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••• Douglas Kellner •••

approach was largely textual, centred on the analysis and criticism of texts as cultural
artefacts, using methods primarily derived from the humanities. The methods of communi-
cations research, by contrast, employed more empirical methodologies, ranging from
straight quantitative research, empirical studies of specific cases or domains, or historical
research. Topics in this area included analysis of the political economy of the media, audi-
ence reception and study of media effects, media history, the interaction of media institu-
tions with other domains of society and the like. See Kellner (1995) for analyses of how the
Frankfurt School, British cultural studies, and French postmodern theory all overcome the
bifurcation of the field of culture and communications into text- and humanities-based
approaches opposed to empirical and social science-based enterprises. As I am arguing here,
a transdisciplinary approach overcomes such bifurcation and delineates a richer and broader
perspective for the study of culture and communications.
4 The contributions of the Frankfurt School to audience reception theory is often completely
overlooked, but Walter Benjamin constantly undertook studies of how audiences use the
materials of popular media and inaugurated a form of reception studies; see Benjamin (1969:
217ff.). Leo Löwenthal also carried out reception studies of literature, popular magazines,
political demagogues, and other phenomena (1949; 1957; 1961). On Frankfurt experiments
with studies of media effects, see Wiggershaus (1994: 441ff.).
5 There were, to be sure, some exceptions and qualifications to this ‘classical’ model: Adorno
would occasionally note a critical or utopian moment within mass culture and the possibil-
ity of audience reception against the grain; see the examples in Kellner (1989). But although
one can find moments that put in question the more bifurcated division between high and
low culture and the model of mass culture as consisting of nothing except ideology and
modes of manipulation which incorporate individuals into the existing society and culture,
generally, the Frankfurt School model is overly reductive and monolithic, and thus needs
radical reconstruction – which I have attempted to do in my work over the past two decades.

References

Adorno, T.W. (1941) ‘On popular music’, (with G. Simpson), Studies in Philosophy and Social
Science, 9(1): 17–48.
Adorno, T.W. ([1932] 1978) ‘On the social situation of music’, Telos 35 (Spring): 129–65.
Adorno, T.W. (1982) ‘On the fetish character of music and the regression of hearing’, in A. Arato
and E. Gebhardt (eds) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York: Continuum,
pp. 270–99.
Adorno, T.W. (1989) ‘On jazz’, in S. Bronner and D. Kellner (eds) Critical Theory and Society: A
Reader. New York: Routledge, pp. 199–209.
Adorno, T.W. (1991) The Culture Industry. London: Routledge.
Adorno, T.W. (1994) The Stars Down to Earth and Other Essays on the Irrational in Culture. London:
Routledge.
Adorno, T.W. et al. ([1950] 1969) The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Norton.
Agger, B. (1992) Cultural Studies as Critical Theory. London: The Falmer Press.
Arato, A. and Gebhardt. E, (eds) (1982) The Essential Frankfurt School Reader. New York:
Continuum.
Aronowitz, S. (1993) Roll Over Beethoven. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New
England.
Benjamin, W. (1969) Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.
Benjamin, W. (1999) ‘The artist as producer’, in W. Benjamin, Collected Writings, vol. 2.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Benjamin, W. (2000) The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Best, S. and Kellner, D. (2001) The Postmodern Adventure: Science Technology, and Cultural Studies
at the Third Millennium. New York and London: Guilford and Routledge.

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