Two answers required. While working together at Columbia University, these two thinkers are believed to have developed the first focused group interview to evaluate a radio program. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name these two thinkers whose joint paper on mass communication analyzes “narcotizing dysfunction,” in which individuals are systematically dissuaded from organized action through the effects of mass media.
ANSWER: Paul Felix Lazarsfeld AND Robert King Merton [reject “Robert C. Merton”]
[10e] That paper by Lazarsfeld and Merton also examines three conditions in which this type of media is effective. This type of media, intended to influence beliefs, was often used to recruit soldiers for the US war effort.
ANSWER: propaganda
[10m] Lazarsfeld and Merton developed theories about leaders named for these things. The “manufacture of consent” was introduced in a 1922 book titled for a type of these things managed by mass media.
ANSWER: opinions [or opinion leaders; or public opinion]
<Oxford A, Social Science>