Page 133 - Cultural Studies and Political Economy

122 Chapter Four

Pooley maintains that the inaugural fifteen pages of Personal Influence had
“more influence on the field’s historical self-understanding than anything
published before or since. . . . This ‘powerful-to-limited effects’ story line,”
he continued, “remains textbook boilerplate and literature review dogma fifty
years later.” 23
According to Lazarsfeld and Katz, prior to publication of their book, the
“potency of the media” had been undoubted: “The media of communication
were looked upon as a new kind of unifying force—a simple kind of nervous
system—reaching out to every eye and ear, in a society characterized by an
amorphous social organization and a paucity of interpersonal relations.” 24
The two-step flow, in contrast, as proposed by Lazarsfeld and Katz, insisted
that people’s attitudes are little affected directly by media, but rather are in-
fluenced by opinion leaders (everyday contacts). Even the title, Personal In-
fluence, is indicative of the flight from, or denial of, political economy: per-
sonal influence is stressed, not structures of influence, or institutions of
power. 25
Soon the two-step flow was superceded by the multi-step flow, forwarded
26
by such mainline researchers as Everett Rogers and Floyd Shoemaker. They
maintained that “the ultimate number of relays between the media and final
27
receivers is variable,” which is to say that general audiences are even fur-
ther removed from direct media influence than had been proposed in the orig-
inal model.
According to Chaffee and Hochheimer, “for four decades ‘limited effects’
was a major defense of owners of new media technologies, including televi-
sion, from government regulation in the United States.” Likewise, Schramm
28
remarked that “the two-step flow hypothesis was widely quoted and used
29
through the 1950s and 1960s.” Joseph Klapper’s The Effects of Mass Com-
30
munication (1960) was perhaps “the watershed” of the doctrine; at the time
of the book’s publication, Klapper was director of social research for CBS, of
which Frank Stanton (a close colleague, coauthor, and friend of Lazarsfeld)
was president. 31
The law of minimal effects may be regarded as an umbrella term—a
prophylactic—under cover of which researchers investigated ways of chang-
ing people’s beliefs and perceptions. Carl Hovland’s studies on persuasion,
for example, among others, received funding during the war from the U.S.
military and, after the peace, from funds flowing from the military through
the Rockefeller Foundation. According to Lowery and DeFleur, between
1946 and 1961 Hovland’s team conducted more than fifty experiments on
how opinions and beliefs could be modified by persuasive communication. 32
Schramm summarized the research findings as follows: “Experimental re-
search on opinion change showed that one-third to one-half of an audience is