On the Theoretical Origins of the Formation of Sociological Research on the Newspaper

L. A. BARDENSTEIN

In the 1860s and 1870s, first at major universities in the United States and then in Europe, departments of journalism were opened, thanks to which the theory of newspaper journalism—in that part of it which concerns questions of professional skill and newspaper technique—became an integral part of the system of higher education in the humanities; on the other hand, the general theory of the newspaper also, in one way or another, entered the orbit of “university science.” It is highly significant that sociology, too, entered the universities of the United States and Europe during this period (though somewhat later). For the historical chronicle of American bourgeois sociology is counted from the moment when A. Woodford, for the first time in the entire existence of university education, was appointed professor of sociology at Indiana University (1885). The further rapprochement of the general theory of the newspaper with “sociological theory,” and then with “analytical social science,” as modern positivists call empirical sociology, took place already on the basis of an established university science, raised to the rank of officially taught lecture courses. The process of the “convergence” of the general theory of the press with sociology is connected here above all with the first steps of social psychology, developing on the basis of the theory of “small groups.” Bagehot, Gumplowicz, Ratzenhofer, Sumner, and Small singled out the group as a sociological category, transferring “sociological investigations from society in general to the relations among specific groups in organized society”¹. In doing so, they relied on the fundamental propositions of social Darwinism, which regards society as a model of the evolutionary process. (It is precisely from this point of view that Sumner, for example, considers the emergence in society of “super-rich” millionaires as a product of “natural selection.”) The reactionary subtext of social Darwinism in this case is extremely clear.

On the basis of the theory of social groups, so-called “psychological sociology” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries began to study special, specific forms of consciousness—collective consciousness—proceeding at first from the propositions of the old, “individual” psychology. It is precisely this period that has special significance for the integra-

¹ See G. Becker, A. Boskoff, Modern Sociological Theory in Its Continuity and Development. IL, Moscow, 1971.

the substantive theory of newspaper journalism, since the study of the “collective consciousness” of social groups entailed an arousal of interest in the scientific analysis of the concept of “public opinion,” in the ways in which the content of the phenomenon designated by it is formed. At the same time, naturally, an analysis became inevitable of the factors that shape public opinion as a manifestation of the collective consciousness of particular social groups. And by that time the newspaper had quite obviously proved, in the realm of practice, that it was precisely the most significant such factor.

The first of the representatives of “psychological sociology” to turn attention to the newspaper precisely in this respect was Gabriel Tarde (1834–1904), author of the books The Laws of Imitation, Social Logic, and Social Laws (1890–1898). In his book The Laws of Imitation, Tarde advances, as the starting point for the development of society (the “social organism”), the psychology of the individual. He formulates the so-called “psychological principle of imitation,” according to which “if imitation is the key to social phenomena, then the typical social relation is the ‘teacher—pupil’ relation in a number of situations”². For Tarde, the model of the world was “the mutual relations of two individuals, one of whom imitates the other”³. In this way, in his opinion, group, collective psychology is also created. How, then, does humanity move forward, if all its intellectual and other activity consists in imitating one’s neighbors, and if there is no one to imitate, then in self-imitation, i.e., “reproducing in consciousness one’s own past experience,” as happened with the hero of Defoe’s novel? The collision is resolved by Tarde quite idealistically: brilliant individuals, endowed with the gift of creative, independent thought, put forward ideas that stimulate the development of society, while the mass, by way of psychological imitation, takes them up and carries them out. Thus, in G. Tarde’s conception, in essence, the theory of the “hero and the crowd” is reproduced, a theory that in its time was adopted by the Russian Narodniks as well. True, Tarde draws a distinction between the concepts of “crowd” and “public,” distinguishing them according to the principle of “degree of organization.” The “crowd,” in his interpretation, is an irrational, unorganized mass, while the “public” is a mass organized rationally.

The further development of “psychological sociology” would refine Tarde’s terms. L. F. Ward, F. H. Giddings, and D. Baldwin developed the concepts of the “group,” “group consciousness,” and their forms; Ch. H. Cooley was the first to give an idea of its structure and classified social groups from a psychological point of view through the concept of the primary and small informal group. (The starting point here, just as with Tarde, is the psychology of the individual)⁴.

Tarde’s idea of the differentiation between the unorganized (irrational) and organized (rational) mass has yet another important outlet—into the realm of newspaper theory, since he closely connects the “rationalization” of the mass precisely with the influence of the mass media, in particular the newspaper. Tarde regards the newspaper as one of the means of the “socialization” of the personality, of attaching it to collective, group consciousness. He specifically analyzes the influence of the newspaper on the judgments of the individual, regarding the results of this influence as the successive replacement of the individual “information process” by a collective, group one. In doing so he (even then!) comes to the conclusion that

² See G. Becker, A. Boskov. Cited work.
³ Ibid.
⁴ See G. M. Andreeva. Contemporary Bourgeois Empirical Sociology. I. S. Kon. Positivism in Sociology.

newspaper information in the bourgeois press is constructed on the assumption of a deliberately lowered level of the reader’s intellectual abilities, as a member of one or another “rationally organized group.” Tarde believes that an individual isolated from the influence of the group has far broader possibilities for the development of independent, creative thinking, since he is not subject to the “standards” created by rational means: through the mass media, advertising, and so on. As we see, Tarde’s investigations, as well as the works of those who continued his line in sociology, subsequently made it possible to begin developing a theory of the “stereotyping of thought,” which plays a serious role (in methodological terms) for the modern theory of the newspaper.

G. Tarde’s activity in sociology chronologically belongs to the end of the last century and precedes the beginning of a new era in bourgeois science. The advent of the imperialist stage in the development of capitalism is accompanied by the strengthening within it of an apologetic tendency that identifies the concept of historical progress with the progress of the capitalist economy. It is precisely for this reason that sociologists abandon the understanding of their science as a theory of social development, placing at the forefront the study only of relations actually existing in real society, with the aim of stabilizing them in every possible way.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the idea of the ideological neutrality of sociology comes to maturity; its theoretical form is the substantiation of the empirical essence of sociology—in other words, the “theory of empiricism.” In the works of W. Dilthey, F. Tönnies, and G. Simmel, the foundations of so-called “understanding” or analytical sociology are developed. The chief means of humanistic knowledge is declared to be not causal explanation, but analysis of the form of individual or group psychology.

Tönnies was the first to divide sociology into pure (theoretical) sociology, which provides “general concepts and types,” applied sociology (the application of these concepts and types to major social phenomena), and empirical sociology. At the center of these “sociologies” lies not an analysis of the historical process, but a typology of social relations studied formally. G. Simmel, for his part, held that the formal analysis of typologized social relations must be carried out in absolute isolation from their concrete content.

Hiding behind the shield of strict objectivity and scientific consistency, bourgeois sociologists of the beginning of the century carried out—sometimes without even suspecting it—the ideological directive of the ruling class: science must not penetrate into the essence of phenomena, since this is fraught with the exposure of the internal mechanism by which the inevitable and eternal vices of capitalism arise; it must merely contribute to the strengthening of existing relations and, as far as possible, “patch up” the breaches in bourgeois democracy. The development of the views of one of the first “great empiricists” of sociology—Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), the founder of the theory of the structural-functional approach to society—also proceeded in line with these tasks. He advances an idea that reduces the vices of capitalism to the concept of “dysfunction,” a social pathology removable with the aid of scientific analysis and its conclusions. In studying phenomena of this kind (Suicide, 1897), Durkheim for the first time combines theory with concrete, statistical-empirical research. Durkheim devotes great attention to the study of the correlation between collective consciousness and the individual psyche. Collective consciousness, according to Durkheim, is a social fact, and this means, in turn, “any manner of thought,

actions and feelings, existing outside the individual and endowed with a coercive force by which he is compelled toward them”^5).

The opinion of a social group, expressed in one form or another, possesses the attributes of coerciveness, being a social fact, since the group as a whole may think differently from one or another of its members. This conclusion of Durkheim is undoubtedly important for developing the principles of a general theory of the bourgeois newspaper, for in the final analysis it came down to the idea of the “manipulation of consciousness,” an idea that even now spiritually nourishes the bourgeois press and the entire system of “mass communications” and “mass culture.”

Of great importance for the development of the process as a result of which the newspaper entered the field of vision of bourgeois sociology and became an object of sociological analysis were the works of Max Weber (1864–1920). M. Weber created the so-called “theory of social behavior,” in which, in accordance with his approach to society as the result of the interaction of individuals, he gave a formal classification of human actions in society and defined the “type” of a person’s social behavior in accordance with the types of the human psyche accepted in individual psychology (instrumentally rational, value-rational, affective, traditional behavior). Therefore his analysis of bourgeois society is, in essence, a study of only one aspect of the life of that society—the spiritual. Hence Weber’s interest in “forms of spiritual production,” in particular in the newspaper and, naturally, in its sociological analysis. Weber “...formulates the sociological laws of the informational process and shows the significance of analyzing the content of newspapers”^6).

Since sociological interest in the newspaper first arose in the sphere of social psychology in connection with the study of factors influencing the behavior of the individual in a group, for a considerable period of time the sociological study of the newspaper proceeded precisely within the framework of this problematics, so to speak, within the branch “sociology of public opinion” (“public opinion sociology”). The study of the “social behavior” of members of various groups during elections, the investigation of their reactions to commercial advertising (the main directions of “public opinion” sociology), inevitably led them to an analysis of the newspaper as the principal and leading means of mass information.

The interest of the theorists of the “sociology of public opinion” in the newspaper undoubtedly had a positive significance. The newspaper began to be regarded as a specifically “social” fact, as an inseparable part of the social system, exerting a certain influence on the course of the spiritual life of society. The fundamentally important proposition concerning the newspaper as an element of the ideological superstructure of society was advanced by Marx and Engels as early as the 1860s–1870s, at the height of their activity as the first theoreticians and practitioners of the workers’ press. Bourgeois sociology, however, came to recognize the social significance of the newspaper and the necessity of its special sociological study under the influence of a number of factors that made themselves felt at the beginning of the present century. This refers above all to the formation of empirical sociology in connection with the new tasks posed before bourgeois science by the latest stage in the development of capitalism. And if the theorists of the era of “proto-sociology” merely drew attention to the social significance of the newspaper and for the first time made it an object of sociological research,

^5) Cited from I. S. Kon, Positivism in Sociology, p. 148.
^6) H. M. de Melo. “A Contemporary Panorama of Research in the Field of Mass Media.” Democratic Journalist, 1969, No. 5.

When it was still so widely disseminated and powerful, already in the first two decades of the twentieth century the development of the newspaper became so rapid that the preconditions emerged for setting sociological studies of the newspaper apart as an independent branch of sociology. Moreover, in this period, alongside the newspaper, entirely new giants were rising: cinema, radio, and, finally, television. The real outlines appeared of a powerful social institution—the so-called systems of social means of mass communication (mass media and communication), used by the bourgeoisie as an instrument of domestic and foreign policy, commercial advertising, the ideological processing of the population, and everything that soon received the biting name “brain washing,” i.e., “washing of brains.”

Thus, the extremely rapid and broad development of the newspaper, periodicals, cinema, radio, and television; the enormous practical interest of the bourgeoisie of the United States and other large capitalist countries in using them effectively for the purposes of profit, propaganda, and, in general, maintaining the stability of the capitalist system; and the sufficiently high level of empirical research in the field from which the sociology of mass communication subsequently emerged—in the sociology of public opinion (the works of Gallup, Lazarsfeld, and others)—all this led, by the end of the 1920s, to the formation and development of the “sociology of mass communication,” and, within it, to the sociological study of the newspaper in all the principal aspects of its functioning in society.