Paul Lazarsfeld's Radio and the Printed Page: A Critical Reappraisal

Abstract

This article analyzes Paul Lazarsfeld's 1941 book, Radio and the Printed Page, arguing for the book's enduring significance in communication and media studies. In the book, Lazarsfeld rejected the then-influential technological determinist model that Hadley Cantril and Gordon Allport had developed through studying the new medium of radio. In contrast to Cantril and Allport, Lazarsfeld found through studying Americans' listening and reading habits that radio's effects on society were not totalizing, and he discovered that radio not only did not diminish the importance of reading printed texts, but that it in fact may have encouraged the practice. The book established Lazarsfeld's scholarly reputation in the United States and formed the basis for his later and widely influential research. Long ignored in the intellectual history of media studies, Radio and the Printed Page is in fact a foundational work, one that contains the clear beginnings of the social constructivist ideas that Lazarsfeld would later articulate in The People's Choice and Personal Influence. Ultimately, the work presented a theory understanding media effects as significant but not totalizing, analyzed how people made meaning of media content through everyday social life, and demonstrated the continuing relevance of print in a world increasingly linked together by newer forms of media.