Table of Contents

Contents: Preface. Education and Propaganda: The Propaganda Debate Between the Wars. Communications Research Comes of Age. The Social Ideas of American Mass Communications Experts. Paul F. Lazarsfeld and the Bureau of Applied Social Research. Wilbur Schramm and the Founding of Communication Study. The Universe of Discourse in Which We Grew Up. Conclusion.

About the Author

Timothy Glander

Reviews

"Glander's book is important, and it will be widely read and discussed. It fills a significant gap in our understanding of the origins of the field of communication research. It balances the internal histories written by the founding fathers and their academic descendants."
—Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly"Professor Glander has given us a solid and stimulating book...[The] chapters are thoughtful, reasonably well researched, and contain much valuable information useful to scholars and commentators."
—History of Education Quarterly"Altogether, Glander's Origins of Mass Communications Research During the American Cold War offers a fresh analysis of the factors that gave rise to communication study and research on university campuses."
—Educational Change"...the investigation of the field has been limited; Glander hopes to remedy this problem by examining research methodology through researching the men and times that produced it. Quite an undertaking--and one that he accomplishes while raising a great many pertinent questions."
—Communication Booknotes Quarterly"This book is in the grand tradition of cultural and educational criticism that we associate with John Dewey or Noam Chomsky. It is a sober and careful and accurate approach to an immensely important subject long ignored or deliberately buried by scholars and state agencies bent on promoting disinformation to citizens and educators....An outstanding and critical contribution to the study of education, communications, and mass media."
—John Marciano
State University of New York at Cortland"An exhaustive critical examination of the intellectual origins of communications research in 20th-century America, with particular attention to the developing links between university campuses, the military, and the media industry....Scholars looking for a thorough and authoritative treatment of mass communications research during its early years will not be disappointed. This book is loaded with the kind of rich historical insights (and sometimes explosive information) that can only come from an historian totally immersed and grounded in the primary source literature....It will undoubtedly generate a new debate in the field and raise critical questions about the nature and goals of communications research as it was developed and implemented in leading research universities across the country."
—Christine Shea
East Carolina University