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Cultural Studies and the Political Economy of Media Scholarship 123

significantly affected by even a single exposure to a persuasive message.” 33
Despite such evidence, mainline researchers (including Schramm as we will
see momentarily) continued supporting the “law;” as late as 2007, Elihu Katz,
for example, was still claiming that “the conclusion of ‘limited effects’ [was]
echoed repeatedly in studies of mass persuasion.” 34
The “law,” however, was also belied by practices and premises of media
companies and commercial propagandists. Broadcasters sold advertising on the
assumption that activation (getting people to act) is an important and sought-
after consequence of media exposure, although in The People’s Choice Lazars-
feld had classified activation as a “minimal effect.” Hitler’s “big lie theory”
contended that if something is said often enough it becomes “true” for many, a
principle endorsed also by such PR industry founders as Ivy Lee and Edward
Bernays, but for Lazarsfeld “reinforcement” was a minimal effect. 35
An insight into the longevity of the minimal effects doctrine, despite abun-
dant contradictory evidence, is gleaned by noting Lazarsfeld’s admission,
confided to researcher Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann, that he abandoned com-
munication research in mid-career for the safer haven of mathematical soci-
ology because “he could no longer take the pressure that the media exerted on
a communication researcher.” 36 Likewise, as noted in a previous chapter,
Lazarsfeld declined to undertake research projects that might rile his major
clients, the commercial broadcasters. But the irony runs deeper. As Pooley re-
marks, “Even while ‘limited effects’-style conclusions were published, in
Personal Influence for example, research outfits like Lazarsfeld and Katz’s
Bureau were under federal contract to design effective propaganda campaigns
overseas. . . . The Bureau was hardly concerned to show that media influence
is limited, since it was in the business of making persuasion work for its com-
mercial and government clients.” 37
Given such blatant contradictions, it is certainly understandable that an op-
positional (albeit marginalized) media paradigm would arise. In 1948, at the
University of Illinois, Dallas W. Smythe began teaching a course on the po-
litical economy of communication. Smythe was joined at Illinois in 1956 by
38
George Gerbner and later, albeit briefly, by Herbert Schiller. That their line of
research was, and remains, “marginal” to the U.S. mainstream is warranted
by the fact (among many others) that Everett Rogers’ A History of Communi-
cation Study mentions Smythe but once and that merely in a footnote ac-
knowledging that he was one of Wilbur Schramm’s hires. Schiller’s name,
too, appears but once in Rogers’ history: in a diagram purporting to depict
critical research. And there is no reference at all to Gerbner, even though (or
perhaps because) Gerbner was particularly successful in challenging the law
of minimal effects on its own terms through empirically rigorous “encultura-
tion” studies. 39