Introduction to the Special Issue: Critical versus Administrative Policy Studies—Celebrating 75 Years since Paul Lazarsfeld's “Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communication Research”

Abstract

Tensions, disagreements, differences, and disputes of both a methodological and theoretical nature have always been an attribute of communication policy studies. One of the major contributions to this debate is Paul Lazarsfeld's seminal piece “Remarks on Administrative and Critical Communication Research.”1The Journal of Information Policy is dedicating issue 1 of volume 6 to the 75th anniversary of this essay, in which we hoped to test the relevance of the distinction between “administrative” and “critical” scholarship in light of Lazarsfeld's analysis when applied to today's information society and the research questions contemporary information policy raises. This special issue is a result of a workshop the Journal held on May 21, 2015, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, as a preconference of the 65th annual conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), in conjunction with the Institute for Information Policy at Penn State, the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the LINKS-ICORE project at the Department of Communication Studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the ICA Communication Law and Policy Division.According to Lazarsfeld, administrative research, which takes its name from the corporate or government funding that supports it, emanates from the notion that the media are “tools handled by people or agencies for given purposes” and therefore the studies themselves focus on making the “tool(s) better known, and thus to facilitate (their) use.” Critical research, on the other hand, is guided by the notion that “the general role of our media of communication in the present social order should be studied.” Lazarsfeld saw “administrative” research as being focused on questions such as “Who are the people exposed to different media? What are their specific preferences? What are the effects of different methods of presentation?” and “critical” research as asking a different set of questions, such as “How are these media organized and controlled? How, in their institutional set-up is the trend toward centralization, standardization and promotional pressure expressed? In what form, however disguised, are they threatening human values?” Administrative research, explains Lazarsfeld, is criticized for solving only “little problems, generally of a business character, when the same methods could be used to improve the life of the community if only they were applied to forward looking projects related to the pressing economic and social problems of our time.” Critical research, however, is opposed by those who believe “that so much of its effort is spent on what might be called ‘showing up’ things, rather than fact-finding or constructive suggestions.”Self-described as one “whose interests and occupational duties are in the field of administrative research,” Lazarsfeld called for the development of critical policy research, since he believed it could “contribute much in terms of challenging problems and new concepts.”Contemporary society stands, 75 years later, at the same crossroads. The media may have changed, they have assumed new names, they are “digital” and “social,” interactive and mobile; however, the social challenges they raise are similar. While media are accessible as never before, the divide among their users is more complex, and on many more levels, than could have been fathomed three quarters of a century ago. The increased pace of technological change also implies that it has become more difficult to undertake the sort of anticipatory “reimagining” of media potentialities with which critical research was tasked. Instead, many of the most radical innovations capitalizing on the affordances of new technologies are taking place in entrepreneurial contexts. Governments, ideologically disinclined or unable to undertake regulation preemptively, are allowing greater play for market forces in media environments. Is there a role for critical research in this new scenario?What direction is communication policy research taking? Is it driven by researchers focused on the “tools” or on the context in which the tools are used? What kinds of research should drive policy? The workshop and subsequent submissions to the Journal ended up in the three contributions presented here.In the first essay, Ruth Katz and Elihu Katz discuss the origins of the administrative versus the critical debate. As a student of Lazarsfeld (Elihu), closely acquainted with members of the Frankfurt school (Ruth), Katz and Katz outline the debate between Lazarsfeld and Theodore Adorno on the issue. They make the observation that the Lazarsfeld–Adorno debate is alive to this day. Nathan Walter analyzes the ongoing dialogue between administrative research and critical studies in health communication. He concludes with a proposition to adopt an integrative approach to the study of health, balancing between administrative tools and critical concerns. Philip Napoli and Lewis Friedland argue that many of the traditional distinctions used to distinguish critical from administrative research do not hold up well within the context of contemporary communications policy research. They use the recent controversy surrounding the FCC's abandoned critical information needs research as a case study for exploring the prospects for a more integrated critical administrative research tradition.