mass-communication-theory

elite pluralism
Theory viewing
society as composed
of interlocking
pluralistic
groups led by
opinion leaders
who rely on media
for information
about politics
and the social
world
Red Scare
Period in U.S.
history, late
1950s to early
1960s, in which
basic freedoms
were threatened
by searches for
“Reds,” or communists,
in media
and government
Chapter 2 Four Eras of Mass Communication Theory 33
In 1960, several classic studies of media effects (Campbell et al., 1960;
Deutschmann and Danielson 1960; Klapper, 1960) provided apparently definitive
support for the limited-effects notions. By 1961, V. O. Key had published Public
Opinion and American Democracy, a theoretical and methodological tour de force
integrating limited-effects notions with social and political theory to create a perspective
that is now known as elite pluralism. This theory views democratic society
as made up of interlocking pluralistic groups led by opinion leaders who rely on
media for information about politics and the social world. These leaders are well
informed by media even though their followers are mostly apathetic and ignorant.
In the 1950s and 1960s, advocates of mass society notions came under increasing
attack from limited-effects theorists as “unscientific” or “irrational” because
they questioned “hard scientific findings.” Mass society notions were further discredited
within academia because they became associated with the anti-Communist
Red Scare promoted by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s. McCarthy
and his allies focused considerable attention on purging alleged Communists from
the media. These purges were justified using mass society arguments—average people
needed to be protected from media manipulation. Limited-effects theorists argued
that average people were well protected from media influence by opinion
leaders who could be trusted to filter out Communist propaganda before it reached
these ordinary Americans.
By the mid-1960s, the debate between mass society and limited-effects advocates
appeared to be over—at least within the mass communication research community.
The body of empirical research findings continued to grow, and almost all
were consistent with the latter view. Little or no empirical research supported mass
society thinking. This was not surprising, because most empirical researchers
trained at this time were warned against its fallacies. For example, in the 1960s, a
time of growing concern about violence in the United States and the dissolution of
respect for authority, researchers and theorists from psychology, rather than mass
communication, were most active and prominent in examining television’s contribution
to these societal ills (we will examine their efforts in Chapter 8). Many communication
scientists stopped looking for powerful media effects and concentrated
instead on documenting minimal, limited effects. Some of the original media researchers
had become convinced that media research would never produce any important
new findings and returned to work in political science or sociology.
In a controversial essay, Bernard Berelson (1959), who worked closely with
Paul Lazarsfeld, declared the field of communication research to be dead. There
simply was nothing left to study when it came to the mass media. Berelson argued
that it was time to move on to more important work. Ironically, he wrote his essay
just before the field of media research underwent explosive growth. Throughout
the late 1960s and the 1970s, students flooded into university journalism schools
and communication departments. As these grew, so did their faculty. As the number
of faculty members increased, so did the volume of research. But was there
anything left to study? Were there any important research questions that weren’t
already answered? Were there any important findings left to uncover? In fact,
many American social science researchers believed there were. Challenge came to
limited-effects theory from several fronts, primarily from psychologists and sociologists
interested in media’s large-scale societal influence.
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