Beginnings of the communication research. Paul Felix Lazarsfeld. Two-step communication flow. Bandwagon

Effect. Gallup’s research.

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Ing. Jiří Šnajdar 2014

Various aspects of communication have been the subject of study since ancient times, and the approach eventually developed into the academic discipline known today as communication studies.

In ancient Greece and Rome, the study of rhetoric, the art of oratory and persuasion, was a vital subject for students. One significant ongoing debate was whether one could be an effective speaker in a base cause (Sophists) or whether excellent rhetoric came from the excellence of the orator's character (Socrates, Plato, Cicero).

Through the European Middle Ages and Renaissance grammar, rhetoric, and logic constituted the entire trivium, the base of the system of classical learning in Europe.

Communication has existed since the beginning of human beings, but it was not until the 20th century that people began to study the process. As communication technologies developed, so did the serious study of communication.

When World War I ended, the interest in studying communication intensified. The social-science study was fully recognized as a legitimate discipline after

World War II.

Before becoming simply communication, or communication studies, the discipline was formed from three other major studies: 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.

The study of communication reaches back to antiquity and beyond, early twentieth-century work by Charles Horton Cooley, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey have been of particular importance for the academic discipline as it stands today.

Cooley, Lippmann, and Dewey capture themes like the central importance of communication in social life, the impact of changing technology upon culture, and questions regarding the relationship between communication, democracy, and community.

These concepts continue to drive scholars today. Many of these concerns are also central to the work of writers such as Gabriel Tarde and Theodor W. Adorno, who have also made significant contributions to the field.

The institutionalization of communication studies in U.S. higher education and research has often been traced to Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where early pioneers such as Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Harold Lasswell, and Wilbur Schramm worked.

The work of Samuel Silas Curry, who founded the School of Expression in 1879 in Boston, is also noted in early communication research.

The Bureau of Applied Social Research was established in 1944 at Columbia University by Paul F. Lazarsfeld. It was a continuation of the Rockefeller Foundation-funded Radio Project that he had led at various institutions (University of Newark, Princeton) from 1937, which had been at Columbia as the Office of Radio Research since 1939.

The Institute for Communications Research was founded at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1947 by Wilbur Schramm, who was a key figure in the post-war institutionalization of communication studies in the U.S.

Schramm, who, in contrast to the more social science-inspired figures at Columbia and Chicago, had a background in English literature, developed communication studies partly by merging existing programs in speech communication, rhetoric, and, especially, journalism under the aegis of communication.

He also edited a textbook The Process and Effects of Mass Communication (1954) that helped define the field, partly by claiming Lazarsfeld, Lasswell, Carl Hovland, and Kurt Lewin as its founding fathers.

Schramm established three important communication institutes: The Institute of Communications Research (University of Illinois), the Institute for Communication Research (Stanford University), and the East-West Communication Institute (Honolulu). Many of Schramm's students, such as Everett Rogers, went on to make important contributions of their own.

The work of what has been called 'medium theorists', arguably defined by Harold Innis' (1950) Empire and Communications grew increasingly important, and was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in his Understanding Media (1964). “McLuhan recognized that the evolution of communication played a crucial role in the human historical development and that social changes following the World Wars were directly connected with the rising of electrical communication technologies, which contributed in transforming the world into a ‘global village.’

The political turmoil of the 1960s worked to the field’s advantage because mass media scholars began to explore the influence that media had on culture and society.  “Growing recognition of the importance of the media by both industry and the public, as well as increasing respect for the field at the university leveled to increased support for new scholarship.”  

Radio and television continued to develop throughout the 1970s and this boom in diversity “forced scholars to adopt a more convergent model of communication.”

In 1980 the US Department of Education classified “communication” as a practical discipline, which was associated primarily with learning journalism and media production. The same classification system deemed speech and rhetorical studies a subcategory of English.

The Department of Media and Communication at the University of Leicester is based within the College of Social Sciences and has been at the forefront of media research since 1966, when it was first established as the Centre for Mass Communication Research. The UK's Social Science Research Council (now the ESRC) invited CMCR to design and deliver the country's first taught postgraduate degree in media and communications.

Communication processes are a fundamental part of virtually every aspect of human social life. Communication Research publishes articles that explore the processes, antecedents, and consequences of communication in a broad range of societal systems.

These include the following: mass media ; interpersonal; health; political; new technology; organization; intercultural; family

Why you need Communication Research?

Research and theory presented in all areas of communication give you comprehensive coverage of the field.

Rigorous, empirical analysis provides you with research that’s reliable and high in quality. The multi-disciplinary perspective contributes to a greater understanding of communication processes and outcomes.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld(February 13, 1901 – August 30, 1976),

was one of the major figures in 20th-century American sociology. The founder of Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, he exerted a tremendous influence over 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."

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

He attended schools in Vienna, eventually receiving a doctorate in mathematics (his doctoral dissertation dealt with mathematical aspects of Einstein's gravitational theory).

Together with Hans Zeisel they wrote a now-classical study of the social impact of unemployment on a small community: Die Arbeitslosen von Marienthal (1932)

The Marienthal study attracted the attention of the Rockefeller Foundation, leading to a two-year traveling fellowship to the United States.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

From 1933-1935, Lazarsfeld worked with the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and toured the United States, making contacts and visiting 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.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

he established an institute in Newark, 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.

The Newark Center was clearly successful in generating interest in both empirical studies and in Lazarsfeld as a research manager, demonstrated that empirical research could be of help and of interest to both business and academia.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

Under "Administrative Research," as he called his framework, 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.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

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 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.

Paul Felix Lazarsfeld

Lazarsfeld's many contributions to sociological method have earned him the title of the "founder of modern empirical sociology".

Lazarsfeld made great strides in statistical survey analysis, panel methods, latent structure analysis, and contextual analysis. He is also considered a co-founder of mathematical sociology.

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 the students of his students, all of which still breathe the spirtit of this man's work".

Two-step flow of communication

The two-step flow of communication or Multistep Flow Model, says that most people form their opinions under the influence of opinion leaders, who in turn are influenced by the mass media. So according to this model, ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population.

The Multistep Flow Model says that most people form their opinions based on opinion leaders that influence the media. Opinion leaders are those initially exposed to a specific media content, and who interpret it based on their own opinion.

They then begin to infiltrate these opinions through the general public who become "opinion followers". These "opinion leaders" gain their influence through more elite media as opposed to mainstream mass media.

In this process, social influence is created and adjusted by the ideals and opinions of each specific "elite media" group, and by these media group's opposing ideals and opinions and in combination with popular mass media sources.

Therefore, the leading influence in these opinions is primarily a social persuasion.

The two-step flow of communication model hypothesizes that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population. It was first introduced by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld in 1944 and elaborated by Elihu Katz and Lazarsfeld in 1955 and subsequent publications.

Lowery and DeFleur argue the book was much more than a simple research report: it was an effort to interpret the authors' research within a framework of conceptual schemes, theoretical issues, and research findings drawn broadly from the scientific study of small groups.

The two-step theory refined the ability to predict how media messages influence audience behavior and explains why certain media campaigns do not alter audiences’ attitudes. This hypothesis provided a basis for the multi-step flow theory of mass communication.

Katz and Lazarsfeld concluded that: ... the traditional image of the mass persuasion process must make room for 'people' as intervening factors between the stimuli of the media and resultant opinions, decisions, and actions."

Bandwagon Effect

The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others.

In other words, the bandwagon effect is characterized by the probability of individual adoption increasing with respect to the proportion who have already done so.

As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.

Bandwagon Effect

A psychological phenomenon whereby people do something primarily because other people are doing it, regardless of their own beliefs, which they may ignore or override. The bandwagon effect has wide implications, but is commonly seen in politics and consumer behavior. This phenomenon can also be seen during bull markets and the growth of asset bubbles.

This tendency of people to align their beliefs and behaviors with those of a group is also called "herd mentality."

Bandwagon Effect

The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others.

Both explanations have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments.

For example, social pressure has been used to explain Asch's conformity experiments, and information has been used to explain Sherif's autokinetic experiment.

Bandwagon Effect

When individuals make rational choices based on the information they receive from others, economists have proposed that information cascades can quickly form in which people decide to ignore their personal information signals and follow the behavior of others. Cascades explain why behavior is fragile - people understand that they are based on very limited information. As a result, fads form easily but are also easily dislodged.

Such informational effects have been used to explain political bandwagons.

Bandwagon Effect

The bandwagon effect occurs in voting: some people vote for those candidates or parties who are likely to succeed (or are proclaimed as such by the media), hoping to be on the "winner's side" in the end.

The bandwagon effect has been applied to situations involving majority opinion, such as political outcomes, where people alter their opinions to the majority view.

Bandwagon Effect

It is also said to be important in the American Presidential Primary elections. States all vote at different times, spread over some months, rather than all on one day.

Some states (Iowa, New Hampshire) have special precedence to go early while others have to wait until a certain date. This is often said to give undue influence to these states, a win in these early states is said to give a candidate the "Big Mo" (momentum) and has propelled many candidates to win the nomination.

Bandwagon Effect

Several studies have tested this theory of the bandwagon effect in political decision making. In the 1994 study of Robert K. Goidel and Todd G. Shields in The Journal of Politics, 180 students at the University of Kentucky were randomly assigned to nine groups and were asked questions about the same set of election scenarios.

Bandwagon Effect

Expectations played a significant role throughout the study. It was found that independents are twice as likely to vote for the Republican candidate when the Republican is expected to win. From the results, it was also found that when the Democrat was expected to win, independent Republicans and weak Republicans were more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate.

Bandwagon Effect

Use in microeconomics

In microeconomics, bandwagon effect describes interactions of demand and preference. The bandwagon effect arises when people's preference for a commodity increases as the number of people buying it increases. This interaction potentially disturbs the normal results of the theory of supply and demand, which assumes that consumers make buying decisions solely based on price and their own personal preference.

Gallup’s research.

Gallup, Inc., is an American research-based, global performance-management consulting company. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became famous for its public opinion polls, which were conducted in the United States and other countries.

Today, Gallup provides research and strategic consulting to major businesses and organizations around the world.

Some of Gallup's key practice areas are employee engagement, customer engagement, talent

management, and well-being.

Gallup’s research.

Gallup has 30 offices in more than 20 countries. There are about 2,000 employees in the privately held company working in four divisions: Gallup Poll, Gallup Consulting, Gallup University, and Gallup Press.

History

George Gallup founded the American Institute of Public Opinion, the precursor of the Gallup Organization, in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1935. He wished to objectively determine the opinions held by the people.

Gallup’s research.

In 1936, Gallup successfully predicted that Franklin Roosevelt would defeat Alfred Landon for the U.S. presidency; this event quickly popularized the company.

In 1938, Gallup and Gallup Vice President David Ogilvy began conducting market research for advertising companies and the film industry. In 1958, the modern Gallup Organization was formed when George Gallup grouped all of his polling operations into one organization.

Gallup’s research.

After Gallup's death in 1984, his family sold the firm to Selection Research, Incorporated (SRI), a research firm headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1988. SRI, founded in 1969 by the psychologist Don Clifton, pioneered the use of talent-based structured psychological interviews.

SRI wanted the Gallup name to use on its polls, which gave them more credibility and higher response rates.

Historically, the Gallup Poll has measured and tracked the public's attitudes concerning political, social, and economic issues, including sensitive or controversial subjects.

Gallup conducts 1,000 interviews per day, 350 days out of the year, among both landline and cell phones across the U.S. for its health and well-being survey and political and economic survey.

Gallup Daily tracking methodology relies on live interviewers, dual-frame random-digit-dial sampling (which includes landline as well as cellular telephone phone sampling to reach those in cell phone-only households), and uses a multi-call design to reach respondents not contacted on the

initial attempt.

Gallup completes 500 cellphone surveys and 500 landline surveys daily, divided evenly between the two topical questionnaires. The population of the U.S. that relies only on cell phones makes 34% of the population.The findings from Gallup's U.S. surveys are based on the organization's standard national telephone samples, consisting of list-assisted random-digit-dial (RDD) telephone samples using a proportionate, stratified sampling design. A computer randomly generates the phone numbers Gallup calls from all working phone exchanges (the first three numbers of your local phone number) and not-listed phone numbers; thus, Gallup is as likely to call unlisted phone numbers as well as listed phone numbers.

When respondents to be interviewed are selected at random, every adult has an equal probability of falling into the sample. The typical sample size for a Gallup poll, either a traditional stand-alone poll or one night's interviewing from Gallup's Daily tracking, is 1,000 national adults with a margin of error of ±4 percentage points.

Gallup's Daily tracking process now allows Gallup analysts to aggregate larger groups of interviews for more detailed subgroup analysis. But the accuracy of the estimates derived only marginally improves with larger sample sizes.

After Gallup collects and processes survey data, each respondent is assigned a weight so that the demographic characteristics of the total weighted sample of respondents match the latest estimates of the demographic characteristics of the adult population available from the U.S. Census Bureau. Gallup weights data to census estimates for gender, race, age, educational attainment, and region.

The data are weighted daily by number of adults in the household and the respondents' reliance on cell phones, to adjust for any disproportion in selection probabilities.

From 1936 to 2008, Gallup Polls correctly predicted the winner of the presidential election with the notable exceptions of the 1948 Thomas Dewey-Harry S. Truman election, where nearly all pollsters predicted a Dewey victory (which also led to the infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline), and 1976, when they inaccurately projected a slim victory by Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter.

For the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Gallup correctly predicted the winner, but was rated 17th out of 23 polling organizations in terms of the precision of its pre-election polls relative to the final results.

In 2005, Gallup began its World Poll, which continually surveys citizens in 160 countries, representing more than 98% of the world's adult population.

The Gallup World Poll consists of more than 100 global questions as well as region-specific items. It includes the following global indexes: law and order, food and shelter, institutions and infrastructure, good jobs, wellbeing, and brain gain. Gallup also works with organizations, cities, governments and countries to create custom items and indexes to gather information on specific topics of interest.

Gallup interviews approximately 1,000 residents per country. The target population is the entire civilian, non-institutionalized population, aged 15 and older.

Gallup asks each respondent the survey questions in his or her own language to produce statistically comparable results.

Gallup uses telephone surveys in countries where telephone coverage represents at least 80% of the population. Where telephone penetration is less than 80%, Gallup uses face-to-face interviewing.

Gallup's Leadership Research

In researching Strengths Based Leadership, Gallup scientists studied more than one million work teams, conducted more than 20,000 in-depth interviews with leaders, drew on 50 years of Gallup Polls about the world's most admired leaders, and even interviewed more than 10,000 followers around the world to ask exactly why they followed the most important leader in their life.

The most effective leaders surround themselves with the right people and then maximize their team.

While the best leaders are not well-rounded, the best teams are. Gallup's research found that top-performing teams have strengths in four distinct domains of leadership strength: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking.

People follow leaders for very specific reasons. When we asked thousands of followers, they were able to describe exactly what they need from a leader with remarkable clarity: trust, compassion, stability, and hope.