Effects of Mass Communication, The

In 1960, Joseph Klapper wrote The Effects of Mass Communication in which he outlined the “phenomenistic approach” to media studies. Klapper explains the approach by stating “it [the phenomenistic approach] is in essence a shift away from the tendency to regard mass communication as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects, toward a view of the media as influences, working amid other influences, in a total situation” (p. 5). Further developments in the phenomenistic approach eventually led to audience-centered media approaches, such as the uses-andgratifications approach, a term which Klapper coined in 1963.

Klapper provides an extensive review of early political and persuasive communication literature, often citing classic works such as Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet's The People's Choice (1948), Katz and Lazarsfeld's Personal Influence (1956), and Lang and Lang's The Mass Media and Voting (1959). Next, the author explains how individual exposure variables, such as selective exposure, selective attention, and selective retention, play a pivotal role in media persuasion. Klapper then outlines how psychological variables may aid the process of opinion conversion by noting experiments that indicated that war propaganda was effective only after soldiers were fully separated from their respective groups, eventually leading to an argument about the concept of “persuadability” as a predictor of personal influence. Klapper transitions from persuasion to media effects in order to further his development for the phenomenalistic approach, examining crime and violence in the media, escapist media content, and childhood viewing of adult media content.

Lastly, Klapper outlines the five interdependent generalizations of the phenomenisitic approach. First, mass communication does not “serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects, but rather functions [Page 200]among and through a nexus of mediating factors and influences.” Second, these mediating factors and influences are a “contributory agent, but not the sole cause” in the reinforcement of media effects. Third, when mass communication does function as a change agent, it is because the mediating factors are absent and the media effect is direct, or it is because the mediating factors will be “impelling towards change.” Fourth, there are “residual situations” when mass communication will produce direct effects or will fulfill certain “psycho-physical functions.” Fifth, “the efficacy of mass communication, either as a contributory agent or as an agent of direct effect, is affected by various aspects of the media and communications themselves or of the communication situation.”

Klapper provides an overview of just about all genres of media effects that originated before 1960, including emerging media effects research that received little empirical or theoretical treatment at the time. In sum, The Effects of Mass Communication provides insight into how media effects studies turned from mediacentered in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to the more modern motive and audience-driven approaches that have become vital to modern communication research. More importantly, this book served as the primary source of what became known as the “limited effects” or “minimal effects” model of mass communication.