Caption titleAt head of title: Ithiel do Sola Pool. Sociology Meetings. September 10, 1954"381"--handwritten on leaf [1]. -- Series statement handwritten on leaf [1

Pool, Ithiel de Sola, 1917-1984

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Ithiel do Sola PoolSociology MeetingsSeptember 10, 1954RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL CO)IDUNICATIONMany studies have made us aware that attention to acommunication or persuasion by it is greater when theaudience is favorably predisposed to the symbols usedot to the message contained or to the source. Much ofthe most effective communication therefore tends to occurwithin the confines of the in-group. Internationalcomulnication, in contrast, is communication among out-groups and ones that are often mutually rejecting, Themessage comes from a source which may be regarded ashostile or at best alien.Any sensible analysis of patterns of communicationsresponse must take full account of this variable of positiveor negative identification of the audience with the commu-nication. At one extreme is the pattern of the rally orthe pep talk where only the converted come to hear ritual-istic re-enforcing messages. The advertir tries to ap-proximate this situation by asserting that his productmeets the audiences felt needs and by putting the adin media which provide extraneous pleasures to the audience.He avoids any distentiation of himself as source from theaudience. The newspaper man is less bound by the formula2of giving the audience what it wants to hear and he con-ceives his function as that of tit ling the readers whatother people think and are doing, i.e. he assumes somedistance between audience and message source. Yet thenewspaper strives to achieve audience identificationwith it by meeting its needs for relaxing absorbtion.Furthermore in its sports columns, comics, and human in-terest bries it gives the reader vicarious familiar con-tact with characters with whom they identify. The paperis thus on the whole a medium with which its reader iden-tifies closely.Only students of psychological warfare have systemati-cally concerned themselves with the problem of communicatingto a hostile audience. Stated over-simply, their most gen-eral conclusion has been that these communications are in-effective until demoralization has created some mutualgoals, for the propagandist and the enemy troops. Therehas been some discussion in the literature of propaganda ofa terrorizing character which does not depend upon an : en-tification between the source and the audience, but rela-tively little. The bulk of the literature on that terroriz-ing situation concerns totalitarian propaganda, brain-washing and concentration camps.The extreme situations of terroristic propaganda onthe one hand and communication within tightly-knit smallgroups on the other are relatively rare. Most communication3processes operate within complex sets of positive andnegative identifications. International communication isan example of such a complex situation, which in thebroadest sense is communication between out-groups.However, insofar as it is not simply terrorization by onegovernment of another people, it involves cross-cuttingand conflict-producing identifications.In its first year of activity the research program ininternational communication at the Center for InternationalStudies, L.I.T., has focused much of its attention on tworelated variables which pecularly affect communicationamong out-groups. These are the identification patternsregarding the in and out-groups among whom the communicationis taking place and the phenomenon which Cooley called theainarz interlocutor.The imaginary interlocutor is a member of a prospectiveaudience, to whom the member of the actually present audiencethinks of himself as communicating. He may think of himselfas passing on the information he is receiving and of hisbeing approved for doing so. In that case he has an incentiveto attend and retain the information. On the other hand, hemay think of himself as being censured for hearing or believingsuch messages as those he is hearing, in which case he mayfeel anxiety and perhaps suppress recollection or understanding.There are many other possible phastasy relationships with theimaginary interlocutor, such as causing him surprise, imagin-ing the interlocutor in one's own position, and imaginingi4how the interlocutor would react in the same situation, etc.Whatever the nature of the phantasy, it is importantto note that there is a population of imaginary characterswhose attitudes are consciot ly or unconsciously brought tobear upon the recipient to a communication. Just as thedemography of the population in magazine fiction or themovies differs drastically from the population of the realworld, so does this population of imaginary interlocutors.For a study of international communication, it is importantto take account of its national as well as social composi-tion.One of the foci of the M.I.T. Studies has been to com-pare the responses to international communications of per-sons with a narrow, provincial frame of identifications andpersons with a broader, or super-national one. To illustratethis point, let me refer to some of the results of our studies.'-e have done a study of American business communicationsaround reciprocal trade. We have also done studies in theMiddle East, Indonesia, and are beginning one in India ondifferences between Western-influenced and narrowly tradi-tionalist types. In our interviews with businessmen we havefound one of the striking differences between protectionistsand anti-protectionists, holding economic interest constant,to be in the scope of their frame of identifications. Toput it most banally, the protectionists are, as could beexpected, somewhat narrow nationalists, whereas theanti-protectionists are more internationally5oriented, but the results go further than that. The pro-tectionists are not only more narrowly ationalist, theyare also more apt to frame their responses within the con-text of a particular town, region, or industry. On theother hand, a considerable number of those individuals inthe business community who became crusaders for freer tradedid so after an experience of travel abroad, which left themwith a vague and often not fully clarified sense of urgencyabout world economic and political stability. In short,the man who while listening to a debate upon tariff policyhas a manufacturer down the street figuratively perched onhis shoulder is more apt to wind up with a protectionistconclusion than the businessman who listens to the debatewith an anxious European perched on his.The Xiddle Eastern studies at X.I.T. which are now be-ing prepared for publication by Daniel Lerner have similarlyshown that one of the most impr tant single differentiatingfactors in communications behavior was the ability of a res-pondent to project himself beyond his narrow environment.Isolated villagers tended to reject such a question as,"Where would you like to live if you could not live in Turkey?"or, "What would you do if you were head of a radio station?"Educated urban characters, of course, responded to such q= s-tions much more readily. Though it is significant how farprojectivity is systematically related to urbanism, stature,education, etc., what was striking was that even holdingsuch social structural variables constant, the variable of6projectivity indexed by responses to such questions provedone of the most predictive of all regarding communicationsbehavior as well as other conventional sociological varia-bles.Starting from such field results we have recently in-augurated a more carefully controlled and pw tly experimentalprogram on the mechanism of the unseen interlocutor. Iehave in some pre-tests taken general attitudinal (uestionsinto the field and then after receiving the responses to them,have asked the respondent what individuals came into theirmind in the course of answering the nuestion. Most res-pondents are able to identify some individuals- of whomthey had just thought. There are striking class differencesin the replies. Ne also found striking differences in thefreiuency of approving and critical imaginary interlocutors.Academic types of persons seem to be particularly prone tocarrying critics around on their shoulders and to engagingin unspoken polemics with them. We are not yet ready to sayanything about the amount of anxiety which may accompanythe situation.In the actual history of the project we arrived at thisorder of problem first by considering the differences be-tween the behavior of tourists and other abroad from thebehavior they would engage in at home. For the tourist who7can make a scene of himself on the streets of Paris, thepopulation physically around him is probably not a signi-ficant part of the mental populatioh which controls him.His reference group during his stay abroad may be the folksfrom his home town. They are the reference group withwhich he identifies. In typical authoritarian fashionhe makes a sharp in-group, out-group differentiation.It cannot be assumed, however, that everyone whomakes this dichotomy identifies positively with his in-'group and rejects the out-group. Some of the researchescarried on at M.I.T. by Howard Perlmutter have shown thatthere is a xenophilic type of person who, like the xenophobe,dichotomizes in and out-group relationships, but who tendsto reject his ownsin-group and to glorify the out-group. Toour surprise, we found there to be a positive vorrelationbetween xenophilia, as measured by an attitude scale, andauthoritarianism, just as previous studies have shown acorrelation between ethnocentrism and authoritarianism.These results obtained with gioups of students in the UnitedStates are now being replic ated in Montreal, France, andIndia. What they suggest is that a strong identificationwith things foreign may often represent not simply a broadscope of identification, but rather a rejection of the indi-vidual's own group and culture. If this is so, then theforeign out-group may tend to be a projective screen ratherthan a realisitically imagined set of reference individuals.The foreign country would tend to be viewed as a Utopia,0 V 5"8and first-hand experience with it would be disillusioning.A better adjustment would be made by persons with a lessstereotyped, though less xenophilic, image.This brings us back to the point at which we started.International communications which is labeled as such isaffected by the stereotype of the out-group from which itcomes and is affected by the positive, or more often# nega-tive identifications with that group. It should be emphasized,however, that most international communication is to onedegree or another covert. A study of American businesscommunications on the tariff, for example, has revealed re-markably little direct communication of foreign attitudes.Even the American exporter typically relies upon Americantrade magazines and other American sources for his writteninformation about foreign countries. It is only in the edi-torial offices of these trade journals, in the State Depart-ment and in similar highly specialized agencies that gen-uinely foreign information is received in large quantity andis theze transformed into domestic communications. Never-theless, much of this material is at least partially recog-nized as foreign in origin and there is faqe-to-face con-tact with a certain number of foreign individuals. In thisway, each specific communication, which would otherwise bestereotyped in a simple fashion as foreign in source, tendsto assimilate a combination of stereotypes, including that9of the particular intermediary individual or agency. Thenet reaction to the communication is to a considerable ex-tent a function of the individual's unconscious decisionto cetegorize it in a certain way as to its possiblesources and a function of his relationship to these in-group and out-group sources as imaginary interlocuta- a.

Research in international communication

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Research in international communication

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