Suchergebnisse

Probable future developments in the field of PO & communications res will include further methodological progress & greater theoretical insight. Examples of this methodology-theory cycle as it has functioned in the past can be found in such areas as that of latent-structure analysis & the study of normal distributions. Further advances along these lines will enable us to tackle some of the large questions of opinion & power which have previously been beyond our technical capacity, for example, arming from individual to societal models & thus dealing with soc change & with comparative cross-cultural opinion analysis. S. F. Fava.

A survey based on 757 usable replies received to questionaires mailed to 9,600 officers of French employers' associations showed that the reasons for hostility to the EDC were not those commonly suggested, such as regional diff's within France, hostility to all supranational org's,' or anti-German or anti-US feeling. On the contrary, about 85% of those giving definite answers were in favor of the Coal & Steel Community, & 90+% were in favor of OEEC. A total of 500 referred either to the USSR or to China when asked to name the nation most likely to start a war, as against 62 who mentioned the US, & 22 who mentioned Germany. The majority in favor of the EDC, while substantial, was smaller than that in favor of all other European institutions: about 2.8 to 1. This diff seems to be primarily a result of a judgment regarding the evolution of the international situation. Asked to characterize the last few yrs, 543 preferred the term Cold War & only 90 the term coexistence. Regarding the next few yrs, these %'s were almost reversed: 432 characterized them as a period of coexistence, & only 143 as a period of Cold War. It appears that this judgment explains the shift away from European integration between the French Parliament's vote on the Schuman plan in 1950 & its vote on the EDC 4 yrs later. IPSA.

The finding of key symbols such as 'Free World', 'their articulation through concrete operational references and their diffusion by the utterances of the various elites, is both an index and an agent of the development of international coalitions. They provide clues to the shared purposes of the coalition, and data on their durability.' Content analysis of elite and mass media of communications makes it possible to follow the career of symbols which unify the parties to a coalition. The usefulness of this mode of analysis is illustrated with an analysis of neutralism, the refusal to join either the Soviet-centered or the Free World coalition. If attention had been paid to the symbols to which early neutralist sentiments were attached, it would have been clear that they corresponded more closely to the symbols diffused by the Soviet coalition than those diffused by the Free World; and if, further, the signif of the early neutralist groups (the Keep Left group in England, and the Combat group in France) had been analyzed in terms of their place in the communications network of their countries, the political consequences of their selection of key symbols could have been foreseen and prevented. Neutralist perception tends to be selective in such a way as to evade questions of responsibility in the Free World coalition, especially with respect to armament, and while paying little attention to the Soviet coalition, focuses on American shortcomings. Unless neutralists retreat further from the political arena, they must join one coalition or the other, and if recent trends continue, are more likely to add their voices to the Hate-America campaign. 'An appropriate strategy of persuasion needs to be worked out to recover for substantial numbers of neutralists a shared purpose with the Free World coalition' Democracy is a key symbol, which might unify the Free World coalition if research in international communications is brought to bear on 'the specifications of democracy, those common desires which Americans share with other people of the Free World.' A. Simmel.

Revision of paper presented before the Am. association for public opinion research, Princeton, N.J., June 22-25, 1951.