Klapper, Joseph (1917–1984)

Joseph T. Klapper is widely known for his influential work in media effects as well as his long career in private broadcasting with CBS. After returning from World War II, Klapper was a doctoral candidate in English at Columbia University when he met and interacted with Paul Lazarsfeld. Lazarsfeld convinced him [Page 382]to switch his major. He is best known for his prominent work in “minimal” or “limited” media effects or “functional analyses,” emphasized by his 1960 book The Effects of Mass Communication, in which he outlined his “phenomenistic approach” as “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.” Overall, this book provides insight how media effects studies turned from media centered in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s to the more modern motive- and audience-driven approaches that have become vital to modern communication research. This work was unanimously selected by the American Association for Public Opinion Research as one of the Fifty Books That Significantly Shaped Public Opinion Research, 1946–1995.

After receiving his PhD in sociology at Columbia University, Klapper served as a professor at the University of Washington and at Stanford University. Next, he moved onto the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), where he conducted research on the Voice of America broadcast channel. Afterward, he spent four years as a research director for General Electric (GE). In 1962, Klapper began his tenure as the director of Social Research for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS); a position he held until his passing.

In addition to his position at CBS, Klapper remained active in government research, serving on President Lyndon B. Johnson's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Additionally, he assisted the U.S. Surgeon General's Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Society and was on the board of advisors for the Federal Role of Funding Children's Television Programming. Also, he served as president of the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) from 1962 to 1963.

During his presidential address at the 1963 AAPOR conference, Klapper coined the title “uses and gratifications” in an attempt to separate traditional “functional analysis” from the uses and gratifications approach by stating “the list of uses to which people put mass communication, and the gratifications they derive from it, do not of course constitute themselves as full ‘functional analyses.’ … They are rather first steps in such analyses.” This assertion helped to inspire future scholars to discover additional variables (i.e., psychological variables, audience motives) in media effects research, eventually forming the modern uses and gratifications approach, which examines the “total situation” that exists in mass communication.