Social Theories of the Press

Constituents of Communication Research, 1840s to 1920s

By (author) Hanno Hardt Foreword by James W. Carey Columbia University

Publication date:

04 December 2001

Length of book:

232 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Dimensions:

234x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780742511330

Hanno Hardt has thoroughly revised and expanded his 'pre-history' of communication research in the United States. With the notable addition of Karl Marx's journalism-focused writings and a new foreword by James W. Carey, this edition covers intellectual contributions from several German theorists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as first-generation U.S. sociologists who were influenced by this scholarship. A new concluding chapter explores the continuing influence of German social thought and the contemporary shift of paradigms in U.S. communication research, including approaches such as critical (Marxist) and cultural studies.
For well over three decades Hanno Hardt has been an advocate, sometimes a lonely one, for deepened historical consciousness in communication studies. . . .This book should make it impossible to ever again consider mass communication research without its European shadow or to speak of the roots of modern social theory without acknowledging the central place of communication in its preoccupations. Hardt opens a treasure trove of insights and ideas most of us never knew existed.