Wright, Charles R

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  • Publication
    Social Surveys and the Use of the Mass Media: The Case of the Aged
    (1988) Wright, Charles R
    On the occasion of the twentieth-anniversary issue of the Public Opinion Quarterly in 1957, an issue devoted to twenty years of public opinion research, Herbert Hyman reflected on the existing state of theory about public opinion (Hyman, 1957; pp. 54-60). The state of theory was bleak, he commented, if one looked for a grand theory that integrated the vast empirical findings of past and contemporary studies of public opinion. Things looked brighter, however, if one looked for theoretical orientations of more modest scope, for example, theories of the middle range, a phrase suggested by Robert K. Merton (Merton 1949; pp. 4-5).
  • Publication
    Functional Analysis and Mass Communication Revisited
    (1974) Wright, Charles R
    Some fifteen years ago, drawing heavily upon the theoretical orientation of Merton (1957), I attempted to specify a functional perspective for the study of mass communication (Wright, 1959, 1960). The resultant paradigm provided a useful framework (labelled a functional inventory) for the classification of many alleged and some documented consequences of mass communication activities for individuals, groups, societies, and cultural systems. The essay also considered problems in the specification and codification of. the kinds of communication phenomena that lend themselves to functional analysis,the need to formulate new hypotheses in terms of functional theory, and a variety of difficulties in inventing research designs and in finding research sites suitable for conducting functional analyses of mass communication. It was noted that various studies during the immediate preceding years had explicitly or implicitly used a functional framework for examining different aspects of mass communication (some were cited by way of illustration) and, therefore, the paper was not a call for something novel; rather, it was a preliminary first step toward explicit consideration of certain theoretical and methodological issues relevant to the future growth of a functional theory of mass communication.
  • Publication
    The Findings
    (1979) Wright, Charles R; Hyman, Herbert H
    The evidence on enduring effects of education is provided by 151 discrete questions from American national surveys conducted between 1949 and 1975, which implicated various values in diverse situations. Since the influence of education on each item is examined separately for each of four age cohorts, our detailed findings involve 600 sets of comparisons of values across a series of educational levels. As in the first study, which involved more than a thousand sets of comparisons of knowledge by educational levels, the presentation of such massive evidence creates a dilemma. Compression and condensation are essential to protect the reader from drowning in the ocean of data, but it is also essential to present enough detail to demonstrate the stability of the findings with replicated items and surveys and to show the variations in the patterning of effects on different values, in different situational contexts, for groups educated in different periods, and with aging.
  • Publication
    Enduring Effects on Knowledge
    (1975) Hyman, Herbert H; Wright, Charles R; Reed, John Shelton
    The domain of knowledge we have been able to examine by secondary analysis contained 250 discrete items of information requested in American national surveys between 1949 and 1971. Since the influence of education on each item (with a few exceptions) is examined separately for each of four age cohorts, our fundamental findings involve about a thousand sets of comparisons of knowledge among several educational levels. How to present such massive evidence creates a severe problem. Compression and condensation are essential if the reader is not to become submerged and finally drown in the ocean of data. In a letter to the New York Times, one poor soul who had waded through the Coleman report, survived then to read Jencks's work, only finally to confront the recent multi-volume report of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, put the problem poignantly: "The voice of reason is overwhelmed by the vast array of codified data" (9 June, 1973, p. 32).
  • Publication
    Sociology of Mass Communications
    (1979) Wright, Charles R
    The study of mass communications is a broad, multidisciplinary field to which sociology has made major contributions. Some of these contributions have been reviewed in earlier works by Riley & Riley (1959), Larsen (1964), Janowitz (1968), McQuail (1969), Davison & Yu (1974), & Ball-Rokeach (1975), and Wright (1975a). Several chapters in Annual Review of Psychology, although not explicitly sociological in orientation, report on communication studies of sociological relevance. Schramm(1962) reviews the social psychology of mass communication from 1955 through 1961. Tannenbanm & Greenberg (1967) update that review through 1966, and W. Weiss (1971) brings it up to 1970. Lumsdaine & May (1965) focus on educational media, a topic beyond the scope of this review. (For an account of recent developments in media of instruction, see Schramm 1977.) And a recent review by Liebert & Schwartzberg (1977), which focuses the effects of the mass media, also presents data on patterns of media use, media content, and transmission of information and cultivation of beliefs-- all of which are topics of sociological concern. Current statistics on the distribution, structure, and uses of mass media are available in Frey (1973) and in a recent comprehensive review and guide American communication industry trends by Sterling & Haight (1978). In addition, the reader can find useful sociological materials on the mass media in the Handbook of Communication(Pool et al. 1973) and in Communication Research---A Half-Century Appraisal (Lerner & Nelson 1977). Here we review sociological developments in five areas of mass communications research, concentrating on the period from 1972 through mid- 1978 but also including some earlier research. First, we examine studies of mass communicators, media organizations, and the processes by which mass communications are produced. These studies relate to sociological interests in occupations and professions, complex organizations, and the phenomenon of work--placing the communicator in the context of the social system, a sociological development in communications research foreseen by Riley & Riley (1959) two decades ago. Second, we consider research on mass media audiences, especially research oriented toward interests in social differentiation and in the social psychology of media uses and gratifications. Third, we review studies that relate interpersonal communication and mass communication - opinion leadership, communication networks, and diffusion of news. Fourth, we consider studies of mass media content that touch upon changing social norms and upon the public presentation of social roles. Finally, we review recent research on mass communication effects, especially studies attempting to determine the media's effects on public beliefs, knowledge, and concepts of social reality, but also those considering the media's roles in socialization and social change.
  • Publication
    Review of Murray Hausknecht, The Joiners: A Sociological Description of Voluntary Association Membership in the United States
    (1962-11-01) Wright, Charles R
    Certain sociological problems are less likely than others to be studied through primary field research. Some deal with topics that do not seem important enough to warrant the expense of a full-scale field inquiry; others treat subjects about which most people believe the facts are known; some involve events and opinions in the past which cannot be measured among current populations. Under these and other circumstances a partial solution to the problem is sometimes provided by secondary analysis-the re-examination of data that were collected for another purpose in order to illuminate a new problem and test new hypotheses. The Joiners presents an excellent example of the kind of problem that sociologists can explore profitably through secondary analysis of past public opinion polls and social surveys.