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Communication and Democracy

The Roots of Media Studies

Hanno Hardt

Media studies in the United States evolved with the rise of modern communication technologies, which had provided opportunities for creating cultural and political homogeneity and demonstrated their potential as instruments of social control. This chapter suggests that media studies are an outgrowth of developing social theories emerging in the nineteenth century, when an increasingly literate European civil society began to think freely about the necessary conditions of a modern world while a new social dynamic materialized in technologies of communication that would help define the experience of relatedness that constitutes society and that would prove to be essential for conceptualizing democracy

The history of US media studies, more specifically, is rooted in the dominant sociological preoccupation with communication as a measurable process, manifest in communication research and the earlier work of the Chicago School before it embraced an alternative understanding of communication as symbolic interaction and meaning-making. Thus, contemporary media studies emanate in the twentieth century from earlier academic undertakings (e.g., journalism, speech and communication studies, or mass communication research) as a field of inquiry reflecting the epistemological turns of social theory, and sociology in particular, with the rediscovery of ideology and the empowerment of the individual in the process of communication. The field had its beginnings, however, in various nineteenth-century attempts to analyze and understand the role and function of the press as a modern institution whose production and dissemination of information would shape and reinforce the development of society (for more detailed discussions, see Hardt, 1992, 2001). Meanwhile, the English-language literature regarding liberty of the press and democracy offers an exhaustive account of the social and political developments in the United Kingdom and the United States, but it lacks a major effort to include various political or philosophical considerations of communication and democracy pursued elsewhere on the European continent. This includes the migration of formative ideas from Germany that reached the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. These formative ideas are particularly important for understanding the fundamental arguments, for instance, regarding society and the role of communication that appeared in the early works of US social scientists.

Specific questions about the social and political power of the press and its potential in the realm of culture have been raised almost since the beginning of public communication, yet their formal study resumed much later mostly in the disciplinary context of a political economy of social forces before the introduction of sociology as a distinct discipline in the US academic context of the late 1880s. Its acceptance rapidly spread with the need for acquainting students with the social problems of a rising urban–industrial society as well as with the microcosm of human interaction in an era of major social changes featuring discrimination and causing alienation. Above all, sociology was conceived of as a practical science whose orientation embraced action and reform to place itself at the service of those committed to create a more just and virtuous society. According to Albion Woodbury Small (1854–1926), “Sociology in its largest scope and on its methodological side is merely a moral philosophy conscious of its task” (1907, p. 22). Thus, US sociology developed an interest in an analysis of social processes and their dynamics in a changing social and cultural environment with the ultimate goal of improving the conditions of society and thereby strengthening democratic practices.

The intellectual roots of US sociology and its interest in the role and function of media (or the press, more specifically) are found in nineteenth-century scholarship in Germany, in particular, when US students sought a world-class education abroad before returning to the United States to settle in academic careers. According to Herbst (1965), “soon after 1870 American students of the liberal arts and the social sciences began going to Germany in large numbers [. . .] As the nation became industrialized, there was a need for specialists, scholars, and teachers trained in economics and statistics, and in allied areas of the social sciences and humanities” (p. 8). It was the rise of the professional class that accompanied industrialization in the United States. In the meantime, major social, cultural, and political shifts in Germany had begun to signal a new age. Mann (1968) described this period succinctly when he wrote, “From the stagecoach to the railway, the steamship, and the telegraph, from the faith of an earlier generation to unconcealed atheism and materialism, from Goethe to Heine, from Hegel to Marx, from Faust to the Communist Manifesto – this is the story of tremendous social and intellectual upheaval” (p. 52).

More specifically, the US students experienced the German press of the nineteenth century as an instrument of political authority, identified with Bismarck and Wilhelm II, before it changed into the hands of special interests and political parties; it was also curbed by censorship and stamp taxes. Thus, state or commercial interests interfered with the development of the press into an independent provider of information. They also learned that throughout this period German intellectuals, including academics, had realized the importance of the press for building a democratic society, and German scholarship had probed the social structure, the flow of communication, and the presence of newspapers. These were central topics in efforts to define and understand social and political change in Germany. This approach also characterized the work of several German teachers of US students, among them economists such as Karl Knies (1821–1898), whose academic pursuit confirmed the centrality of communication in a theory of society. Having studied the economics of transportation and telegraphy, Knies concluded that communication and the press belonged in a general framework of historical inquiry that was aimed at explaining the need for improving social relations.

Knies stressed the interdependence of the economic and cultural spheres of society, such as in his discussion of news. He suggested, for instance, that if “news is a commodity, it must have a certain value, an intrinsic value. But the intrinsic value alone is not inherent in the object itself, it can only be there if and as long as a human need exists for the news” (Knies, 1857, p. 67). Moreover, Knies acknowledged that the transmission of news had become a significant private business and thus increased the potential for manipulation and influence on society. In fact, Knies outlined the development of communication, from interpersonal contacts, when information passed directly from source to intended receiver, to the more advanced system of transmitting news and information with the aid of messengers, whose oral presentations replaced the intimacy of the dialogical relationship and increased the possibility of misuse. The upcoming primitive technologies of optical and aural systems of communication constituted a significant change with faster speeds and the coverage of greater distances. Moreover, news now could be received indiscriminately by different individuals within the reach of the signal, replacing the need for personal contact. The process of news communication had become more impersonal. With the introduction of printing techniques, resulting in a tremendous growth of form, frequency, and quantity of messages, transportation became an important issue and led to the rise of occupational roles, such as news carriers, as postal services combined with the construction of railway lines across vast regions.

Knies (1857) also addressed non-economic considerations affecting the spread of news communication, such as physical mobility and alienation as a result of increasing rates of communication when improved means of communication brought people into contact with distant places and reinforced feelings of living in a changing and perhaps uncertain environment. However, the development of communication technologies, including the telegraph, supported the need of individuals to remain in communication, and news became a specific form in which people expressed their relationships. Knies (1857) defined news as the “communication of an event that occurs away from the location of the recipient” (p. 44). This definition focused on spatial rather than temporal elements of social communication, but he also acknowledged the fact that news is typically short-lived and thus of limited commercial value.

In this context, Knies (1857) acknowledged the commercial interests of the press, including questions of advertising, by concentrating on the idea of knowledge and information as expressions of power. He concluded that “knowledge is sales [. . .] and knowledge is production” (p. 49). For Knies, advertising remained a cultural document of society; it offered valuable information about the life of communities, and he proposed that it be used as evidence not only by social or cultural historians but also by politicians in their quest for learning more about the conditions of their localities or constituencies. At the same time, he asserted that the dissemination of advertisements and news and their potential effects on readers also challenged the moral responsibility of those in charge of these communication processes. Misuse in either case is easy but always at the expense of the trust and loyalty of readers. According to Knies, the economic basis of social communication systems, such as the commercial press, discriminated against the full participation by the illiterate and the poor in society. Also, any maturation of the social organism could only occur with improving the social communication systems, which would develop organizational and occupational roles for the collection and dissemination of information.

Throughout his work, Knies (1857) realized the centrality of communication in society; his discussion of the role of communication in the evolution of modernity frequently anticipated late twentieth-century social scientific concerns and findings regarding media and the state of the community. He emphasized the interdependence of economic and cultural spheres of society and thus promoted interdisciplinary analyses by using methodological perspectives that reflected a contemporary approach to qualitative media research.

Among the US students in Germany was Simon N. Patten (1852–1922), whose references to the teachings of the German historical school suggest that he, too, believed economic theory must be built on historical foundations, that economics should be studied through an examination of the processes of culture, and that an understanding of civilization ultimately leads to an understanding of the economic system. Social reform and planned change in the US context also involved an analysis of communication, which implied not only a potential atmosphere of cooperation, but it also provided a basis for generating understanding.

According to Patten (1899), social control ultimately rests on opinion and thus involves the media. Indeed, the cultural milieu and the conditions under which people exist are determinants of media effects, and he illustrated his idea with a specific example of press coverage and its varied reception in different cultures. For instance, he wrote:

Patten's social concerns and the expressed need for decreasing social and economic differences through communication and cooperation resulted in a bill of economic rights, which included the right to publicity and to decisions by public opinion. They reflected his priorities in the struggle for progress and created new forms of social control by individuals who enjoyed freedom of thought and movement.

Patten's work is also reminiscent of Henry George (1829–1897), who had campaigned against the control of transportation and communication by private corporations, advocating nationalization for the public good. Patten's influence was widely acknowledged with his cultural perspective and his concerns for public welfare and economic and social reform. He supported the role of sociologists in the social change movement, and he was among nine social scientists who established the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University in 1905.

A shared understanding of the importance of communication and the function of the press in society beyond specific cultural or political differences existed between German and US social scientists at the time, resulting from earlier contacts and the subsequent adoption of ideas by US scholars related to the workings of the social organism. For instance, Knies referred to his contemporary Albert Schäffle (1831–1903), whose work would feature prominently at Chicago several years later. Schäffle's organismic theory of society was based on the process of social communication as a binding force in society. He argued that progress and “the development of cultural community [. . .] of moral community [. . .] depends upon the development of a symbolizing technique and upon the adequate supply of steadily improving symbolic goods, upon the development of all forms of communication for intellectual intercourse involving knowledge, appreciations and decisions” (Schäffle, 1873, p. 6).

Understandably, the press played a major role in Schäffle's discussion of the commercial and intellectual life of society. Schäffle (1881) warned that the social sciences would be mistaken to ignore or neglect the study of the public, the public sphere, public opinion, and the press; they form a homogeneous system. And he asked:

More specifically, Schäffle's major theoretical work, Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (four volumes, 1875–1879), as well as an earlier article, “Über die volkswirthschaftliche Natur der Güter der Darstellung und Mittheilung” (1873), firmly suggested that any discussion of economic and political affairs cannot advance without an understanding of communication, although he did not offer a unified theory of communication. In this context he described the creation and internalization of symbol systems and the need for transmission of the resulting messages. For Schäffle, the printed word constituted a record of observation and reflection of the modern world where the press and literature become an organ of criticism and a technology of unification. Newspapers serve as an example of media as carriers of a variety of symbols reproduced for the benefit of their readers; they frame issues of reproduction in terms of useful consumption, reflecting the goals of an industry that tries to organize the reproduction of symbols in an economically feasible and profitable manner while advancing the needs of society for the reproduction and circulation of original news among the general public.

Schäffle's considerations of media and the economic consequences of industrializing the reproduction of communication necessarily lead to issues of influence and control in mass society. Because the press and the public are of universal importance to the intellectual life of society, Schäffle assigned responsibilities for a systematic treatment of communication and media to the social sciences. He offered a meaningful rationale for their study and analysis with an implicit indication of media studies as a legitimate academic concern. For Schäffle, the public sphere emerged as a site for the exchange of personal and material symbols, based on openness, and would always remain the battleground for the ideas and ideologies of an active and participatory community. Indeed, any removal of the public sphere would have to be considered a mutilation of the social body, not unlike removing its nervous system.

Schäffle recognized the public as individuals participating in an intellectual exchange, such as with the press, and he recognized the existence of many publics at any given time being connected through the press. The public as a basically passive and receptive social entity, therefore, constituted an object available to outside stimulation rather than to being considered an aggressive force. An exception is found in the rise of public opinion, which is extremely important for the discussion of social action, according to Schäffle. In this context the press constitutes a primary cultural mechanism for channeling the flow of ideas and opinions. Indeed, the press becomes the most powerful means of influencing public opinion; it is a superpower, far superior to other means of communication, such as books or even conversations. Schäffle warned against underestimating public opinion in the service of promoting ideas or attitudes; it becomes the backdrop in the social drama set against those representing the dominant power in society.

Schäffle considered the daily press – as a constitutive element in the conceptualization of the social system – the most powerful institution for the exchange of ideas between people and their leaders; the press is a conductor or condensator of intellectual currents and typically seeks the company of government, political parties, and social or economic organizations. He also recognized that newspapers often suffer from a loss of credibility and need feedback to gain some measure of their editorial position. In their various manifestations, ranging from special-interest publications to the local press, these media represent a large and interconnected system for collecting and transmitting ideas. As such, they serve as an organ of public opinion. Consequently, the press becomes a desirable property and is targeted by a variety of social, political, religious, or financial interests either for purposes of propaganda or for mere speculation. It became obvious to Schäffle that both good and evil forces in society are compelled to use the press for persuasion, which could result in corruption and falsification.

Schäffle identified two major sources of corruption that affected the health of society: the centralization of government and the exploitation of the press by financial interests. Yet he suggested that because society as a whole is responsible for the quality of its media, over time it will acquire the media it deserves. His plans for reforming the press became part of an economic reform by which the press would be freed from financial speculation and advertising control. They were based on the need for protecting individual and collective freedoms of expression, which can only be guaranteed when the production and dissemination of ideas remain absolutely free and undisturbed by capitalist or bureaucratic efforts to organize the activities of the press for financial gain or political control. Although Schäffle recognized the corruption of the contemporary press because of the economic organization of German society, he still believed that the press remained the most pervasive instrument of social communication. Schäffle blamed these unfavorable conditions also on the social sciences, which had been unable to provide necessary insights into the manipulation by government, journalists, and publishers. Echoing Comte's hope that progress in the social sciences would end the corruption of the public spirit, he also projected sentiments found in the early writings of US social sciences, notably sociologists.

Karl Bücher (1847–1930) represents yet another contributor who emphasized the cultural–historical approach to communication and economic development, citing the need for media systems in economies based on the exchange of goods and services, the problems of journalism in industrial societies, and the overriding commercial interests of the press. Influenced by Schäffle, Bücher provided by far the most extensive discussion of the press among German economists, whose ideas were known by Robert Park, for instance.

Knies's and Schäffle's thoughts also are reflected in the early writings of Karl Marx, who saw the press as a pivotal institution in modern society, realized its potential as a means of persuasion, and considered it an indispensable weapon against political authority and for the rule of democratic ideas (Hardt, 2001, p. 39). These ideas resurfaced – including a Spencerian theory of society, not unlike Schäffle's conceptualization of society – several years later, particularly in the work of Albion Small (1854–1926), whose goal for sociology was the development of a comprehensive theory of society. According to Matthews (1977), Small's career influenced the development of American sociology both practically and theoretically. Small built the largest and most influential department in the United States and founded the American Journal of Sociology (1895). Based on the works of an Austrian sociologist (Gustav Ratzenhofer) and US pragmatists (John Dewey, William James) as well as on the insights of the German Historical School, Small concluded that sociology was best suited for a detailed and reform-oriented analysis of particular phases of the social process rather than for the discovery of an absolute social system.

To understand the work of US social scientists during the later part of the nineteenth century, it is necessary to recall that it occurred at a time when immigration and urbanization had introduced new challenges to the organization and control of social life. An understanding of the city as a new social and cultural environment, accentuated by the influx of a non-English-speaking population, raised a number of social issues related to the survival and growth of democratic practices under hitherto unknown conditions. More specifically, US social scientists and the sociologists at the University of Chicago, in particular, responded to the practical challenges posed by social and economic changes and the workings of US capitalism. Their position in relation to the dominant political ideology and the interests of the ruling class was marked by the desire to reinforce social control through an objective analysis of the political process in an effort to secure consensus, encourage cooperation, and strengthen social justice.

Their work is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of social phenomena with history, philosophy, political economy, and social psychology contributing to insights into the nature of society and confirming the importance of culture as the site of explanation. Academic training in a number of disciplines allowed the mind to operate in a wider berth of knowledge. Thus, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship benefited from a broader intellectual perspective regarding issues of communication and society, in particular, than a later trend toward specialization would offer. In this context, Small's work signaled the beginning of a sustained and intensive interest of members of the sociology department at the University of Chicago (the Chicago School) in notions of communication, public opinion, and media (the press) based on their work on social control, urbanization, and democratic institutions. In fact, the significance of the various means of communication, including telegraph, railroads, highways, and rivers as means of transportation, and the spread of schools and newspapers as institutional sources of knowledge, also provide some of the historical background for discussions about the place of communication in modern society. Finally, the emerging concerns about communication also reflect the focus of pragmatic philosophical thought regarding language, understanding, and the search for consensus in a democracy.

An expert on developments in Germany, Small offered a detailed presentation of the German social sciences and their impact on US sociology between 1800 and 1900 in his Origins of Sociology (1924), in which he discussed, among others, the work of Knies and Schäffle, including a sociological approach to economics. At the same time, Small remained aware of the elementary and unsubtle nature of the social sciences, based on rationalization rather than on an investigation of social phenomena.

Given his theoretical orientation, Small followed Schäffle's emphasis on communication as a necessary condition for the development of society with language becoming the privileged medium for passing on traditions. Small also identified with Schäffle's definition of sociology, which would change over time but still showed Schäffle's influence. He suggested that sociology is a basic social science, part of a unified and cooperative process, open to insights from other social sciences regarding techniques, for instance, that may help arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of the material conditions of a social existence. Small relied on his knowledge of economics, political science, and history for his sociological quest and for his pursuit of social justice. His analysis of the social environment concentrated on the notion of human interests and their social control.

Not unlike Schäffle, Small described an organismic theory of society in which the media of communication (the press) feature prominently. This idea was expressed first in his Introduction to the Study of Society (1894, with George M. Vincent), in which he recounted the evolution of society, using organic analogies to analyze social structures and functions. Accordingly, communication is part of a regulatory system that penetrates the social organism and operates “as the nerve fibers to the coordinating and controlling centers in the animal organism” (Small & Vincent, 1894, p. 215). Communication in society consists of a combination of psychic and physical changes that bring about the successful transmission of messages. Thus, “every social communication is effected between individuals, and every individual is part of many different channels in the social nervous system” (Small & Vincent, 1894, p. 216). This model implies that individuals are not only mediators but also terminal cells in the process of communication.

Following Schäffle's elaboration regarding symbols and communication, Small and Vincent (1894) listed among those symbols “oral, written, and printed language, vocal and instrumental music, gestures, drawing, photographs, paintings, statutes, theatrical and operatic representations” (p. 219). The preservation of ideas and the coordination of communication through postal services or telegraph companies suggest a structure that could provide technical devices to accommodate the presentation of symbols over space and time. The success of social communication, however, hinges upon the presence of interwoven channels such as the press, as well as commercial, educational, ecclesiastical, and government systems of communication. Small and Vincent (1894) saw the press, for instance, as “incorporated in nearly every division of the psycho-physical communication apparatus and is almost as general in its scope as the post office itself” (p. 223). The communication network, as described by Small and Vincent, is composed of general and special-interest newspapers as well as national and international news agencies and press syndicates, which disseminate identical messages throughout the social system with the aid of agencies responsible for the transportation of printed materials. To illustrate the operations of such a communication system, they explored the working arrangements of a telegraph editor, who connects the newspaper with the outside world, involving selection and follow-up on news items.

Increasing industrialization and the growth of an urban population contributed to the rise of opinion leaders and an increase in the power of newspapers as social institutions beyond their immediate environments. Small and Vincent (1894) described the rise of experts as opinion leaders, who enhance social knowledge and direct sentiments. Not unlike Schäffle's discussion of newspaper practices in Germany, the press became the most important instrument for the communication of ideas between authorities and their adherents. In addition, Small and Vincent commented on the social and cultural role of the press and its widespread use among those who seek to impress their fellow citizens in matters of public interest. They were convinced that advanced studies of society would yield more evidence to show the immense influence of the press, and at the same time realized that different interests may well use the press for purposes of manipulation, such as the coercion of authorities through the use of letters to the editor. Because of their conclusions, the authors advocated a close examination of the press enterprise and practices, and encouraged commentaries on the duties and responsibilities of newspapers. They lamented the lack of factual reporting, carelessness, inefficiency of news coverage, and sensationalism combined with self-interest. Likewise, they critiqued the economic dependence of the press, following Schäffle, realizing that subscription and advertising were the major determinants of the commercial well-being of newspapers, which must also cater to reader interests and, thus, must remain adaptive. On the other hand, Small and Vincent understood that the press cannot be held responsible for the general problems of society. They insisted that responsibility must be shared throughout the social system, suggesting public participation in controlling press behavior.

Throughout, Small's work reflects a strong and lasting influence of Schäffle's social theories and writings on society that privilege communication as a social process; the latter remains at the center of sociological inquiry with a focus on the press, which serves as the collector and disseminator of information in a system of public communication. Small also moved beyond these claims by addressing the gatekeeping functions of editors, indicating the two-step flow of communication and thus identifying a future topic and concern of media studies.

His contemporary, William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), who taught at Yale, showed great interest in economics and social problems and had concluded that the press, torn between public responsibilities in a democracy and its potential in the commercial world, is “on one side, an institution of indispensable social utility, and on the other side a foul nuisance. It exerts a tyranny which no one dare brave,” suggesting that “what priestcraft was for the fourteenth century, presscraft is to the twentieth” (Sumner, Keller, & Davie, 1927, pp. 233–234). Given the development of the prosperous yellow press, Sumner recognized there was little reason to believe that the quality press would become more successful. Consequently, he doubted the usefulness of public discussions or the presentation of complicated issues as long as the number of subscribers remained more important than reflection or debate. Yet Sumner saw the power of language, communication, and public opinion as elementary forces in society.

Among Small's colleagues in Chicago, George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) offered by far the most extensive discussion of the role of language and communication in the making of the self as well as in the creation of community. Mead (1969) insisted not only that symbolic interaction features in the creation of the self, but also that media such as the press “report situations through which one can enter into the attitude and experience of other persons” because society cannot be built “out of elements that lie outside of the individual's life-processes” (p. 257). Mead concluded that communication is the organizing process of the community and that the ideal human society is one that “so fully develops the necessary system of communication that the individuals who exercise their own peculiar functions can take the attitude of those whom they affect” (p. 327). The media of communication, including novels or plays, assume a pivotal role in this process, which includes a receptive and active self and demands for its analysis by the application of scientific methodology.

These conclusions found their practical application in Mead's democratic convictions and his awareness of social inequality in US society, which called for political engagement. Mead's notions of a democratic life were related to the work of John Dewey (1859–1952) and his appreciation of communication, which must play a major role in the formation of community as an active and intelligent force. Not unlike Mead's insistence on the importance of media such as the press, Dewey (1925) also paid attention to this ideal mechanism for the transmission of ideas. But he also realized the dangers of public communication because the ongoing centralization and concentration of the means of production affected the press and, thus, created problems for a democratic society. More specifically, he addressed systems of communication that had been created outside the community and hence would neither respond nor be responsible to the community. For Dewey, communication established the individual in a system of mutual relationships and common purposes and offered opportunities for shared experiences, discourse, and reflexive thinking. Dewey (1925) concluded that “of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful” (p. 166), and it is also “uniquely instrumental and uniquely final” (p. 204), providing choices and solidifying meanings in a community setting.

During the next generation, considerations of communication and media in the United States continued with the work of Robert Park (1864–1944), who had studied with John Dewey and William James and who had been educated in Germany under the tutelage of Wilhelm Windelbandt at the University of Heidelberg before he joined the sociology department at the University of Chicago. Park was more interested in the practical consequences of communication and the press specifically as an aspect of social control, such as in his The Immigrant Press and Its Control (1922). He was an observer, trained as a newspaper reporter in Minneapolis and New York City, interested in facts, and throughout his later academic career conscious of the effects of communication and its divisive potential, including the role of the press. Park's interest in the function of the press is also reflected in his use of Bücher's (1921) remarks on the “Extension of Communication by Human Invention,” which focused on the effects of new communication technologies on society, which Park published in the student edition of his Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Park & Burgess, 1921).

Finally, it may be worthwhile to mention the contributions of Louis Wirth (1897–1952) and Morris Janowitz (1919–1988) at Chicago. Both addressed issues of communication and media in the tradition of the Chicago School. Wirth had been Park's student and had studied with Small, William I. Thomas (1863–1947), Ernest W. Burgess (1886–1966), and Mead for a doctorate that he received in 1925. Wirth was a major urban sociologist with an interest in city life, minorities, and media. His address to the American Sociological Society in 1947 on “Consensus and Mass Communication,” in which he outlined the role of urban media in consensus building, was published in the American Sociological Review a year later (Wirth, 1948).

Janowitz had graduated with a doctorate in sociology in 1948. Interested in the organization and regulation of society, Janowitz (1952) analyzed the community press, representing the symbolic dimension of the urban space that “acts as a mechanism to maintain local consensus through the emphasis on common values” (p. 11). In this context he also provided a discussion of the role and function of the immigrant press in the works of Park, Thomas, and Florian Znaniecki (1882–1958). Later Janowitz co-edited (with Bernard Berelson) one of the first compilations of relevant articles in the Reader in Public Opinion and Communication (1950); the editors concluded in their introduction to the second edition (Berelson & Janowitz, 1966) that “the hope is no longer prevalent that democratic institutions are automatically strengthened with the growth of the mass media, the development of literacy, and the extension of the popular franchise” (p. 1). Their remarks left readers wondering about the consequences of these insights regarding media studies and their place in defense of democratic ideals, which had moved the work of the Chicago School into the twentieth century.

The scholarship of the leading members of the Chicago School since the nineteenth century was consistently united in its determination to help perfect the cause of democracy in the United States by offering a critique of capitalism while embracing the fundamental political ideas of the country. Notions of communication in its individual or institutional form played a central role in conceptualizing and applying a model of democratic life as a participatory and responsible community of individuals empowered by knowledge, materialized in public opinion, and disseminated through conversation and media such as the press. These considerations of public communication were typically accompanied by noting the ethical dimension of communication in a commercial system, not unlike observations revealed in the earlier German scholarship of Knies and Schäffle. In fact, a more general belief among German academics that cultural subjects were unique and could not be validated by scientific methods but warranted historical explanations typically contained an ethical mandate.

More specifically for these US authors, the process of public communication demonstrated the relationship of communication, privilege, and responsibility in an increasingly secularized society with an extended reliance on expert knowledge for reaching consensus and advancing democracy as a participatory experience, as indicated by Small and Dewey. Mead also emphasized the importance of the moral self as a participant in the process of democracy, a view shared by Park, for whom the moral order installed conscience, a sense of obligation. Indeed, self-interest must give way to higher moral principles in the political arena, according to Small, and Janowitz (1978, p. 3), and public communication constituted the necessary means of this process. For those members of the Chicago School who had proposed a communication- and media-centered definition of society, there were ethical concerns inherent in the relations between truth and understanding or community and communication that played a major role in conceptualizing democracy.

While Small represented the first generation of sociologists who were prepared to apply their knowledge and social scientific interest to the improvement of a democratic existence, his contemporaries Mead and Dewey shared visions of democracy that were based on the power of communication and the workings of an active community. Neither was this appreciation of communication and media as central social processes lost on the following generations, from Park to Wirth and Janowitz, whose academic pursuits reflect a continuing concern regarding the importance of media, their quality, and their service to their respective communities.

The critique of capitalism, however, in the writings of these members of the Chicago School remained within the realm of pragmatic considerations that were aimed at balancing instead of eradicating the negative forces in US life, thus fixing the limits of potential change while steeped in the predominance of Protestantism, which was well suited to sustain a belief in an evolutionary model of society. Their concomitant reflections on the moral responsibilities of those engaged in producing media contents and directing the public discourse indicate the beginnings of a moral philosophy of public communication.

Consequently, the history of media studies in the United States builds on the tradition of the Chicago School, but unlike the sociological imagination of the Chicago School, rarely included issues of communication in the broader context of serving the need to remedy existing social and political conditions and of securing the American Dream. The fact that notions of communication and democratic practice – as articulated by the Chicago School – found their way into the vocabulary of US media studies, together with an acknowledgment of the work of individual scholars like Dewey, rather provided a legitimating argument for intellectual proximity and historical tradition.

The Chicago School, on the other hand, had offered a sociological perspective on matters of communication in society that placed the importance of media at the core of a working democratic system while raising questions about the impact of social change on the notion of community and on the form and function of participation, cooperation, and consensus in a system of coexistence. Implicit in an emerging liberal critique of capitalism was the inescapable condition of change and the constant need for readjustment.

Since then, the twentieth-century rendition of media studies has been shaped by the field of mass communication research, which had responded in large measure to the demands of government and industry since the 1940s for objective, quantifiable observations of specified social and political phenomena. Consequently, the dominant version of media studies has left a gap between broader philosophical or theoretical considerations and the priorities of empirical research.

During the post-World War II era, any critique within media studies of capitalism as an ideological foundation of media practices has remained marginalized. When critique arose, it belonged to the literature of social criticism. However, a British reaction against an “Americanized,” effects-centered study of mass communication has resulted in the return of ideology (Hall, 1980) and addressed issues of empowerment; it ushered in a period of critical communication research in the United States. These developments helped late twentieth-century media studies launch its pursuit of a progressive, communication-centered, cultural vision of democracy and rekindled the emancipatory, interdisciplinary spirit of the earlier sociological scholarship of the Chicago School.

REFERENCES

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