Four schools of communication and their viewpoints

Traditional school, also known as empirical school or management school, mainly refers to the school that investigates social phenomena from empirical facts and focuses on the study of communication effects, which is opposite to the critical school that is good at examining social phenomena in a speculative way. Generally speaking, the empirical school mainly refers to the mainstream communication research led by the United States, and lasswell, lazarsfeld, Levin and hovland, regarded as the four founders of communication by Shi Lamu, are typical representatives of the empirical school.

As the mainstream communication research paradigm in the United States and the West, the empirical school has achieved fruitful results. American scholars Loweree and Deffler summed up the famous research results of empirical school 14 and wrote a book "Milestones in the Study of Mass Communication Effect".

The main characteristics of positivism school are empirical research methods, pragmatic research purposes and diverse social views.

(A) empirical research methods

The so-called empirical research method is a method of empirical investigation of social phenomena or social behaviors by using observable, measurable and quantifiable empirical materials. The premise of this methodology is that researchers recognize the objectivity of laws, the verifiability of laws and the subjective initiative of people. Therefore, the empirical research method mainly verifies the objectivity of the law through empirical methods, emphasizing objectivity and logic.

Therefore, the primary goal of empirical research method is to collect uncontroversial scientific data and information about theoretical assumptions, and the empirical process should be objective and repeatable, so as to provide other scholars with a means of verification. The conclusions drawn by analyzing data or materials need to be discussed openly in order to construct a general theory about social phenomena.

The empirical research method emphasizes practical and reliable empirical materials or objective data, and advocates explaining the reasons of social phenomena and social behaviors from the variables of environment or external conditions, which has certain objectivity and data rationality. However, empirical research methods also have limitations that cannot be ignored.

First of all, social phenomena and human behavior are infinitely complex, especially when it comes to the spiritual and rational activities of the subject, and the empirical materials are not authoritative; Secondly, at present, empirical research mainly relies on questionnaires and controlled experiments. Questionnaire survey is considered as a science in the sense of probability, and control experiments cannot explain complex social reality. Furthermore, empirical research mainly relies on the empirical materials of individuals or small groups, which has certain utility in the study of social micro-phenomena, but lacks scientificity in investigating social history and macro-social structure; Finally, although the empirical research method emphasizes objectivity, pure objectivity can only be an illusion.

(B) the research purpose of pragmatism

Pragmatism is a way of thinking and a philosophical school widely circulated in the west. It holds that the criterion for judging things or truth is not the thing itself, but the objective behavior it causes. It advocates "truth is for our use" and emphasizes that social science research must be based on social real life and solve practical problems.

It is this pragmatic research purpose that leads to the positivist school and its effect-oriented research, such as lasswell's propaganda research, hovland's persuasion research, and lazarsfeld's Applied Social Research Bureau. Pay attention to the influence of communication on people's psychology, attitude and behavior, and pay attention to how to achieve the goals of individuals or groups through communication, as described in the milestone of the above-mentioned mass communication effect research.

(C) a pluralistic view of society

Empirical school, also known as management school or administrative school, is due to their pluralistic social view. They deny that the western capitalist society is a class distribution society, but think that it is a society in which multiple interests compete and balance each other. Therefore, the task of communication is not to change the existing capitalist system, but to realize social management by improving the communication mechanism.

This pluralistic ideology of the empirical school determines that it will not study mass communication under the capitalist system from a critical standpoint, but will repair it from the perspective of "management" for the purpose of maintaining the existing system. It is precisely because of this pluralistic social view that it has been criticized by many critical schools.

Second, the critical school

The critical school, which originated in Europe, is actually a general term for the study of critical viewpoints and methods in Europe and America. It is a collection of different viewpoints and methods, not referring to a certain school, including the school of communication political economy and ideological theory at the macro level, the school of cultural studies at the micro level, structuralist semiotics, feminism, cultural imperialism, postmodernism and post-structuralism.

On the one hand, the difference between critical school and empirical school lies in research methods. The critical school opposes positivism, but not positivism and the direct application of natural research methods to the study of human communication. It recognizes that the main body of communication studies is people with thoughts and subjective initiative, and studies communication and media in the historical, social and cultural background, paying attention to macro issues such as social structure and ideology, which has strong theoretical speculation.