Mass culture suppressed potentialities and denied awareness of contradictions in a

onedimensional world; only art, in fictional and dramatic form, could preserve the qualities
of negation and transcendence. P. 129

Clearly, the media had social effects; these must be examined, researched. But, equally
clearly, these effects were neither all-powerful, simple, nor even direct. The nature of this
complexity and indirectness too had to be demonstrated and researched. p. 130

On the one hand, message-based studies, which moved from an analysis of the content
of messages to their effects on audiences; and, on the other, audience-based studies, which
focused on the social characteristics, environment and, subsequently, needs which audiences
derived from, or brought to, the message p.130

Social psychology had pointed to trigger phrases which suggest to us values we desire
to realise. But, Merton asked, Which trigger phrases prove persuasive and which do not?
Further, which people are persuaded and which are not? And what are the processes involved
in such persuasion and in resistance to persuasive arguments? p.130

Mertons criticisms did not lead to any widespread reforms in the way in which
messages were analysed as such. Instead, by a kind of reversal, it opened the road to an almost
exclusive pre-occupation with receivers and reception situations. The emphasis shifted to the
consideration of small groups and opinion leaders, an emphasis first developed in Mertons
own work on influentials and reference groups, and later by Katz and Lazarsfeld. Like
Merton, they rejected the notion that influence flowed directly from the media to the individual;
indeed, in Personal Influence (1955) they developed the notions of a two-step flow of
communication and of the importance of opinion leaders within the framework of
implications raised by small group research. From several studies in this area it had become
obvious, according to Katz and Lazarsfeld, that the influence of mass media are not only
paralleled by the influence of people[but also] refracted by the personal environment of
the ultimate consumer [...] This was the background against which Klapper (1960) summed
up: persuasive communications function far more frequently as an agent of reinforcement than
as an agent of changereinforcement, or at least constancy of opinion, is typically found to be
the dominant effect . P.132