Lasswell, Harold (1902–1978)

Harold Dwight Lasswell was an influential American social scientist who did pioneering work in political science and communication. His main achievements are the study of propaganda and the development of content analysis as a research method in communication.

Lasswell earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a doctoral degree in political science from the University on Chicago. During his career, he served as a faculty member for major U.S. universities, such as the University of Chicago, Yale University, City University of New York, Temple University, and Columbia University. He was part of the intellectual group of scholars known as the “Chicago School.” During the 1930s, Lasswell became one of the leaders of the Rockefeller Foundation Seminar on Mass Communication, where he made two important contributions to the field of communication. First, he defined communication as “Who says what to whom through which channel with what effect?” a model that became the main paradigm in the filed and stirred research on media effects. Second, Lasswell theorized about the functions of communication in society, identifying surveillance of the environment, correlation of individuals' responses to societal stimuli, and transmission of cultural heritage as the three main functions of the process. Together with entertainment, which was added to the list later by Charles Wright, these functions became known as the classic functions of communication and the basis for the uses and gratifications theory. A third significant contribution to the study of communication was the development of qualitative and quantitative research methods. He developed content analysis while studying propaganda disseminated by various countries engaged in World War I and II. Lasswell served as the chief of the Experimental Division for the Study of Wartime Communications at the U.S. Library of Congress. This division analyzed print and broadcast communications disseminated by the Axis powers to identify propaganda strategies used by to divide and demoralize the enemy. In doing so, Lasswell and his associates developed sampling techniques, measurement systems, reliability and validity guidelines for content analysis. The first courses on propaganda and public opinion formation taught in American universities came directly from Lasswell's research.

His most popular works include Propaganda and Communication in World History (in three volumes; 1979), Propaganda Techniques in the World War (1927), Psychopathology and Politics (1930), and Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936). His interests were diverse and ranged beyond the field of political science and communication. He published across the board in social sciences (anthropology, international and economic relations, law, and psychiatry) and was among the first scholars who attempted to bridge psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Lasswell worked with psychoanalysts in Boston, Vienna, and Berlin on psychoanalytic theory and set up his own experimental lab where he conducted experiments with volunteers, an initiative that scandalized the academic world at the time. He founded the field of political psychology by using psychoanalysis and psychology to describe causal relationships between the personality of politicians and their political behavior. Such theories are explained in his books Psychopathology and Politics and World Politics and Personal Insecurity (1965).