ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMMUNICATION FIELD

Wilbur Schrammand the

Establishment of Communication Study

byGemma B. Dumansi

2015-66007

College of Development Communication

University of the Philippines Los Banos

THE FOREFATHERS OF COMMUNICATION STUDY IN AMERICA

1. HAROLD LASSWELL :STRUCTURE & FUNCTION OF COMMUNICATION IN SOCIETY (SURVEILLANCE, CORRELATION, SOCIALIZATION

2. PAUL LAZARSFELD: COMMUNICATION RESEARCH (FROM MARKET RESEARCH TO MEDIA EFFECTS TO SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT

THE FOREFATHERS OF COMMUNICATION STUDY IN AMERICA

3. KURT LEWIN: DEEPER UNDERSTANDING TO HUMAN COMMUNICATION – COMMUNICATION IN GROUPS

4. CARL HOVLAND: DIRECTED “YALE COMMUNICATION AND ATTITUDE CHANGE PROGRAM

WILBUR SCHRAMM: THE FOUNDER OF COMMUNICATION STUDY

W. Schramm possessed a unique set of personal qualities and interpersonal skills to found communication study.

Without a founder, there would be no new field, and therefore no forefathers to recall

He established communication study at the end of WWII, a period when U.S. universities were beginning a tremendous expansion, often doubling or even tripling their student enrollments.

WASHINGTON AT WAR: January 1942 – volunteered to work under

Office of Facts Figures (OFF), a central propaganda agency for the US government.

he drafted Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” that were broadcast by radio to the American people.

he’s responsible for liason work with U.S. universities encouraging them to aid in the war pains.

Ralf O. Nafziger, a journalism Prof. from University of Minnesota, was also recruited to the OFF when the war broke out. – occasionally meet with W. Schramm.

SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENTISTS WHOM W. SCHRAMM COLLABORATED WITH…..

1. George Stoddard –his old friend and became President of the University of Illinois.

2. Rensis Likert – a methodologist who conducted survey research on public attitudes toward the war (an extension of his Farm Survey work for U.S Department of Agriculture)

3. Harold Lasswell - OFF consultant 4. Ralph Casey – collaborated with Lasswell on analyses of

propaganda and public opinion (see Rogers & Caffee, 1994, pp.17-20 on Casey and Schramm)

- Casey was a director of the journalism school at the University of Minnesota.

SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENTISTS WHOM W. SCHRAMM COLLABORATED WITH…..

5. Ernerst R. Hilgard (Jack)- a Psychologist of Learning from Stanford University.

6. Paul Lazarsfeld – OFF consultant and also a consultant to Samuel Stouffer’s Research Branch in the US Army’s Information and Education Division in Pentagon. Conduct surveys of the morale, racial attitudes,

and other attitudes of US troops Carry out experiments on the effects of military

training filmsCarl Hovland (on leave from Yale University) directed this experimental research.

MEAD, HILGARD, LIKERT & SCHRAMM

Margaret Mead – a political scientist and famous anthropologist, directed a research program on nutrition behavior for the National Research Council

Mead, Hilgard, Likert & Schramm were part of a group that met monthly in a Washington Hotel for dinner and had discussions about interdisciplinary social science work (Schramm chaired these meetings).

During WWII, Washington was the place for social scientist. The war effort demanded an interdisciplinary approach to problems, often related to communication study because in so many ways, it was seen as “a war of words”.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF WWII TO COMMUNICATION STUDY.. Communication was viewed as the basic

tool for mobilization of the American people to volunteer, conserve, and in other ways aid in concentrating the nation’s resources on winning the war.

WWII created the conditions for the founding of the communication field.

W. Shramm decided to return to Iowa after less than 2 years at OFF / OWI (office of War Information)/ USIA (U.S. Information Agency)

University of Iowa (1934-1947) University of Illinois (1947-1955) Stanford University (1955-1973)

After Retirement: University of Hawaii – Manoa Campus (1973-1978) Chinese University of Hongkong (Aw Boon Haw

Prof. 1year) University of Michigan (Guest Scholar – 1 Term)

SHRAMM’S COMMUNICATION STUDY AT THREE MAJOR RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES…

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA: SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM In 1943, the School of Journalism in Iowa was mainly

providing vocational type of higher education preparing undergraduate students to enter jobs as newspaper reporters.

This picture of a school of journalism as professional (rather than scholarly) in orientation characterized not only in Iowa but almost all several hundred journalism programs except:

University of Wisconsin in Madison, where an unusually brand of journalism education had been pioneered by William G. “Daddy” Bleyer (1873-1935), who started a course in journalism in 1904.

Bleyer placed emphasis on research as part of education for journalism. If schools of journalism were to guide rather than merely follow professional practice, he considered that social science could help by answering practical questions about newsworthiness, editing decisions, & determinants of readership.

BLEYER & HIS 2 DISCIPLES Daddy Bleyer at University of Wiscosin

he instituted journalism minor in social science PhD studentUndergrad journalism majors took courses in sociology, polsci, & econ as a means of understanding the society on which they were to report.He provided other Universities with journalism professors who saw research as a natural part of their carrier responsibilities.Benefited Schramm’s germinating idea of a new field of communication study.

Ralph Casey & Ralph Nafziger at University of Minnesota made similar changes in the J-School of minnesota as what Schramm is doing at Iowa.

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA: SCHRAMM IN ACTION1. Schramm: Director of the School of Journalism2. Submitted a plan: Broadening the journalism

major from how-to-do-it journalism classes; the founding of a bureau of newspaper readership (as component of School of Journalism) and social science courses: sociology, psychology, economics, etc.

3. Established: PhD program in mass communication (interdisciplinary). Courses: communication theory, research methods, public opinion, propaganda analysis, other social scientific topics, supported by outside courses in psychology, sociology, economics, and political science

4. established Research Institute at Iowa patterned after Lazarsfeld’s Office of Radio Research @ Columbia University was established. Funding:

Cedar Rapids radio station- to know how large their audience was and who was in it.Young and Rubicam advertising agency (N.Y)- through its research director Dr. George “Ted” Gallup (one of Iowa’s 1st Journ students)

MASS COMMUNICATION AT ILLINOIS

Wilbur Schramm: Director of the Institute of Communication

Research Professor of Communication In charge of the University of Illinois Press,

the radio and television stations, veterans affairs, a conference center, and a host of other activities.

The Communication Czar The Duke of Allerton

THE INSTITUTE OF COMMUNICATION RESEARCH It was funded with 15 faculty positions A dozen of new doctoral students were

admitted each term doctoral students took courses in social

science departments, plus core courses in communication at the institute.

1st graduate of the doctoral program went out to start similar units at other universities eager to build Com study, such as Michigan State.

SCHRAMM @ ILLINOIS: Organized a conference at Allerton Park

and funded by Rockefeller Foundation Wrote the 1st book in Com study (1948)

“Communication in Modern Society” – collection of conference papers

2nd book “Mass Communications” (1949.1960) – collection of articles and excepts which he dedicated this influenial volume to Lazarsfeld, Lasswell, and Hovland for bringing social science to Communication field.

“Process and Effects of Mass Communication” (1954) - Schramm’s most important book, originally a US Information Agency training manual composed of papers by various scholars. Published: University of Illinois Press

Schramm arranged for Press to publish “The Mathematical Theory of Communication” by Claude E. Shnnon w/ explanatory paper by Warren Weaver (1949) – became basis for Information Theory which Schramm incorporated to communication study in 1955 so as with his doctoral students David K. Berlo (1960) and Wilson Taylor (1953) in their communication field

THE COLD WAR… During the Illinois years another war, this time

in Korea, played a key role in Schramm’s intellectual evolution.

USIA (1951) invited Schramm to conduct a Survey of public opinion in Seoul that examined the appeal that Communism held during the invasions from North Korea; the city changed hands several times in a period of months

Korea project marked the beginning o Schramm’s role as an adviser to other nations’ governments an his interest in comparisons between Western and Soviet-Communist theories of the press (Schramm, 1956).

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMUNICATION Mass Communication programs around US

began in the late 1950s offering courses in comparative press systems and in international communication flows, and a decade later on the role of communication in development. (Schramm produced many standard readings for these courses and led the way in conducting research on these topics)

Illinois was thus the place where communication research in the programmatic sense was first established, although its roots could be traced to Schramm at Iowa and even Bleyer at Wisconsin.

STANFORD AS THE SEED INSTITUTION FOR COMMUNICATION STUDY….

Schramm was appointed at the Department of Journalism (small and professional in orientation)

Chick Bush, director of the Institute for Communication Research was pushing journalism at Stanford towards a social science perspective and he counted on Schramm to go in that direction (Schramm replaced him as director after 2 yrs)

Jack Hilgard, Dean of Stanford’s Graduate School, controlled some $50,000/year of special monies which provided the funding for Schramm’s initial appointment to strengthen the social sciences at Stanford.

Under Schramm, the Institute for Communication Research always seemed abundant in research funds - Ford Foundation, a grant that paid half of his salary for 4 yrs and US Agency for International Development for research and training in development communication.

Schramm’s program at Stanford became famous for doctoral students that almost every traditional University wanted to hire a “Stanford type” – well trained in quantitative methods like Wayne Danielson & Maxwell McCombs

Wayne Danielson (born 1929) BA degree in journalism(1952) @ University of Iowa, MA

degree @ Stanford (1953), enrolled Stanford’s interdisciplinary doctoral program in communication (1954) – also enrolled courses in Psychology on Hilgard Learning Theory, in Social Psychology from Leon Festinger and in Statistics from Quinn McNemar

Received his PhD in Mass Communication Research @ Stanford (1957) and taught 1yr at University of Wisconsin, then moved to University of North Carolina for 10yrs (became Dean of School of Journalism)

University of Texas – Austin (1969-1979), Dean, College of Communication.

Stepped down as Dean, and continued as professor of journalism and Computer Science in Texas.

Maxwell E. McCombs (born 1938) BA in Tulane University MA in Stanford University – Bush gave him

statistical methods, learning theory, content analysis, and communication theory

Finished PhD in Communication at Stanford University(1966)

Taught Journalism at UCLA then took faculty position at North Carolina until 1973.

Faculty at Syracuse Univ. and the at the University of Texas where he chaired Dep’t of Journalism (1986-1991)

HOW SCHRAMM WORKED… The careers of Danielson (principally in

administration) and McCombs (mainly in research and doctoral education) illustrate the path of the model of Schramm protégé. They applied quantitative methods and social science theories to real-world problems.

Schramm often spoke of both of them with an obvious pride of authorship. Schramm’s social views evolved throughout his

life, from a traditional Christian white American ethnocentrism to an ecumenical and respectful collaborator with people from around the world.

Schramm was a tireless worker: he had put together funding, participants, and a

program for a summerlong conference n communication and development which was held in Honolulu

made his greatest academic contribution as synthesizer of other people’s work. (converts other people’s findings into useful generalization).

He helped found the Indian Institute for Mass Communication in Delhi, andEast-West Communication Institute at the University of Hawaii

He promoted communication study not only in united States but around the world

SCHRAMM’S MODEL Feedback loop model Field Experience

REFERENCES: Rogers, Everett M (1997). A History of

Communication Study: A Biographical Approach. The Free Press. New York

Schramm, Wilbur L. 1997. The Beginnings of Communication Study in America: A Memoir. SAGE Publications, Inc. California