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Personal Influence and the New Paradigm: Some Inadvertent Consequences
An examination of the reception given Personal Influence when first published points to highly selective interpretations of the findings. The claims reviewers made for the influence of interpersonal communication relative to the mass media, especially in the political process, went even beyond those advanced by the authors. They overlooked not only the very restricted conceptualization of "effects" that guided the Decatur research but also previously accumulated evidence on multiple kinds of media influence. This article argues that the new conventional wisdom pitting personal versus mass media effects associated with this and previous studies in the Columbia tradition discouraged, however inadvertently, a coming generation of sociologists from researching the effects—particularly long-range effects—of mass communication. As a consequence, academic sociology came to cede much of the high ground it once occupied in media studies to political science and to more professionally oriented departments or schools of communication.
Key Words: mass media effects • interpersonal communication • concept of mass
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 608, No. 1,
157-178 (2006) This article has been cited by other articles:
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