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Beginnings of the communication
research. Paul Felix Lazarsfeld. Twostep communication flow. Bandwagon
Effect. Gallup’s research.
L8
Ing. Jiří Šnajdar
2014
Various aspects of communication have been the
subject of study since ancient times, and the
approach eventually developed into the academic
discipline known today as communication studies.
In ancient Greece and Rome, the study of rhetoric,
the art of oratory and persuasion, was a vital subject
for students. One significant ongoing debate was
whether one could be an effective speaker in a base
cause (Sophists) or whether excellent rhetoric came
from the excellence of the orator's character
(Socrates, Plato, Cicero).
Through the European Middle Ages and
Renaissance grammar, rhetoric, and logic
constituted the entire trivium, the base of the system
of classical learning in Europe.
Communication has existed since the beginning of
human beings, but it was not until the 20th century
that people began to study the process. As
communication technologies developed, so did the
serious study of communication.
When World War I ended, the interest in studying
communication intensified. The social-science study
was fully recognized as a legitimate discipline after
World War II.
Before becoming simply communication, or
communication studies, the discipline was formed
from three other major studies: psychology,
sociology, and political science.
Communication studies focus on communication as
central to the human experience, which involves
understanding how people behave in creating,
exchanging, and interpreting messages.
The study of communication reaches back to
antiquity and beyond, early twentieth-century work
by Charles Horton Cooley, Walter Lippmann, and
John Dewey have been of particular importance for
the academic discipline as it stands today.
Cooley, Lippmann, and Dewey capture themes like
the central importance of communication in social
life, the impact of changing technology upon culture,
and questions regarding the relationship between
communication, democracy, and community.
These concepts continue to drive scholars today.
Many of these concerns are also central to the work
of writers such as Gabriel Tarde and Theodor W.
Adorno, who have also made significant
contributions to the field.
The institutionalization of communication studies in
U.S. higher education and research has often been
traced to Columbia University, the University of
Chicago, and the University of Illinois UrbanaChampaign, where early pioneers such as Paul F.
Lazarsfeld, Harold Lasswell, and Wilbur Schramm
worked.
The work of Samuel Silas Curry, who founded the
School of Expression in 1879 in Boston, is also
noted in early communication research.
The Bureau of Applied Social Research was
established in 1944 at Columbia University by Paul
F. Lazarsfeld. It was a continuation of the Rockefeller
Foundation-funded Radio Project that he had led at
various institutions (University of Newark, Princeton)
from 1937, which had been at Columbia as the
Office of Radio Research since 1939.
The Institute for Communications Research was
founded at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 1947 by Wilbur Schramm, who was a
key figure in the post-war institutionalization of
communication studies in the U.S.
Schramm, who, in contrast to the more social
science-inspired figures at Columbia and Chicago,
had a background in English literature, developed
communication studies partly by merging existing
programs in speech communication, rhetoric, and,
especially, journalism under the aegis of
communication.
He also edited a textbook The Process and Effects
of Mass Communication (1954) that helped define
the field, partly by claiming Lazarsfeld, Lasswell, Carl
Hovland, and Kurt Lewin as its founding fathers.
Schramm established three important
communication institutes:
The Institute of Communications Research
(University of Illinois), the Institute for
Communication Research (Stanford University), and
the East-West Communication Institute (Honolulu).
Many of Schramm's students, such as Everett
Rogers, went on to make important contributions of
their own.
The work of what has been called 'medium theorists',
arguably defined by Harold Innis' (1950) Empire and
Communications grew increasingly important, and
was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in his
Understanding Media (1964). “McLuhan recognized
that the evolution of communication played a crucial
role in the human historical development and that
social changes following the World Wars were
directly connected with the rising of electrical
communication technologies, which contributed in
transforming the world into a ‘global village.’
The political turmoil of the 1960s worked to the
field’s advantage because mass media scholars
began to explore the influence that media had on
culture and society. “Growing recognition of the
importance of the media by both industry and the
public, as well as increasing respect for the field at
the university leveled to increased support for new
scholarship.”
Radio and television continued to develop
throughout the 1970s and this boom in diversity
“forced scholars to adopt a more convergent model
of communication.”
In 1980 the US Department of Education classified
“communication” as a practical discipline, which was
associated primarily with learning journalism and
media production. The same classification system
deemed speech and rhetorical studies a subcategory
of English.
The Department of Media and Communication at the
University of Leicester is based within the College of
Social Sciences and has been at the forefront of
media research since 1966, when it was first
established as the Centre for Mass Communication
Research. The UK's Social Science Research
Council (now the ESRC) invited CMCR to design
and deliver the country's first taught postgraduate
degree in media and communications.
Communication processes are a fundamental part
of virtually every aspect of human social life.
Communication Research publishes articles that
explore the processes, antecedents, and
consequences of communication in a broad range
of societal systems.
These include the following: mass media ;
interpersonal; health; political; new technology;
organization; intercultural; family
Why you need Communication Research?
Research and theory presented in all areas of
communication give you comprehensive coverage
of the field.
Rigorous, empirical analysis provides you with
research that’s reliable and high in quality. The
multi-disciplinary perspective contributes to a
greater understanding of communication
processes and outcomes.
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
(February 13, 1901 – August 30, 1976),
was one of the major figures in 20th-century
American sociology. The founder of Columbia
University's Bureau of Applied Social Research,
he exerted a tremendous influence over the
techniques and the organization of social
research. "It is not so much that he was an
American sociologist," one colleague said of him
after his death, "as it was that he determined
what American sociology would be."
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
He attended schools in Vienna, eventually
receiving a doctorate in mathematics (his doctoral
dissertation dealt with mathematical aspects of
Einstein's gravitational theory).
Together with Hans Zeisel they wrote a nowclassical study of the social impact of
unemployment on a small community:
Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (1932)
The Marienthal study attracted the attention of the
Rockefeller Foundation, leading to a two-year
traveling fellowship to the United States.
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
From 1933-1935, Lazarsfeld worked with the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration and
toured the United States, making contacts and
visiting the few universities that had programs
related to empirical social science research. It
was during this time that Lazarsfeld met Luther
Fry at the University of Rochester (which resulted
in the inspiration for the research done in
Personal Influence, written some twenty years
later) and Robert S. Lynd, who had written the
Middletown study.
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
he established an institute in Newark,
institutionalizing the marginal field of opinion
research, that Lazarsfeld felt was his most
important contribution. Lazarsfeld saw his
institute as an important bridge between
European and American models of research.
The Newark Center was clearly successful in
generating interest in both empirical studies and
in Lazarsfeld as a research manager,
demonstrated that empirical research could be of
help and of interest to both business and
academia.
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
Under "Administrative Research," as he called his
framework, a large, expert staff worked at a
research center, deploying a battery of socialscientific investigative methods - mass market
surveys, statistical analysis of data, focus group
work, etc.- to solve specific problems for specific
clients.
Funding came not only from the university, but
also from commercial clients who contracted out
research projects.
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
Lazarsfeld's interest in the persuasive elements
of mass media became a topic of great
importance during the Second World War and
this resulted in increased attention, and funding,
for communication research. By the 1950s, there
were increased concerns about the power of the
mass media, and with Elihu Katz, Lazarsfeld
published Personal Influence, which propounded
the theory of a two-step flow of communication,
opinion leadership, and of community as filters for
the mass media. Along with Robert K. Merton, he
popularized the idea of a narcotizing dysfunction
of media, along with its functional roles in society.
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld
Lazarsfeld's many contributions to sociological
method have earned him the title of the "founder
of modern empirical sociology".
Lazarsfeld made great strides in statistical survey
analysis, panel methods, latent structure analysis,
and contextual analysis. He is also considered a
co-founder of mathematical sociology.
Lazarsfeld also made significant contributions by
training many younger sociologists.
One of Lazarsfeld's biographers, Paul Neurath,
writes that there are "dozens of books and
hundreds of articles by his students and the
students of his students, all of which still breathe
the spirtit of this man's work".
Two-step flow of communication
The two-step flow of communication or Multistep
Flow Model, says that most people form their
opinions under the influence of opinion leaders,
who in turn are influenced by the mass media. So
according to this model, ideas flow from mass
media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider
population.
The Multistep Flow Model says that most people
form their opinions based on opinion leaders that
influence the media. Opinion leaders are those
initially exposed to a specific media content, and
who interpret it based on their own opinion.
They then begin to infiltrate these opinions through
the general public who become "opinion followers".
These "opinion leaders" gain their influence
through more elite media as opposed to
mainstream mass media.
In this process, social influence is created and
adjusted by the ideals and opinions of each
specific "elite media" group, and by these media
group's opposing ideals and opinions and in
combination with popular mass media sources.
Therefore, the leading influence in these opinions
is primarily a social persuasion.
The two-step flow of communication model
hypothesizes that ideas flow from mass media to
opinion leaders, and from them to a wider
population. It was first introduced by sociologist
Paul Lazarsfeld in 1944 and elaborated by Elihu
Katz and Lazarsfeld in 1955 and subsequent
publications.
Lowery and DeFleur argue the book was much
more than a simple research report: it was an effort
to interpret the authors' research within a
framework of conceptual schemes, theoretical
issues, and research findings drawn broadly from
the scientific study of small groups.
The two-step theory refined the ability to predict
how media messages influence audience behavior
and explains why certain media campaigns do not
alter audiences’ attitudes. This hypothesis provided
a basis for the multi-step flow theory of mass
communication.
Katz and Lazarsfeld concluded that: ... the
traditional image of the mass persuasion process
must make room for 'people' as intervening factors
between the stimuli of the media and resultant
opinions, decisions, and actions."
Bandwagon Effect
The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby
the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends
increases the more that they have already been
adopted by others.
In other words, the bandwagon effect is
characterized by the probability of individual
adoption increasing with respect to the proportion
who have already done so.
As more people come to believe in something,
others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of
the underlying evidence.
Bandwagon Effect
A psychological phenomenon whereby people do
something primarily because other people are
doing it, regardless of their own beliefs, which they
may ignore or override. The bandwagon effect has
wide implications, but is commonly seen in politics
and consumer behavior. This phenomenon can
also be seen during bull markets and the growth of
asset bubbles.
This tendency of people to align their beliefs and
behaviors with those of a group is also called "herd
mentality."
Bandwagon Effect
The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of
others can occur because individuals directly prefer
to conform, or because individuals derive
information from others.
Both explanations have been used for evidence of
conformity in psychological experiments.
For example, social pressure has been used to
explain Asch's conformity experiments, and
information has been used to explain Sherif's
autokinetic experiment.
Bandwagon Effect
When individuals make rational choices based on
the information they receive from others,
economists have proposed that information
cascades can quickly form in which people decide
to ignore their personal information signals and
follow the behavior of others. Cascades explain
why behavior is fragile - people understand that
they are based on very limited information. As a
result, fads form easily but are also easily
dislodged.
Such informational effects have been used to
explain political bandwagons.
Bandwagon Effect
The bandwagon effect occurs in voting: some
people vote for those candidates or parties who are
likely to succeed (or are proclaimed as such by the
media), hoping to be on the "winner's side" in the
end.
The bandwagon effect has been applied to
situations involving majority opinion, such as
political outcomes, where people alter their
opinions to the majority view.
Bandwagon Effect
It is also said to be important in the American
Presidential Primary elections. States all vote at
different times, spread over some months, rather
than all on one day.
Some states (Iowa, New Hampshire) have special
precedence to go early while others have to wait
until a certain date. This is often said to give undue
influence to these states, a win in these early
states is said to give a candidate the "Big Mo"
(momentum) and has propelled many candidates
to win the nomination.
Bandwagon Effect
Several studies have tested this theory of the
bandwagon effect in political decision making. In
the 1994 study of Robert K. Goidel and Todd G.
Shields in The Journal of Politics, 180 students at
the University of Kentucky were randomly assigned
to nine groups and were asked questions about the
same set of election scenarios.
Bandwagon Effect
Expectations played a significant role throughout
the study. It was found that independents are twice
as likely to vote for the Republican candidate when
the Republican is expected to win. From the
results, it was also found that when the Democrat
was expected to win, independent Republicans
and weak Republicans were more likely to vote for
the Democratic candidate.
Bandwagon Effect
Use in microeconomics
In microeconomics, bandwagon effect describes
interactions of demand and preference.
The bandwagon effect arises when people's
preference for a commodity increases as the
number of people buying it increases.
This interaction potentially disturbs the normal
results of the theory of supply and demand, which
assumes that consumers make buying decisions
solely based on price and their own personal
preference.
Gallup’s research.
Gallup, Inc., is an American research-based, global
performance-management consulting company.
Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company
became famous for its public opinion polls, which
were conducted in the United States and other
countries.
Today, Gallup provides research and strategic
consulting to major businesses and organizations
around the world.
Some of Gallup's key practice areas are employee
engagement, customer engagement, talent
management, and well-being.
Gallup’s research.
Gallup has 30 offices in more than 20 countries.
There are about 2,000 employees in the privately
held company working in four divisions: Gallup Poll,
Gallup Consulting, Gallup University, and Gallup
Press.
History
George Gallup founded the American Institute of
Public Opinion, the precursor of the Gallup
Organization, in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1935. He
wished to objectively determine the opinions held
by the people.
Gallup’s research.
In 1936, Gallup successfully predicted that Franklin
Roosevelt would defeat Alfred Landon for the U.S.
presidency; this event quickly popularized the
company.
In 1938, Gallup and Gallup Vice President David
Ogilvy began conducting market research for
advertising companies and the film industry. In
1958, the modern Gallup Organization was formed
when George Gallup grouped all of his polling
operations into one organization.
Gallup’s research.
After Gallup's death in 1984, his family sold the firm
to Selection Research, Incorporated (SRI), a
research firm headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska,
in 1988. SRI, founded in 1969 by the psychologist
Don Clifton, pioneered the use of talent-based
structured psychological interviews.
SRI wanted the Gallup name to use on its polls,
which gave them more credibility and higher
response rates.
Historically, the Gallup Poll has measured and
tracked the public's attitudes concerning political,
social, and economic issues, including sensitive or
controversial subjects.
Gallup conducts 1,000 interviews per day, 350 days
out of the year, among both landline and cell
phones across the U.S. for its health and well-being
survey and political and economic survey.
Gallup Daily tracking methodology relies on live
interviewers, dual-frame random-digit-dial sampling
(which includes landline as well as cellular
telephone phone sampling to reach those in cell
phone-only households), and uses a multi-call
design to reach respondents not contacted on the
initial attempt.
Gallup completes 500 cellphone surveys and 500
landline surveys daily, divided evenly between the
two topical questionnaires. The population of the
U.S. that relies only on cell phones makes 34% of
the population.
The findings from Gallup's U.S. surveys are based
on the organization's standard national telephone
samples, consisting of list-assisted random-digitdial (RDD) telephone samples using a
proportionate, stratified sampling design.
A computer randomly generates the phone
numbers Gallup calls from all working phone
exchanges (the first three numbers of your local
phone number) and not-listed phone numbers;
thus, Gallup is as likely to call unlisted phone
numbers as well as listed phone numbers.
When respondents to be interviewed are selected
at random, every adult has an equal probability of
falling into the sample. The typical sample size for a
Gallup poll, either a traditional stand-alone poll or
one night's interviewing from Gallup's Daily
tracking, is 1,000 national adults with a margin of
error of ±4 percentage points.
Gallup's Daily tracking process now allows Gallup
analysts to aggregate larger groups of interviews
for more detailed subgroup analysis. But the
accuracy of the estimates derived only marginally
improves with larger sample sizes.
After Gallup collects and processes survey data,
each respondent is assigned a weight so that the
demographic characteristics of the total weighted
sample of respondents match the latest estimates
of the demographic characteristics of the adult
population available from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Gallup weights data to census estimates for gender,
race, age, educational attainment, and region.
The data are weighted daily by number of adults in
the household and the respondents' reliance on cell
phones, to adjust for any disproportion in selection
probabilities.
From 1936 to 2008, Gallup Polls correctly predicted
the winner of the presidential election with the
notable exceptions of the 1948 Thomas DeweyHarry S. Truman election, where nearly all pollsters
predicted a Dewey victory (which also led to the
infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline), and
1976, when they inaccurately projected a slim
victory by Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter.
For the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Gallup
correctly predicted the winner, but was rated 17th
out of 23 polling organizations in terms of the
precision of its pre-election polls relative to the final
results.
In 2005, Gallup began its World Poll, which
continually surveys citizens in 160 countries,
representing more than 98% of the world's adult
population.
The Gallup World Poll consists of more than 100
global questions as well as region-specific items. It
includes the following global indexes: law and
order, food and shelter, institutions and
infrastructure, good jobs, wellbeing, and brain gain.
Gallup also works with organizations, cities,
governments and countries to create custom items
and indexes to gather information on specific topics
of interest.
Gallup interviews approximately 1,000 residents per
country. The target population is the entire civilian,
non-institutionalized population, aged 15 and older.
Gallup asks each respondent the survey questions
in his or her own language to produce statistically
comparable results.
Gallup uses telephone surveys in countries where
telephone coverage represents at least 80% of the
population. Where telephone penetration is less
than 80%, Gallup uses face-to-face interviewing.
Gallup's Leadership Research
In researching Strengths Based Leadership, Gallup
scientists studied more than one million work
teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth
interviews with leaders, drew on 50 years of Gallup
Polls about the world's most admired leaders, and
even interviewed more than 10,000 followers
around the world to ask exactly why they followed
the most important leader in their life.
The most effective leaders surround themselves
with the right people and then maximize their team.
While the best leaders are not well-rounded, the
best teams are. Gallup's research found that topperforming teams have strengths in four distinct
domains of leadership strength: Executing,
Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic
Thinking.
People follow leaders for very specific reasons.
When we asked thousands of followers, they were
able to describe exactly what they need from a
leader with remarkable clarity: trust, compassion,
stability, and hope.