Malcolm MacLean & William Stephenson: Career Contributions & Leadership
Introduction
Three contributions seem to distinguish the theoretical and scholarly work of Malcolm MacLean and William Stephenson. In contrast to their contemporaries, and most scholarship within the field in this decade, MacLean and Stephenson were less preoccupied with mass information than mass communication. First, their focus was to expand the intellectual dynamics of how mass communication should be conceived and researched. To accomplish this, MacLean and Stephenson almost uniquely rejected normative approaches to formulating research questions and hypotheses. Their second and least understood advance was to insist that research should be ipsative, not normative. A third, and perhaps least controversial contribution, was their leadership regarding the processes of scholarship and pedagogy.
Similar to many pioneers in the mass communication field, MacLean and Stephenson set an example by the way they did their work and their range of interests as much as its intellectual depth.
In this essay, MacLean’s and Stephenson’s interests in mass communication are explored by placing their work within a current context. The emphasis will be to note how many of the contemporary traditions within the field of mass communication were established during their careers and to explain some of the differences between many current researchers and MacLean’s and Stephenson’s scholarly instincts. The essay will note how their emphases on mass communication and ipsative approaches to research remain distinctive.
MacLean’s and Stephenson’s leadership as scholars also will be mentioned. Both seemed to realize that the more unusual a scholar’s work, the more singularity demands a careful attention to process and providing bold directions to the field.
MacLean’s & Stephenson’s era, current paradigms and models
To place MacLean and Stephenson’s work in context, it is easier editorially to explain the 1955-1974 era as MacLean’s and from 1974-1989 as Stephenson’s. (MacLean died in 1974 and Stephenson died in 1989.) In discussing the 1955-1974 era as MacLean’s, the assumption is there was a strong similarity between their intellectual underpinnings and approaches. Before the early 1960s, when MacLean and the field first read Stephenson’s work, the parallel was accidental. Intellectual consistencies were clear in the work MacLean did before he ever heard of Stephenson, especially the 1957 essay he co-authored with Bruce Westley on mass communication theory (Westley & MacLean, 1957). By the early 1960s, the Stephenson-MacLean connection was direct. MacLean was an early adopter of Q technique and used it extensively during the last decade of his life (MacLean, 1962a, 1962b, 1962c, 1962d, 1965, 1972). They exchanged ideas frequently. Within a short time after MacLean’s death, Stephenson agreed to be a visiting professor at the University of Iowa School of Journalism of Mass Communication partially to help continue MacLean’s scholarship. During seminars from fall 1974 through spring 1977, Stephenson often spoke of his admiration for MacLean both professionally and personally.
Before distinguishing MacLean and Stephenson from their contemporaries, let us summarize the principal qualities of concepts and paradigms in mass communication before 1974. The conceptual and paradigmatic footholds within current mass communication studies were established during MacLean’s lifetime. Significantly, it was during this era when MacLean first read Stephenson’s work and began their intellectual and personal friendship. As McQuail (1994) explains, the two current paradigms that underlie mass communications research and four key models within the field were established by the early 1970s (see also, Severin & Tankard, 1997; Berger, 1995; Tan, 1985; DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach, 1989; Hansen, et. al, 1998)..
The dominant paradigm, as McQuail (1994, p. 45) explains it, emphasizes: a liberal-pluralist ideal of society; a functionalist perspective, a linear transmission model of effects, a powerful media modified by group relations and quantitative research and variable analysis. To McQuail (1994, p. 48) an alternative paradigm emphasizes: a critical view of society and rejection of value neutrality, rejection of the transmission model of communication, a non-deterministic view of modern technology and messages; cultural and qualitative methodology, a preference for cultural or political-economic theories and wide concern with inequality and sources of opposition in society.
Hence, the two paradigms that McQuail (994) notes undergird current mass communication research were established well within MacLean’s and certainly within Stephenson’s career. By the mid 1970s, or within MacLean’s career, all four of McQuail’s (1994) models in mass communication theory also were established. McQuail (1994, p. 849-60) defines these models as transmission, expression or ritual, publicity and reception.
Briefly, a transmission model of mass communication probes how the meaning of media messages are modified across a complex chain of interactions between media sources, types of messages, media channels, and audience receivers (McQuail, 1994, p. 49-50). A publicity model emphasizes the ‘fact more than the quality’ of attention that mass media generate (McQuail, 1994, p. 51-52). It also focuses on how mass communication either is managed directly by a collusion between advertisers and media corporations or indirectly by advertisers (and/or large social institutions) catering to the routine procedures within news organizations (McQuail, 1994, p. 51-52). Under this model, the processes and effects mass communication are often facilitated by larger corporations, governmental agencies, or private organizations. Sometimes, this model is seen to emphasize the channel or devices for presentation more than the substance of messages (McQuail, 1994, p. 52).
The "essence of the reception approach is to locate the attribution and construction of meaning (derived from media) with the receiver" (McQuail, 1994, p. 53). The reception model recognizes the differences between how messages are interpreted within mass audience or ‘publics’ within a mass audience and large news and mass media organizations. The emphasis is often the differences and interaction between agendas of audiences and messages and the fostering of social norms.
The ritual view of mass communication, which McQuail (1994, p.59-60) introduces as strongly influenced by James Carey (1989), seeks to understand how culture is created, celebrated, played and maintained by the longer range actions, norms and decisions within large media organizations and parallel media technologies. McQuail explains a ritual model is often associated with qualitative approaches and an emphasis on a broader social context. It is often self-presented as an alternative to the ascribed quantitative instincts of transmission, publicity and receiver models and rejects a tendency elsewhere toward administrative research approaches. Yet McQuail (1994, p.59-60) notes it is oversimplified to associate a ritual model of mass with the alternative paradigm noted above. He adds a fifth model, post-modernism, that he finds is sometimes more consistent with alternative paradigm perspectives. In contrast with a ritual model, a post-modernism model focuses more consistently on cultural or political-economic theories and concern with inequality and sources of opposition in society. A post-modernism model also takes account of a "dominant ethos or spirit of our times" and aesthetic and cultural trends," which includes contemporary technological determinism (McQuail, 1994, p. 59).
Admittedly, of the currently important models raised by McQuail, or by others (Severin & Tankard, 1997; Berger, 1995; Tan, 1985; DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach, 1989; Hansen, et. al, 1998), post-modernism is probably the most developed and discussed within the literature following MacLean's and Stephenson's career. But many of the core intellectual motifs in post-modernism (and critical perspectives) were established by the mid-1970s and certainly by 1989.
The transmission, receiver and publicity models especially were well-grounded during MacLean’s career and he influenced the evolution of the transmission model between 1957-1974 (McQuail, 1994, p.50). The ritual model of mass communication research was better established during the last 15 years of Stephenson’s career than MacLean’s lifetime. Stephenson and Carey were on the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication faculty from 1975-77. During this period, Stephenson discussed Carey’s work and noted the interest it spawned among scholars and graduate students.
Nevertheless, both MacLean’s and Stephenson’s approaches and ideas were launched within a contemporary intellectual landscape. There is no need to speculate how MacLean and Stephenson would have responded to modern mass communication scholarship, they did so and the difference in emphases within their work should speak for itself.
More importantly, it is difficult to categorize MacLean or Stephenson’s work within prevailing current paradigms or models. While it does not stop mass communication historians from trying, MacLean’s and Stephenson‘s scholarship is acategorical and it is probably inadvisable to place them within intellectual pidgeon holes (see McQuail, 1994, p. 50; Berger, 1995; Severin & Tankard, 1997). The primary reason is MacLean and Stephenson avoided normative research underpinnings. Each believed mass communication paradigms and models were complementary: never mutually exclusive. Stephenson, a physicist, grounded his approaches to research in three basic principles regarding observation that he derived from physics:.quantum theory, complementarity, and superpositioning (Stephenson, 1972, 1973, 1978a, 1979, 1982, 1986a, 1986b, 1987; Logan, 1991).
Stephenson agreed with Bronowski's (1973) interpretation of quantum theory that at the subatomic level (where there is no light for human beings to directly experience nature) subatomic particles are not subject to the billiard-ball, mechanical, causal occurrences that were presumed to reflect nature's true essence. Conversely, within nature's real core are subatomic particles with differing positions and velocities that change in interaction with each other. By measuring any one, a physicist influences all the others and vice-versa (Johnson, 1990; Penrose, 1990). Further, the standard quantum model leads theorists to believe that subatomic particles do not have a position at all until they are measured. "Only when we cause the electron to interact with some kind of measuring instrument does it take on an exact location" (Johnson, 1990, p. 48).The more fundamental principle of complementarity argues that subatomic occurrences are not a mutually exclusive, or a one-dimensional, causal series of events. To predict the position or velocity of a subatomic particle, scientists must assume, a priori, that "many possible solutions exist simultaneously in quantum superposition" (Johnson, 1990, p. 48). At the instant of measuring subatomic events, one event can predictably occur, or take precedence, against a range of other possibilities; but the whole range remains operant and is always critical to an interpretation. A phenomenon's variance, or different probability states, always must be included to both study and interpretation of subatomic events in order to make viable inferences about them.
Stephenson's interpretation of complementarity as a philosophy of science revolved around several principles
(Stephenson, 1972, 1973, 1978a, 1979, 1982, 1986a, 1986b, 1987):* research about complex phenomena always should permit the superimposition of variables
* research operations should be operant, or let the phenomena in superimposition speak for themselves.
* research demands a contextual immediacy. Science should observe, not contrive, nature and should focus on the 'here and now' when observing natural or human events.
* investigators should interpret research findings within what Bronowski (1973) called a "play of tolerance," or recognize that interpretation adds a layer of uncertainty to statistical error margins. A play of tolerance recognizes that human judgments are an integral part of scientific observations.
* the extent of human judgment in interpreting scientific findings raises what Polanyi (1966) called the "tacit dimension" in science and makes it mandatory that investigators use unobtrusive methods and measures. Researchers should explore and challenge as much as confirm categorical pre-judgments. Operational definitions and processes should avoid contriving the study of nature and human beings.
"To put these ideas another way, Stephenson believed that complementarity demanded that when physical or behavioral scientists examine what they cannot directly see, touch, feel, or otherwise experience (which includes subatomic particles as well as the inner-workings of the human mind) it is methodologically and theoretically imperative to assume all probability states are operant before one measures (or apply operational definitions, empirical methods and subsequent descriptions). In the process of measuring, a researcher may alter, or reshuffle the foundations of the probability states, to the extent that new combinations may be created that may be more intrinsically interesting than what was originally expected. Events in the world researchers cannot directly experience are pluralistic, simultaneous, coexistent, finite and collectively exhaustive. What changes during measurement is a reordering of the parameters that cannot be precisely fixed, but can be said to take precedence in this circumstance within a finite range. Investigations may determine which of a range of probability states takes precedence in a single case, but should understand that the reordering does not erase the range" (Logan, 1991, p. 31).
Applied to mass communication research, MacLean and Stephenson sought for interaction -- not confirmation -- of how existing paradigms, models, frameworks and hypotheses interact. By using Q technique, they sought to discover how patterns were operant, or ideas were superimposed when persons had the opportunity for multivalued choice among and between an array of model and paradigmatic options (Stephenson, 1967, 1969, 1972, 1973, 1978b, 1980a; MacLean, 1965; 1972). The resulting factors represented more than patterns of opinion; they were superimpositions that often eclipsed normative models and paradigms. The factors, or superimpositions, naturally emerged when persons were given an opportunity to select among diverse options.
Hence, Stephenson and MacLean intended less to reject qualitative or quantitative methods, dominant paradigms and models, and advocating finding a fresh approach (grounded in scientific principles) to unobstrusively explore what no investigator can see directly: how persons and individuals perceive mass mediated experiences. Similar to the universe inside an atom, the life of a mind is impossible for any human to visit. Yet, this did not deter Stephenson or MacLean from trying and adopting basic principles of exploring human experience in terms of quantum theory.
An array of novel ideas
It should be emphasized that MacLean and Stephenson intended less to critique the work of other scholars than try to set a different course. As an aside, both suffer from the irony that their perceived research contributions are a fraction of what each intended to convey. For example, MacLean is often credited for fostering the receiver model in mass communication research and for adding feedback loops into the interactions among sources, messages, channels and receivers within the transmission model (McQuail, 1994; p. 50; Berger, 1995; Severin & Tankard, 1997; Tan, 1985). Stephenson is credited less for theoretical contributions than the introduction of Q technique within the field, which is often seen as a research tool to enhance the study of mass communication within MacLean’s tranmission model (Berger, 1995; Stempel and Westley, 1985; Carey, 1989).
However, Q technique, feedback loops and an expanded transmission model that incorporate receivers are elements -- not the whole -- of MacLean’s and Stephenson’s work. Science historian Loren Graham (1982) notes that it is rare for scholars with expansionist scientific perspectives to receive credit for the totality of their work. Graham (1982) explains that an ‘expansionist’ perspective views the role of science as developing insights from other disciplines (especially physics) to create innovative, multidimensional, theoretical perspectives. Expansionists, Graham continues, are often less interest in developing the literature review from within their immediate field. The result is their work is often seen as outside normal disciplinary boundaries and their contributions devalued. As briefly noted above, Stephenson’s concepts of mass communication and rationales for Q methodology were derived from quantum theory (plus morphology and gestalt psychology) more than the literature of mass communication, which he partially ignored (Brown, et. al, 1972; Sanders, 1974; Brown, 1999; Logan, 1991). By turning to Q methodology, MacLean also broke ranks from grounding work in mass communication studies (either quantitatively or qualitatively) by rejecting existing frameworks as viable unilateral constructs for investigation. By insisting that qualitative frameworks, such as critical theory, were too limiting, or by insisting that quantitative constructs, such as drive theories of media effects, were similarly constraining, the foundation of MacLean’s and Stephenson’s work was outside disciplinary boundaries. As Graham emphasizes, it is hardly surprising that scholarly approaches and influences that are fostered outside an author’s home discipline are greeted with peer skepticism and constraints.
More specifically, MacLean’s contribution is often cited as helping eclipse the transmission model of mass communication by placing an emphasis on the receiver of mass communication (McQuail, 1994; p. 50; Severin & Tankard, 1997; Tan, 1985) . MacLean also is credited for pioneering the importance of feedback between four clusters of major variables in mass communication research: the sources of messages, the messages, the channels of communication and receivers within the mass communication process (MacQuail, 1994, p.50 ; Severin & Tankard, 1997; Tan, 1985).
However, MacLean intended less to introduce feedback and interaction as variables than to reconceptualize the dynamics of the mass communication process. To MacLean, it became insufficient to posit normative theories -- whether qualitative or quantitative -- as a research framework to confirm/reject (on the quantitative side) or used as an explanatory mechanism (on the qualitative side). MacLean really was a revolutionary; he partially turned away from the scholarly process that continues to be advocated in research methods texts (both qualitative and quantitative). He accepted empirical measurement, but he rejected the use of independent and dependent variables, or confirming grounded constructs. MacLean embraced the field’s literature; but during the last decade of his life, his scholarship was not based in testing constructs or applying analytic historical, cultural, socio-political theoretical frameworks. Instead, he wished to find how a multi-valued atmosphere stimulated fresh combinations of ideas that eclipsed what previously occurred to investigators (1962a, 1962b, 1962c, 1962d, 1965, 1972). MacLean once contrasted that, "R is normative; Q is ipsative" (MacLean, 1965, p. 618). The quotation refers less to scaling but to the second definition of normative given by Vogt, (1999, p. 195), "often used to prescribing norms, standards, or values – as opposed to describing them."
In addition, MacLean respected individual opinion enough to discover how persons (if given the opportunity to do so) might reorient how scholars depicted reality. He adopted Q technique because it assumed meanings are in people, persons were intelligent and their factor scores fostered original inferences (MacLean, 1965). Similar to Stephenson, MacLean sought to discover how mass communication is internalized through multi-valued choice and subsequent factors. Factors often yielded surprises; not so much that they rejected existing models and paradigms but more they combine them into distinctive, novel arrays. Critical perspectives or quantitative constructs were not to be proven or disproven; the question was whether they were operant (or became superimposed) under the circumstances investigated. Since factor arrays suggested that normative paradigms and models were normally insufficiently holistic to account for the phenomena they sought to explain, MacLean (1965, 1972) found their functional utility as exemplars was often limited.
The process of asking persons to sort their feelings among paradigms and models also yielded how communication is perceived among the mass, which shifted research emphases away from mass information. In MacLean’s Q methodological work, his emphasis was on how persons reconstituted an array of diverse ideas in order to find if ideas asserted by others were perceived as meaningful, or authentic. In the process of reinforcing the primacy of the subject’s judgment (rather than the investigators, or the ideas of mass communication experts), MacLean sought to shift research away from how mass information impacts citizens, culture and society toward how individuals and groups re-create meaning in communication.
Similarly, Stephenson consistently reminded researchers to consider "communication in the mass, not as communication of the mass media (Stephenson, 1980a, p. 25; emphases are Stephenson's).In the history of mass communication research, MacLean and Stephenson are among the rare investigators who offered to explain how individuals and groups create meaning and culture, sometimes in juxtaposition (and sometimes akimbo) from the agendas and actions of mass media organizations, news media habits and conventions, socio-poltical influences, cultural traditions and technological developments. While the ritual tradition’s methodological approach rejects Q technique along with other quantitative methods, there are parallels between core ideas in the ritual model of mass communication and Stephenson’s and MacLean’s emphases. In both traditions, an investigator considers the comparative consistencies or inconsistencies between the agendas of large social organizations, and social norms, the nature of change, dissent, conformity and social judgment (Hansen et.al, 1998; Carey, 1989). At the heart of Stephenson’s and MacLean’s work (and sometimes at the core of a ritual approach), is the importance of individual and collective judgments. Both the ritual tradition and Stephenson & MacLean emphasize that individual and collective judgments are of importance in understanding how culture is formed as well as the contributions of large social institutions.
There are additional parallels between MacLean and Stephenson and McQuail’s post-modern model (which Hardt, 1999, p. 180 terms critical and cultural traditions). Similar to critical and cultural scholars, MacLean and Stephenson were interested in separating fact from values, the relationship of meaning and language to culture and constituting reality (Hardt, 1999, p. 180). They accepted the idea that "the interpretative nature of culture and communication precludes a fixed or final truth" (Hardt, 1999, p. 180).
The difference is MacLean and Stephenson were neutral, e.g. non-polemical, regarding presumptions in cultural and critical traditions that thought is mediated by historically grounded power relations, or the relationship between representation and reality are largely political in nature (Hardt, 1999, p. 180). To MacLean and Stephenson, this was a matter to be found, never assumed, Stephenson (1980a, p.17) explained it this way:
For us, what any communication means is always a matter for discovery….
While the creation of power relationships, creation of social, economic and cultural institutions, social norms and conventions and the role of the mass communication are assumed to interact multidimensionally, the role of investigator was to remain unobstrusive in pre-determining the state of the relationship. Both MacLean and Stephenson believed that it should be operant responses by persons -- not the categorical assumptions based on a scholarly vision -- which helped define the state of a social system. Implied in this stance was a non-determinism about individuals or societies drawn from quantum mechanics and a strong belief in observation via self-reference, which was asserted as an alternative framework to examine complex social phenomena.
Leadership & Legacy
A quarter-century following MacLean’s death and a decade after Stephenson’s, the limited understanding of their contributions in contemporary scholarship is probably founded in their maverick approaches and the fact they less interested in confirming constructs or frameworks derived from mass communication literature than developing some of the aforementioned broader principles. As expansionists, MacLean and Stephenson probably should have not been surprised by the lukewarm reception Q technique received (see Graham, 1982). But as self-acknowledged mavericks, MacLean and Stephenson realized their distinctive approaches needed explanation and elaboration. Despite the deficiency of current acceptance within mass communication traditions, it is interesting to note briefly the extent that MacLean and Stephenson attempted to explain their approaches to future generations.
MacLean’s care in elucidating Q technique seems most evident in an explanatory essay he published, some theses and dissertations he supervised and his efforts to discover if Q-derived factors could be more generalizeable (MacLean, 1962a, 1962c, 1962d and especially 1965). With Talbott and others, MacLean (1962a; 1962c, 1962d) experimented with Q blocks, which attempted to ascertain if opinion patterns based on small sample sizes could be more generalizeable to a large population. In MacLean’s (1962a, 1962b, 1962c, 1962d, 1965, 1972) work which used Q technique and Q blocks, it is striking to note the painstaking, detailed explanation used within the methodological sections. The detail suggests the degree that MacLean hoped peers might understand Q technique’s advantages and disadvantages. His students were encouraged to compare traditional empirical approaches, where survey items are individually scored by persons (and the factor matrix is persons by items) to Q methodology that requires all survey items to be comparatively scored (and the factor matrix is items by persons). The interpretation of factors suggested how they challenged existing frameworks in mass communication research and reinforced Q’s viability as a research technique (MacLean, 1965).
Stephenson more directly explained the intellectual and psychometric bases of Q technique in his writings. In two books plus a series of essays he wrote for the Psychological Record during the last decade of his life, Stephenson (1953, 1967, 1986a, 1986b, 1987) attempted to detail his influences, find common ground with contemporary researchers and contrast his approaches. The book, The Play Theory of Mass Communication, was Stephenson’s effort to apply his views within the mass communication field. However, most of his writings are about Q’s application in psychometrics, psychology and encouraging a place for subjectivity within empirical science (Stephenson, 1953a, 1953b, 1961a, 1961b, 1962c, 1974, 1978a, 1979, 1982). The reason for the diversion to other fields is explained by Stephenson’s judgment that Q’s future was grounded in interdisciplinary work -- whenever measuring adult or child subjectivity was useful.
While Stephenson’s leadership was more confined to theory and scholarship, MacLean’s career took directions as an academic administrator, expert on Italian mass communication research, president of the International Communication Association and a curricular reformer. MacLean’s administrative activities reinforced the degree that original ideas needed more than scholarly elucidation. To MacLean, innovations in generating knowledge also should be applied to the education of undergraduate and graduate students. The University of Iowa’s mass comm lab, which MacLean organized, was designed to help communicators understand the dynamics of mass communication. In lieu of focusing on traditional educational approaches to training news reporting and editing skills, law and history with an overlay of theoretical and ethics courses, Iowa students were first encouraged to understand the motivations of key sources (e.g. understanding social institutions) the differences between mass mediums, how the construction of news might differ from persuasive messages, the variety of ‘public’s’ within an audience, and feedback between social and communication interaction and news and media judgment. The mass comm lab exemplified applied multidimensional, interactive, audience-based, media product development. Its transformative qualities paralleled MacLean’s scholarship and sought to train students to question and reinvent conventions as much as master them.
The mass comm lab’s underlying presumption was that scholarly vision requires grounding as well as applications and trials. The lab was an attempt to both apply and authenticate an array of original, intellectual ideas. The educational process itself also was seen as integral to advancing knowledge about the mass media. The legacy of educational leadership that MacLean left combined innovative scholarship, international, interdisciplinary interests and curricular applications.
Despite their leadership, contemporary mass communication research has not embraced MacLean’s or Stephenson’s Q-based direction, or its underlying ideas -- and may not for the foreseeable future. In most surveys of the literature, review of milestones, or even recent quantitative methods textbooks, mentions of Stephenson and MacLean, Q research and its theoretical underpinnings are fleeting and they are not seen as integral to the current paradigms and models outlined above (McQuail, 1994; p. 50; Severin & Tankard, 1997; Tan, 1985; Stempel & Westley, 1989; Wimmer & Dominick, 1997).
Yet, MacLean’s ideas about the importance of media and community interaction seem akin to the conceptual underpinnings of the currently discussed public journalism movement. As mass communication programs converge skills to encompass new media technologies, many ideas within the mass comm lab may be widely adopted. Q technique and its underlying ideas additionally thrive in some disciplines outside of mass communication studies such as policy studies, political science, health care, psychology, marketing and counseling-mediation literature. There is an International Society for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity, with a U.S., European and Korean branch, a listserv with more than 400 members worldwide, a refereed journal (Operant Subjectivity) and annual meetings worldwide.
While MacLean and Stephenson’s intellectual and personal leadership may not be appreciated in its totality, their contributions represent timeless interdisciplinary authority and approaches. They continue to be sources of inspiration for anyone who seeks to understand media authenticity, who believes that meanings are in people and believes in the potential of mass communication as an academic discipline.
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