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Contents

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• What is Communication?

Perspectives on Theory

• Introduction: An overview of theory in communication study

Theorists and Approaches to Communication

• Uncertainty Reduction: Charles Berger, Richard Calabrese
• Propaganda and the Public: Walter Lippmann, Harold D. Lasswell, Edward Bernays, and Jacques Ellul
• Uses and Gratifications: Hetzog, Katz, and friends
• The Frankfurt School: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
• Semiotics and Myth: Roland Barthes
• Orality and Literacy: Walter Ong
• Diffusion of Innovations: Gabriel Tarde, Everett Rogers
• Sociological Systems: Niklas Luhmann
• Network Society: Manuel Castells

License

• GNU Free Documentation License

What is Communication?

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Some have suggested that the very common practice of beginning a communication theory class with an attempt to define communication and theory is flawed pedagogy. Nonetheless, it is difficult to begin a study of the theories of communication without first having some grasp, however temporary and tenuous, of what sorts of phenomena "count" as communication, and what kinds of ideas about those phenomena constitute "theory," or, more specifically, good theory.

Communication is a slippery concept, and while we may casually use the word with some frequency, it is difficult to arrive at a precise definition that is agreeable to most of those who consider themselves communication scholars. Communication is so deeply rooted in human behaviors and the structures of society that it is difficult to think of social or behavioral events from which communication is absent.

We may turn to etymology for clues: "communication" (from the latin "communicare") literally means "to put in common", "to share". While the term was originally meant in a very material sense, applying to tangible things, it has since evolved to apply primarily to knowledge and information.

We might say that communication consists of transmitting information from one person to another. In fact, many scholars of communication take this as a working definition, and use Lasswell's maxim ("who says what to whom to what effect") as a means of circumscribing the field of communication. Others suggest that there is a ritual process of communication that cannot be artificially abstracted from a particular historical and social context. As a relatively young field of inquiry, it is probably premature to expect a conceptualization of communication that is shared among all or most of those who work in the area. Furthermore, communication theory itself is, in many ways, an attempt to describe and explain precisely what communication is.

Indeed, a theory is some form of explanation of a class of observed phenomena. Karl Popper colorfully described theory as "the net which we throw out in order to catch the world--to rationalize, explain, and dominate it." The idea of a theory lies at the heart of any scholarly process, and while those in the social sciences tend to adopt the tests of a good theory from the natural sciences, many who study communication adhere to an idea of communication theory that is akin to that found in other academic fields.

This book approaches communication theory from a biographical perspective, in an attempt to show theory development within a social context. Many of these theorists would not actually consider themselves "communication" researchers. The field of communication study is remarkably inclusionary, and integrates theoretical perspectives originally developed in a range of other disciplines.

Introduction

Evaluating theory

What makes a theory "good"? Six criteria might be said to be properties of a strong theory. (The terminology presented here is drawn from Littlejohn, Theories of Human Communication, but a similar set of criteria are widely accepted both within and outside the field of communication.)

Theoretical Scope 

How general is the theory? That is, how widely applicable is it? In most cases, a theory that may only be applied within a fairly narrow set of circumstances is not considered as useful as a theory that encompasses a very wide range of communicative interactions. The ideal, of course, is a theory that succinctly explains the nature of human communication as a whole.

Appropriateness 

Theories are often evaluated based upon how well their epistemological, ontological, and axiological assumptions relate to the issue or question being explained. If a theory recapitulates its assumptions (if it is tautological), it is not an effective theory.

Heuristic value 

Some theories suggest the ways in which further research may be conducted. By presenting an explanatory model, the theory generates questions or hypotheses that can be operationalized relatively easily. In practical terms, the success of a theory may rest on how readily other researchers may continue to do fruitful work in reaction or support.

Validity 

It may seem obvious that for a theory to be good, it must also be valid. Validity refers to the degree to which the theory accurately represents the true state of the world. Are the arguments internally consistent and are its predictions and claims derived logically from its assumptions? Many also require that theories be falsifiable; that is, theories that present predictions that--if they prove to be incorrect--invalidate the theory. The absence of such questions significantly reduces the value of the theory, since a theory that cannot be proven false (perhaps) cannot be shown to be accurate, either.

Parsimony 

The law of parsimony (Occam's razor) dictates that a theory should provide the simplest possible (viable) explanation for a phenomenon. Others suggest that good theory exhibits an aesthetic quality, that a good theory is beautiful or natural. That it leads to an "Aha!" moment in which an explanation feels as if it fits.

Openness 

Theories, perhaps paradoxically, should not exist to the absolute exclusion of other theories. Theory should not be dogma: it should encourage and provide both for skepticism and should--to whatever degree possible--be compatible with other accepted theory.

It is important to note that a theory is not "true," or "false" (despite the above discussion of falsifiability), but rather better or worse at explaining the causes of a particular event. Especially within the social sciences, we may find several different theories that each explain a phenomenon in useful ways. There is value in being able to use theories as "lenses" through which you can understand communication, and through which you can understand the world together with other scholars.

Theories and Models

Many suggest that there is no such thing as a successful body of communication theory, but that we have been relatively more successful in generating models of communication. A model, according to a seminal 1952 article by Karl Deutsch ("On Communication Models in the Social Sciences"), is "a structure of symbols and operating rules which is supposed to match a set of relevant points in an existing structure or process." In other words, it is a simplified representation or template of a process that can be used to help understand the nature of communication in a social setting. Such models are necessarily not one-to-one maps of the real world, but they are successful only insofar as they accurately represent the most important elements of the real world, and the dynamics of their relationship to one another.

Deutsch suggests that a model should provide four functions. It should organize a complex system (while being as general as possible), and should provide an heuristic function. Both these functions are similar to those listed above for theories. He goes on to suggest models should be as original as possible, that they should not be obvious enough that they fail to shed light on the existing system. They should also provide some form of measurement of the system that will work analogously within the model and within the actual system being observed.

Models are tools of inquiry in a way that theories may not be. By representing the system being observed, they provide a way of working through the problems of a "real world" system in a more abstract way. As such, they lend themselves to the eventual construction of theory, though it may be that theory of the sort found in the natural sciences is something that cannot be achieved in the social sciences. Unfortunately, while models provide the "what" and the "how," they are not as suited to explaining "why," and therefore are rarely as satisfying as strong theory.

Laws and Rules

The aim in the natural sciences is to create what, since Hempel at least, has been called covering law. Covering law requires the explicit relationship of a causal condition to an effect within certain bounderies. It has been observed that social relationships are very difficult to capture within the structure of covering law. Perhaps this is because people have the annoying habit of violating "natural laws." Wittgenstein's later work in particular put forward the possibility that rules-based systems may provide a more effective descriptive model of human communication. This may account for the propensity of communication theorists to develop models more often than theory. Rules-based approaches are particularly popular within speech communication, where human interaction is seen to proceed along structural, though not necessarily causal, lines.

Mapping the Theoretical Landscape

A discipline is defined in large part by its theoretical structure. Instead communication, at its present state, might be considered a field of inquiry. Theory is often borrowed from other social sciences, while communication provides few examples of theories that have been exported to other disciplines. What is taught as communication theory at one institution is unlikely to be at all similar to what is taught within other communication schools. This theoretical variegation makes it difficult to come to terms with the field as a whole. That said, there are some common taxonomies that are used to divide up the range of communication research. Two common mappings will be briefly presented here.

Many authors and researchers divide communication by what are sometimes called "contexts" or "levels," but more often represent institutional histories. The study of communication in the US, while occurring within departments of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology among others, generally developed from schools of rhetoric and schools of journalism. While many of these have become "departments of communication," they often retain their historical roots, adhering largely to theories from speech communication in the former case, and mass media in the latter. The great divide between speech communication and mass communication is joined by a number of smaller sub-areas of communication research, including intercultural and international communication, small group communication, communication technology, policy and legal studies of communication, telecommunication, and work done under a variety of other labels. Some of these departments take a largely social science perspective, others tend more heavily toward the humanities, and still others are geared more toward production and professional preparation.

These "levels" of communication provide some way of grouping communication theories, but inevitably, there are theories and concepts that leak from one area to another, or that fail to find a home at all. If communication is a cohesive field of study, one would expect to see a cohesive set of theories, or at least a common understanding of the structure of the field, and this appears to still be developing.

Another way of dividing up the communication field emphasizes the assumptions that undergird particular theories, models, and approaches. While this tends also to be based on institutional divisions, theories within each of the seven "traditions" of communication theory that Robert Craig suggests tend to reinforce one another, and retain the same ground epistemological and axiological assumptions. His traditions include the rhetorical, semiotic, phenomenological, cybernetic, sociopsychological, and sociocultural traditions. Each of these are, for Craig, clearly defined against the others and remain cohesive approaches to describing communicative behavior. As a taxonomic aid, these labels help to organize theory by its assumptions, and help researchers to understand the reasons some theories may be incommensurable.

While these two approaches are very commonly used, it seems that they decentralize the place of language and machines as communicative technologies. The idea that communication is (as Vygotsky argues) the primary tool of a species that is defined by its tools remains at the outskirts of communication theory. It is represented somewhat in the Toronto School of communication theory (alternatively sometimes called medium theory) as represented by the work of Innis, McLuhan, and others. It seems that the ways in which individuals and groups use the technologies of communication--and in some cases are used by them--remains central to what communication researchers do, and the ideas that surround this, and in particular the place of persuasion, are constants across both the "traditions" and "levels" of communication theory.

Uncertainty Reduction

Advances in Interpersonal Communication: Charles Berger, Richard Calabrese and Key Uncertainty Theorists

Since the mid-twentieth century, the concept of information has been a strong foundation for communication research and the development of communication theory. Information exchange is a basic human function in which individuals request, provide, and exchange information with the goal of reducing uncertainty. Uncertainty Reduction theory (URT), accredited to Charles R. Berger and Richard J. Calabrese (1975), recognized that reducing uncertainty was a central motive of communication. Through the development of URT, these scholars pioneered the field of interpersonal communication by examining this significant relationship in uncertainty research.

Health and Bryant (2000) state: “One of the motivations underpinning interpersonal communication is the acquisition of information with which to reduce uncertainty” (p. 153). The study of information is basic to all fields of communication, but its relation to the study of uncertainty in particular advanced theoretical research in the field of interpersonal communication. URT places the role of communication into the central focus which was a key step in the development of the field of interpersonal communication. Berger and Calabrese (1975) note: “When communication researchers have conducted empirical research on the interpersonal communication process, they have tended to employ social psychological theories as starting points” (p. 99). The research underlying the theory and efforts made by other contemporaries marked the emergence of interpersonal communication research; with the development of URT, communication researchers began to look to communication for theories of greater understanding rather than theoretical approaches founded in other social sciences.

The History of Interpersonal Communication Research: A Brief Overview

Traditionally, communication has been viewed as an interdisciplinary field. Interpersonal communication is most often linked to studies into language, social cognition, and social psychology. Prior to the 1960s, only a modest amount of research was completed under the label of interpersonal communication. Heath and Bryant (2000) marked this time as the origin of the field of interpersonal communication: “Particularly since 1960, scholars adopted communication as the central term because they wanted to study it as a significant and unique aspect of human behavior” (p. 59).

The 1960s produced research that impacted the development of an interpersonal field. Research in psychiatry examined personality and the influence of relationships, finding that psychiatric problems were not only a result of self problems, but a result of relational problems as well. Research trends in humanistic psychology and existentialism inspired the idea that relationships could be improved through effective communication (Heath & Bryant, 2000).

Research conducted under the title of interpersonal communication initially focused on persuasion, social influence, and small group processes. Theories explored the role of learning, dissonance, balance, social judgment, and reactance (Berger, 2005). Kurt Lewin, a forefather of social psychology, played a considerable role in influencing interpersonal research pioneers such as Festinger, Heider, Kelley, and Hovland.

By the 1970s, research interests began to shift into the realm of social interaction, relational development, and relational control. This was influenced by the research of such scholars as Knapp, Mehrabian, Altman, Taylor, Duck, Kelley, and Thibaut. During the later part of the decade and into the 1980s, the cognitive approaches of Hewes, Planalp, Roloff, and Berger became popular along with research into behavioral and communicative adaptation by Giles, Burgoon, and Patterson. Berger (2005) states: “these early theoretical forays helped shape the interpersonal comm research agenda during the past two decades” (p. 416).

Today, interpersonal communication tends to focus on dyadic communication, communication involving face-to-face interaction, or communication as a function of developing relationships. Research into interpersonal communication theory typically focuses on the development, maintenance, and dissolution of relationships. It has been recognized that interpersonal communication is motivated by uncertainty reduction (Berger & Calabrese, 1975). Since its introduction in the 1970s, uncertainty has been recognized as a major field of study that has contributed to the development of the field of communication as a whole. This chapter strives to focus on those theorists who pioneered the research of uncertainty reduction in communication. Their work is crucial to the development of the field of interpersonal communication, and is central in our understanding of interpersonal processes.

Defining Uncertainty

Since uncertainty has been identified as an important construct, necessary to the study of communication, it would be beneficial to know when the concept originated, and how it has been defined and studied. One way to consider uncertainty is through the theoretical framework of information theory. Shannon and Weaver (1949) proposed that uncertainty existed in a given situation when there was a high amount of possible alternatives and the probability of their event was relatively equal. Shannon and Weaver related this view of uncertainty to the transmission of messages, but their work also contributed to the development of URT.

Berger and Calabrese (1975) adopted concepts from the information theorists as well as Heider's (1958) research in attribution. Berger and Calabrese (1975) expanded the concept of uncertainty to fit interpersonal communication by defining uncertainty as the “number of alternative ways in which each interactant might behave” (p. 100). The greater the level of uncertainty that exists in a situation, the smaller the chance individuals will be able to predict behaviors and occurrences.

During interactions individuals are not only faced with problems of predicting present and past behaviors, but also explaining why partners behave or believe in the way that they do. Berger and Bradac’s (1982) definition of uncertainty highlighted the complexity of this process when they stated: “Uncertainty, then, can stem from the large number of alternative things that a stranger can believe or potentially say” (p. 7).

Uncertainty plays a significant role when examining relationships. High levels of uncertainty can severely inhibit relational development. Uncertainty can cause stress and anxiety which can lead to low levels of communicator competence (West & Turner, 2000). Incompetent communicators may not be able to develop relationships or may be too anxious to engage in initial interactions. West and Turner (2000) note that lower levels of uncertainty caused increased verbal and nonverbal behavior, increased levels of intimacy, and increased liking. In interactions individuals are expected to increase predictability with the goal that this will lead to the ability to predict and explain what will occur in future interactions. When high uncertainty exists it is often difficult to reach this goal.

Although individuals seek to reduce uncertainty, high levels of certainty and predictability can also inhibit a relationship. Heath and Bryant (2000) state: “Too much certainty and predictability can deaden a relationship; too much uncertainty raises its costs to an unacceptable level. Relationship building is a dialectic of stability and change, certainty and uncertainty” (p. 271). Therefore uncertainty is a concept that plays a significant role in interpersonal communication. The following theorists explore how communication can be a vehicle individuals utilize to reduce uncertainty.

Early Influences

The following theorists significantly contributed to the examination of uncertainty in communication. The influence of their work can be seen reflected in the assumptions of Berger and Calabrese (1975).

Leon Festinger (1919-1989)

Leon Festinger studied psychology at the University of Iowa under the direction of Kurt Lewin. Lewin, one of the founders of social psychology and a pioneer in the research of group dynamics, had a substantial influence on the development of interpersonal communication. After graduation, Festinger initially worked at the University of Rochester, but in 1945 he followed Lewin to Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Research Center for Group Dynamics. After Lewin's death, Festinger worked at the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and the New School for Social Research (Samelson, 2000).

Much of Festinger’s research followed his mentor Lewin and further developed Lewin’s theories. Several of Festinger's theories were highly influential on the emerging field of interpersonal communication and on the development of URT. Festinger is best known for the theories of Cognitive Dissonance and Social Comparison. Cognitive Dissonance theory (CDT) attempted to explain how an imbalance among cognitions might affect an individual. Lewin foreshadowed CDT in his observations regarding attitude change in small groups (Festinger, 1982). CDT allows for three relationships to occur among cognitions: a consonant relationship, in which cognitions are in equilibrium with each other; a dissonant relationship, in which cognitions are in competition with each other; and an irrelevant relationship, in which the cognitions in question have no effect on one another (West & Turner, 2000). Cognitive Dissonance, like uncertainty, has an element of arousal and discomfort that individuals seek to reduce.

Social Comparison theory postulates that individuals look to feedback from others to evaluate their performance and abilities. To evaluate the self, the individual usually seeks the opinions of others who are similar to the self. This need for social comparison can result in conformity pressures (Trenholm & Jensen, 2004). Berger and Calabrese (1975) related social comparison to URT by stating that “Festinger has suggested that persons seek out similar others who are proximate when they experience a high level of uncertainty regarding the appropriateness of their behavior and/or opinions in a particular situation” (p. 107).

Festinger received the Distinguished Scientist award of the American Psychological Association and the Distinguished Senior Scientist Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. Festinger’s legacy is significant, and his theoretical influence can still be recognized in contemporary social science research. Aronson (in Festinger, 1980) stated, “It was in this era that Leon Festinger invented and developed his theory of cognitive dissonance, and in my opinion, social psychology has not been the same since” (p. 3).

Fritz Heider (1896-1988)

Fritz Heider earned his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Graz. During his time in Europe, Heider worked with many renowned psychologists such as Wolfgang Köhler, Max Wertheimer, and Kurt Lewin. Heider, like Festinger, recognized Lewin as a substantial impact on his life: “I want to pay tribute to [Lewin's] stimulating influence, which has affected much of my thinking and which is still strong even in this book, although it does not derive directly from his work” (Heider, 1958, p. vii). In 1929, Heider moved to the United States to work at Smith College and later the University of Kansas where he worked for the remainder of his life (Ash, 2000).

Heider’s 1958 publication, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, signified a major breakthrough in the study of interpersonal communication (Heath & Bryant, 2000). At this point, social psychologists like Heider expanded their research to focus on interpersonal relations as an important field of study. Though many social psychologists focused on behavior in interpersonal relations, their research served as a gateway for research examining communication in interpersonal relationships. Heider’s text provided one of the first forums for discussing relational phenomena.

Heider’s work reflected Lewin’s cognitive approach to behavior. Heider (1958) focused on theories in cognitive consistency, emphasizing that individuals prefer when their cognitions are in agreement with each other. Heider examined how individuals perceive and evaluate the actions and behaviors of others, a focus reexamined in Berger and Calabrese’s development of URT. Heider stated: “persons actively seek to predict and explain the actions of others” (Berger & Bradac, 1982, p. 29). Heider’s theory of “naïve psychology” suggested that individuals act as observers and analyzers of human behavior in everyday life. Individuals gather information that helps them to predict and explain human behavior. “The naïve factor analysis of action permits man to give meaning to action, to influence the actions of others as well as of himself, and to predict future actions” (Heider, 1958, p. 123).

When examining motivations in interpersonal relations, Heider (1958) found that affective significance is greatly determined by causal attribution. Heider states: “Thus, our reactions will be different according to whether we think a person failed primarily because he lacked adequate ability or primarily because he did not want to carry out the actions” (1958, p. 123). The condition of motivation becomes the focus and is relied on for making judgments and also interpreting the action.

Heider was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His influence continues to grow after his death in 1988.

Claude E. Shannon (1916-2001) and Warren Weaver (1894-1978)

Claude E. Shannon received his B.S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Shannon worked for the National Research Council, the National Defense Research Committee, and Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he developed the mathematical theory of communication, now known as information theory, with Warren Weaver. Shannon went on to teach at MIT until his death in 2001. During his lifetime Shannon was awarded the Nobel Prize, Leibmann Prize, Ballantine Medal, Who's Who Life Achievement Prize, and the Kyoto Prize (“Claude Elwood Shannon”, 2002).

Warren Weaver received his B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Weaver worked as faculty at Throop College, California Institute of Technology, University of Wisconsin, and served in World War One. Weaver was also an active member of the Rockefeller Foundation, Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Salk Institute for Biological Studies, serving in many leadership roles. He was awarded UNESCO's Kalinga Prize before his death in 1978 (Reingold, 2000).

Shannon and Weaver significantly contributed to the systematic approach to the study of communication. Both theorists were engineers who sought to explain information exchange through cybernetic processes. They were the first to effectively model information, as they sought to explain how to attain precise and efficient signal transmissions in the realm of telecommunications. In their theory of information, Shannon and Weaver (1949) showed that the need to reduce uncertainty motivates individual’s communication behavior. This concept was later extended by Berger and Calabrese (1975) in the development of URT.

Information theory provided the connections from information to uncertainty and uncertainty to communication that facilitated the development of URT. “Shannon & Weaver’s (1949) approach stressed the conclusion that information is the number of messages needed to totally reduce uncertainty” (Heath & Bryant, 2000, p. 145). Individuals have a desire to reduce uncertainty and they are able to fulfill this need by increasing information. Individuals increase information through communication (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). These concepts are further explored in the examination of information-seeking strategies in URT.

Uncertainty in the Modern Era

Charles R. Berger: Biography

Charles R. Berger received his B.S. from Pennsylvania State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University. After graduation, Berger worked at Illinois State University at Normal, Northwestern University, and the University of California at Davis, where he continues to work today as the chair of the Department of Communication. Berger has been involved with the International Communication Association since the 1970s, is an active member of the National Communication Association, and belongs to such professional groups as the American Psychological Society, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Iowa Network for Personal Relationships (“Charles R. Berger”, 2001).

Berger has published on a variety of topics in interpersonal communication including: uncertainty reduction, strategic interaction, information-seeking, attribution, interpersonal attraction, social cognition, and apprehension. In the past thirty-five years, Berger has published approximately forty articles appearing in the Communication Education, Communication Monographs, Communication Research, Communication Theory, Communication Quarterly, Communication Yearbook, Educational and Psychological Measurement, Human Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology Journal of Social Issues, Journal of Personality, Personal Relationship Issues, Speech Monographs, Western Journal of Communication, and the Western Journal of Speech Communication. Berger has coauthored five books and contributed to over thirty other texts. In 1982, Berger received the Golden Anniversary Book Award, presented by the Speech Communication Association, for his text: Language and Social Knowledge.

Richard J. Calabrese: Biography

Richard J. Calabrese received his B.A. from Loyola University, two M.A. degrees from Bradley University, and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Calabrese has taught at Bradley University, the University of Illinois at Urban, and Bowling Green University. Calabrese became a professor in communication at Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, in 1967, where he continues to work today. Currently, Calabrese is the director of the Master of Science in Organization Management Program at Dominican University and also a consultant for organizational communication (“Richard Joseph Calabrese”, 2001).

Calabrese is a member of the International Association of Business Communicators, the Speech Communication Association, and is involved with the National Communication Association. Calabrese is the coauthor of Communication and Education Skills for Dietetics Professionals.

A Theory of Uncertainty Reduction: “Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond: Toward a developmental theory of interpersonal communication” (1975).

In 1971, Berger became an assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University. During this time, Calabrese studied under Berger, receiving his Ph.D. in 1973. In 1975, Berger and Calabrese published “Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond: Toward a developmental theory of interpersonal communication,” which serves as the foundation of URT. This article inspired a wave of new research examining the role of uncertainty in communication. Berger and Calabrese (1975) formed URT, also known as initial interaction theory, to explain the role of communication in reducing uncertainty in initial interactions and the development of interpersonal relationships.

The theory was developed, like other interpersonal theories before it (Heider, 1958), with the goal of allowing the communicator the ability to predict and explain initial interactions. Though Berger and Calabrese did not explore the realm of subsequent interaction, they did strongly recommend that future research should investigate the application of the framework of URT to developed relationships. Especially in initial encounters, there exists a high degree of uncertainty given that a number of possible alternatives exist in the situation (Shannon & Weaver, 1949). But individuals can use communication to reduce this uncertainty. Berger and Calabrese (1975) maintained that “communication behavior is one vehicle through which such predictions and explanations are themselves formulated” (p.101). Individuals have the ability to decrease uncertainty by establishing predictable patterns of interaction. Because of this, reducing uncertainty can help foster the development of relationships.

Berger and Calabrese (1975) found that uncertainty was related to seven other communication and relational-focused concepts: verbal output, nonverbal warmth, information seeking, self-disclosure, reciprocity, similarity, and liking. From those concepts, the researchers introduced a collection of axioms, or propositions, supported by past uncertainty research. Each axiom states a relationship between a communication concept and uncertainty. From this basis of axioms, the theorists were able to use deductive logic to infer twenty-one theorems that comprise the theory of uncertainty reduction (West & Turner, 2000). The procedure used to develop the axioms and theorems was adopted from Blalock (1969). A complete list of the axioms and theorems of URT is available in Appendix A.

Central to URT is the supposition that in initial interactions, an individual’s primary concern is to decrease uncertainty and increase predictability regarding the behaviors of the self and the communicative partner. This idea is based on Heider's (1958) notion that individuals seek to make sense out of the events he perceives (Berger & Calabrese, 1975). Individuals must be able to engage in proactive and retroactive strategies to learn how to predict what will happen and also explain what has already happened.

Heath and Bryant (2000) stated: “Uncertainty-reduction theory is a powerful explanation for communication because it operates in all contexts to help explain why people communicate as they do” (p. 271). The impact of Berger and Calabrese (1975) on the field of interpersonal communication was and continues to be prolific. In the past thirty years, this article has generated a plethora of research, changing the way that relationships are explored and analyzed.

Expansions on Uncertainty Reduction

Although URT was primarily formed to explain behavior in initial interactions, its application has since been expanded to incorporate all levels of interpersonal relationships. “Uncertainties are ongoing in relationships, and thus the process of uncertainty reduction is relevant in developed relationships as well as in initial interactions” (West & Turner, 2000, p. 141). The following section will examine uncertainty reduction research since its introduction in 1975.

A. Charles Berger

Since its conception, Berger has produced a plethora of research expanding URT to better fit the dynamic nature of interpersonal relations. Berger (1979) established that three predeceasing conditions must exist for an individual to reduce uncertainty. These motivations to reduce uncertainty include: a potential for costs or rewards, deviations from expected behavior, and the possibility of future interaction.

In 1982, Berger teamed up with James J. Bradac, formerly of University of California at Santa Barbara (1980-2004), to publish a book devoted to uncertainty reduction research. Their text, titled Language and Social Knowledge: Uncertainty in Interpersonal Relations, was also edited by Howard Giles, originator of Communication Accommodation Theory and also faculty of UCSB. In this text, the authors focused on the function of communication, and specifically language, as a proponent for reducing uncertainty.

Berger and Bradac (1982) proposed six axioms that built on URT’s original seven axioms to extend the relationship between uncertainty reduction and language. Through the use of these axioms the authors specifically examined the role of language as an uncertainty reducing agent. The authors further arranged uncertainty into two categories: cognitive uncertainty and behavioural uncertainty (Berger & Bradac, 1982). Cognitive uncertainty refers to uncertainty associated with beliefs and attitudes. Behavioural uncertainty refers to uncertainty regarding the possible behaviors in a situation. This categorization helped researchers identify the origins of uncertainty, which resulted in an increased ability to address the discomfort produced by uncertainty.

Berger and Bradac were cognitive that URT would be more useful if its influence was extended to include developed relationships as well as initial interaction. Berger and Bradac (1982) alleviated this by stating that uncertainty reduction was critical to relational development, maintenance, and dissolution as well. Berger again related his research to Heider (1958) by stating that individuals make casual attributions regarding communicative behavior. As relationships further develop, individuals make retroactive and proactive attributions regarding a partner’s communication and behavior (Berger & Bradac, 1982).

Berger (1987) highlighted the role of costs and rewards in relationships by stating that “uncertainty reduction is a necessary condition for the definition of the currency of social exchange, and it is through communicative activity that uncertainty is reduced” (Berger, 1987, p. 57). Berger (1987) also expanded URT by claiming that three types of information-seeking strategies are used to reduce uncertainty: passive, active, or interactive strategies. This is related to the concepts of information theory (Shannon & Weaver, 1949), emphasizing that increased information results in decreased uncertainty.

B. Developments from Other Researchers

The latter improvements made by Berger expanded the scope and value of URT. Other researchers also made contributions to further developments of URT. Since its introduction in 1975, URT has been expanded from a theory of relational development to one also important in established relationships. The following sections examine the contributions made by current interpersonal researchers to URT.

William Douglas

William Douglas was a student at Northwestern University while Berger was on faculty. The two scholars collaborated in their study of uncertainty in 1982, and Douglas continued in the same vein of research after graduation. Douglas’ research has appeared in major communication journals including: Communication Monographs, Communication Research, Human Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and the Journal of Personal and Social Relationships. Douglas’ research in uncertainty accounts for individual differences when examining initial interactions. Much of his research expanded previous work in initial interaction, examined global uncertainty, self-monitoring, and the relationship of verbal communication to uncertainty reduction.

Douglas (1987) examined one of the motivations to reduce uncertainty originally posited in Berger (1979): the anticipation of future interaction. In this study, question-asking in situations of varying levels of anticipated future interaction was analyzed. Douglas found that high levels of mutual question-asking occurred when the level of anticipated future interaction was moderate. This finding suggested that individuals seem to avoid negative consequences (Douglas, 1987). Douglas (1990) expanded this verbal communication to uncertainty relationship by discovering that question-asking resulted in uncertainty reduction which in turn resulted in increased levels of disclosure.

Douglas (1991) defines global uncertainty as “uncertainty about acquaintanceship in general” (p. 356). In this article, Douglas found that individuals with high global uncertainty are less likely to engage in question-asking, self-disclosure, and are evaluated as less competent communicators than individuals with low global uncertainty. Findings also suggested that high global uncertainty positively correlates to communication apprehension. This has a negative effect on relational development and can result in low levels of relational satisfaction.

Uncertainty-Increasing Events 

Sally Planalp and James Honeycutt (1985) also made substantial contributions to uncertainty reduction research. Planalp and Honeycutt recognized that communication does not always function as an uncertainty reducing agent, but can also serve to increase uncertainty when information conflicts with past knowledge. The authors researched what specific events lead to increased uncertainty in interpersonal relationships and their effects on both the individual and the relationship. The results found that uncertainty-increasing events were very likely to result in relational dissolution or decreased closeness of the relational partners. This research was very beneficial because it led to better explanations regarding the role of communication in uncertainty reduction.

Romantic Relationships 

Malcolm Parks and Mara Adelman (1983) sought to expand the breadth of URT to apply to romantic relationships. Data was collected from individuals in premarital romantic relationships through questionnaires and telephone interviews. Individuals who communicated more often with their romantic partner and their partner’s network (family and friends) perceived greater similarity to their partner. They also received greater support from their own network (family and friends), and experienced a lower degree of uncertainty (Parks & Adelman, 1983). These findings support URT’s axioms that greater verbal communication and similarity serve to decrease uncertainty (Berger & Calabrese, 1975), and also extends the scope of URT to romantic relationships.

Relational Maintenance 

In recent years, studies have begun to link uncertainty reduction to relational maintenance processes. Dainton and Aylor (2001) connected relational uncertainty positively to jealousy and negatively to relational maintenance behaviors. These results suggested that individuals are less likely to engage in relational maintenance when high uncertainty exists in the relationship.

Cultural Studies 

Research conducted by William Gudykunst and Tsukasa Nishida (1984) expanded URT’s scope to intercultural contexts. Specifically the researchers examined the effects of attitude similarity, cultural similarity, culture, and self-monitoring on attraction, intent to interrogate, intent to self-disclose, attributional confidence, and intent to display nonverbal affiliative behaviors (Gudykunst & Nishida, 1984). Research conducted on individuals of the Japanese and American cultures found a positive correlation between each of the variables indicating that uncertainty varies across cultures.

C. Criticisms of URT

Berger (1987) recognized that URT “contains some propositions of dubious validity” (p. 40). Like many other successful theoretical approaches, Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) theory of uncertainty reduction has inspired subsequent research that served both as supporting evidence and in an oppositional role to the theory. These criticisms help to clarify the underlying principles of the theory and suggest ways for improvement for future research.

Michael Sunnafrank (1986) argued that a motivation to reduce uncertainty is not a primary concern in initial interactions. His belief was that a “maximization of relational outcomes” (p. 9) was of more significant concern in initial encounters. Sunnafrank argued that the predicted outcome value (POV) of the interaction had a greater effect on uncertainty. Berger (1986) combated Sunnafrank’s arguments by acknowledging that outcomes cannot be predicted if there is no previous history of interaction regarding the behavior of the individuals. Berger claims that Sunnafrank’s arguments simply expanded URT: that by predicting outcomes (using POV) individuals are actually reducing their uncertainty (Berger, 1986).

Kathy Kellermann and Rodney Reynolds (1990) also tested the validity of URT. Their primary concern was axiom three, which related high uncertainty to high information seeking (see appendix A). Their study of over a thousand students found that a want for knowledge was a greater indicator than a lack of knowledge for promotion of information-seeking (Kellermann & Reynolds, 1990). These researchers emphasized that high uncertainty does not create enough motivation to result in information-seeking; rather a want for information must also exist.

Canary and Dainton (2003) explored uncertainty reduction in terms of relational maintenance across cultural contexts and found that the applicability of URT may not hold to multiple cultures. Canary and Dainton (2003) focused on the concept of uncertainty avoidance in cultures stating: “individuals from cultures with a high tolerance for uncertainty are unlikely to find the experience of uncertainty as a primary motivator for performing relational maintenance” (p. 314). This leads to a general questioning of validity of URT other cultures.

Legacy and Influence

Research has found that communication plays a critical role in initial interactions and relational development. Berger and Calabrese (1975) were the first to investigate the role of communication in initial interactions with the development of a theory of uncertainty reduction. Its widespread influence led to its adoption in other relational and communicative contexts such as small group, mass communication, and computer-mediated communication.

The influence of URT is well noted by others in the field: “Postulates by Berger and Calabrese prompted more than two decades of research to prove, clarify, and critique uncertainty reduction’s explanation of how people communicate interpersonally” (Heath & Bryant, 2000, p. 275). Berger and Calabrese (1975) generated additional studies on uncertainty reduction accomplished by such scholars as Hewes, Planalp, Parks, Adelman, Gudykunst, Yang, Nishida, Douglas, Kellerman, Hammer, Rutherford, Honeycutt, Sunnafrank, Capella, Werner, and Baxter. URT has withstood the test of time, proving itself as a heuristic theory with utility that increases with subsequent research.

Appendix A: Axioms and Theorems of Uncertainty Reduction Theory

Axioms of Uncertainty Reduction Theory

1. Given the high level of uncertainty present at the onset of the entry phase, as the amount of verbal communication between strangers increases, the level of uncertainty for each interactant in the relationship will decrease. As uncertainty is further reduced, the amount of verbal communication will increase.
2. As nonverbal affiliative expressiveness increases, uncertainty levels will decrease in an initial interaction situation. In addition, decreases in uncertainty level will cause increases in nonverbal affiliative expressiveness.
3. High levels of uncertainty cause increases in information seeking behavior. As uncertainty levels decline, information seeking behavior decreases.
4. High levels of uncertainty in a relationship cause decreases in the intimacy level of communication content. Low levels of uncertainty produce high levels of intimacy.
5. High levels of uncertainty produce high rates of reciprocity. Low levels of uncertainty produce low reciprocity rates.
6. Similarities between persons reduce uncertainty, while dissimilarities produce increases in uncertainty.
7. Increases in uncertainty level produce decreases in liking; decreases in uncertainty level produce increases in liking.

Theorems of Uncertainty Reduction Theory

1. Amount of verbal communication and nonverbal affiliative expressiveness are positively related.
2. Amount of communication and intimacy level of communication are positively related.
3. Amount of communication and information seeking behavior are inversely related.
4. Amount of communication and reciprocity rate are inversely related.
5. Amount of communication and liking are positively related.
6. Amount of communication and similarity are positively related.
7. Nonverbal affiliative expressiveness and intimacy level of communication content are positively related.
8. Nonverbal affiliative expressiveness and information seeking are inversely related.
9. Nonverbal affiliative expressiveness and reciprocity rate are inversely related.
10. Nonverbal affiliative expressiveness and liking are positively related.
11. Nonverbal affiliative expressiveness and similarity are positively related.
12. Intimacy level of communication content and information seeking are inversely related.
13. Intimacy level of communication content and reciprocity rate are inversely related.
14. Intimacy level of communication content and liking are positively related.
15. Intimacy level of communication content and similarity are positively related.
16. Information seeking and reciprocity rate are positively related.
17. Information seeking and liking are negatively related.
18. Information seeking and similarity are negatively related.
19. Reciprocity rate and liking are negatively related.
20. Reciprocity rate and similarity are negatively related.
21. Similarity and liking are positively related.

References

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Propaganda and the Public

Around the time of World War One and Two, Communication research largely focused on the influence of propaganda. One question that researchers sought to answer was: how can communication be utilized to create behavioral changes? Governments felt that if they were to function efficiently, they could only do so with the coordinated cooperation of their citizens. Through the use of propaganda, governments could ensure that a nation functioned to meet its goals, but could also lead to crushing individuals' ability to shape their own lives and their own consciousness. Research into this area greatly expanded mass communication research in the twentieth century.

This chapter approaches the question of propaganda, from the perspective of someone that many have called one of the "fathers of communication," Walter Lippmann.

Early Experiences of Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)

Walter Lippmann was born in 1889 and spent much of his youth exploring arts such as painting and music, travelling to Europe, and acquiring a particular interest in reading, all due to his family’s secure economic status (Weingast, 1949). By the time he entered Harvard in the fall of 1906, Lippmann had been exposed to a wide array of ideas and had been well prepared for the challenging work that lay ahead of him at school. It was at Harvard that the first influences on Lippmann’s work and theoretical approach first appeared.

Lippmann was influenced by the social thinkers of the time such as George Santayana, William James, and Graham Wallas. It is impossible to understand Lippmann's own thought without some grounding in the perspectives popular at Harvard and elsewhere. He was influenced by the move toward an American pragmatic approach, as well as socialist thinkers of the time.

Predecessors of Walter Lippmann

William James (1842-1910)

Many consider William James to be one of the most prominent influences on Lippmann while at Harvard (Weingast, 1949; Steel, 1999). The two scholars first met when Lippmann published an article in the Illustrated, a Harvard campus magazine. Lippmann's article, written as a response to a book of Barrett Wendell's, was a commentary on social justice and the plight of the common man. James was intrigued by Lippmann's article and surprised Lippmann by approaching him. The two became friends, and Lippmann's regular conversations with James profoundly influenced his future work.

William James is perhaps best known for his theories of pragmatism. James (1907) defines the pragmatic method as, "The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking toward last things, fruits, consequences, fact" (p. 29). He showed how pragmatism is related to truth, and truth is that which can be verified. "True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify" (James, 1907, p. 88). In this way, James (1907) suggested that the understanding of the world is based on enduring, significant perceptions of the effects of the objects that surround individuals. Although Lippmann strayed from the practice of pragmatism in his own work, there were ideas that he took from James' theories and applied to his own life. Steel (1999) claims that one of these ideas was that of meliorism, or the idea that "things could be improved, but never perfected" (p. 18). Another is practicality, or the idea that "men had to make decisions without worrying about whether they were perfect" (Steel, 1999, p. 18).

The themes of meliorism and practicality are indeed evident in Lippmann’s thought and writing. Throughout many years of writing, Lippmann's opinions on the issues of the public and their relationship to government tended to waver. For example, according to Weingast (1949), Lippmann initially supported the idea that government intervention in the economy was necessary, specifically through the provision of public projects to support employment during times of economic hardship. However, when Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his New Deal, which included more government intervention in the public arena, Lippmann did not support the program (Weingast, 1949). Lippmann (1936) wavered in his views on socialism as well.

It is doubtful that his constant changes of opinion were purposeful; rather they served as evidence of James' influence on Lippmann's work. By accepting the ideas of meliorism and practicality, it could potentially mean that one is always striving to find the next best solution; that when one theory fails, another can be developed to take its place. By questioning himself and his beliefs, Lippmann was advancing his own theories and finding new ways of understanding his surroundings.

George Santayana (1863-1952)

Santayana was a philosopher at Harvard who also influenced the work of Lippmann. Santayana’s theories revolved around the idea of the essence of objects, which Munson (1962) defined as the "datum of intuition" (p. 8). Santayana was interested in uncovering the various essences that made up human life: those values which could be uncovered and then tied to human experience (Steel, 1999). This outlook is a sharp contrast to the theories of James, which Lippmann had already been exposed to. Steel (1999) explained that while James focused on the idea of moral relativism, or the ability to create truth from observation, Santayana was focusing on the "search for absolute moral values that could be reconciled with human experience" (p. 21).

Santayana’s influence on Lippmann is evident in his later work. Tied to Santayana’s ideas of the "essence" of humanity and life, were his ideas that democracy could result in a tyranny of the majority (Steel, 1999, p. 21). This idea is easily related to Lippmann's later writings in Phantom Public (1925). Phantom Public examines the American public within a democratic system. Lippmann (1925) expresses his ideas that the majority of the American public is uneducated in public issues, easily manipulated into siding with the majority, and therefore, plays a very limited role in the democratic process. In relation to democracy, Lippmann states, "Thus the voter identified himself with the officials. He tried to think that their thoughts were his thoughts, that their deeds were his deeds, and even in some mysterious way they were a part of him….It prevented democracy from arriving at a clear idea of its own limits and attainable ends" (p. 148). Lippmann (1925) shows that within a democratic system the majority is actually suppressed by the minority opinion. It is this overwhelming suppression of the public opinion within a democratic system that seems to represent Santayana’s influence on Lippmann. If Santanyana argued that democracy would result in a tyranny of the majority, Lippmann (1925) supported this idea by showing that public opinion caused little influence on a democratic system that was actually controlled by the educated elite.

Graham Wallas (1858-1952)

Graham Wallas, a founder of the Fabian Society, was another predecessor to Lippmann’s work (Steel, 1999). Wallas is perhaps best known for his work Human Nature in Politics (1981). The political views expressed in this book helped to shape Lippmann’s later thoughts about the relationship between the public and its environment.

Wallas (1981) expresses his thoughts on the public’s understanding of their surroundings. He states that the universe presents the public with, "an unending stream of sensations and memories, every one of which is different from every other, and before which, unless we can select and recognize and simplify, we must stand helpless and unable to either act or think. Man has therefore to create entities that shall be the material of his reasoning" (p. 134). In this way, Wallas was showing that the public is incapable of understanding their environment; the stimuli that they are presented with are too numerous to gain a well-versed understanding. Steel (1999) claims that this idea was one of Wallas’ greatest influences on the future work of Lippmann, particularly in Public Opinion (1922). In this work, Lippmann (1922) expanded upon Wallas’ original ideas about the relationship between the public and their environment, and was able to show that the public was not able to take in all of the knowledge from their environment that would truly be needed to affect their governance.

Aside from inspiring Lippmann to examine the relationship between the public and the environment, Wallas can also be credited with influencing Lippmann to break his ties with the Socialist school of thought (Steel, 1999). Until his interactions with Wallas, Lippmann had held strong socialist beliefs, based not only upon his experiences at school, but also upon the writings of Karl Marx.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Karl Marx was particularly concerned with explaining the class struggles that existed in society (Rogers, 1994). His most well-known works were Das Kapital (Capital) and The Communist Manifesto. Through these works, Marx explained his theories about the struggle of the working class, their alienation from their work, and their need to rebel against the elite in order to take ownership for their actions and gain power (Rogers, 1994). Marxism explained the way that economic forces create changes in society, and the need for the creation of a communist system to restore equality to that system (Rogers, 1994).

While at Harvard, Lippmann read Marx’s ideas on communism, and chose to support the ideology of socialism (Steel, 1999). Lippmann also joined the Fabians while at school. They were a group which urged for the empowering of the middle-classes, rather than the over-throwing of the elite, in order to create social equality (Steel, 1999). Unlike Marxists, however, the Fabians still believed in the presence of an intellectual elite (Steel, 1970). This theme is present in Lippmann’s Phantom Public (1925). In this piece of literature, Lippmann (1925) explains that society is truly dominated by an intellectual elite, even when they might think that they are following a system of majority rule. "…it is hard to say whether a man is acting executively on his opinions or merely acting to influence the opinion of someone else, who is acting executively" ( Lippmann, 1925, p. 110).

Marx also claimed that mass media is used as a tool by the elite social classes to control society (Rogers, 1994). This theme is evident in Lippmann’s Public Opinion (1922), which explained that it was the mass media who determined what information the public could access, and how the limitation of such access could in turn, shape public opinion.

The remnants of Marxism are present in Lippmann’s later works, such as Public Opinion and Phantom Public. By 1914, Lippmann was no longer a supporter of the implementation of socialism on a large scale (Steel, 1999). With his publication of Drift and Mastery (1914), Lippmann denounced the use of socialism (Steel, 1999). Furthermore, his publication of Good Society (1936) was essentially a criticism of the very theories of socialism that he had once supported. By this point, Lippmann (1936) recognized the error in the socialist theories; the fact that even by putting an end to private ownership and developing collective property, people still may not know how to properly distribute resources without exploitation. Lippman (1936) claims "This is the crucial point in the socialist argument: the whole hope that exploitation, acquisitiveness, social antagonism, will disappear rests upon confidence in the miraculous effect of the transfer of titles" (p. 72). Lippmann’s wavering views on socialism are important. They clearly affect how Lippmann sees the relation between man, his environment, and his government. These themes will be prevalent in Lippmann’s theories, as he explains how and why the public is subject to manipulation.

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

Aside from his reading of Karl Marx, Lippmann was also influenced by the readings of other academics. Of particular importance to the work of the propaganda/mass communication theorists in general was the work of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s influence can be seen not only in the work of Lippmann, but also in the work of Lippmann’s contemporaries.

Sigmund Freud was initially trained as a medical doctor and later founded psychoanalytic theory (Rogers, 1994). Of particular importance to psychoanalytic theory was the understanding of an individual’s mind. According to Rogers (1994), Freud was able to divide the human consciousness into three states; the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious. The conscious consists of those things which we know about ourselves, the preconscious consists of those things which we could pay conscious attention to if we so desired, and the unconscious consists of those things which we do not understand or know about ourselves (Rogers, 1994). From these three levels of individual analysis, Freud attempted to understand human behavior. Both Freud’s general theories of psychoanalysis, as well as one of Freud’s writings in particular, The Interpretation of Dreams, came to be of particular importance to the propaganda theorists.

The Interpretation of Dreams dealt with the idea that dreams are a form of wish fulfillment; they represent a desire of the unconscious that can be achieved during sleep through the creation of a dream to fulfill a need (Levin, 1929). Lippmann applied this idea to his work in Public Opinion (1922). In Public Opinion, Lippmann (1922) stressed the idea of “The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads” (p. 3). This concept involves the idea that a person’s perceptions of an event or situation may not match what is actually happening in their environment (Lippman, 1922). This idea was influenced by The Interpretation of Dreams, in that Lippmann used this book to develop his idea of a “pseudo-environment” that existed in the minds of individuals (Rogers, 1994, p. 234).

Bernays' (1928) understanding of human motives was also based on the study of Freud’s work. Bernays was Freud's nephew, and at various times in his life the American travelled to Vienna to visit with his uncle. Bernays had a special interest in adopting psychoanalytic theory into his public relations work, and this influenced his thinking in relation to public opinion. In Propaganda, Bernays (1928) claims it is the Freudian school of thought that recognized "man's thoughts and actions are compensatory substitutes for desires which he has been obliged to suppress" (p. 52). Bernays (1928) goes on to show that propagandists cannot merely accept the reasons that men give for their behavior. If they are truly hiding their real motives, as Freud suggests, then "the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do" (Bernays, 1928, p. 52). By getting to the root of a man’s wants and needs, Bernays suggests that propaganda can become more effective and influential.

Overall, Freud’s theories were a strong guiding framework for understanding individuals. By helping theorists such as Lasswell, Lippmann, Bernays, and Ellul to understand individuals, Freud was also helping them to understand the public that they aimed to manipulate.

The Theories of Walter Lippmann

While at Harvard, Lippmann had first-hand exposure to the theories of William James, George Santayana, and Graham Wallas. He had also read the works of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx. While some applications of Lippmann’s predecessors’ ideas to his research have already been discussed, it is important to examine the overall theories of Walter Lippmann.

Following his time at Harvard, Lippmann decided to pursue a career in journalism. He had focused on the study of Philosophy at Harvard. By 1910 he had dropped out of their graduate program and was ready to pursue a career (Steel, 1999). Lippmann started his career by working for Lincoln Steffens, writing primarily about socialism and issues on Wall Street (Rogers, 1994). Following his time with Steffens, Lippmann began work on an elite intellectual magazine known as the New Republic (Rogers, 1994). Lippmann worked on New Republic for nine years, and as his time there came to an end, he began to publish his most prominent pieces of literature (Rogers, 1994).

Public Opinion

Public Opinion (1922) is perhaps Lippmann’s most well-known work. It was in this piece that Lippmann first began to develop and explain his theories on the formation of public opinion. Lippmann (1922) begins this book by describing a situation in 1914, where a number of Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen were trapped on an island. They have no access to media of any kind, except for once every sixty days when the mail comes, alerting them to situations in the real world. Lippmann explains that these people lived in peace on the island, treating each other as friends, when in actuality the war had broken out and they were enemies (Lippmann, 1922).

The purpose of the above anecdote is to develop the idea of "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads" (Lippmann, 1922, p. 3). Throughout Public Opinion, Lippmann (1922) explains the way that our individual opinions can differ from those that are expressed in the outside world. He develops the idea of propaganda, claiming that "In order to conduct propaganda, there must be some barrier between the public and the event" (Lippmann, 1922, p. 28). With this separation, there is the ability of the media to manipulate events or present limited information to the public. This information may not match the public’s perception of the event. In this way, Lippmann was essentially presenting some of the first views on the mass communication concepts of gatekeeping and agenda-setting, by showing the media’s power to limit public access to information.

Lippmann (1922) showed how individuals use tools such as stereotypes to form their opinions. “In putting together our public opinions, not only do we have to picture more space than we can see with our eyes, and more time than we can feel, but we have to describe and judge more people, more actions, more things than we can ever count, or vividly imagine…We have to pick our samples, and treat them as typical” (Lippmann, 1922, p. 95). Lippmann shows that the public is left with these stereotypical judgments until the media presents limited information to change their perception of an event. Rogers (1994) claims that in this way, Lippmann was showing us that "...the pseudo-environment that is conveyed to us by the media is the result of a high degree of gatekeeping in the news process" (p. 237). Lippmann recognized that the media was altering the flow of information, by limiting the media content that was presented to the public. Furthermore, Lippmann presents the idea of agenda-setting, as he recognizes that the mass media is the link between individual perceptions of a world, and the world that actually exists (Rogers, 1994).

Phantom Public

Phantom Public (1925) focused on describing the characteristics of the public itself. Lippmann (1925) used this book to show the public’s inability to have vast knowledge about their environment, and therefore, to show their failure to truly support a position. Lippmann (1925) gives a harsh view of the general public, stating, "The individual man does not have opinions on public affairs... I cannot imagine how he could know, and there is not the least reason for thinking, as mystical democrats have thought, that the compounding of individual ignorances in masses of people can produce a continuous directing force in public affairs" (p. 39). This book seemed to show that democracy was not truly run by the public, but rather, was being controlled by an educated elite. The public could not be truly well informed, so they were easily convinced to side with an educated minority, while convincing themselves that they were actually in a system of majority rule. Lippmann (1925) claims that the book aimed to "...bring the theory of democracy into somewhat truer alignment with the nature of public opinion... It has seemed to me that the public had a function and must have methods of its own in controversies, qualitatively different from those of the executive men" (p. 197).

Other Writings

Lippmann also published a number of other books that dealt primarily with his political thoughts regarding the public. These included A Preface to Politics (1913) and Good Society (1936). While these works are important toward understanding Lippmann’s thoughts on the relation of the public to their government, Public Opinion and Phantom Public held most of Lippmann’s theories that were relevant to mass communication research.

Future Career Path

Aside from his major works of literature, Lippmann was perhaps best known for his "Today and Tomorrow" column, which he began publishing in 1931 in the New York Herald Tribune (Weingast, 1949). This column gave Lippmann complete freedom of expression, and the ability to write about such topics as history, government, economics, and philosophy (Weingast, 1949). Although the column tended to appeal to a limited American audience, it dealt with a wide variety of important issues. Weingast (1949) estimates that only 40% of American adults could understand Lippmann’s column, and only 24% could be considered regular readers of the column (p. 30). However, it is this column that still must be recognized for helping Lippmann’s ideas to gain popularity.

Lippmann’s various works led him to a great many opportunities to work with important figures in history. In 1918, he was given the ability to assist President Woodrow Wilson in writing the Fourteen Points, which helped to restore peace after World War One (Rogers, 1994). Of more importance to communication studies, Lippmann was also given the opportunity to publish and present propaganda in Europe to support the acceptance of the Fourteen Points on an international scale (Steel, 1999). It is through this work that some of Lippmann’s ties to Harold Lasswell can be observed.

Other Propaganda Theorists

Harold Lasswell (1902-1978)

As Lippmann was writing propaganda, Harold Lasswell was undertaking empirical analyses of propaganda. In fact, much of the propaganda that Lasswell was examining was actually being written by Lippmann himself (Rogers, 1994).

Harold Lasswell (1902-1978) was a prominent scholar in the area of propaganda research. He focused on conducting both quantitative and qualitative analyses of propaganda, understanding the content of propaganda, and discovering the effect of propaganda on the mass audience (Rogers, 1994). Lasswell is credited with creating the mass communication procedure of content analysis (Rogers, 1994). Generally, content analysis can be defined as, "...the investigation of communication messages by categorizing message content into classifications in order to measure certain variables" (Rogers, 1994). In an essay entitled "Contents of Communication," Lasswell (1946) explains that a content analysis should take into account the frequency with which certain symbols appear in a message, the direction in which the symbols try to persuade the audience’s opinion, and the intensity of the symbols used. By understanding the content of the message, Lasswell (1946) aims to achieve the goal of understanding the "stream of influence that runs from control to content and from content to audience" (p. 74).

This method of content analysis is tied strongly to Lasswell's (1953) early definition of communication which stated, "Who says what in which channel to whom and with what effects" (p. 84). Content analysis was essentially the 'says what' part of this definition, and Lasswell went on to do a lot of work within this area during the remainder of his career.

Lasswell's most well-known content analyses were an examination of the propaganda content during World War One and Two. In Propaganda Technique in the World War, Lasswell (1938) examined propaganda techniques through a content analysis, and came to some striking conclusions. Lasswell (1938) was similar to Ellul, in that he showed that the content of war propaganda had to be pervasive in all aspects of the citizen’s life in order to be effective. Furthermore, Lasswell (1938) showed that as more people were reached by this propaganda, the war effort would become more effective. "...[T]he active propagandist is certain to have willing help from everybody, with an axe to grind in transforming the War into a march toward whatever sort of promised land happens to appeal to the group concerned. The more of these sub-groups he can fire for the War, the more powerful will be the united devotion of the people to the cause of the country, and to the humiliation of the enemy" (Lasswell, 1938, p. 76).

Aside from understanding the content of propaganda, Lasswell was also interested in how propaganda could shape public opinion. This dealt primarily with understanding the effects of the media. Lasswell was particularly interested in examining the effects of the media in creating public opinion within a democratic system. In Democracy Through Public Opinion, Lasswell (1941) examines the effects of propaganda on public opinion, and the effects of public opinion on democracy. Lasswell (1941) claims, “Democratic government acts upon public opinion and public opinion acts openly upon government” (p. 15). Affecting this relationship is the existence of propaganda. Due to this propaganda, “General suspiciousness is directed against all sources of information. Citizens may convince themselves that it is hopeless to get the truth about public affairs” (Lasswell, 1941, p. 40). In this way, Lasswell has created a cycle, whereby the public is limited in the information that is presented to them, and also apprehensive to accept it. However, it is still that information that is affecting their decisions within the democratic system, and is being presented to them by the government. This is an interesting way of viewing the power of the media that is somewhat similar to Lippmann’s theories.

Edward Bernays (1891-1995)

At approximately the same time that Lippmann and Lasswell were examining public opinion and propaganda, Edward Bernays (1891-1995) was examining public relations, propaganda, and public opinion. Bernays (1928) defines propaganda as, "a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of a public to an enterprise, idea, or group" (p. 25). Contrary to other propaganda theorists, Bernays recognizes that propaganda can be either beneficial or harmful to the public. It can help individuals decide what to think about or alter the opinions of individuals, but this may actually be beneficial to society’s functioning as a whole. Bernays states, “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of... Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society" (p. 9).

Based on these ideas that the public opinion can be modified, and that such shaping is a necessary part of society, Bernays pursued his work in the field of public relations. "Public relations is the attempt, by information, persuasion, and adjustment, to engineer public support for an activity, cause, movement, or institution" (Bernays, 1955, p. 3). In The Engineering of Consent, Bernays (1955) lays out the framework for understanding the public and developing a public relations campaign. Bernays (1955) claims that the key to a successful public relations campaign is adjustment of the campaign to the attitudes of various groups in society, gathering information to effectively express an idea, and finally, utilizing persuasion to influence the public opinion in the intended direction.

Bernays’ theories represent a step forward for mass communication theory. They move away from more typical presentations of “hit-or-miss propaganda,” and move toward a deeper understanding of the public, and the necessity of attention-generating propaganda in influencing public opinion (Bernays, 1955, p.22). Bernays (1955) himself made a statement regarding his phrase, “the engineering of consent.” He said, “Engineering implies planning. And it is careful planning more than anything else that distinguishes modern public relations from old-time hit or miss publicity and propaganda” (Bernays, 1955, p.22). Furthermore, Bernays’ theories also represent a different view of the formation of public opinion. In opposition to Lippmann, who views the public as being easily manipulated, Bernays cautions against this. He claims, “The public is not an amorphous mass which can be molded at will or dictated to” (Bernays, 1928, p. 66). Instead, Bernays (1928) offers the idea that in attempting to influence the public, a business must “…study what terms the partnership can be made amicable and mutually beneficial. It must explain itself, its aims, its objectives, to the public in terms which the public can understand and is willing to accept” (p. 66).

Bernays elaborates on these ideas in Public Relations (1952). Rather than merely attempting to manipulate the public through propaganda, Bernays presents public relations as a tool that can be used to combine the ideas of the public and the persuader. “The objective-minded public relations man helps his client adjust to the contemporary situation, or helps the public adjust to it” (Bernays, 1952, p. 9). Bernays view of the public is softer than that of Lippmann, as he recognizes the power of society, but still also claims that manipulation of the public is possible. Bernays (1952) writes of the benefits of public relations, “To citizens in general, public relations is important because it helps them to understand the society of which we are all a part, to know and evaluate the viewpoint of others, to exert leadership in modifying conditions that affects us, to evaluate efforts being made by others, and to persuade or suggest courses of action” (p. 10). Under this framework, while manipulation of the public is still possible, it is not in such blatant ignorance of the public opinion. Theorists such as Lippmann and Ellul tended to disagree with this point.

Jacques Ellul (1912 – 1994)

Jacques Ellul’s (1912-1994) theories on propaganda took a different view of the formation of public opinion. Ellul (1965) shows that propaganda is actually a specific technique, which is both needed by the public, and by those who create the propaganda in the first place. In Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, Ellul (1965) defines propaganda as, "a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated into a system" (p. 61). In contrast to the other theorists examined in this chapter, Ellul tends to view propaganda as a necessary, but all-encompassing, activity. It is not something to be presented to the public in a single instance, but rather, must become a consistent part of every aspect of the public's life.

In The Technological Society, Ellul (1964) categorizes propaganda as a form of human technique. In general, he considers the term "technique," to be referring to the methods that people use to obtain their desired results (Ellul, 1964). Specifically, he claims that human technique examines those techniques in which "man himself becomes the object of the technique" (Ellul, 1964, p. 22). In this scenario, man is the "object," as he is constantly being exposed to, and pressured by, various presentations of propaganda. Ellul (1964) goes on to say, "Techniques have taught the organizers how to force him into the game... The intensive use of propaganda destroys the citizen's faculty of discernment" (p. 276).

While The Technological Society focuses on the methods used to create a technique, such as propaganda, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965) focuses on the specific relationship between propaganda and the manipulation of public opinion. As with Lippmann, Ellul understands the lack of knowledge that the general public holds for use in forming public opinion. Ellul (1965) comments on the use of stereotypes and symbols in propaganda, as did Lippmann in Public Opinion (1922). Ellul (1965) states, "The more stereotypes in a culture, the easier it is to form public opinion, and the more an individual participates in that culture, the more susceptible he becomes to the manipulation of these symbols" (p. 111).

Both Ellul and Lippmann recognize the inability of the public to form educated opinions as a whole. However, while Lippmann chose to focus on the idea that we should accept the fact that it is truly an educated elite that is controlling our opinions, Ellul chose to focus on the fact that the public actually has a need for propaganda. Ellul contests the idea that the public is merely a victim of propaganda. Rather, he states that, "The propagandee is by no means just an innocent victim. He provokes the psychological action of propaganda, and not merely lends himself to it, but even derives satisfaction from it. Without this previous, implicit consent, without this need for propaganda experienced by practically every citizen of the technological age, propaganda could not spread" (Ellul, 1965, p. 121).

Through his theories in The Technological Society and Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes, Ellul tends to give the media and society’s elite (the creators of propaganda) a lot of power in shaping public opinion. While Bernays recognized the importance of making propaganda appeal to the needs of the public, Ellul claims that the public's need is simply for propaganda in the first place. Be happy!

Recent Mass Communication Theorists

Based on the traditional theories of Lippmann, Lasswell, Bernays, and Ellul, more recent studies have been able to be conducted on the use of propaganda in creating public opinion. Lippmann (1922) was essentially the first theorist to develop the idea of the agenda-setting function of the media. By 1972, McCombs and Shaw had set out to study this phenomenon in their work “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media.” This study examined the 1968 presidential campaign, by asking undecided voters to identify the key issues of the presidential campaign, and then comparing those ideas to the issues that were being presented by the mass media at the time (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). McCombs and Shaw (1972) found that there was a +0.967 correlation between voter judgment of important issues, and media presentation of those issues. McCombs and Shaw used this information to further Lippmann’s ideas that the mass media did indeed set the agenda for what the public should think about.

Iyengar and Kinder (1982) expanded on Lippmann’s theories as well, by putting the idea of agenda-setting and priming to the test. They created experimental situations, in which subjects were exposed to news broadcasts that emphasized particular events. The results of this study both supported and expanded upon Lippmann’s initial theories. "Our experiments decisively sustain Lippmann’s suspicion that media provide compelling descriptions of a public world that people cannot directly experience" (Iyengar & Kinder, 1982, p. 855). Iyengar and Kinder (1982) found that those news items that received the most attention, were the news items that people found to be the most significant. Furthermore, Iyengar and Kinder (1982) also found evidence of a priming effect, in that those events that received the most attention by a news broadcast, also weighed the most heavily on evaluations of the president at a later time.

Lippmann’s (1922) theories in Public Opinion also touched on the idea of a gatekeeper in the media process. By 1951, Kurt Lewin had expanded on this idea, by showing that people can manipulate and control the flow of information that reaches others (Rogers, 1994). Based on the ideas of both Lewin and Lippmann, White (1950) undertook an examination of the role of a gatekeeper in the realm of mass media. In The “Gatekeeper”: A Case Study In the Selection of News, White (1950) examined the role of a wire editor in a newspaper. He found strong evidence that there was a gatekeeping role at work within the mass media, as this editor rejected nine-tenths of the articles that he received, based primarily on whether he considered the event to be “newsworthy,” and whether he had another article on the same topic that he liked better. His results were important, as they showed the subjective judgments that an individual can exert in releasing limited information to the public.

Conclusion: The Importance of These Theories

The theories developed by Lippmann, Lasswell, Ellul, and Bernays are important for a number of reasons. Based on the ideas of his predecessors, Lippmann was able to bring attention to the fact that the public is able to be influenced by the media. The work of Lippmann and his colleagues has led to more recent research that is meant to help understand the influence of the media on the public. Through the work Iyengar and Kinder, White, Lewin, and McCombs and Shaw, a more comprehensive understanding of the media has been developed. The public has now been made aware various media functions such as agenda-setting, gatekeeping, and priming, and the potential effects that these techniques can have on their audiences.

The theories presented in this paper have tied heavily to both the direct effects and limited effects media models. Theorists such as Ellul tended to side heavily with the direct effects model, whereby propaganda could directly influence the thought of the masses. Meanwhile, theorists such as Lippmann also noted that the media might not be influencing only thought, but may also be influencing what people thought about. It was this line of thinking that resulted in a starting point for future research in the area of the limited effects of the media. Such limited effects were shown through the work of Iyengar and Kinder, as well as McCombs and Shaw.

Overall, the research of the scholars discussed in this paper has been very important to the understanding of the media, the manipulation of the public, and the formation of public opinion. While the theories of Lippmann, Lasswell, Bernays, and Ellul were formed years ago, they continue to help us understand the society that surrounds us today.

References

Bernays, E.L. (1928). Propaganda. New York: Horace Liveright, Inc.

Bernays, E.L. (1952). Public relations. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press.

Bernays, E.L. (1955). The engineering of consent. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma.

Ellul, J. (1964). The technological society. New York: Vintage Books.

Ellul, J. (1965). Propaganda: the formation of men's attitudes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Iyengar, S., Peters, M.D., & Kinder, D.R. (1982). Experimental demonstrations of the "not-so-minimal" consequences of television news programs. The American Political Science Review, 76(4), 848-858.

James, W. (1907). Pragmatism. In G. Gunn (Ed.), Pragmatism and other writings (pp. 1 - 132). New York: Penguin Books.

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Online Resources

Uses and Gratifications

Introduction

Uses and gratifications approach is an influential tradition in media research. The original conception of the approach was based on the research for explaining the great appeal of certain media contents. The core question of such research is: Why do people use media and what do they use them for? (McQuail, 1983). There exists a basic idea in this approach: audience members know media content, and which media they can use to meet their needs.

In the mass communication process, uses and gratifications approach puts the function of linking need gratifications and media choice clearly on the side of audience members. It suggests that people’s needs influence what media they would choose, how they use certain media and what gratifications the media give them. This approach differs from other theoretical perspectives in that it regards audiences as active media users as opposed to passive receivers of information. In contrast to traditional media effects theories which focus on “what media do to people” and assume audiences are homogeneous, uses and gratifications approach is more concerned with “what people do with media” (Katz, 1959). It allows audiences personal needs to use media and responds to the media, which determined by their social and psychological background.

Uses and gratifications approach also postulates that the media compete with other information sources for audience’s need satisfaction (Katz et al., 1974a). As traditional mass media and new media continue to provide people with a wide range of media platforms and content, it is considered one of the most appropriate perspectives for investigating why audiences choose to be exposed to different media channels (LaRose et al., 2001).

The approach emphasizes audiences’ choice by assessing their reasons for using a certain media to the disregard of others, as well as the various gratifications obtained from the media, based on individual social and psychological requirements (Severin & Tankard, 1997). As a broader perspective among communication researches, it provides a framework for understanding the processes by which media participants seek information or content selectively, commensurate with their needs and interests (Katz et al., 1974a). Audience members then incorporate the content to fulfill their needs or to satisfy their interests (Lowery & DeFleur, 1983).

Origin and History

It is well accepted that communication theories have developed through the realms of psychology and sociology over the past 100 years. With illumed by valuable ideas as well as exploring more untilled fields in these two disciplines, researchers elicit a series of higher conceptions of understanding media. As a sub-tradition of media effects research, uses and gratifications approach is suggested to be originally stemmed from a functionalist paradigm in the social sciences (Blumler & Katz, 1974).

To some extent, however, functional theory on communication agrees with media’s effects towards people. For example, a model often used in the theory, the Hypodermic Syringe model, discusses that “the mass media have a direct, immediate and influential effect upon audiences by ‘injecting’ information into the consciousness of the masses” (Watson & Hill 1997, p. 105). Functional theory influenced studies on communication from the 1920s to the 1940s. After that, a shift which rediscovered the relationship between media and people occurred and led to establishment of uses and gratifications approach.

The exploration of gratifications that motive people to be attracted to certain media is almost as old as empirical mass communication research itself (McQuail, 1983). Dating back to the 1940s, researchers became interested in the reasons for viewing different radio programmes, such as soap operas and quizzes, as well as daily newspaper (Lazrsfeld & Stanton, 1944, 1949; Herzog, 1944; Warner & Henry, 1948; etc.). In these studies, researchers discovered a list of functions served either by some specific content or by the medium itself (Katz et al., 1974b). For instance, radio soap operas were found to satisfy their listeners with advice, support, or occasions for emotional release (Herzog, 1944; Warner and Henry, 1948); rather than just offering information, newspaper was also discovered to be important to give readers a sense of security, shared topics of conversation and a structure to the daily routine (Berelson, 1949). For these diverse dimensions of usage satisfaction, psychologist Herzog (1944) marked them with the term “gratifications.”

Uses and gratifications approach became prevailing in the late 1950s till 1970s when television has grown up. Some basic assumptions of the approach were proposed when it was rediscovered during that era. Among the group of scholars who focus on uses and gratifications research, Elihu Katz is one of the most well-known and contributed greatly to establishing the structure of the approach.

Elihu Katz is served both as a sociologist and as a communication researcher. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1956 from Columbia University and began teaching at the University of Chicago until 1963. During the next thirty years, he taught in the Department of Sociology and Communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the late 1960, invited by the Government of Israel, Katz headed the task force charged with the introduction of television broadcasting. This experience led to his subsequent academic work about broadcasting and television in leisure, culture and communication from the 1970s to1990s (UPENN, 2001). In 1992, he joined the faculty of the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, and also directed its experimental Scholars program for post-doctoral study.

Katz’s mentor in Columbia University is Paul Lazarsfeld, who is one of the pioneers of gratifications research. Their cooperating work produced important outgrowths that connect the concept of gratifications with the functional theory model. Later, Katz introduced uses and gratification approach when he came up with the notion that people use the media to their benefit. In a study by Katz, Gurevitch and Haas (1973), a subject which is known as the uses and gratifications research were explored. They viewed the mass media as a means by which individuals connect or disconnect themselves with others and found that people bend the media to their needs more readily than the media overpower them (Katz, Gurevitch and Haas, 1973).

Along with colleague Jay G. Blumler, Katz published a collection of essays on gratifications in 1974 which were entitled The Uses of Mass Communication. They took a more humanistic approach to looking at media use. They suggest that media users seek out a medium source that best fulfills the needs of the user and they have alternate choices to satisfy their need. (Blumler & Katz, 1974). They also discovered that media served the functions of surveillance, correlation, entertainment and cultural transmission for both society and individuals (Blumler and Katz, 1974).

Five basic assumptions were stated in a study of Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch in 1974 as follows. They provide a framework for understanding the correlation between media and audiences:

1. The audience is conceived as active, i.e., an important part of of mass media use is assumed to be goal oriented … patterns of media use are shaped by more or less definite expectations of what certain kinds of content have to offer the audience member.
2. In the mass communication process much initiative in liking need gratification and media choice lies with the audience member … individual and public opinions have power vis-à-vis the seemingly all-powerful media.
3. The media compete with other sources of need satisfaction. The needs served by mass communication constitute but a segment of the wider range of human needs, and the degree to which they can be adequately met through mass media consumption certainly varies.
4. Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves- i.e., people are sufficiently self-aware to be able to report their interests and motives in particular cases, or at least to recognize them when confronted with them in an intelligible and familiar verbal formulation.
5. Value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored on their own terms. (p. 15-17).