Elihu Katz

Traditions of Research on the Diffusion of Innovation

dent, chance resulting from chance. Theory in the sense of conceptions of relationships between kinds of events is an inescapable step in the comprehension of social processes, and we must assume that such comprehension in a scientific sense is possible. Theory, however, must be formulated in the light of an awareness of events, on the one hand, and, on the other, a readiness to accept them as manageable within the limits of a generalizing science. The argument of this essay is that theory-building for attacking the problem of change has been hampered in both evolutionist and functionalist analyses by an orientation that encourages the derivation of sources of change from the nature of the thing changing. Sources of change in societies are to be discerned in happenings, and whether the happenings are internal or external to a conceived system, they are not deducible from that conception. Processes of social change are conceptual arrangeabilities of events.82

And Deliver Us from Segmentation

With the rapid multiplication of channels, television has all but ceased to function as a shared public space. Except for occasional media events, the nation no longer gathers together. Unlike the replacement of radio by television as radio underwent a similar process of segmentation, there is no new medium in the wings to replace television that is likely to promote national political integration. No less than in the United States, the governments of Europe—once proud of their public broadcasting systems—are bowing to the combined constraints of the new media technology, the new liberal mood, the economic and political burden of public broadcasting, and the seductions of multinational corporations. Thus is mass democracy deprived of its last common meeting ground, and, if theories of technological determinism are applicable, the cohesion of the nation-state itself is in jeopardy. The case of Israeli broadcasting—now in the throes of this paradigm change—is presented in illustration.

Theorizing Diffusion: Tarde and Sorokin Revisited

This article is a call for volunteers to stand on the shoulders of Gabriel Tarde and Pitirim Sorokin, who dared to theorize the process of diffusion over a wide variety of disciplines. While all of the social sciences and humanities regularly produce case studies of diffusion, theorizing seems paralyzed. This paralysis stems from the ostensible incommensurability of diffusing items; their refusal to hold still in transit; the complexity of their interactions with the cultures, social structures, and media systems in which potential adopters are embedded; the difficulty of reconciling voluntary action and external imposition; and the lack of a disciplinary home.

Youth and Popular Music: A Study in the Sociology of Taste

Preferences in popular music among teen-age girls vary according to the neighborhood in which a girl lives and her relative popularity among her peers. Highly popular girls are shown to conform more closely than the less popular to the prevailing neighborhood norms in popular music. Musical tastes and preferences for particular songs and for particular disk jockeys are found to be anchored in relatively small groups of friends, suggesting that personal relations play an important role in musical fads and fashions.

Notes on a Natural History of Fads

The natural history of fads of fashions, a particular type of social change, is told as a succession of chronological stages, each characterized by the interaction among producers, distributors, and consumers. The process is thus: discovery of the potential fad, promotion by the discoverers and/or original consumers, labeling, dissemination, eventual loss of exclusiveness and uniqueness, death by displacement.

Communication Research and the Image of Society Convergence of Two Traditions

Research on mass communications and on the acceptance of new farm practices may be characterized as an interest in campaigns to gain a acceptance of change. Despite their shared problems, these two fields have shown no interest in each other. However, very recently, as the student of mass communications began to revise his image of an atomized mass society, there have been signs of growing convergence. The attempt to take systematic account of interpersonal relations as relevant to the flow of mass communications has directed the attention of students of urban communication to rural sociology.

Publicity and Pluralistic Ignorance: Notes on ‘The Spiral of Silence’

It is strange, but true, that public opinion research, mass communications research and public opinion theory have become disconnected. It is difficult even to explain how any one of these can exist without the others, and yet the fact is that each has wandered off on its own. It is to the great credit of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann that she has taken the lead in trying to bring them together again.1 Beginning with her call for a “return to a theory of powerful mass media”, Noelle-Neumann has been trying to show how the dynamics of media production and the dynamics of opinion formation interact, and how the process of this interaction can be described empirically by means of creative polling techniques.2 There may be room for debate over her inferences from the data, but nobody can underestimate the importance of her attempt to put the whole together.

Rediscovering Gabriel Tarde

Gabriel Tarde (l843–1904) is thought to have “lost” his debates with Durkheim by insisting that sociology ought to occupy itself with observable interpersonal processes. Given contemporary interest in such processes—much abetted by the computer—Tardes reputation is being rehabilitated. Terry Clark (1969) was first to notice that Tarde (1898) had anticipated Lazarzfelds two-step flow of communication. Tardes work has bearing on social networks, interpersonal influence, diffusion of innovation, and the aggregation of public opinion.

How Feeling Free to Talk Affects Ordinary Political Conversation, Purposeful Argumentation, and Civic Participation

Scholars have examined how specific opinion climates affect political discourse, but little attention has been given to how perceived freedom to talk in general is related to congenial political conversation in ordinary spaces or willingness to argue with an opponent—or how each mode of talk affects civic participation. Respondents in a nationwide survey felt free to talk about politics. Freedom to talk, issue-specific news, and newspaper use were most strongly related to ordinary political conversation. With argumentation, issue-specific news, issue-specific talk, and local opinion climate dominated. Ordinary political conversation was significantly related to conventional participation; argumentation was not.

Platforms & Windows: Broadcasting's Role in Election Campaigns

Perhaps the political parties structure of Israel since its establishhave reason to be satisfied with the traditional forms of campaigning. The voter, for ment in 1948; despite the alignments, disalignments and realignments among the 16 parties competing for votes; and despite the fact that television was used his part, is less well for‘ political campaigning for the first served. Society-the social time-the composition of the Seventh system-benefits least of all. Knesset is remarkably like that of its six predecessors.2 As in so many other