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COMMUNICATION RESEARCH AND THE IMAGE OF SOCIETY CONVERGENCEOF TWO TRADITIONS
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Author(s):
DR.BUDHADEO PD.SINGH
Vol - 1, Issue- 2 ,
Page(s) : 5 - 13
(2010 )
DOI : https://doi.org/10.32804/CASIRJ
Abstract
Research on mass communications and on the acceptance of new farm practices may be characterized as an interest in campaigns to gain a acceptance of change. Despite their shared problems, these two fields have shown no interest in each other. However, very recently, as the student of mass communications began to revise his image of an atomized mass society, there have been signs of growing convergence. The attempt to take systematic account of interpersonal relations as relevant to the flow of mass communications has directed the attention of students of urban communication to rural sociology.
- This is a revision of a paper prepared for the Fourth World Congress of Sociology, 1959, and ispart of a larger inventory of research on social andpsychological factors affecting the diffusion of innovationsupported by the Social Science ResearchCommittee of the University of Chicago and theFoundation for Research on Human Behavior.Thanks are due to Martin L. Levin, who has assistedwith this project and to Professors C.Arnold Anderson and Everett M. Rogers for helpfulcriticism.
- This point is elaborated in Elihu Katz and PaulF. Lazars Feld, Personal Influence: The Part Playedby People in the Flow of Mass Communication(Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955).
- It would be interesting if a rural sociologistwould tell it from his point of view. In any case,this meeting of traditions is timely, in view of thepessimism expressed by C. Arnold Anderson's"Trends in Rural Sociology," in Robert K. Mertonet al. (eds.), Sociology Today (NewYork: BasicBooks, 1959), p. 361. Anderson regards research ondiffusion as the most sophisticated branch of ruralsociology.
- Cf. similar conclusions of Eliot Freidson, "CommunicationsResearch and the Concept of the Mass," in Wilbur Schramm (ed.), The Process andEffects of Mass Communication (Urbana: Universityof Illinois Press, 1954), pp. 380-88, and JosephB. Ford, "The Primary Group in Mass Communication,"Sociology and Social Research, XXXVIII(1954), 152-58.
- For a review of such studies see Joseph T.Klapper, The Effects of the Mass Media (NewYork: Bureau of Applied Social Research, 1949);relevant excerpts from this document appear inSchramm (ed.), op. cit., pp. 289-320. G. D. Wiebesuggests reasons why marketing campaigns farebetter than others, in "Merchandising Commoditiesand Citizenship on Television," Public OpinionQuarterly, XV (1951-52), 679-91. See also Paul F.Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, "Mass Communication,Popular Taste and Organized SocialAction," in Wilbur Schramm, (ed.), Mass Communications(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1949), 459-80.
- This parallels the discovery of the relevance ofinterpersonal relations in other modern institutions, especially in mass production.
- 7See Edward A. Shill’s, "Mass Society and Its Culture" (paper presented at the Daedalus-TamimentInstitute Seminar, June, 1959), for a critiqueof the common tendency among students of communicationto conceive of mass society as disorganizedand anomic.
- For a review of these studies see Elihu Katz, “The Two-Step Flow of Communication: An Up to-Date Report on an Hypothesis," Public OpinionQuarterly, XXI, (1957), 61-78.
- For a recent systematic exposition of a numberof these studies see John W. Riley, Jr., and MatildaW. Riley, "Mass Communication and the SocialSystem," in Merton et al. (eds.), op cit., pp. 537-78,and Joseph T. Klapper, "What We Know aboutthe Effects of Mass Communication: The Brinkof Hope," Public Opinion Quarterly, XXI (1957-58), 453-74.
- E.g., Carl I. Holland, Irving L. Janis, andHarold H. Kelley, Communication and Persuasion(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1953),chap. v, "Group Membership and Resistance tInfluence," and John W. C. John stone and ElihuKatz, "Youth Culture and Popular Music," AmericanJournal of Sociology, LXII (1957), 563-68.For a review of the implications of research on thesmall group for the design of research on mass communicationsee Katz and Lazarsfeld, op. cit., Part I.
- Relevant also is the anthropological study ofunderdeveloped areas where social structure maysometimes be taken into account along with culturein explaining the acceptance of change (e.g.,Benjamin D. Paul [ed.], Health, Culture and Community:Case Studies of Public Reactions to HealthPrograms [New York: Russell Sage Foundation,1955]).
- For reviews of research in this field see Subcommittee on the Diffusion and Adoption of NewFar Practices of the Rural Sociological Society,Sociological Research on the Diffusion and Adoptionof New Farm Practices (Lexington: KentuckyAgricultural Experiment Station, 1952), and EugeneA. Wakening, "The Communication of Informationon Innovations in Agriculture," in theforthcoming volume by Wilbur Schramm (ed.),Communicating Behavioral Science Information(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press). A recentbibliography on Social Factors in the Adoptionof Farm Practices was prepared by the NorthCentral Rural Sociology Subcommittee on Diffusion(Ames: Iowa State College, 1959).
- Yet rural sociologists have justifiably beratedtheir colleagues for not taking more systematicaccount of interpersonal structures (e.g., HerbertF. Lion Berger, "The Diffusion of Farm and HomeInformation as an Area of Sociological Research,"Rural Sociology, XVII [1952], 132-44).
- See the propositions concerning the systemsof social interaction in rural, as contrasted withurban, society in Pit rim Sorokin and Carle C.Zimmerman, Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology(New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1929), pp. 48-58.
- The work of Charles P. Loomis is outstandingin this connection; on his approach to the relationshipbetween interpersonal structures and theintroduction of change see Loomis and J. AllanBeegle, Rural Sociology: The Strategy of Change(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1957).Stoichiometry has played an important role in thisdevelopment.
- For mention of the claims of communicatorsthat members of their audiences are influentialfor others see one of the earliest pieces of researchon opinion leaders: Frank A. Stewart, "A SociometricStudy of Influence in Southtown," Sociometry,X (1947), 11-31.
- E.g., Everett M. Rogers and George M. Beal,"The Importance of Personal Influence in theAdoption of Technological Changes," Social Forces,XXXVI (1958), 329-35, and Herbert Menzel andElihu Katz, "Social Relations and Innovation inthe Medical Profession," Public Opinion Quarterly,XIX (1955-56), 337-53. More important, perhaps,is the "official" recognition of the relevance ofresearch on mass communications in the 1959bibliography of the North Central Rural SociologySubcommittee, op. cit.
- See James S. Coleman, Elihu Katz, and HerbertMenzel, "The Diffusion of an Innovationamong Physicians," Sociometry, XX (1957), 253-70. See also the reports of "Project Revere," e.g.,Stuart C. Dodd, "Formulas for Spreading Opinions,"Public Opinion Quarterly, XXII (1958-59),537-54, and Melvin L. DeFleur and Otto N. Larsen,The Flow of Information (New York: Harper &Bros., 1958). Extensive work on informal cliquesas facilitators and barriers to interpersonal communicationin rural communities has been reportedby Herbert F. LionBerger and C. Milton Cough nor,Social Structure and the Diffusion of Farm Information (Columbia: University of MissouriAgricultural Experiment Station, 1957).
- Typically, the respondent is asked to recall thesources influencing him, arrange them chronologically,and then select the one which was "mostinfluential." The shortcomings of this are obvious.There are many exceptions, but a sizable number ofstudies have reported that the influence of "otherpeople" is more influential than other sources. See,e.g., Herbert F. Lionburger, Information-seekingHabits and Characteristics of Farm Operators(Missouri Agricultural Experiment Station ResearchBull. 581 [Columbia, 1955]); E. A. Wilkening,Adoption of Improved Farm Practices as Relatedto Family Factors (Wisconsin AgriculturalExperiment Station Research Bull. 183 [Madison,1953]); Marvin A. Anderson, "Acceptance and Useof Fertilizer in Iowa," Crop life, II (1955) ; GeorgeFisk, "Media Influence Reconsidered," PublicOpinion Quarterly, XXIII (1959), 83-91; andKatz and Lazarsfeld, op cit., Part II. The moreimportant question, however, is under what conditionscertain sources of influence are more orless likely to be influential. Different innovations,different social structures, and different phases ofthe process of decision and of diffusion have beenshown to be associated with variations in the roleof the media. The latter two factors are treatedbelow.
- Cf. James S. Coleman, Elihu Katz, and Herbert Menzel, Doctors and New Drugs (Glencoe Ill.: Free Press, 1960), with such recent rural studies as Rogers and Beal, op. cit.; James H.Cop, Maurice L. Sill, and Emory J. Brown, "TheFunction of Information Sources in the FarmPractice Adoption Process," Rural Sociology,XXIII (1958), 146-57; and Eugene A. Wilkening,"Roles of Communicating Agents in Technological Change in Agriculture," Social Forces,XXXIV (1956), 361-67. earlier formulation stended to infer the psychological stages of decision making rom the typical sequence of the media reported by respondents, but more recent formulations define the phases of decisions and the media employed in each phase independently. The studies cited above representing the most advanced approach to this problem are also considering the consequences of the use of media "appropriate" or "inappropriate" to a given stage of decision.
- This, of course, is the "two-step" flow of communication, a conception which finds support it the studies reviewed by Katz, op. cit.; Rogers and Beal, op. cit.; Lionburger, op. cit.; and F. E. Emery and. A.Oeser, Information, Decision and Action: Psychological Determinants of Changes inFarming Techniques (Melbourne, Australia: Universityof Melbourne Press, 1958).
- Cf. Coleman, Katz, and Menzel, op. cit., with E. A. Wilkening, Acceptance of Improved Farm Practices in Three Coastal Plain Counties (North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station Technical Bull. 98 [Chapel Hill, 1952]), and James Cop, Personal and Social Factors Associated with the Adoption of Recommended Farm Practices (Kansas State College, Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bull. [Manhattan, 1956]).
- See Bryce Ryan and Neal Gross, Acceptance and Diffusion of Hybrid Seed Corn in Two Iowa Communities (Iowa State College, Agricultural Experiment Station Bull. 372 [Ames, 1950]), and Emery and Oeser, op cit. The latter, however, suggest that, under certain conditions, personal Contact may be more important for early adopters even though they, in turn, are primary sources of influence for those who follow their lead.
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