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Communication » Media » Steven H. Chaffee

Steven H. Chaffee




Steven H. Chaffee (1935 –2001) was an internationally recognized mass communication scholar who had a crucial role in developing and shaping the field of communication during the last third of the twentieth century. He was born in Los Angeles on August 21, 1935. He received a BA in history (with distinction) from the University of Redlands in 1957, and an MA in journalism from UCLA in 1962. In 1965 he completed a PhD in communication at Stanford where he studied with Wilbur Schramm and Richard Carter, who supervised his dissertation. He served in the US Navy as a public information officer (1958 –1961) and worked as news editor and reporter for various Los Angeles newspapers (1961–1962).

Chaffee began his teaching career in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1965. He established during his 16 years there a prolific research record: eight books and monographs, and 50 journal articles and book chapters. Much of his research was conducted in collaboration with Jack McLeod and graduate students in the Mass Communications Research Center where the innovative ideas for co-orientation and family communication pattern concepts were developed (McLeod & Chaffee 1972; Chaffee et al. 1973).




His summary of the scientific evidence for a connection between televised violence and adolescent aggressiveness for the US Surgeon General’s Committee on Television and Social Behavior in 1972 gave impetus to subsequent research on effects of media violence. His editing of Political communication: Issues and strategies for research (1975) can be given primary credit for founding the field of political communication. Chaffee served on a dozen key AEJMC and ICA committees during this early period and was elected president of ICA for 1980 –1981. He was awarded a prestigious Vilas Professorship in 1974 and served as director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 1980 –1981.

In 1981, Chaffee returned to Stanford’s communication department as professor and director of the Institute for Communication Research founded by Wilbur Schramm. He was named Janet Peck Professor of International Communication in 1987. His research productivity continued unabated with seven books and 42 journal articles and book chapters over the last 19 years. Most notable are three very different works: empirical research on measuring attention to media content (Chaffee & Schleuder 1986), the co-edited Handbook of communication science (1987), and the helpful monograph on concept explication (1991). During the Stanford years he received many awards: ICA Fellow, 1983; the Nelson Award for career contributions to education for journalism and mass communication from Wisconsin, 1990; the Fisher Mentorship Award for service to his students and communication research from ICA, 1992; and the AEJMC Presidential Award for his dedication and service, 1996. He was editor of Communication Research (1983 –1986) and served on the editorial boards of several other journals.

Chaffee left Stanford to accept the Arthur N. Rupe Endowed Chair in the department of communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1999. He died unexpectedly from a heart problem at the age of 65 on May 15, 2001.

An essential key to understanding Chaffee’s career was his unusually strong commitment to the development of communication as a recognized autonomous scholarly field. From Wilbur Schramm, who stitched together a framework of the field, he learned that much more theorizing and empirical research needed to be done before claims of legitimacy could be made. He was able to see the weaknesses of the mid-twentieth-century models borrowed from other social sciences. The “minimal effects” Columbia model focused narrowly on persuasion in terms of conversion of candidate vote preferences. Selective exposure was almost an iron law leading directly to the flawed concept of “reinforcement”. Instead, Chaffee focused his early research on knowledge and other cognitive news media effects that were more likely than attitude conversion.

He later challenged Lazarsfeld’s “synthetic competition” between media and personal influences through research showing that the two forms of communication could be mutually facilitating (1982). He was also ahead of his time in questioning the then popular diffusion of information models that assumed knowledge and technology to be of unquestioned value and treated them as fixed quantities “transported” to the “underdeveloped” world. He also attempted to revise political socialization models that envisioned “transmission” of knowledge and values “functional to the ongoing system” from parent to child through simple modeling. A much more valid and sophisticated learning model can be found in Chaffee’s late work evaluating the “Kids Voting” school civic intervention program (McDevitt & Chaffee 2000).

Chaffee understood that progress in developing an autonomous field would depend on constructing a set of well-explicated communication concepts. Concept explication became a distinctive feature of the methods courses and group projects at Wisconsin. He insisted that the seemingly simple concept of “media use” was multidimensional and demanding of careful concept explication. Time spent with TV, the sole measure used by many social scientists, he showed, was totally inadequate. Exposure and attention to types of content within a medium were more important.

His devotion to hands-on teaching of graduate students beyond classroom hours was testimony to his strong commitment to the communication field. He mentored his junior colleagues toward tenure by providing encouragement and extensive feedback on their research. He believed in the benefits of the expression of diverse viewpoints, an idea empirically supported by his early political socialization work where families with pluralistic communication patterns facilitated adolescent learning.

Steven Chaffee was a leader among a handful of second generation “young Turks” who reinvigorated the mass communication field in the 1960 –1980. Chaffee was justifiably proud of the achievement of his cohort, but in historical essays on Schramm, Bleyer, Nafziger, and others he acknowledged their debt to the “founding fathers.” He was unsatisfied with past achievements and in a final essay on the future of political communication research (2001), he stressed the need to refocus research: “While questions of political content and direction will always be important, the direction in which the most inventive efforts are needed have to do more with the politics of communication than with the communication of politics.”

References:

  1. Berger, C., & Chaffee, S. H. (eds.) (1987). Handbook of communication science. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
  2. Chaffee, S. H. (1972). Television and adolescent aggressiveness. In G. Comstock & E. Rubinstein (eds.), Television and social behavior, vol. 3. Washington, DC: National Institute of Mental Health, pp. 1–34.
  3. Chaffee, S. H. (ed.) (1975). Political communication: Issues and strategies for research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
  4. Chaffee, S. H. (1982). Mass media and interpersonal channels: Competitive, convergent, or complimentary? In G. Gumpert (ed.), Inter/media: Interpersonal communication in a media world, 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 57–77.
  5. Chaffee, S. H. (1991). Communication concepts 1. Explication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
  6. Chaffee, S. H. (2001). Studying the new communication of politics. Political Communication, 18, 237–244.
  7. Chaffee, S. H., & Schleuder, J. (1986). Measurement and effects of attention to media news. Human Communication Research, 13, 76 –107.
  8. Chaffee, S. H., McLeod, J. M., & Wackman, D. (1973). Family communication patterns and adolescent political participation. In J. Dennis (ed.), Socialization to politics: Selected readings. New York: John Wiley, pp. 323 –340.
  9. McDevitt, M., & Chaffee, S. H. (2000). Closing gaps in political communication and knowledge. Communication Research, 27, 259 –291.
  10. McLeod, J. M., & Chaffee, S. H. (1972). The construction of social reality. In J. Tedeschi (ed.), The social influence processes. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, pp. 50 – 99.




Communication Research

Communication Research

  • Media
    • Media Economics
    • Media Effects
    • Media History
    • Media Production and Content
    • Media Systems
    • Media and Perceptions of Reality
    • Excitation Transfer Theory
    • Effects Of Exemplification And Exemplars
    • Economics of Advertising
    • Antitrust Regulation
    • Audience Commodity
    • Brands
    • Circulation
    • Commercialization of the Media
    • Competition in Media Systems
    • Concentration in Media Systems
    • Consolidation of Media Markets
    • Consumers in Media Markets
    • Cost and Revenue Structures in the Media
    • Cross-Media Marketing
    • Distribution
    • Diversification of Media Markets
    • Economies of Scale in Media Markets
    • Globalization of the Media
    • Labor in the Media
    • Labor Unions in the Media
    • Markets of the Media
    • Media Conglomerates
    • Media Management
    • Media Marketing
    • Mergers
    • Ownership in the Media
    • Piracy
    • Political Economy of the Media
    • Privatization of the Media
    • Forms of Media Corporations
    • Public Goods
    • Agenda-Setting Effects
    • Appraisal Theory
    • Media Effects on Attitudes, Values, and Beliefs
    • Cognitive Availability
    • Albert Bandura
    • Catharsis Theory
    • Steven H. Chaffee
    • Credibility Effects
    • Cumulative Media Effects
    • Desensitization
    • Diffusion of Information and Innovation
    • Emotional Arousal Theory
    • Media Effects on Emotions
    • Effects of Entertainment
    • Fear Induction through Media Content
    • Leon Festinger
    • Framing Effects
    • Frustration Aggression Theory
    • George Gerbner
    • Carl I. Hovland
    • Intercultural Media Effects
    • Elihu Katz
    • Knowledge Gap Effects
    • Latitude of Acceptance
    • Linear and Nonlinear Models of Causal Analysis
    • Mainstreaming
    • Media Effects: Direct and Indirect Effects
    • Media Effects Duration
    • History of Media Effects
    • Media Effects Models: Elaborated Models
    • Strength of Media Effects
    • Media System Dependency Theory
    • Mediating Factors
    • Mediatization of Society
    • Structure of Message Effect
    • Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann
    • Effects of Nonverbal Signals
    • Observational Learning
    • Opinion Leader
    • Order of Presentation
    • Persuasion
    • Physical Effects of Media Content
    • Priming Theory
    • Media Effects on Public Opinion
    • Reciprocal Effects
    • Schemas and Media Effects
    • Effects of Sex and Pornography as Media Content
    • Sleeper Effect
    • Media Effects on Social Behavior
    • Media Effects on Social Capital
    • Social Judgment Theory
    • Trap Effect
    • Two-Step Flow of Communication
    • Secondary Victimization
    • Effects of Violence as Media Content
    • Academy Awards
    • History of Advertising
    • BBC
    • Cable Television
    • History of Censorship
    • History of Cinematography
    • History of Citizen Journalism
    • Civil Rights Movement and the Media
    • Coffee Houses as Public Sphere
    • Effects of Violence as Media Content
    • Academy Awards
    • Collective Memory and the Media
    • History of Digital Media
    • History of Documentary Film
    • History of Elections and Media
    • Electronic Mail
    • Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
    • Fleet Street
    • Fourth Estate
    • Graffiti
    • Historic Key Events and the Media
    • Illustrated Newspapers
    • Literary Journalism
    • History of Magazine
    • Music Videos
    • Nineteenth-Century New Journalism
    • History of News Agencies
    • History of News Magazine
    • Newscast
    • 24-Hour Newscast
    • Antecedents of Newspaper
    • History of Newspaper
    • Paperback Fiction
    • Penny Press
    • History of Postal Service
    • History of Printing
    • Newsreel
    • Freedom of Communication
    • Propaganda in World War II
    • History of Public Broadcasting
    • Radical Media
    • Radio Networks
    • Radio: Social History
    • Radio Technology
    • Satellite Television
    • History of Sports and the Media
    • History of Telegraph
    • Television Networks
    • Television: Social History
    • Television Technology
    • Underground Press
    • History of Violence and the Media
    • Virtual Reality
    • Watergate Scandal
    • Women’s Movement and the Media
    • Accountability of the Media
    • Accountability of the News
    • Accuracy
    • Balance
    • Bias in the News
    • Commentary
    • Commercialization: Impact on Media Content
    • Conflict as Media Content
    • Consonance of Media Content
    • Construction of Reality through the News
    • Credibility of Content
    • Crime Reporting
    • Editorial
    • Endorsement
    • Ethics of Media Content
    • Fairness Doctrine
    • Fictional Media Content
    • Framing of the News
    • Infotainment
    • Instrumental Actualization
    • Internet
    • Internet News
    • Local News
    • Magazine
    • Media Performance
    • Morality and Taste in Media Content
    • Narrative News Story
    • Negativity
    • Neutrality
    • News
    • News Factors
    • News Production and Technology
    • News Values
    • Newspaper
    • Objectivity in Reporting
    • Plurality
    • Quality of the News
    • Quality Press
    • Radio
    • Radio News
    • Reality and Media Reality
    • Scandalization in the News
    • Sensationalism
    • Separation of News and Comments
    • Soap Operas
    • Soft News
    • Sound Bites
    • Stereotypes
    • Synchronization of the News
    • Tabloid Press
    • Tabloidization
    • Television
    • News
    • Truth and Media Content
    • Violence as Media Content
    • Africa: Media Systems
    • Austria: Media System
    • Balkan States: Media Systems
    • Baltic States: Media Systems
    • Argentina: Media System
    • Bolivia: Media System
    • Brazil: Media System
    • Canada: Media System
    • Caribbean States: Media Systems
    • Central America: Media Systems
    • Chile: Media System
    • China: Media System
    • Colombia: Media System
    • Convergence of Media Systems
    • Cuba: Media System
    • Czech Republic: Media System
    • Egypt: Media System
    • France: Media System
    • Germany: Media System
    • Gulf States: Media Systems
    • India: Media System
    • Iran: Media System
    • Israel: Media System
    • Italy: Media System
    • Japan: Media System
    • Malaysia: Media System
    • Mexico: Media System
    • Netherlands: Media System
    • North Africa: Media Systems
    • Poland: Media System
    • Portugal: Media System
    • Public Broadcasting Systems
    • Russia: Media System
    • Scandinavian States: Media Systems
    • Singapore: Media System
    • South Africa: Media System
    • South Korea: Media System
    • Spain: Media System
    • Switzerland: Media System
    • United Kingdom: Media System
    • United States of America: Media System
    • West Asia: Media Systems
    • Behavioral Norms: Perception through the Media
    • Body Images in the Media
    • Computer Games and Reality Perception
    • Cultivation Effects
    • Disowning Projection
    • Entertainment Content and Reality Perception
    • Extra-Media Data
    • False Consensus
    • False Uniqueness
    • Media Campaigns And Perceptions Of Reality
    • Media Content and Social Networks
    • Media Messages and Family Communication
    • Media and Perceptions of Reality
    • Perceived Realism as a Decision Process
    • Perceived Reality as a Communication Process
    • Perceived Reality: Meta-Analyses
    • Perceived Reality as a Social Process
    • Pluralistic Ignorance
    • Pluralistic Ignorance and Ideological Biases
    • Social Perception
    • Social Perception: Impersonal Impact
    • Social Perception: Unrealistic Optimism
    • Socialization by the Media
    • Spiral of Silence
    • Stereotyping and the Media
    • Third-Person Effects
    • Video Malaise

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