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110-502: Scholarly communication theorists focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of communication, examining statistics in order to help substantiate claims. The range of social scientific methods to study communication has been expanding. Communication researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-20th century led to increasingly interpretative , hermeneutic , and philosophic approaches towards

220-621: A humanities perspective, communication is concerned with rhetoric and persuasion (traditional graduate programs in communication studies trace their history to the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece ). Humanities approaches to communication often overlap with history , philosophy , English , and cultural studies . Communication research informs politicians and policy makers , educators , strategists , legislators , business magnates , managers , social workers , non-governmental organizations , non-profit organizations , and people interested in resolving communication issues in general. There

330-721: A hypothesis . If a new theory better explains and predicts a phenomenon than an old theory (i.e., it has more explanatory power ), we are justified in believing that the newer theory describes reality more correctly. This is called an intertheoretic reduction because the terms of the old theory can be reduced to the terms of the new one. For instance, our historical understanding about sound , light and heat have been reduced to wave compressions and rarefactions , electromagnetic waves , and molecular kinetic energy , respectively. These terms, which are identified with each other, are called intertheoretic identities. When an old and new theory are parallel in this way, we can conclude that

440-518: A knowledge transfer where there is a task of translating research knowledge to be application in practice, and ensuring that practitioners are made aware of it. Academics have been criticized for not attempting to transfer the knowledge they produce to practitioners. Another framing supposes that theory and knowledge seek to understand different problems and model the world in different words (using different ontologies and epistemologies ). Another framing says that research does not produce theory that

550-403: A "socialist activist". He came to sociology through his expertise in mathematics and quantitative methods, participating in several early quantitative studies, including what was possibly the first scientific survey of radio listeners, in 1930–1931. In 1926 he married the sociologist Marie Jahoda . Together with Hans Zeisel they wrote a now-classical study of the social impact of unemployment on

660-458: A business plan for the production of knowledge from a standpoint that was non–profit yet not acquiring debt. This was significant because it was a model that was replicated at other universities—making the production of research affordable and organized. Another important contribution of Paul Lazarsfeld was his advancement to media effects research that he was able to bring into fruition. Lazarsfeld's “most important methodological contributions were

770-419: A first step toward being tested or applied in a concrete situation; theorems are said to be true in the sense that the conclusions of a theorem are logical consequences of the axioms. Theories are abstract and conceptual, and are supported or challenged by observations in the world. They are ' rigorously tentative', meaning that they are proposed as true and expected to satisfy careful examination to account for

880-413: A foundation to gain further scientific knowledge, as well as to accomplish goals such as inventing technology or curing diseases. The United States National Academy of Sciences defines scientific theories as follows: The formal scientific definition of "theory" is quite different from the everyday meaning of the word. It refers to a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by

990-607: A future president of the American Sociological Association, was also a student of Lazarsfeld's at Columbia. Paul Lazarsfeld's most important contribution, in his own opinion as well, was the beta version of a research institution that was based within a University setting. He started his journey of institute creation overseas in Vienna. He then proceeded to create two within the United States—most importantly with

1100-435: A given subject matter. There are theories in many and varied fields of study, including the arts and sciences. A formal theory is syntactic in nature and is only meaningful when given a semantic component by applying it to some content (e.g., facts and relationships of the actual historical world as it is unfolding). Theories in various fields of study are often expressed in natural language , but can be constructed in such

1210-400: A large, expert staff worked at a research center, deploying a battery of social-scientific investigative methods—mass market surveys, statistical analysis of data, focus group work, etc.—to solve specific problems for specific clients. Funding came not only from the university, but also from commercial clients who contracted out research projects. This produced studies such as two long reports to

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1320-777: A legitimate discipline after World War II . Prior to being established as its own discipline, communication studies, was formed from three other major studies no: psychology, sociology, and political science. Communication studies focus on communication as central to the human experience, which involves understanding how people behave in creating, exchanging, and interpreting messages. Today, this accepted discipline now also encompasses more modern forms of communication studies as well, such as gender and communication, intercultural communication, political communication, health communication, and organizational communication. The institutionalization of communication studies in U.S. higher education and research has often been traced to Columbia University ,

1430-483: A message via a mediated channel. These tools produced both qualitative and quantitative data. His contributions to measurement include innovative survey methods such as the longitudinal panel survey he used in his 1940 study in Erie, OH. He contributed to data analysis with a variety of techniques such as the 2x2 contingency tables, frequency analyses, scatter plots, and mixed methods like focus groups. Paul Lazarsfeld has been

1540-460: A particular social institution. Most of the following are scientific theories. Some are not, but rather encompass a body of knowledge or art, such as Music theory and Visual Arts Theories. Paul Lazarsfeld Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (February 13, 1901 – August 30, 1976) was an Austrian-American sociologist and mathematician . The founder of Columbia University 's Bureau of Applied Social Research , he exerted influence over

1650-431: A quantitative approach. MSU was soon followed by important departments of communication at Purdue University , University of Texas-Austin , Stanford University , University of Iowa , University of Illinois , University of Pennsylvania , The University of Southern California , and Northwestern University . Associations related to Communication Studies were founded or expanded during the 1950s. The National Society for

1760-447: A recursively enumerable set) in which the concept of natural numbers can be expressed, can include all true statements about them. As a result, some domains of knowledge cannot be formalized, accurately and completely, as mathematical theories. (Here, formalizing accurately and completely means that all true propositions—and only true propositions—are derivable within the mathematical system.) This limitation, however, in no way precludes

1870-626: A relatively new discipline, however, there are programs and departments to support and teach this topic in about 13 Canadian universities and many colleges as well. The Communication et information from Laval, and the Canadian Journal of Communication from McGill University in Montréal, are two journals that exist in Canada. There are also organizations and associations, both national and in Québec, that appeal to

1980-437: A single textbook. In mathematical logic , a theory has a related but different sense: it is the collection of the theorems that can be deduced from a given set of axioms , given a given set of inference rules . A theory can be either descriptive as in science, or prescriptive ( normative ) as in philosophy. The latter are those whose subject matter consists not of empirical data, but rather of ideas . At least some of

2090-615: A small community: Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (1932; English: The sociography of an unemployed community , 1971 ). The Marienthal study attracted the attention of the Rockefeller Foundation , leading to a two-year traveling fellowship to the United States. From 1933 to 1935, Lazarsfeld worked with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and toured the United States, making contacts and visiting

2200-552: A small set of basic postulates (usually symmetries, like equality of locations in space or in time, or identity of electrons, etc.)—which is capable of producing experimental predictions for a given category of physical systems. One good example is classical electromagnetism , which encompasses results derived from gauge symmetry (sometimes called gauge invariance) in a form of a few equations called Maxwell's equations . The specific mathematical aspects of classical electromagnetic theory are termed "laws of electromagnetism", reflecting

2310-588: A son, Robert Lazarsfeld (born 1953), who was professor of mathematics at Stony Brook University , and who published Positivity in Algebraic Geometry (Springer) in 2004. Lazarsfeld's many contributions to sociological method have earned him the title of the "founder of modern empirical sociology". Lazarsfeld invented the latent class model for clustering multivariate discrete data. He also made great strides in statistical survey analysis, panel methods, latent structure analysis, and contextual analysis. He

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2420-474: A technical term in philosophy in Ancient Greek . As an everyday word, theoria , θεωρία , meant "looking at, viewing, beholding", but in more technical contexts it came to refer to contemplative or speculative understandings of natural things , such as those of natural philosophers , as opposed to more practical ways of knowing things, like that of skilled orators or artisans. English-speakers have used

2530-540: A textbook The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (1954) that helped define the field, partly by claiming Paul Lazarsfeld , Harold Lasswell , Carl Hovland , and Kurt Lewin as its founding forefathers. Schramm established three important communication institutes: the Institute of Communications Research (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), the Institute for Communication Research ( Stanford University ), and

2640-403: A theory of heat as energy replaced it. Also, the theory that phlogiston is a substance released from burning and rusting material was eliminated with the new understanding of the reactivity of oxygen. Theories are distinct from theorems . A theorem is derived deductively from axioms (basic assumptions) according to a formal system of rules, sometimes as an end in itself and sometimes as

2750-404: A theory's content is based on some formal system of logic and on basic axioms . In a deductive theory, any sentence which is a logical consequence of one or more of the axioms is also a sentence of that theory. This is called the received view of theories . In the semantic view of theories , which has largely replaced the received view, theories are viewed as scientific models . A model

2860-544: A vast body of evidence. Many scientific theories are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them substantially. For example, no new evidence will demonstrate that the Earth does not orbit around the sun (heliocentric theory), or that living things are not made of cells (cell theory), that matter is not composed of atoms, or that the surface of the Earth is not divided into solid plates that have moved over geological timescales (the theory of plate tectonics) ... One of

2970-419: A way that their general form is identical to a theory as it is expressed in the formal language of mathematical logic . Theories may be expressed mathematically, symbolically, or in common language, but are generally expected to follow principles of rational thought or logic . Theory is constructed of a set of sentences that are thought to be true statements about the subject under consideration. However,

3080-520: Is social status conferral function, or the way that the "mass media confer status on public issues, persons, organizations and social movements". The second function is the "enforcement of social norms ", where the mass media uses public exposure of events or behaviour, to expose "deviations from these norms to public view". The third function, and perhaps best known, is the narcotizing dysfunction , in which energies of individuals in society are systematically routed away from organized action—because of

3190-421: Is a logical framework intended to represent reality (a "model of reality"), similar to the way that a map is a graphical model that represents the territory of a city or country. In this approach, theories are a specific category of models that fulfill the necessary criteria. (See Theories as models for further discussion.) In physics the term theory is generally used for a mathematical framework—derived from

3300-526: Is a statement that can be derived from those axioms by application of these rules of inference. Theories used in applications are abstractions of observed phenomena and the resulting theorems provide solutions to real-world problems. Obvious examples include arithmetic (abstracting concepts of number), geometry (concepts of space), and probability (concepts of randomness and likelihood). Gödel's incompleteness theorem shows that no consistent, recursively enumerable theory (that is, one whose theorems form

3410-437: Is also considered a co-founder of mathematical sociology . Many of his ideas have been so influential as to now be considered self-evident. He is also noted for developing the two-step flow of communication model. Lazarsfeld also made significant contributions by training many younger sociologists. One of Lazarsfeld's biographers, Paul Neurath, writes that there are "dozens of books and hundreds of articles by his students and

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3520-410: Is often a great deal of crossover between social research , cultural research, market research , and other statistical fields. Recent critiques have been made about the homogeneity of communication scholarship. For example, Chakravartty, et al. (2018) find that white scholars comprise the vast majority of publications, citations, and editorial positions. From a post-colonial point of view, this state

3630-419: Is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be scientific , belong to a non-scientific discipline, or no discipline at all. Depending on the context, a theory's assertions might, for example, include generalized explanations of how nature works. The word has its roots in ancient Greek , but in modern use it has taken on several related meanings. In modern science,

3740-422: Is problematic because communication studies engages with a wide range of social justice concerns. Business communication emerged as a field of study in the late 20th century, due to the centrality of communication within business relationships. The scope of the field is difficult to define because of the various ways in which communication is used between employers, employees, consumers, and brands. Because of this,

3850-490: Is relevant to practice. In the context of management, Van de Van and Johnson propose a form of engaged scholarship where scholars examine problems that occur in practice, in an interdisciplinary fashion, producing results that create both new practical results as well as new theoretical models, but targeting theoretical results shared in an academic fashion. They use a metaphor of "arbitrage" of ideas between disciplines, distinguishing it from collaboration. In science,

3960-709: Is under the theory. Sometimes two theories have exactly the same explanatory power because they make the same predictions. A pair of such theories is called indistinguishable or observationally equivalent , and the choice between them reduces to convenience or philosophical preference. The form of theories is studied formally in mathematical logic, especially in model theory . When theories are studied in mathematics, they are usually expressed in some formal language and their statements are closed under application of certain procedures called rules of inference . A special case of this, an axiomatic theory, consists of axioms (or axiom schemata) and rules of inference. A theorem

4070-571: The East-West Communication Institute ( Honolulu ). The patterns of scholarly work in communication studies that were set in motion at these institutes continue to this day. Many of Schramm's students, such as Everett Rogers and David Berlo went on to make important contributions of their own. The first college of communication was founded at Michigan State University in 1958, led by scholars from Schramm's original ICR and dedicated to studying communication scientifically using

4180-572: The Greek language . In the book From Religion to Philosophy , Francis Cornford suggests that the Orphics used the word theoria to mean "passionate sympathetic contemplation". Pythagoras changed the word to mean "the passionless contemplation of rational, unchanging truth" of mathematical knowledge, because he considered this intellectual pursuit the way to reach the highest plane of existence. Pythagoras emphasized subduing emotions and bodily desires to help

4290-521: The University of Chicago , and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign , where early pioneers of the field worked after the Second World War . Wilbur Schramm is considered the founder of the field of communication studies in the United States. Schramm was hugely influential in establishing communication as a field of study and in forming departments of communication studies across universities in

4400-467: The University of Newark (now, the Newark campus of Rutgers University ). A year later, he established an institute in Newark along the lines of his Vienna Research Center, institutionalizing the marginal field of opinion research that Lazarsfeld felt was his most important contribution. Lazarsfeld saw his institute as an important bridge between European and American models of research, and was willing to place

4510-444: The focus group . It was also the beginning of a rich and influential collaboration in the field of communication studies. The paper for which Lazarsfeld and Merton is best known is their "Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action" (1948). Widely anthologized, the paper has been proposed as a canonical text in media studies. Lazarsfeld and Merton set out to understand the burgeoning public interest in problems of

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4620-418: The "media of mass communication". After a critical consideration of common and problematic approaches to the mass media —noting that the "sheer presence of these media may not affect our society so profoundly as is widely supposed" —they work their work through three aspects of what they see as the problem. They highlight three "social functions" that cast a long shadow into the present day. The first of these

4730-447: The 1950s, there were increased concerns about the power of the mass media, and with Elihu Katz , Lazarsfeld published Personal Influence , which propounded the theory of a two-step flow of communication , opinion leadership , and of community as filters for the mass media. Along with Robert K. Merton , he popularized the idea of a narcotizing dysfunction of media, along with its functional roles in society. His contributions include:

4840-475: The 20th century, eventually including means of communication such as mass communication, interpersonal communication, and oral interpretation. When World War I ended, the interest in studying communication intensified. The methods of communication that had been used during the war had challenged the beliefs many people had on the limits of it that existed prior to these events. Innovations were invented during this period of time that no one had ever seen before, like

4950-624: The ASA Methodology section is also named in his honor, as is the top theory award of the American Evaluation Association . Though the research bureau was a major contribution, it was not without flaws. Lazarsfeld emphasized that a research institution is capable of existing in an organized fashion but that the commandeering and leadership really dictated the success of it. Lazarsfeld was successful for nearly two decades; however actors within this particular system could manipulate

5060-653: The American Statistical Association . Lazarsfeld died in 1976. His mother Sophie survived him by almost a month, dying at age 95. With Marie Jahoda, he had a daughter, Lotte Franziska Lazarsfeld (born 1930), later Lotte Bailyn , who became a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He divorced Marie in 1930 and married his colleague Herta Herzog in 1936. The marriage lasted until 1945. With his third wife, married in 1949, Patricia Kendall  [ fr ] , he had

5170-458: The Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University. The most prestigious era of this Bureau was when Lazarsfeld was the director, associate director, as well as an active researcher in the Bureau. It was during this time that the Bureau was able to control and distribute almost a million dollars and produce studies a sundry. This was his most important contribution because it was able to create

5280-481: The Lazarsfeld-Stanton Program Analyzer and focus group interviewing” according to Everett Rogers. The Lazarsfeld–Stanton Program Analyzer, or "Little Annie" as it was called, provided audience members with a device that had a red button and a green button. When an experimental audience member viewed mediated content, they were able instantly communicate through the two buttons if what they witnessed

5390-651: The President of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the American Association for Public Opinion Research . He received honorary degrees from many universities, including the University of Chicago , Columbia University , the University of Vienna and the Sorbonne University . Columbia University's social research center has been renamed after him. The career achievement award of

5500-533: The Radio Project, came to represent an intellectual tradition that contrasted with Lazarsfeld's own dedication to empiricism and willingness to collaborate with industry. Likewise, Lazarsfeld's focus on empirical discovery rather than grand theory (" abstract empiricism " in the words of C. Wright Mills ) was one of the spurs that led Robert K. Merton to develop what he called "theories of the middle range". In terms of weaknesses, he looked at individuals and missed

5610-661: The Study of Communication (NSSC) was founded in 1950 to encourage scholars to pursue communication research as a social science. This Association launched the Journal of Communication in the same year as its founding. Like many communication associations founded around this decade, the name of the association changed with the field. In 1968 the name changed to the International Communication Association (ICA). Undergraduate curricula aim to prepare students to interrogate

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5720-473: The United States offer a variety of different majors within the realm of communication studies, consisting of programs of study in the areas mentioned above. Communication studies is often perceived by many in society as being primarily centered around the media arts, however, those that become communication studies graduates could move on to have careers in areas ranging from media arts to public advocacy to marketing to non-profit organizations and even more. With

5830-802: The United States, and would recommend him for the directorships of the Newark Center and the Princeton Office of Radio Research. Lazarsfeld contacted the Psychological Corporation , a non-profit organization devoted to bringing the techniques of applied psychology to business, and proposed a number of projects that were rejected as not having enough commercial value or being too involved. He also helped John Jenkins, an applied psychologist at Cornell University , translate an introduction to statistics Lazarsfeld had written for his students in Vienna ( Say It With Figures ). Finally, he pursued research into

5940-481: The United States. He was the first individual to identify himself as a communication scholar; he created the first academic degree-granting programs with communication in their name; and he trained the first generation of communication scholars. Schramm had a background in English literature and developed communication studies partly by merging existing programs in speech communication, rhetoric, and journalism. He also edited

6050-564: The aims are different. Theoretical contemplation considers things humans do not move or change, such as nature , so it has no human aim apart from itself and the knowledge it helps create. On the other hand, praxis involves thinking, but always with an aim to desired actions, whereby humans cause change or movement themselves for their own ends. Any human movement that involves no conscious choice and thinking could not be an example of praxis or doing. Theories are analytical tools for understanding , explaining , and making predictions about

6160-408: The aircraft telephones and throat microphones. However, new ways of communicating that had been discovered, especially the use of morse code through portable morse code machines, helped troops to communicate in a much more rapid pace than ever before. This then sparked ideas for even more advanced ways of communication to later be created and discovered. The social science study was fully recognized as

6270-441: The analysis of communication. Conversely, the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s have seen the rise of new analytically, mathematically, and computationally focused techniques. As a field of study, communication is applied to journalism , business , mass media , public relations , marketing , news and television broadcasting , interpersonal and intercultural communication, education , public administration ,

6380-414: The axioms of that field. Some commonly known examples include set theory and number theory ; however literary theory , critical theory , and music theory are also of the same form. One form of philosophical theory is a metatheory or meta-theory . A metatheory is a theory whose subject matter is some other theory or set of theories. In other words, it is a theory about theories. Statements made in

6490-473: The community and patients; enhancing organizational visibility; marketing products and services; establishing a venue for acquiring news about activities, promotions, and fund-raising; providing a channel for patient resources and education; and providing customer service and support." Theoretical A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon , or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking

6600-436: The construction of mathematical theories that formalize large bodies of scientific knowledge. A theory is underdetermined (also called indeterminacy of data to theory ) if a rival, inconsistent theory is at least as consistent with the evidence. Underdetermination is an epistemological issue about the relation of evidence to conclusions. A theory that lacks supporting evidence is generally, more properly, referred to as

6710-495: The dairy industry on factors influencing the consumption of milk; and a questionnaire to let people assess whether they shop too much (for Cosmopolitan magazine ). While at Newark, Lazarsfeld was appointed head of the Princeton Office of the Radio Research Project , which was later moved to Columbia. In 1937, he first tried to have the project moved to Newark, and when that request was turned down, split his time between

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6820-497: The development of scientific knowledge . Communication, a natural human behavior, became a topic of study in the 20th century. As communication technologies developed, so did the serious study of communication. During this time, a renewed interest in the studies of rhetoric, such as persuasion and public address, was created, which ultimately laid the foundation for several of the forms of communication studies that we know of today. The focus of communication studies developed further in

6930-451: The discipline of medicine: medical theory involves trying to understand the causes and nature of health and sickness, while the practical side of medicine is trying to make people healthy. These two things are related but can be independent, because it is possible to research health and sickness without curing specific patients, and it is possible to cure a patient without knowing how the cure worked. The English word theory derives from

7040-560: The early influence of federal institutional inquiries, notably the 1951 Massey Commission , which "investigated the overall state of culture in Canada", the study of communication in Canada has frequently focused on the development of a cohesive national culture, and on infrastructural empires of social and material circulation. Although influenced by the American Communication tradition and British Cultural Studies , Communication studies in Canada has been more directly oriented toward

7150-400: The elementary theorems of a philosophical theory are statements whose truth cannot necessarily be scientifically tested through empirical observation . A field of study is sometimes named a "theory" because its basis is some initial set of assumptions describing the field's approach to the subject. These assumptions are the elementary theorems of the particular theory, and can be thought of as

7260-645: The enterprise": "Big business finances the production and distribution of mass media [...] he who pays the piper generally calls the tune". They point out the ensuing problems of social conformism, and consider the impact upon popular taste (a controversy which rages unabated until the present). The final section of the paper considers a topic of great salience in the post–World War II period, propaganda for social objectives. Here they propose three conditions for rendering such propaganda effective, terming these "monopolization" (the "absence of counter propaganda"), "canalization" (taking established behaviour and enlisting it in

7370-536: The few universities that had programs related to empirical social science research. It was during this time that Lazarsfeld met Luther Fry at the University of Rochester (which resulted in the inspiration for the research done in Personal Influence , written some twenty years later) and Robert S. Lynd , who had written the Middletown study. Lynd would come to play a central role in helping Lazarsfeld emigrate to

7480-406: The field of business. Implementation of modern business communication curriculums are enhancing the study of business communication as a whole, while further preparing those to be able to effectively communicate in the business community. Health communication is a multidisciplinary field that practices the application of "communication evidence, strategy, theory, and creativity" in order to advance

7590-482: The focus of the field is usually placed on the demands of employers, which is more universally understood by the revision of the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of business standards to emphasize written and oral communication as an important characteristic in the curriculum. Business communication studies, therefore, revolve around the, ever changing, written and oral communication aspects directly related to

7700-726: The future of his institutes before his personal career. For example, in order to make the Newark Center seem to have a larger staff, Lazarsfeld published under a pseudonym. The Newark Center was clearly successful in generating interest in both empirical studies and in Lazarsfeld as a research manager. The research carried on at the center between 1935 and 1937 (including research for the Mirra Komarovsky book The Unemployed Man and His Family ) demonstrated that empirical research could be of help and of interest to both business and academia. Under "Administrative Research", as he called his framework,

7810-580: The healthcare system. It brought elevated awareness to different avenues including promotional activities and communication between heath professionals and their employees, patients, and constituents. "Efforts to create marketing-oriented organizations called for the widespread dissemination of information", putting a spotlight on theories of "communication, the communication process, and the techniques that were being utilized to communicate in other settings." Now, health care organizations of all types are using things like social media. "Uses include communicating with

7920-520: The ideas presented in the widely read "The Art of Asking Why" (1935), which explained Lazarsfeld's concept of "reason analysis". At the end of the fellowship in 1935, with a return to Vienna made untenable by the political climate, Lazarsfeld decided to remain in America, and secured an appointment as the director of student relief work for the National Youth Administration , headquartered at

8030-747: The individual decision-making process and how it was influenced by the mass media. The Marienthal study was an exception, being biased toward the community, but in all the studies carried out in localities after Marienthal (Sandusky, Elmira, and Decatur, for example), the individual was much more clearly the unit of analysis. While Lazarsfeld clearly did not see his own research agenda as the only approach to communication research, others criticized his "administrative research"—paid for by commercial and military funding—as an overwhelming move toward empirical, short–term, effects–based research. The ascendency of administrative research provided an effective foil for critics. Theodor W. Adorno , who had worked under Lazarsfeld at

8140-443: The intellect function at the higher plane of theory. Thus, it was Pythagoras who gave the word theory the specific meaning that led to the classical and modern concept of a distinction between theory (as uninvolved, neutral thinking) and practice. Aristotle's terminology, as already mentioned, contrasts theory with praxis or practice, and this contrast exists till today. For Aristotle, both practice and theory involve thinking, but

8250-590: The larger social structure and the power relations within it. He predominantly worked in the area of administrative research. He did many surveys but was reluctant to generalize his findings to a larger group. Though he found powerful cognitive effects produced by media in his 1940 study, he chose to support the minimal effects hypothesis. In the end, he thought that his ideas of empirical research had not been as widely received as he might have hoped. In one of his last published papers, "Communication Research and Its Applications: A Postscript" (1976), Lazarsfeld lamented that

8360-650: The level of consistent and reproducible evidence that supports them. Within electromagnetic theory generally, there are numerous hypotheses about how electromagnetism applies to specific situations. Many of these hypotheses are already considered adequately tested, with new ones always in the making and perhaps untested. Certain tests may be infeasible or technically difficult. As a result, theories may make predictions that have not been confirmed or proven incorrect. These predictions may be described informally as "theoretical". They can be tested later, and if they are incorrect, this may lead to revision, invalidation, or rejection of

8470-411: The machinations of the institution and thus derail the program. Another negative repercussion of having the type of leadership that Lazarsfeld provided was that the organization and its methodology was determined by his preferences—not allowing in this case for statistics to be utilized and that the data sets were unable to be replicated and generalized. A major portion of Lazarsfeld's research concerned

8580-446: The metatheory about the theory are called metatheorems . A political theory is an ethical theory about the law and government. Often the term "political theory" refers to a general view, or specific ethic, political belief or attitude, thought about politics. In social science, jurisprudence is the philosophical theory of law. Contemporary philosophy of law addresses problems internal to law and legal systems, and problems of law as

8690-436: The most reliable, rigorous, and comprehensive form of scientific knowledge, in contrast to more common uses of the word "theory" that imply that something is unproven or speculative (which in formal terms is better characterized by the word hypothesis ). Scientific theories are distinguished from hypotheses, which are individual empirically testable conjectures , and from scientific laws , which are descriptive accounts of

8800-545: The most useful properties of scientific theories is that they can be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed. From the American Association for the Advancement of Science : A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of

8910-884: The nature of communication in society, and the development of communication as a specific field. The National Communication Association (NCA) recognizes several distinct but often overlapping specializations within the broader communication discipline including: technology , critical-cultural, health , intercultural , interpersonal -small group, mass communication, organizational , political , rhetorical, and environmental communication . Students take courses in these subject areas. Other programs and courses often integrated in communication programs include journalism , rhetoric , film criticism , theatre , public relations , political science (e.g., political campaign strategies, public speaking, effects of media on elections), as well as radio , television , computer-mediated communication , film production , and new media . Many colleges in

9020-411: The new one describes the same reality, only more completely. When a new theory uses new terms that do not reduce to terms of an older theory, but rather replace them because they misrepresent reality, it is called an intertheoretic elimination. For instance, the obsolete scientific theory that put forward an understanding of heat transfer in terms of the movement of caloric fluid was eliminated when

9130-400: The possibility of faulty inference or incorrect observation. Sometimes theories are incorrect, meaning that an explicit set of observations contradicts some fundamental objection or application of the theory, but more often theories are corrected to conform to new observations, by restricting the class of phenomena the theory applies to or changing the assertions made. An example of the former is

9240-461: The problem of media-adequacy —and beyond. As all spheres of human activity and conveyance are affected by the interplay between social communication structure and individual agency, communication studies has gradually expanded its focus to other domains, such as health , medicine , economy , military and penal institutions , the Internet , social capital , and the role of communicative activity in

9350-557: The project and his institute in Newark. He feared (correctly, perhaps) that the institute would fail without his management. At the Project, Lazarsfeld expanded the aims postulated by the assistant directors, Hadley Cantril and Frank Stanton , and in a special issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology in February 1939, edited by Lazarsfeld, he tied together some of the varied research the Project

9460-408: The radio studio, leaving their wives in the Lazarsfeld apartment with the uneaten dinner." Lazarsfeld was using the famous Stanton–Lazarsfeld Program–Analyzer, to record the responses of listeners, and in the ensuing interviews they conducted, Merton was instrumental in ensuring questions were properly answered. This was believed to be the start of the "focused group interview", or what we now known as

9570-517: The real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory." It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact. The term theory is not appropriate for describing scientific models or untested, but intricate hypotheses. The logical positivists thought of scientific theories as deductive theories —that

9680-432: The restriction of classical mechanics to phenomena involving macroscopic length scales and particle speeds much lower than the speed of light. Theory is often distinguished from practice or praxis. The question of whether theoretical models of work are relevant to work itself is of interest to scholars of professions such as medicine, engineering, law, and management. The gap between theory and practice has been framed as

9790-448: The speaker did not experience or test before. In science, this same concept is referred to as a hypothesis , and the word "hypothetically" is used both inside and outside of science. In its usage outside of science, the word "theory" is very often contrasted to " practice " (from Greek praxis , πρᾶξις) a Greek term for doing , which is opposed to theory. A "classical example" of the distinction between "theoretical" and "practical" uses

9900-461: The specific interests that are targeted towards these academics. These specific journals consist of representatives from the industry of communication, the government, and members of the public as a whole. Communication studies integrates aspects of both social sciences and the humanities . As a social science , the discipline overlaps with sociology , psychology , anthropology , biology , political science , economics , and public policy . From

10010-532: The state and the policy apparatus, for example the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission . Influential thinkers from the Canadian communication tradition include Harold Innis , Marshall McLuhan , Florian Sauvageau, Gertrude Robinson, Marc Raboy, Dallas Smythe , James R. Taylor , François Cooren , Gail Guthrie Valaskakis and George Grant . Communication studies within Canada are

10120-525: The students of his students, all of which still breathe the spirit of this man's work". One of Lazarsfeld's successful students was Barney Glaser —propounder of grounded theory (GT)—the world's most quoted method for analyzing qualitative data. Index formations and qualitative mathematics were subjects taught by Lazarsfeld and are important components of the GT method according to Glaser. James Samuel Coleman , an important contributor to social theories of education and

10230-467: The techniques and the organization of social research . "It is not so much that he was an American sociologist," one colleague said of him after his death, "as it was that he determined what American sociology would be." Lazarsfeld said that his goal was "to produce Paul Lazarsfelds". He was a founding figure in 20th-century empirical sociology . Lazarsfeld was born to Jewish parents in Vienna : his mother

10340-409: The term "theory" refers to scientific theories , a well-confirmed type of explanation of nature , made in a way consistent with the scientific method , and fulfilling the criteria required by modern science . Such theories are described in such a way that scientific tests should be able to provide empirical support for it, or empirical contradiction (" falsify ") of it. Scientific theories are

10450-416: The term "theory" refers to "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment." Theories must also meet further requirements, such as the ability to make falsifiable predictions with consistent accuracy across a broad area of scientific inquiry, and production of strong evidence in favor of

10560-497: The theory from multiple independent sources ( consilience ). The strength of a scientific theory is related to the diversity of phenomena it can explain, which is measured by its ability to make falsifiable predictions with respect to those phenomena. Theories are improved (or replaced by better theories) as more evidence is gathered, so that accuracy in prediction improves over time; this increased accuracy corresponds to an increase in scientific knowledge. Scientists use theories as

10670-557: The theory. In mathematics, the term theory is used differently than its use in science ─ necessarily so, since mathematics contains no explanations of natural phenomena per se , even though it may help provide insight into natural systems or be inspired by them. In the general sense, a mathematical theory is a branch of mathematics devoted to some specific topics or methods, such as set theory , number theory , group theory , probability theory , game theory , control theory , perturbation theory , etc., such as might be appropriate for

10780-596: The tide had turned against empirical research and that "while an increasing number of writers expressed the need [to make 'applications' a topic of research], it certainly was not the subject of popular demand among sociologists." Lazarsfeld was noted for his ability to forge productive collaborations with a wide range of thinkers. One of his most celebrated collaborations was with Robert K. Merton . Both Merton and Lazarsfeld were new faculty members in Columbia University's Department of Sociology appointed in 1941. Merton

10890-493: The time and attention needed to simply keep up with reading or listening to mass media: "Exposure to this flood of information may serve to narcotize rather than to energize the average reader or listener." The remainder of Lazarsfeld and Merton's paper discusses structure of ownership and operation of the mass media specific to the US—especially the fact that in the case of magazines, newspapers, and radio, advertising "supports

11000-407: The truth of any one of these statements is always relative to the whole theory. Therefore, the same statement may be true with respect to one theory, and not true with respect to another. This is, in ordinary language, where statements such as "He is a terrible person" cannot be judged as true or false without reference to some interpretation of who "He" is and for that matter what a "terrible person"

11110-407: The two-step flow of communication from media to opinion leaders and then others ( multi-step flow theory ); his research on the characteristics of opinion leaders; diffusion of medical innovations; uses and gratifications of receivers from day time radio soap operas, etc. His research led to a marriage between interpersonal communication and mass communication. In 1956, he was elected as a Fellow of

11220-446: The way nature behaves under certain conditions. Theories guide the enterprise of finding facts rather than of reaching goals, and are neutral concerning alternatives among values. A theory can be a body of knowledge , which may or may not be associated with particular explanatory models . To theorize is to develop this body of knowledge. The word theory or "in theory" is sometimes used outside of science to refer to something which

11330-703: The well-being of people and populations. The term was first coined in 1975 by the International Communication Association and, in 1997, Health communication was officially recognized in the broader fields of Public Health Education and Health Promotion by the American Public Health Association. The discipline integrates components of various theories and models, with a focus on social marketing. It uses marketing to develop "activities and interventions designed to positively change behaviors." This emergence affected several dynamics of

11440-465: The word theory since at least the late 16th century. Modern uses of the word theory derive from the original definition, but have taken on new shades of meaning, still based on the idea of a theory as a thoughtful and rational explanation of the general nature of things. Although it has more mundane meanings in Greek, the word θεωρία apparently developed special uses early in the recorded history of

11550-584: Was Radio and the Printed Page . These two publications did much to consolidate and define the field of communication. After a falling out with Cantril, which may have been financial in nature, the Radio Research Project moved to Columbia University, where it grew into the acclaimed Bureau for Social Research. At Columbia, the direction of research leaned toward voting, and a study of the November 1940 vote

11660-453: Was engaged in. Lazarsfeld felt this publication was necessary because "no central theory was visible, and we began hearing rumors that important people questioned whether we knew what we were doing" (Lazarsfeld, 1969). But in the spring of 1939, the Rockefeller foundation officers were still unconvinced and "required more solid evidence of achievement" before they would renew funding. The result

11770-454: Was likable or it was not. The second research method that was used in tandem with Little Annie was focus group interviewing. After using the tool and viewing the artifact, the participants of the study then filled out a questionnaire, and then discussed the content. The tool was a boon because it allowed for broadcast content to be revised and also be rated for effectiveness. This tool was useful to truly measure audience analysis and reception of

11880-413: Was published as The People's Choice , a book that had a substantial effect on the nature of political research. During the 1940s, mass communication entrenched itself as a field in its own right. Lazarsfeld's interest in the persuasive elements of mass media became a topic of great importance during the Second World War and this resulted in increased attention, and funding, for communication research. By

11990-490: Was seen as a budding theorist, while Lazarsfeld was considered a methodology specialist. Apparently the pair had little contact until Merton and his wife came to dinner at the Lazarsfeld's Manhattan apartment on Saturday evening, November 23, 1941. Upon arrival Lazarsfeld explained to Merton that he had been just asked by the US government's Office of New Facts and Figures to evaluate a radio program. Thus "Merton accompanied Lazarsfeld to

12100-529: Was the Adlerian therapist Sophie Lazarsfeld , and his father Robert was a lawyer. He attended the University of Vienna , eventually receiving a doctorate in mathematics (his doctoral dissertation dealt with mathematical aspects of Einstein's gravitational theory ) in 1925. In the 1920s, he moved in the same circles as the Vienna Circle of philosophers, including Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap , and served as

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