CS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Paul Lazarsfeld, Interdisciplinarity, Cultural Policy
12 Oct 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
Week 2
Communication Studies in a Canadian Context
Four Characteristics of Communication Studies
• Critical sensibility
• Cultural policy focus – government and federal agencies care
• Nationalism (why the nation is important to communication scholars)
• Orientation towards social justice
• Interdisciplinarity
• Sociology
• Women and gender studies
• International development
• Political science
• Science and technology studies
• Cultural studies
• Information studies
• Other humanities and social sciences
Critical or Administrative: Hamilton
Administrative
• Conducted in the service of a public or private admin agency
• Sees media as useful tools to be harnessed for corporate/agency/government goals
• Example: The Bachelor; who’s watching, how many viewers
• Solves small problems, but does not look at big pictures
• Assumption that it is not political
• Americans use the administrative approach
Critical
• Conducted in the service of society broadly
• Sees media systems in general as something in need of study/scrutiny
• Deals with big pictures issues
• Assumption that it is political
• Media is always political (always has to do with power; who can communicate, to
whom)
• Canadians use the critical approach
**Important to know: Paul Lazarsfeld, “Remarks on Critical and Administrative Communication
Research,” 1941.**
Methodological Distinctions
Administrative
• Assumption that it is based more on quantitative and empirical (observational) research
• verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic
