3.

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 16

Accordingly, communications research, while retaining its concern

with audiences and the stimuli that excite them, also has become inter-
nationalized, better to serve its chief sponsor. Hamid Mowlana offers
rich documentation about this development. He writes: ’In the last
decade (1960-1970), the comparative and integrated study of social
institutions, political behavior, social change, public opinion and mass
media has received unprecedented emphasis by the United States
scholar’.1° Though Mowlana’s study of research on international com-
munications encompasses a historical span of 120 years, beginning in
1850, he finds, not surprisingly, that ’more than half of the studies coded
-
52 per cent were written between 1960 and 1969’ (p. S 1 ) . And
-

Influencia sobre
also, as could be expected, ’studies in specific cultural and geographical
la investigación areas have corresponded roughly to United States involvement in those
para que los
resultados
areas’. He adds, ’this factor of involvement seems to have influenced
beneficien a los
grupos de poder
heavily what domestic studies have been undertaken and what foreign
works translated’ (p. 82), Mowlana concludes without further elabora-
tion that ’United States interests and involvements in world events gen-
erate scholarly studies as much as methodological and research devel-
opments’. (p. 90).
Otherwise put, American corporate enterprise stimulates and pro-
motes the research studies and methodologies that it requires for its
maintenance and expansion. And, in fact, an entirely new sub-division
of communications study has arisen to focus in a concentrated way on
these matters. Happily-named ’public diplomacy’, the area is described
by a University Center of Public Diplomacy thusly: the field concerns
itself with ’the cause and effect of public attitudes and opinions which .

influence the formulation and execution of foreign policiesl

Another way of saying this is that public diplomacy is actually the
’

utilization of communications research and related interdisciplinary

fields for getting a grip on the minds of foreign audiences so that the
foreign policies of the United States, or for that matter, any nation
utilizing such techniques, are admired (or at least) accepted and tol-
erated.
Some examples of public diplomacy in action are offered by one of
its scholars and practitioners. Glen H. Fisher, Dean of the Center for
Area and Country Studies in the Foreign Service Institute of the United
States Department of State writes: ’... skill must be used in choosing
international actions in the first place which can be expected to gain
the desired objectives ...’ (p. 7). For this reason, Fisher believes that
the space exploration program contributed substantially to ’American
10. Hamid Mowlana, ’Trends in Research on International Communication in The
United States’, Gazette, Vol. XIX, No. 2, 1973, p. 79.
11. Glen H. Fisher, Public Diplomacy and the Behavioral Sciences, Indiana Univer-
sity Press, Bloomington, 1972, p. 7.

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 17

stature in the international arena’. So too he says that ’The Peace Corps
certainly was conceived with an age of public-diplomacy in mind’ (p. 8).
On the other hand, Fisher is concerned that although ’The American
public easily believed, after evidence was responsibly and carefully
sifted, that President Kennedy’s death was the murder act of one de-
ranged person ... a surprisingly widespread belief (existed) abroad that
a plot had been swept under the rug’ (p. 20).

Obviously, public diplomacy runs into difficulties when the events

or programs cannot be managed entirely or
staged by the public diplo-
mats. But the objective is clear however complicated and troublesome
-

to achieve -

’one must usually attempt to capture the mentality of

significant groups’, and, ’a nation [must be understood] as a communica-
tion system’ (p. 44).
These are challenging tasks for communications researchers but schol-
ars have not been reluctant to accept them. The United States Informa-
tion Agency (USIA), a S 200 million annual operation, and a major
employer of personnel with communications skills, operational and an-
alytical, is in the forefront of the new praxis. One of its most know-
ledgeable officials writes:
’As practitioners of the fragile of presenting American attitudes and actions, we
art
must now shape our operation much more sophisticated manner, with greater
in a
attention to the sensitivities of our audience than ever before’. And, ’What USIA
needs, first and foremost, is to improve its listening instruments, its sensitive intake
channels’.
Influenciar el mercado

This plea for better communications research about international publics

makes the additional point that: ’Our primary role in this effort is to
sensitize policy makers, from the White House on down, in the rel-
evance, and the specific details of the communications environment
abroad
The recent surge in research on international communications found
by Mowlana, the appearance of the new field of public diplomacy de-
scribed by Fisher, and the exhortation of USIA officials for ’sensitizing’
policy-makers to the international communications ’environment’, are
different facets of the same condition i.e., the global involvement of
-

United States capitalism and its urgent need for reliable information
about the climate of opinion in the areas in which it is active.

The new f ield of communications policy research

The situation is similar domestically and it is reflected in the emergence
of still another new area of communications research, the innocuously-
12. Wilson P. Dizard, ’Which Way To The Future?’, USIA Communicator, July
1973, Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 11-13.

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18

titled but significant field of communications policy research.l3

Professor Pool explains this development:

’Now, an additional research interest is emerging, namely normative research about

alternative ways of organizing and structuring society’s communications system.
Examples are research on such matters as cable television, or satellite broadcasting,
or use of broadcasting in the political process, or communication and economic

development, or the communications needs of the United Nations’ (p. 2).

This is what he and others call communications policy research. As

already noted, Pool views the rapidity of technological change as the
main factor in this shift of research orientation from the former, small-
bore micro studies on audiences.
Though the speed with which technological change is occurring no
doubt does play an important part in forcing researchers, however reluc-
tant because of temperament or training or both, to view larger frame-
works in their analyses, technology is hardly the whole story, as Pool
suggests it is. Giving it such prominence obscures social and economic
factors that are by no means passive. It is not accidental that these
forces are the most part ignored.
Preoccupation with technology permits the continuation of the illu-
sion, especially powerful in the United States, that most, if not all
social and economic problems either arise from or can be overcome by
improved technique and instrumentation, regardless of such institu-
tional questions as ownership, control, and social structure.
Yet accompanying the admittedly impressive technological inno-
vations are profound social transformations. Globally, the emergence
of 75 new nations in the last quarter of a century, following the collapse
of the formal empire system, and the rise of national liberation move-
ments swithin many of these newly-independent but economically-domi-
nated states, provide the bases for intense struggles in the decades
ahead. The dominators face the liberation movements with terrifying
arsenals of military force as well as with sophisticated means of infor-
mation and opinion control. How effective will public diplomacy be,
confronted with the desperate, unsatisfied needs of Asians, Latin
Americans and Africans?
Besides, fierce economic battles for mastery of world markets are
already underway between the United States, Western Europe and
Japan. These favored areas are faced also with the real possibility that
their formerly unlimited access to natural resources oil, copper, iron -

ore, bauxite, etc which they have consumed with arrogant waste-
-

13. Ithiel Pool, ’The Rise of Communications Policy Research’, paper presented
to the annual meeting, International Broadcast Institute, Nicosia, Cyprus, September
14-18, 1973.

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 19

fulness -

may be less available in the years aheadas the supplier states

-

mostly the economically weak societies begin to defend their -

resources and to conserve them for either home use or for better ex-

change value in the future.

Pool is correct when he sees a future for communications policy re-
search. Communications scholars will have a great supply of ’policy’
problems to explore as these conflicts mature. And then, there is the
domestic situation in the United States surely a communications
-

researcher’s cornucopia. For by this time it must be evident that what

Pool and others call ’policy’ problems, are, in fact, the signs, staggering
in their multiplicity, of the profound crisis of Western industrial devel-
opment and of United States capitalism in particular. Energy crisis,
transport paralysis, urban decay, political corruption, inflation and
ecological disasters the symptoms are endless.
-

Into this disintegration of structures and values marches the com- Empíricas
y
munications researcher, to survey the mood, take the public pulse and cuantitativ
as no
to indicate the semantic and visual stimuli that will soothe, transfix and sirven más
pacify.
The work of communications research in a time of general crisis,
domestic and global, can no longer be limited to tiny, individualistic
studies. Pool sees this clearly. ’Communications research in the past may
have provided important information for middle level decisions about
such matters as which program to offer the viewing public or how to
couch an appeal to them. It seldom entered into the fundamental deci-
sions about what the communications system should be. More enlighten-
ment in the making of such decisions can only help’ (p. 11). And
’enlightenment’ there will be!
Communications policy researchers, promoted from their former
limited but not inconsequential role as advisors to advertisers and public
relations men, now stride in the corridors of embassies and general
staff headquarters. Their contributions are well understood and increas-
ingly called upon. Along with his multi-billion dollar armament pur-
chases from the United States, Iran’s Shah constructs a telecommunica-
tions system linking 52 cities with the capital, Teheran.14 The system,
it can be assumed, will provide both the infrastructure for physical
control and cultural domination.
Yet Pool interprets these developments differently. As long as com-
munications pulicy research is concerned with ’pluralism of expression’,
and ’a pluralistic market place of ideas’, all will be well, he claims. And
how does one achieve this pluralism? Pool offers a few suggestions in
his discussion of what communications policy research includes. Ac-

14. Robert A. Rosenblatt, ’Northrup Gets $60 Million Hike on Iran Job: Profit
Still in Doubt’, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 6, 1973.

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 20

cording to him, if we eliminate ’archaic notions’ about ’social versus

Necesario el
desarrollo de
private ownership’ (p. 16) and ’national sovereignty’ (p. 8), communica-
una teoría
tions research is on the right track. With these modest exclusions Pool
crítica que believes researchers ’can discuss ... issues in concrete analytic detail
pueda poner
en discusión and not become engaged in old-fashioned verbal slogans’ (p. 17).
el papel de los
medios de
By labelling substantive matters ’old-fashioned’, ’archaic’, and ’ideol-
comunicación ogical’, and excluding them from further consideration, Pool ties com-
en la munications policy research securely to the status quo, all the while
reproducción
de
desigualdades
proclaiming objectivity and hardnosed empiricism.
sociales
If communications policy research does not concern itself with the
issue of which social groups control the system and the communications
apparatus inside the system, and if matters of national sovereignty of
natural resources and cultural independence are also brushed aside,
what remains to be considered? only how to keep the existing ar-
-

rangements intact with this or that gimmicky modification of technique

and instrumentation.
It is understandable therefore, that Pool mentions approvingly, a
proposal to reduce urban concentration ’by bringing via telecommunica-
tions, the cultural advantages of the city to the residents of the country’
(p. 22). ’Education, music, theatre, and better medical care can all be
brought by new technologies directly to the rural home’ (p. 22).
This might be an attractive perspective if these advantages were
actually available to urban people to begin with. Pool, whose academic
base is Cambridge (Mass.), might inquire in nearby Boston who, and
how many, enjoy these pleasant urban features before proposing to -

extend these benefits to the countryside, where they should also be

available.

Concl ttsion

Communications research in the United States has been and remains

firmly under influence of the major power-wielders in the country.
The big corporations, their allies in advertising and public relations
and opinion polling, and more recently, (as reflected in the rise of
policy research and public diplomacy), the national governmental
bureaucracy as the overall protector and guarantor of the imperial
-

system, domestically and worldwide - are the sponsors of and the

clients for a good part of the communications research community.15

15. One ruggedly independent United States scholar writes: ’I think relevant
research is being done, and more can be done, but I am deeply pessimistic. The
researcher or research entity must enjoy maximum protection from the influence of
the power centers. As the power centers control most of the money, this requirement
is difficult, if not hopeless. The need for independence eliminates most national

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 21

The latter justifies its work with the language of scientific method but
its preoccupations and its perspectives deny its claims to objectivity.
Still, the dimensions of crisis, globally and nationally, visible every-
where, are producing some enlightenment. It is perhaps too much to Teoría crítica
expect that this developing awareness will penetrate the well-insulated
and well-kept communications research establishment. Failing that,
new and meaningful, though still modest work by ’outsiders’, already
is appearing. It is from such efforts, outside the mainstream, as well as
a saving fraction of researchers within the system, that hope for the
future of communications research is sustainable.

bodies, which reflect conventional respectability. International bodies are mainly

congeries of nationally oriented delegates ...’.
O.W. Riegel, Comment on UNESCO Document COM/MD/20, August 17, 1973.

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