Communication Theory for Humans

Neil O'Boyle
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 Communication
Theory for Humans
COMMUNICATORS IN
A MEDIATED WORLD

NEIL O’BOYLE
 Communication Theory for Humans

“Showcasing Neil O’Boyle’s real enthusiasm for teaching theory, Communication

Theory for Humans offers an enjoyable, student-centred approach that doesn’t over-
simplify the ideas it introduces. The book makes classic theory relevant through recent
applications, makes difficult theory clear through relatable examples, and shines a spot-
light on the humans without whom communication would have no purpose or mean-
ing. If you’re not lucky enough to join O’Boyle in his classroom, this is the next
best thing.”
—Bethany Klein, Professor of Media and Communication, University of Leeds, UK

“In contrast to most academic work, which is a pain to read, Neil O’Boyle’s book is
clear, engaging, lucid and quite often funny. It deals with complex topics in a thoughtful
manner but, at the same time, doesn’t take itself or its subject matter too seriously.
Perhaps most importantly of all, it may actually get undergraduates to read something!”
—Dr Michael Skey, Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media, School of Social
Sciences and Humanities, Loughborough University, UK

“This book provides students with an introduction to the foundational texts in com-
munication theory and human interaction. While many textbooks exist on this subject,
what distinguishes Neil O’Boyle’s book is its innovative structure with chapters organ-
ised around six core concepts, including ‘authors’, ‘influencers’, and ‘produsers’. With
an emphasis on real life examples, O’Boyle helps theory come alive, aided by his deeply
engaging and personal writing style. This will be a valuable text for students and teach-
ers alike.”
—Dr Anamik Saha, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications,
Goldsmiths University, UK
 Neil O’Boyle

Communication Theory
for Humans
Communicators in a Mediated World
Neil O’Boyle
Dublin City University
Dublin, Ireland

ISBN 978-3-031-02449-8    ISBN 978-3-031-02450-4 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02450-4
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For my mother and father
 Preface

This is a book about communication theory that is aimed primarily at students

taking media and communication studies programmes. As readers are aware,
there are already many excellent textbooks on communication theory available,
some of which have multiple editions. My own personal favourites include
Littlejohn and Foss’s Theories of Human Communication, Griffin’s A First Look
at Communication Theory, McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory, Fiske’s
Introduction to Communication Studies, Hodkinson’s Media, Culture and
Society, and Sullivan’s Media Audiences. These books describe a wide range of
theories, models, and approaches and have helped enormously in ‘mapping
out’ the field for students as well as helping them to ‘locate’ (and differentiate)
theories in terms of how each approaches the study of communication. The
aforementioned books also do an excellent job of explaining what ‘communi-
cation’ is, what a ‘theory’ is, and how one might go about assessing the relative
‘merits’ and ‘shortcomings’ of theories.
This book is somewhat different. In the course of writing it, I regularly
imagined myself in conversation with an undergraduate student, posing ques-
tions and answering them, and engaging in a sort of open-ended, probing
dialogue about communication. For years, students have complained to me
that some theories are overloaded with conceptual baggage and tortuous jar-
gon and would be considerably easier to understand if they were explained in
everyday terms. Students have also repeatedly made the point that while there
are many books on communication available, the majority prioritise discussions
of media rather than human communicators per se. This book is my (decidedly
partial) response to that critical feedback. It is not intended as a stand-alone
text but rather as a companion reader—as a resource that can be read alongside
the many excellent books already available. Hence, I do not attempt to ‘re-­
cover’ ground that is already well-covered elsewhere. Naturally, there will be
points of overlap; however, my aims here are broader. This book aims to foster
an appreciation of theory in readers, to cultivate theoretical sensitivity in them,
and to provide them with lots of ‘real world’ examples to help them better

vii
viii PREFACE

understand how theories apply to everyday life. My overarching aim is to

broaden and deepen the reader’s thinking about communication in the fullest
possible sense, in the knowledge that communicative practices (and communi-
cation theories) are always evolving—or ‘always “emerging”’, as John Liep
(2001: 6) has said about culture.
Liep’s words offer an important reminder that cultural production (which
includes knowledge and ideas) is ongoing and unfinished. This applies equally
to academic disciplines such as communication studies, which is currently
undergoing a long overdue process of ‘de-Westernisation’. As welcome as it is
that the contributions of non-Western scholars are finally beginning to receive
the recognition they deserve, it needs to be stated at the outset that the core
concepts and ideas described in this book derive chiefly from Western theoreti-
cal frameworks. (Indeed, my own particular orientation probably falls some-
where between North American communication studies and British cultural
studies, though I have also long appreciated James Carey’s particular variant of
American cultural studies.) That said, throughout the book I offer numerous
examples of studies carried out across the world that demonstrate the broad (if
not perhaps universal) relevance of the theories described. Furthermore, it is
necessary to highlight that the source material used in this book is mainly social
scientific. This is important to mention because any comprehensive analysis of
human communication clearly requires input from neuroscientists, psycholo-
gists, biologists, and other specialists. Indeed, this is a point of criticism that
has been directed at communication studies as a discipline. For example, Kory
Floyd (2014: 4) argues that ‘until recently, no communication theories have
directly posited either biological or evolutionary causes for communication
behaviour or physiological, health-related outcomes of communication
behaviour’.
Liep’s suggestion that culture is always ‘emerging’ also intimates that you,
the reader, are part of this process. More directly, Berger (1991) argues that
theory development should be part of the training of all communication
researchers. In other words, he argues that students should not simply read and
study theories but should be encouraged to critique them, unpack them, and
imagine their own alternatives. I wholeheartedly agree with him—as readers
will discover when they come to the ‘learning activities’ section at the end of
each chapter. These activities have been designed to help students better under-
stand concepts and tease out arguments but also to encourage them to think
more critically about theory construction. Doing so will remind them that
communication theory is itself unfinished and that they too can contribute to
its development. More broadly, it will remind them that they too have a voice,
that they too have power, that they too are civic agents capable of changing the
world (Jenkins, Peters-Lazaro, and Shresthova 2020).
In recent decades, cinema audiences have been subjected to a series of ‘not
another’ movies, my favourite being the brilliantly named Not Another Not
Another Movie (2011). It occurred to me in writing this book that something
similar might be said of my own efforts here—that students might groan at the
 PREFACE ix

appearance of yet another communication theory book. If that is indeed the

case and you opened this book with a deep sigh, then one of my lesser tasks is
to turn that readerly frown upside down. However, beyond that, my greater
hope is that you will find the work informative and interesting in equal mea-
sure, that it will stimulate your imagination and speak to your social realities,
and that it will present enough ideas and raise enough questions to motivate
the curious among you to seek out more. Who knows, perhaps it might even
ignite wanderlust of a theoretical kind. As I write these words on a dark
February morning in 2022 with the global COVID-19 pandemic raging on
outside, it occurs to me that wanderlust ‘of a theoretical kind’ may be the only
kind possible for some time to come.

Dublin, Ireland Neil O’Boyle

February 2022

References
Berger, C. R. (1991) ‘Communication Theories and Other Curios’, Communication
Monographs 58(1): 101–113.
Floyd, K. (2014) ‘Humans Are People, Too: Nurturing an Appreciation for Nature in
Communication Research’, Review of Communication Research 2(1): 1–29.
Jenkins, H., Peters-Lazaro, G. and Shresthova, S. (eds) (2020) Popular Culture and the
Civic Imagination. New York: New York University Press.
Liep, J. (2001) Locating Cultural Creativity. London: Pluto Press.
 Acknowledgements

Every book is a collective endeavour and this one is no different. First off, my
sincere thanks to Lauriane Piette at Palgrave and Immy Higgins at Springer
Nature for their incredible patience, guidance, and support throughout the
entire process. I also wish to sincerely thank the reviewers of the book for their
encouragement and invaluable suggestions, and for very generously providing
endorsements. They are (in alphabetical order!): Anamik Saha, Bethany Klein,
and Michael Skey. Special thanks also to Jeff Pooley for his very kind
endorsement.
I wish to express my gratitude to my colleagues at the School of
Communications, Dublin City University, for their friendship and intellectual
hospitality over the past thirteen years. My sincere thanks also to my students
for their passion, wisdom, and attendance. (Most pedagogical discussion nowa-
days centres on ‘in-class engagement’ but such discussion is rather moot if
nobody turns up in the first place).
Finally, sincere thanks to my family. I am eternally grateful to my amazing
wife Miriam and to my wonderful sons Ronan and Eoin for their love, support,
and incredible patience. I also apologise profusely to them for my incessant
tapping on the keyboard at all hours, for my mood swings and pacing, and for
my irritatingly loud ‘self-talk’. Thanks also to my brothers Will, Frank, Rob,
and Eamonn for their constant support. Lastly, my heartfelt thanks to my
mother and father for always being there for me and for helping me in more
ways than they will ever know. This book is dedicated with love to them.

xi
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Actors: An Introduction to Symbolic Interactionism 27

3 Narrators: A Narrative Approach to Human Communication 51

4 Members: Communication in Human Groups 77

5 Performers: Goffman’s Dramaturgical Perspective103

6 Influencers: Person-to-Person Influence in the Networked Era127

7 Produsers:
 New Media Audiences and the Paradoxes of
Participatory Culture153

8 Concluding Thoughts183

Index205

xiii
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Rational-world and narrative paradigms. (Adapted from Fisher,

W. (1984) ‘Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm’,
Communication Monographs 51: 1–22) 58
Fig. 4.1 A Fantasy Theme Analysis of a Trump Speech 95

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Communication is a—perhaps the—fundamental social process. Without

communication, human groups and societies would not exist.
—Schramm (1963: 1)

Introduction: Human Wildlife

A student of mine once said, exasperatedly, that communication theories are
like ‘mown lawns’. ‘They’re too neat and tidy’, he said, ‘nobody’s got grass like
that!’ I remember being deeply impressed by the young man’s insightful and
richly descriptive remarks—and pleased to see he wasn’t scrolling his phone
when he made them. His words contain more than a little truth: communica-
tion theories, like all theories, invariably attempt to put a degree of order on
processes and experiences that are often complex and sometimes chaotic. And
yet, as I hope to demonstrate in this short book, theories are also fascinating,
thought-provoking, and incredibly useful things. As readers are aware, human
communication is a terribly complicated business and with each passing year,
new tools, technologies, and countless new studies emerge, all of which add
even more complexity. However, it is equally true that our reasons and motiva-
tions for communicating have not changed all that much over time. As Wilbur
Schramm notes in the epigraph of this chapter, human communication is fun-
damentally a social process: we communicate to share experiences and pass on
information, to explain events and alert others, to justify our actions, boast,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
N. O’Boyle, Communication Theory for Humans,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02450-4_1
2 N. O’BOYLE

complain, influence, bully, flirt, and much more.1 Sometimes we communicate

simply to keep in touch, such as sending a Snapchat ‘streak’ to someone (what
scholars call ‘phatic communication’). Nowadays, we live in a world preoccu-
pied with new technologies—a world seemingly obsessed with big data and
algorithms, bots and apps, responsive media and smart devices, platforms and
programmatic advertising, fake news, artificial intelligence, machine learning,
and the ‘metaverse’, and yet all of this can sometimes make us forget that
human interactions are the lifeblood of our world, regardless of how datafied
and technology-dependent that world has become.
This book prioritises the human in human communication and is aimed
primarily at students taking media and communication studies programmes. As
already highlighted, these students sometimes complain about the ‘theory’
modules they are obliged to take. Adjectives such as ‘dull’ and ‘unhelpfully
abstract’ are known to appear in their feedback and it is not uncommon to hear
theory modules described as ‘detached from everyday life’. However, in my
experience, negative appraisals of this sort usually come from students who
have not made an effort to read theory, who have not properly engaged with
it, and in some cases have not even come to class—in person, Zoom, or other-
wise! Of course, theory can sometimes be boring, and sometimes its relevance
to everyday life can be difficult to discern. But to dismiss ‘theory’ out of hand
is to miss out on a fascinating and colourful world of concepts and ideas that
can enrich our thinking and help us make sense of our lives and the societies in
which we live; it is to disregard the analytical footing theories give us, the con-
fidence they inspire in us, and how they work as catalysts for our imagination.2
Students also sometimes forget that theorising is something all of us do, even
if we don’t label it such. As Joas and Knobl (2009: 5) observe, without theoris-
ing ‘it would be impossible to learn or to act in consistent fashion; without
generalisations and abstractions, the world would exist for us only as a chaotic
patchwork of discrete, disconnected experiences and sensory impressions’.
That said, Ernest Bormann (1990: 3) cautions that we must avoid confusing
‘hunches’ and ‘opinions’ with scholarly theories, the crucial difference being

1
Relatedly, in their recent book Changing News Use: Unchanged News Experiences? (2021),
Irene Costera Meijer and Tim Groot Kormelink argue that while practices around news consump-
tion are evolving and diversifying—for example, in addition to reading, watching, and listening, we
now also scroll, tag, check, and sometimes actively avoid news—‘many underlying patterns of news
experience—how people appreciate news—are surprisingly durable’ (p.2). Indeed, James Carey
(2009: 17) similarly observes that ‘news changes little and yet is intrinsically satisfying; it performs
few functions yet is habitually consumed’.
2
The first academic paper I always assign my theory classes to read is Howard Becker’s ‘Becoming
a Marijuana User’. This paper was published way back in 1953 and yet it remains one of the best
examples of ‘applied’ symbolic interactionism. We will briefly examine this paper in Chapter 2;
however, I mention it here simply because it offers an excellent example of how scholarly works can
act as catalysts for our imagination. For example, Carter and Fuller (2016: 938) observe that ‘to
this day, when students read ‘Becoming a Marijuana User’ they realise how creative one can be as
a researcher; Becker was instrumental in inspiring scholars to dare to examine unique, taboo, and
esoteric phenomena not studied by others’.
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

that scholarly theories consist of rules and principles that have been tested by
experience. Of course, this should not be taken to suggest that they are always
correct. Likewise, it is important to remember that every theory is partial,
which is to say that in focusing on some things it invariably overlooks or disre-
gards others.
A number of metaphors and analogies have been put forward to explain
how theories work. They are ‘tools’ to help us build explanations; they are
‘bridges’ that lead to fuller understandings of phenomena. Littlejohn and Foss
(2011) liken theories to guidebooks, which is a particularly helpful way of
thinking about them. Guidebooks, such as those published by Lonely Planet or
Rough Guides, are valuable sources of information and can tell us much about
the interesting things to see and do when visiting particular places. But guide-
books also leave out a great deal about the culture and history of places, and
they generally contain little or no information about regions or locales that are
unpopular with tourists. Theories can be thought about in much the same way:
they will be of considerable use to us so long as we don’t fool ourselves into
thinking that they describe and explain everything.

Communication Studies
Communication studies as an academic discipline or field originated in the
United States in the mid-twentieth century, which makes it relatively ‘young’
in historical terms. In fact, Pooley (2021: 143) points out that ‘until the
1940s, no such thing as communication research’ even existed. Moreover, at
that time and for a number of years after, the term ‘communication theory’
was mostly used in the context of electrical engineering (Craig and Muller
2007: xiv). Like other academic disciplines, communication studies has a
number of founding myths and origin stories, however, Pooley and Park
(2008: 1) argue in their landmark volume, The History of Media and
Communication Research: Contested Memories, that on the whole ‘there is very
little history of mass communication research’. Wilbur Schramm (mentioned
above) was one of the first to self-identify as a communications scholar and in
the post-World War II era he helped to establish a number of important com-
munication institutes, such as those at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign and Stanford University. During those early years and for much of
the twentieth century, mediated communication—or more precisely, mass-
mediated communication (e.g., newspapers, radio, television, etc.)—was the
primary ‘stuff’ of communication studies, though research on interpersonal
communication was also carried out by scholars specialising in linguistics and
social psychology. In fact, Berger argues that from the start, communication
studies was really a ‘melange of disciplines’ (1991: 103). He points out, for
example, that the nascent field was shaped initially by social behaviourism and
sociology (discussed in Chap. 2), but also by political science and psychology,
and later by British cultural studies. Like Berger, Silvio Waisbord argues that
communication studies has always been an eclectic and fragmented patchwork
4 N. O’BOYLE

of different intellectual traditions and research approaches. ‘Communication

studies’, he insists, ‘is versatile, vibrant, and messy’; it has no ‘ontological cen-
ter’ (2019: 9). For these reasons, Waisbord argues that it is not so much a
discipline as a ‘post-­discipline’. However, this does not trouble him; on the
contrary, he considers it the main strength of the field. These diverse origins
reveal themselves in the present day in the range of specialisms or sub-disci-
plines within communication studies, many of which have their own research
networks, conferences, academic journals, and so on. Even umbrella associa-
tions, such as the International Association for Media and Communication
Research (IAMCR), which is the largest of its kind worldwide, are made up of
a number of distinct sections and working groups, including communication
policy and technology, journalism research and education, audience studies,
and political communication (https://iamcr.org/s-­wg).
Of course, so much internal diversity can also be problematic in a number of
ways. For one thing, depending on their particular orientation and interests,
communication scholars will sometimes define communication in different
ways. For instance, Carey (2009) famously distinguishes between a ‘transmis-
sion’ view of communication (sending or imparting information) and a ‘ritual’
view of communication (maintaining meaningful social bonds). Consequently,
Robert Craig (1999) argues that any attempt to find a ‘unified’ theory of com-
munication—one that everyone everywhere agrees upon—is both futile and
likely impossible. Instead, he argues that we need ‘a way of seeing how differ-
ent traditions of communication theory are relevant to each other and have
interesting issues to debate in common’ (Craig and Muller 2007: 60). Another
difficulty with being ‘everything and nothing’ so to speak is that the particular
expertise of communication scholars is sometimes hard to define, which also
helps to explain why the legitimacy of the discipline is sometimes called into
question.3 Part of the problem, as Wolfgang Donsbach once observed in a
speech, is that every human being is a communicator on some level and every-
one therefore has some knowledge of what it is that communication schol-
ars study:

Communication has a very simple problem: The closeness of its object to every-
body’s reality and experience makes everybody a self-proclaimed “expert.” People
say, “Because I watch a lot of television (be it as a politician, a spokesperson,
spindoctor, or just a parent), I have at least as much to say as a researcher in this
field.” This problem does not apply to a physicist or a neurologist. But it happens
to us, and it sometimes makes it hard to defend research against common wisdom
or claims from interested parties. (Donsbach 2006: 445)

As already noted, communication studies originated in the Western world

(the US to be specific); however, since the late twentieth century there have

3
As Pooley (2016: xii) humorously puts it, ‘“communication”, as an organized academic enter-
prise, was jerrybuilt atop a motley cluster of barely compatible, legitimacy-starved skills-training
traditions’.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

been calls to ‘de-Westernise’ the field—calls that increased considerably with

the publication of Curran and Park’s De-Westernizing Media Studies in 2000.
Curran and Park, along with many others, argue that communication studies is
rooted in Western philosophical and cultural assumptions and is dominated by
Western theoretical and methodological frameworks. In De-Westernizing
Communication Research (2011), Georgette Wang clarifies that such argu-
ments are not aimed at rejecting Western models but at enriching and broaden-
ing the field—or encouraging ‘a plurality of global voices’, as Waisbord (2016:
868) puts it. However, this is easier said than done. For example, Waisbord
argues that while the field is experiencing some positive effects associated with
globalisation, internationalisation, and multiculturalism—for example,
increased interaction and collaboration between researchers from various parts
of the world—strong differences in academic cultures remain and English still
dominates. Moreover, he argues that while it is welcome that academic works
are increasingly being translated into different languages, most of the founda-
tional or canonical works in the field are underpinned by Western epistemolo-
gies (knowledge, understanding, and ways of knowing). In other words, he
suggests that translation alone can hardly be expected to bring an end to ‘aca-
demic imperialism’ (ibid. 872). Linked to this more general call to de-­
Westernise communication studies has been a growing demand by non-White
scholars for more professional recognition and greater inclusion ‘on the
ground’ as it were (i.e. in communication schools and departments, conference
panels, etc.). In their important paper ‘#CommunicationSoWhite’, Chakravartty
et al. (2018) compare White and non-White scholars in terms of publication
and citation rates in twelve peer-reviewed communication journals, finding
that non-White scholars authored only 14 per cent of all papers (on racial top-
ics) published between 1990 and 2016 and were cited significantly fewer times.
However, the motivation for their research goes far beyond a desire to track
publication and citation rates:

We undertook this study because we observed the absence of non-White scholars

from the canon of communication across all subfields; the marginal position of
non-White scholars in key institutional spaces; the persistent ghettoization of
race-related panels and discussions on conference program agendas; and the
greater visibility of White scholars’ work on race and inequality. (Chakravartty
et al. 2018: 255)

Chakravartty et al.’s findings point to significant exclusions, biases, and

power imbalances within the field of communication studies; however, the pic-
ture is far bleaker outside it. First and foremost, it is vital to remember that not
everyone everywhere enjoys the same freedoms to communicate. Nowadays,
technology-free ‘retreats’ are becoming increasingly popular for the well-­
heeled, with many deciding to temporarily unplug their various devices and
voluntarily go ‘off grid’ or indulge in a ‘digital detox’. However, ‘being incom-
municado’ is not a choice for everyone; for many refugees, migrant workers,
6 N. O’BOYLE

and impoverished people around the world, ‘it remains an everyday experience,
indirectly, directly or structurally’ (Constantinou et al. 2008: 5/6). Equally, it
is important to acknowledge that the pace and nature of technological change
depend entirely on the geographical context (Curran et al. 2016) and that
despite significant progress, a ‘digital divide’ remains globally. This term high-
lights that although the internet is technically available worldwide, there remain
significant differences both between and within countries in respect of access,
skills, and levels of usage. At a minimum, we can think of a first- and second-
level digital divide: the first comes down to material access, while the second
concerns the extent to which individuals are equipped to use digital technolo-
gies (Hargittai 2002). Such debates also bring to light differences in media
ecosystems. For example, in some countries, indigenous language media and
older, more traditional forms, such as community radio and newspapers, con-
tinue to play a vital role in information-sharing and bottom-up participation,
though their future survival is far from guaranteed. For instance, Salawu (2015)
highlights that the future remains precarious for many local language newspa-
pers in sub-Saharan Africa.
It is important to note that something of a digital divide can be found in all
countries, including wealthy ones. Even in the United States—the birthplace of
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook—internet connectivity
remains an issue for many people. For example, in his recent book Farm Fresh
Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (2021), Christopher Ali describes
the persistence of a rural-urban digital divide and the widespread lack of broad-
band in rural America. Likewise, in the United Kingdom, 10 per cent of the
adult population (5.3 million people) were classified as ‘internet non-­users’ in
2018 (Office for National Statistics 2019). That said, the digital divide is much
more pronounced in poorer countries, which again reminds us that physical
places continue to matter in our increasingly mediated world. Couldry and
Hepp (2017: 78) argue that ‘locations of high media connectivity’ are privi-
leged in the present day, while Florida (2002) similarly argues that places with
advanced technological infrastructures and skilled, diverse workforces tend to
be the most economically successful. Unfortunately, many people across the
globe do not live in such places. As United Nations Deputy Secretary-­General
Amina Mohammed starkly put it in April 2021, ‘Almost half the world’s popu-
lation, 3.7 billion people, the majority of them women, and most in developing
countries, are still offline’ (United Nations 2021). Indeed, even though it is
sometimes framed as a great ‘leveller’, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has
in fact deepened the isolation and inequality experienced by some people
(Sobande 2020).4
4
Relatedly, activists sometimes suffer the delusion that everyone is equally attentive to their
cause—or at least should be. But of course some people, such as those facing starvation, have little
concern for causes other than how to obtain food. As the humanist psychologist Abraham Maslow
once famously put it: ‘For the man who is extremely and dangerously hungry, no other interests
exist but food. He dreams food, he remembers food, he thinks about food, he emotes only about
food, he perceives only food and he wants only food’ (Maslow 1943: 374).
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Communicators
As the title suggests, our focus in this book is on embodied, symbol-using,
socially situated human communicators. Readers will appreciate (in being one
of them!) that humans communicate in numerous ways—with their words and
language, their posture, their tone of voice, their facial expressions, their move-
ment or stillness, their eye contact or avoidance, their silences, their clothes,
their hobbies and interests, and much more. Human bodies differ, personalities
differ, and moods differ from situation to situation. We are sometimes discern-
ing, sceptical, critical; at other times gullible, impressionable, manipulable.
Most of us are consumers, viewers, readers, listeners, lurkers, and users; many
of us are also fans, hobbyists, and creators. Some of us are influencers and some
are trolls; a few are media moguls and a few are changemakers. Some, such as
the climate activist Greta Thunberg, have become famous ‘global communica-
tors’ (Hautea et al. 2021: 2) while the majority of us live out our lives known
mainly to family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. And yet all human
communicators, no matter how lowly—no matter if they spend their days beg-
ging, picking fruit, washing dishes, breaking stones, or sweeping floors—have
some communicative power, and in this book we will explore some of the
diverse forms this can take. Each chapter uses a single concept—actors, narra-
tors, members, performers, influencers, and produsers—to explore key ideas,
theories, and thinkers. Altering our vantage point in this way enables us to
think about communicators (including ourselves) through different conceptual
prisms. Each concept offers a unique, though related, way of thinking about
interacting selves and the wider groups and networks to which they belong,
and each chapter deliberately includes a mix of early and recent studies to
enable readers to historically locate concepts and trace their evolution.5 Media
are central to this discussion, but it is important to reiterate that human com-
municators—and how they communicate, relate, and make meaning in their
lives—are our primary concern.
This book weaves together a number of different theories and perspectives
on communication; however, it advances from a view of human beings as inter-
active and reflexive meaning-makers. Though commonplace nowadays, such a
view is still relatively recent when considered in terms of the long history of
humankind, and its wide endorsement owes much to a theoretical perspective
associated mainly with sociology but which has also had a profound influence
on the field of communication studies generally: symbolic interactionism.
Symbolic interactionism, which we examine in the next chapter, emerged in
the early to mid-twentieth century in the writings of scholars such as George
Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer and was largely a response to what were
perceived as serious shortcomings in the dominant theoretical perspectives of

5
Rob Stones (2008: 5) rightly argues that older theories ‘can be very helpful in the analysis of
new societal features, just as new ways of seeing things can provide fresh insights not only into new
societal features but also into long-standing and/or historical societal features’.
8 N. O’BOYLE

the day. In particular, these scholars took issue with psychology’s tendency to
explain human behaviour in terms of attitudes, drives, and conscious and
unconscious motives, and sociology’s tendency to explain it in terms of social
position, social status, and social roles. In both cases, argued symbolic interac-
tionists, ‘the meanings of things for the human beings who are acting are either
bypassed or swallowed up in the factors used to account for their behaviour’
(Blumer, 1998[1969]: 3). Consequently, scholars working in this tradition
espouse a view of human beings as first and foremost social animals and argue
that meanings arise primarily through their communicative interactions. As
already noted, this view has gained considerable ground and over the course of
the twentieth century the formerly sharp demarcations between traditional
sociology, psychology, and interactionist perspectives softened considerably. Of
course, this is not to suggest that disciplinary boundaries have evaporated but
rather simply that many contemporary scholars are reluctant to narrowly label
their work.
In this book readers will encounter a range of theories about, and approaches
to, the study of communication, but at all times the primary focus will be on
human communicators. It is fitting therefore that we begin with symbolic
interactionism. Nevertheless, it is equally important to emphasise that none of
the theories described in the chapters that follow are simple ‘offshoots’ of this
general perspective; indeed, few of the thinkers we will encounter can be
labelled narrowly as symbolic interactionists. (This includes Erving Goffman,
whom we will meet in Chap. 5 and whose work has long been associated with
the perspective.) Likewise, as described in the next chapter, symbolic interac-
tionism has also been challenged and critiqued in various ways. Despite all of
this, we can say with confidence that many of the thinkers we encounter in this
book have at one point or another acknowledged an intellectual and theoretical
debt to scholars such as George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer, and there-
fore it is perhaps reasonable to suggest that something of a symbolic interac-
tionist thread weaves its way through all of the chapters that follow.6

How to Read this Book

Textbooks are generally not designed to be read cover to cover but rather with
the assumption that readers will pick and choose chapters based on what their
instructors are covering in class. To some extent that holds true for this book.
However, because it is shorter than most textbooks and the six core concepts
interlink and overlap, I prefer to think of it as a play of several acts. You will of
course ‘get’ something from it if you only stay for an act or two, but if you stick
around for the whole show, I promise you’ll get a lot more! Again, it is

6
Though we give his work scant attention in this book, it is important to add that James Carey’s
(2009) ‘cultural approach’ to communication was also heavily inspired by the Chicago School of
symbolic interactionism. For Carey, ‘the most viable though still inadequate tradition of social
thought on communication comes from those colleagues and descendants of Dewey in the
Chicago School: from Mead and Cooley through Robert Park and on to Erving Goffman’
(2009: 19).
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

important to reiterate for readers that this book is not intended as a standalone
text but rather has been designed to be read alongside other books and articles.
One of my goals has been to make it as accessible, free-flowing, and engaging as
possible; however, I have also tried to ensure that the theoretical scaffolding is
built clearly and consistently, and that the core concepts are thoroughly
explained. Where necessary for explanatory purposes—and in the interests of
faithfully representing their ideas—I cite the actual words of key thinkers
(though I have also been careful not to clutter the text with endless quotes and
citations).
While we are on the subject of language, it is important to draw the reader’s
attention to the gendered nature of some of the words and terms used in earlier
chapters, especially in scholarly works dating from the early and mid-twentieth
century—a time when male/masculine pronouns were the default. For exam-
ple, in the following passage, in which he describes the inseparability of indi-
vidual and collective selves, Mead writes, ‘The individual possesses a self only
in relation to the selves of the other members of his social group; and the
structure of his self expresses or reflects the general behaviour pattern of this
social group to which he belongs, just as does the structure of the self of every
other individual belonging to this social group’ (2015[1934]: 164, my empha-
sis). Some readers may be uncomfortable with these pronouns, but it is impor-
tant to remember that their use does not invalidate the arguments being made
but simply reflects the historical context in which they were written. That said,
it is vital that we pay attention to language. Indeed, Jeff Pooley (2021: 139)
sensibly suggests that historians of communication should ‘linger more delib-
erately, more patiently, on the words that past scholars actually used’—advice
that should also be heeded by students of communication, in my opinion.
As already explained, this book charts a communicator-centred course
through human communication and draws mainly on the work of media and
communication scholars as well as other social scientists. However, some read-
ers may wish to ‘read around’ the subject and perhaps look more closely at the
contributions of psychologists, linguists, biologists, and other specialists. For
example, in the Preface I noted that Kory Floyd (2014) has criticised the com-
munication studies field for ignoring the contributions of biologists. Floyd also
argues that much communication theory is ‘needlessly anthropocentric’ (p.1)
in the sense that it gives human explanations for behaviours (e.g., aggression,
fear, and arousal) that are not uniquely human. Indeed, it is worth noting, as
the naturalist Simon Barnes (2018) points out, that humans and animals com-
municate in lots of similar ways (e.g., by using sounds, gestures, movements,
etc.) and that they also communicate with each other. For example, dogs will
bark, scratch doors, and run around in circles when they need to ‘relieve’ them-
selves. A more celebrated example involved a chimpanzee named Washoe who
famously learned American sign language in the 1960s.7 We do not have space

7
It is worth adding here that in 2021 the Swedish scholars Susanne Schotz, Joost van de Weijer,
and Robert Eklund were awarded the prestigious Ig-Nobel prize for biology for their research on
‘cat-human communication’.
10 N. O’BOYLE

in this book to consider such things, but their omission does not make them
unimportant.
Readers of this book will differ from one another in countless ways—by age,
gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, body shape, interests, abili-
ties, social circumstances, and so on. Some will be introverted and some extro-
verted; some will be temperamental, shy, dyslexic, colour-blind … the list is
endless. Therefore, as you read about communication theories, keep in mind
that we are all differentially embodied and uniquely situated, and that stage of
life, illness, travel, altered personal circumstances, wider social transformations,
and a host of other things can and do affect how we communicate. Remember
too that how we communicate and perceive the world can also be chemically
altered. A drunk person is likely to slur, just as a person on LSD may ‘experi-
ence colour in a different way, and see tangerine trees and marmalade skies’
(Barnes 2018: 31).
Lastly, if readers find that some of the concepts and ideas described here
sound like concepts and ideas covered in non-media and communication
classes—for example, in a sociology class, or a psychology class, or a cultural
studies class—then rest assured that your instincts are quite correct. Once you
begin to read communication theory, and social theory more generally, you
start to notice points of similarity and overlap, both within disciplines and
across ostensibly different ones. For example, you might notice that two differ-
ent sociologists from two different time periods seem to be reflecting on much
the same thing, or that a media studies scholar and a psychologist appear to be
analysing the same phenomena (though their language and concepts might
differ).8 This should not surprise us—for at least three reasons. First, as men-
tioned earlier, academic fields often have diverse disciplinary roots and share
many interests and concerns. Second, theories generally do not spring forth
‘fully formed’ from the minds of isolated individuals but more often than not
take shape gradually and incrementally as responses to (or critiques of) existing
theories. Therefore, it is helpful, and in my view more accurate, to think of
theories as a patchwork of interconnected (and sometimes conflictual) thoughts
and ideas linking past and present. (In fact, this is precisely what Robert Craig’s

8
For example, Berger and Luckman’s famous work, The Social Construction of Reality (1966),
overlaps in many ways with the works of George Herbert Mead and Herbert Blumer. Berger and
Luckman argue that human society is intersubjective and that it is fundamentally created and sus-
tained by our continuous interactions and communications with others. While each of us may
perceive the world from a somewhat unique perspective, there will always be a ‘correspondence’
between our meanings and interpretations and those of everybody else—that is, we will ‘share a
common sense’ about reality (1966: 36), and a ‘social stock of knowledge’ will always be ‘transmit-
ted from generation to generation’ (ibid. 41). Couldry and Hepp’s (2017) The Mediated
Construction of Reality, which we draw on throughout this book, also overlaps to some extent with
Berger and Luckman’s work. However, they emphatically state at the outset that their aim is nei-
ther to ‘rework’ Berger and Luckman’s book nor to ‘reinterpret’ it: ‘Our aim instead, starting out
from something like their basic ambition, is to build a different but comparable account of how
social reality is constructed, an account that is adequate to the communicative forms of the digital
age’ (p.6).
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

(1999) exceedingly helpful ‘integrative model’ is all about.) Third, it is impor-

tant to remember that theorists, regardless of their specialism, are just like the
rest of us and are naturally curious about the ways of the world and why human
beings behave as they do. Communication theorists wonder about the big
things, such as why intercultural communication is sometimes so difficult, and
about the little things, such as what makes rumour different to gossip. (No
doubt some of them also wonder if bacteria communicate, or if it’s possible to
communicate with the dead, or if body language matters to extra-terrestrials,
but I’m afraid these things are beyond the scope of the present work.) In this
book we undertake a relatively modest though nonetheless enriching theoreti-
cal journey—a journey whose course is charted by six core concepts and that
wilfully transgresses disciplinary jurisdictions and steers clear of conceptual
quagmires. Where necessary and relevant, I indicate points of overlap and dis-
agreement between theories and theorists, but I mostly leave it to readers to
discover these for themselves. However, before describing the chapters to fol-
low, there is one point of overlap I must say something about.

Structure and Agency

When distilled down to its bare essence, most if not all social theory is con-
cerned with the relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’, or the extent to
which each human being’s freedom to act independently and live out a life of
their own choosing (agency) is shaped, limited, and curtailed by rules and laws,
norms and duties, and other forces beyond their individual control (structure).
The word ‘structure’ might make us think of physical entities—walls, barriers,
fences, and so on, all of which can be used to inhibit agency9—but what soci-
ologists really mean is social structure, which is created through human interac-
tion. Crossman (2020) explains that social structure can be understood as
operating on three levels: the macro, meso, and micro. The macro-level
includes core social institutions, such as education, religion, politics, media,
family, and the economy, which together make up the overarching social struc-
ture of a society. The meso- or middle-level is the level of social networks,
which historically were closely aligned with race and class (and to some extent
still are). Finally, the micro-level is the level of everyday social interaction,
which is patterned by norms, customs, duties, gender and age expectations,
and so on. It is important to keep in mind that social structure shapes us in the

9
The most obvious example of this is a prison but border checkpoints (e.g., between Israel and
Palestine), encampments (e.g., housing Uyghur people in China), and other kinds of detention
institutions clearly inhibit human agency in various ways. And yet even in such circumstances
humans are never entirely without agency. Indeed, even when incarcerated, individuals can still
‘envision themselves as competent agents capable of independent thought and action’ (Novek
2005: 296). For example, Novek’s study demonstrates that contributing to a prison newspaper
affords inmates limited forms of self-expression and can help them maintain a sense of autonomy
in a largely controlled, depersonalised environment.
12 N. O’BOYLE

sense that we internalise norms, values, attitudes, and ways of acting and think-
ing, but that it is also shaped and reproduced by us.10
Throughout history, many thinkers have reflected on the dynamic or ‘dia-
lectic’ of structure and agency, and some have actively tried to challenge the
prevailing social order. For example, during the Enlightenment period of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, freethinking intellectuals, who were
known as philosophes, mounted a critique against church authority and inher-
ited privilege and championed science, reason, and human freedom. Powerfully
capturing the thrust of this movement (and the dynamic of structure and
agency along with it), Jean Jacques Rousseau begins The Social Contract
(2014[1763]: 1) with the (much-quoted) words, ‘Man is born free; and every-
where he is in chains’. It is essential to add, of course, that most of the philos-
ophes were white European males who hailed from the upper echelons of society
and that their libertarian message offered little in the short term to the lower
orders of the day. Nonetheless, contemporary thinkers such as Stephen Bronner
(2004) argue that their efforts helped link distant parts of world in a common
cause and played a crucial role in the development of the very idea of ‘the citi-
zen’. Another historical figure whose work tells us much about structure and
agency is the nineteenth-century German philosopher, Karl Marx. Like the
Enlightenment thinkers, he advocated for human freedom and equality, but his
focus was firmly on the capitalist economic system and its exploitation and
dehumanisation of the working class (or ‘proletariat’). Marx saw little agency
in the individual eighteenth-century worker but considerable agency in work-
ers as a collective; hence, why his writing sought to inspire revolution and mass
emancipation.
In the twentieth century, feminist and civil rights activists pursued other
forms of emancipation, namely equal rights, entitlements, and opportunities
for women and people of colour. As readers are aware, these efforts continue
in the present day, however, the structure-agency dynamic has become much
more complex and is increasingly shaped by global forces. For example, Arlie
Hochschild’s (2004) work on ‘global care chains’ examines how women from
poor Southern Hemisphere countries, such as the Philippines and Guatemala,
are often coerced by economic hardship into taking up care positions in rich
Northern Hemisphere countries and in the process miss out on raising their
own children. Hochschild argues that such decisions are sometimes framed as
‘personal choices’ when in fact they are deeply painful outcomes of ‘a global
social logic’ (p.42). Likewise, as noted above, the COVID-19 pandemic is
sometimes imagined as a great leveller when in fact it has exacerbated inequal-
ity and social exclusion, especially for those already living in poverty. Just as
concerning, it has resulted in a decline in citizen freedoms worldwide and a

10
In the same vein, Barney et al. (2016: xxii) write that ‘participants in new media environments
(engineers, policymakers, investors, branders, employers, users, workers, thinkers, hackers, activ-
ists, players, dreamers, propagandists, educators, artists, and so on) shape the media as they are
being shaped through them’.
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

sharp rise in tyranny (sometimes disguised as public health concerns)—or what

Repucci and Slipowitz (2021) describe as a deepening of a global ‘democratic
recession’.
Communication scholars often analyse the structure-agency dynamic in
terms of media. On one hand, this might involve comparing levels and types of
‘media freedom’ in different places. For example, in its most recent ‘internet
freedom’ survey, the non-profit organisation Freedom House classifies a num-
ber of countries (including China, Pakistan, Rwanda, and Iran) as ‘not free’,
meaning that ordinary citizens do not have freedom of expression or adequate
access to diverse information (https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-­
net/scores). However, we would be deeply mistaken if we interpreted such
findings as indicating that threats to media freedom and civil liberties are found
only in non-Western countries. For instance, the ‘Mapping Media Freedom’
project, which is funded by the European Commission, has identified a number
of threats facing journalists in Europe, which include assault, rape, online
harassment, political interference, and even death (https://www.indexoncen-
sorship.org/demonising-­t he-­m edia-­t hreats-­t o-­j ournalists-­i n-­e urope/).
Moreover, ‘critical’ scholars have long argued that triumphalist claims about
freedom of choice and expression in the West are misguided and that in reality
consumers and audiences are largely forced to choose from the ‘set menus’
given to them by media and entertainment companies—or what Theodore
Adorno and Max Horkheimer famously called the ‘Culture Industry’. In their
celebrated work Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Adorno and Horkheimer
argue that the United States, which is often regarded as a beacon of individual
and social liberty, is in fact a highly ‘administered’ capitalist society—a society
in which mass consumer culture dulls the senses of citizens and generates false,
irrational needs. For these thinkers, the average citizen believes him or herself
to be wholly unique and different—to be an ‘individual’—when in fact the vast
majority are conformist. At first glance their analysis might seem far-fetched
and terribly outdated. However, when we stop to think about how most of us
spend our ‘downtime’, how we relax after a long day at college or work, we
might find that their suggestions cannot be dismissed so breezily—as
Inglis argues:

What you do out of working hours might seem like the freest thing in the world:
you can apparently do what you want, when you want, see what you like, do what
you choose. But if we look at the ubiquity of the products of the Culture
Industries in our lives, then we may begin to see another image of our leisure
hours emerging, one characterized by constraint and lack of individual scope for
action, rather than a totally free exercise of individual tastes and desires. (2005: 83)

There is no doubt that the picture painted by Adorno and Horkheimer was
too stark and tended to portray those of us who enjoy popular books, music,
movies, and television programmes as ‘unthinking, passive dupes of the Culture
Industries’ (ibid. 84). Nevertheless, their work remains relevant, not only
14 N. O’BOYLE

because countless millions worldwide are reading Harry Potter, watching

Squid Game and Idols, and Playing Fortnite and Overwatch, but also because
it provides a useful counter to one-eyed celebrations of the ‘freedoms’ granted
by digital technologies such as social media and streaming platforms. In 2010,
the billionaire media magnate and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg pro-
claimed that ‘if people share more, the world will become more open and con-
nected. And a world that’s more open and connected is a better world’
(Zuckerberg 2010). Of course, this rosy picture of openness and togetherness
hides the darker reality that social media users are more or less obligated to
share—what van Dijck calls ‘the imperative of sharing’ (2013: 50). Equally, we
would be remiss in failing to mention Facebook’s involvement in various scan-
dals in recent years, not least the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal, in
which the personal data of millions of Facebook users were illegally obtained
and subsequently used for highly targeted political advertising (which some
believe swayed the 2016 US presidential election in Donald Trump’s favour).
As we shall explore further in Chap. 7, digital media are undoubtedly more
‘participatory’ than broadcast media insofar as Web 2.0 has made it possible for
individuals to both consume and produce content. However, accompanying
these developments has been an intensification of corporate control. Henry
Jenkins describes these two contradictory trends as follows:

On the one hand, new media technologies have lowered production and distribu-
tion costs, expanded the range of available delivery channels, and enabled con-
sumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content in
powerful news ways. At the same time, there has been an alarming concentration
of the ownership of mainstream commercial media, with a small handful of mul-
tinational conglomerates dominating all sectors of the entertainment industry.
(2006: 17/18)

Readers should therefore keep in mind that the media environment of the
present day is both more open and more controlled than in the past and is
marked by a number of deep paradoxes. For example, digital media have
enabled the creation of compassionate and nurturing online communities, and
yet the anonymity, immediacy, and worldwide reach of the internet has also
made it an ideal vehicle for spreading hate (Banks 2010). Likewise, just as par-
ticipatory media have enabled ordinary citizens to mobilise, ‘speak out’, and
challenge those in authority, they have also facilitated the growth of ‘cancel
culture’ and the emergence of ‘complaint’ and ‘shaming’ sites, such as
CheaterBoard and PredatorAlert, which allow users to post (often false) allega-
tions of infidelity and abuse (Krolik and Hill 2021). Equally, we cannot forget
that participatory media have also been used by oppressive regimes to silence
dissenters. Perhaps more troubling still is the routine tracking, profiling, and
surveillance that attends all of our activities online. As a final example, it is
worth noting that the World Health Organization has recently begun using the
term ‘infodemic’ to describe the virus-like spread of misinformation and
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

disinformation about the Coronavirus, especially through social media (WHO

2021). And yet at the same time, some research suggests that social media
platforms such as TikTok have facilitated the spread of credible public health
messages during the pandemic (Abidin 2020). These examples suggest that we
must be cautious about making ‘grand declarations’ in relation to media (new
and old) and must carefully think through the specific dynamics, nuances, and
contradictory forces at work in each individual case.
Again, it is important for readers to keep in mind that while everyone has
agency to some degree, this can and does vary from situation to situation and is
heavily determined by one’s structural position—that is, one’s socioeconomic
class, occupation, social status, and so on. Indeed, it is also worth remembering
that agency can vary by age. For example, danah boyd observes that young
people are often depicted as ‘full of agency’ given their tendency to be active
media users, but that such depictions often ignore the ‘social controls’ young
people experience at home and in school and the many ways in which their
agency is restricted, redirected, and sometimes even undermined (Jenkins et al.
2016: 45–49). A ‘conservatorship’ offers another example of restricted agency.
In this legal arrangement, a guardian is appointed to manage the affairs of a
‘conservatee’, who is very often their own child. (If you’re like me, then you
first encountered this term while watching the documentary film, Framing
Britney Spears (2021)!) We can also think about the dynamic of structure and
agency as it operates within particular professions. For example, a journalist
writing a story might discover over the course of her research that the owner of
the newspaper that employs her has behaved inappropriately or unlawfully.
Does she go ahead and write the story ‘warts and all’ and potentially risk losing
her job, or does she ‘self-censor’—that is, take out all the damaging stuff?11 We
can even consider the dynamic of structure and agency at the level of user inter-
faces. For instance, social networking platforms such as TikTok, Instagram,
WeChat, Bilibili, and YouTube have different technical features that enable and
constrain our communication in different ways. Content is also algorithmically
filtered, ranked, and ordered, reminding us that platform providers also play a
role in steering user agency (van Dijck 2009: 43). Indeed, sometimes a user can
even be ‘deplatformed’ or banned from using certain platforms (often with
good justification).
All of these examples make clear that questions of structure and agency are
highly complex and generally cannot be answered simply and definitively. New
media technologies undoubtedly present emancipatory possibilities but they
have not eradicated older, systemic, and persistent forms of exclusion and
inequality. Therefore, all of us as individuals must continually negotiate the
social worlds we inhabit, ‘which includes the technologies that increasingly
shape our contemporary environment’ (Jenkins et al. 2020: 7). Even tech

11
It is worth noting here that the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to two journalists (Maria
Ressa of the Philippines and Dmitry Muratov of Russia) for their courageous efforts ‘to safeguard
freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace’ (RTÉ 2021).
16 N. O’BOYLE

giants such as Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Apple do not enjoy unlimited
powers but must contend with citizen groups and non-profit organisations
(e.g., The Internet Society), as well as activist campaigns (e.g., The Battle for
the Net). An even more important means of curtailing the powers of these
corporations is through more stringent regulations, such as the European
Commission’s planned ‘Digital Services’ and ‘Digital Markets’ Acts, which aim
to safeguard user rights and improve competitiveness and which will require
tech companies to be more transparent about their algorithms, advertising, and
processes for removing content. Flew and Gillett (2020) suggest that there has
been a ‘policy turn’ in recent times in the area of internet governance, ‘as poli-
ticians and policymakers across multiple jurisdictions grapple with the power of
digital platforms, and associated questions of accountability, transparency, mar-
ket dominance and content regulation’ (p.1). They offer various examples,
such as The EU Hate Speech monitoring code, the UK Online Harms Bill, and
Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platforms
Inquiry, as evidence of this trend. However, they also highlight that the ‘policy
turn’ still leaves plenty of thorny issues unresolved, including the fundamental
question of whether national governments should be acting as internet regula-
tors in the first place. Flew and Gillett also point out that not everyone sup-
ports calls for regulation: ‘The internet’s libertarian past and founding values
of freedom are so pervasive that many critics argue against any form of content
regulation’ (ibid. 9).
Lastly, as noted above, readers must keep in mind that structure and agency
are not separate as such but rather entangled in our everyday practices, experi-
ences, and relations. As Carey (2009: 23) suggests, ‘We first produce the
world … and then take up residence in the world we have produced’. If this
book tends to place somewhat more emphasis on the agency of human beings
as actors, narrators, members, performers, influencers, and produsers, we must
remember that structure is always ‘present’ as it were. Therefore, it is impor-
tant that readers keep in mind that these agentic concepts are helpful abstrac-
tions—they are prisms plucked from the binding thickets and vicissitudes of
everyday human life.

Outline of the Book

Chapter 2 focuses on ‘actors’ and introduces students to symbolic interaction-
ism—a perspective that is a century old and yet still entirely relevant in the digi-
tal age. The chapter introduces readers to foundational ideas or ‘root images’
in this perspective, such as the distinction between symbolic action (which
involves human interpretation e.g., flirting) and non-symbolic action (which is
simply a matter of reflexes e.g., a boxer moving to avoid a punch). We examine
Mead’s core argument that the human ‘self’ (and human group life more gen-
erally) is a formative process of ongoing interaction both with ourselves and
others. We also consider the methodological orientation of symbolic interac-
tionism, which suggests that to truly understand how humans make meaning,
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

researchers must venture out into the world and investigate social situations
‘first hand’. Throughout the chapter we draw on a number of academic studies,
new and old, to explain core ideas and illustrate arguments. For example, we
examine Howard Becker’s classic (1953) study of young marijuana smokers
alongside more recent studies of avatars (Gottschalk 2010) and ‘cyberself-ing’
(Robinson 2007).
Chapter 3 focuses on ‘narrators’ and introduces students to Walter Fisher’s
narrative paradigm. This perspective on communication, much like symbolic
interactionism, views human beings as interactive meaning-makers but con-
ceives of them first and foremost as ‘storytellers’. The chapter describes Fisher’s
analysis of the Ronald Reagan presidency of the United States during the 1980s
and demonstrates how the same approach can be used to explain the simple yet
successful storytelling underpinning Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in
2016. In this chapter we also examine how some of the basic premises of
Fisher’s narrative paradigm—for example, that arguments which appeal to
‘good reasons’ (values) will be more persuasive than those which rely solely on
logic—have been taken up by scholars in the field of environmental studies. For
example, Jason Derry (2015) draws on Fisher’s work in arguing that environ-
mentalists and climate science communicators sometimes do a poor job of con-
necting with audiences because they prioritise rational arguments (facts and
figures about pollution, CO2 levels, etc.) and neglect to put their messages in
human terms. In doing so, Derry praises the scientific storytelling approach of
the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, whose television shows and documen-
taries have been watched by millions worldwide.
The focus of Chap. 4 is on ‘members’ and here we consider various instances
of human ‘group’ life. As with other areas of communication studies, a number
of theories of groups have been developed; however, in this chapter we focus
on Ernest Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory. Bormann studied the pro-
cess by which small groups form and cohere and he argued that language is
central to this—that through interaction and shared language group members
often develop a shared consciousness or outlook on the world (what he calls a
‘rhetorical vision’). Importantly, Bormann also argued that the convergence
that happens in small groups can also happen on a much larger scale, and is
often accompanied by slogans. (Recent examples might include ‘Me Too’ and
‘Black Lives Matter’.) In this chapter we examine a number of studies that have
applied Bormann’s framework in analysing a wide variety of groups. For exam-
ple, we consider Duffy’s (2003) study of online hate groups and McCabe’s
(2009) analysis of ‘pro-eating disorder’ communities.
Chapter 5 examines human communicators as ‘performers’ and focuses on
Erving Goffman’s observational study, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(1959). Goffman was interested in the ‘dramaturgical’ or performative aspects
of human communication and spent years studying ‘impression management’
in face-to-face interactions—that is, our attempts to create favourable impres-
sions of ourselves by acting, talking, dressing, and using our bodies and mate-
rial objects in particular ways. Of course, creating and maintaining favourable
18 N. O’BOYLE

impressions of ourselves is not always easy and sometimes our bodies let us
down: sometimes we belch or fart or say the wrong thing; sometimes our eyes
keep on finding our watch even though we are trying our best to appear inter-
ested in what another person is saying. As with other chapters, we consider a
range of studies that have ‘applied’ Goffman’s framework to help explain inter-
active behaviour in radically different contexts—such as Erickson and
Tewksbury’s (2000) study of men who visit strip clubs and Scott’s (2009)
study of interaction and behavioural etiquette at a public swimming pool.
Erving Goffman did not study the media but his approach has inspired many
excellent studies of different mediums. In concluding this chapter, we examine
some media-focused, Goffman-inspired studies, including Mendelson and
Papacharissi’s (2010) study of the Facebook photo galleries of college students
and Roberts et al.’s (2014) study of impression management strategies used by
Asian American journalists.
Chapter 6 focuses on ‘influencers’ and begins with some reflections on early
assumptions about media audiences, who were often conceived as undifferenti-
ated, passive, and manipulable masses. However, in their ground-breaking
work Personal Influence (1955) Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld challenged this
view (and the assumption that media effects are ‘direct’) and argued instead
that ‘opinion leaders’ play a crucial role in shaping how audiences understand
and respond to media messages. Katz and Lazarsfeld’s work has inspired many
scholars right up to and including the present day and has received renewed
attention in light of the staggering growth of ‘influencer’ marketing. As readers
are aware, there are now countless ‘influencers’ (or what are called ‘wanghong’
in China) across politics, fashion, sport, and other domains. (There are even
‘student influencers’ who create college dorm room tours, daily vlogs, and
other content as part of the social media strategies of universities.) In this chap-
ter we consider some of the reasons that have been put forward to explain why
such individuals are influential. For example, it has been suggested that the
content they post is more ‘relatable’ and ‘authentic’ and less ‘polished’ than
that found on early social media websites. Crystal Abidin (2020) also suggests
that while having a stable and coherent ‘brand’ was deemed important for
influencers on older platforms such as YouTube, newer platforms such as
TikTok prioritise those users who adapt quickest to emerging trends.
In the penultimate chapter of the book, Chap. 7, we begin by examining
‘reception theory’ and ‘uses and gratifications’—two approaches to media
audiences, which while very different, share the basic assumption that readers,
listeners, and viewers actively create meanings around media and are not simply
passive consumers of it. However, in more recent times scholars have observed
that individuals do not simply ‘use’ and ‘decode’ media but also increasingly
create and distribute their own content. As danah boyd suggests, ‘Today’s
media-rich ecosystem isn’t just full of highly edited content produced by pro-
fessionals or experts; everyday people produce it, sometimes for a public audi-
ence and sometimes just for their friends’ (Jenkins et al. 2016: 98). In this
chapter we focus on the concept of ‘produsers’ (Bruns 2007)—a conjoining of
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

the words producers and users—and the broader ‘participatory culture’

(Jenkins 1992) it invokes. In some respects, the arrival of produsers signals a
new era of increased citizen participation and even collective resistance.
However, at the same time, such developments have occurred in tandem with
an alarming concentration of corporate power and an intensification of data
collection and surveillance. Therefore, in many ways the concept perfectly
illustrates the point made earlier that the contemporary media environment is
marked by a number of deep paradoxes:

The produser is a paradoxical figure. The act of creation and freedom that defines
the produser—freely producing, remixing, and distributing content on the
Web—is also an act of subjection and submission to the economic system upon
which the Internet is based. Intentionally or not, the produser supplies personal
information to companies controlling Web 2.0 platforms. The ordinary Internet
user thus helps reinforce a production system that we have termed informational
capitalism. (Proulx et al. 2011: 22)

In the final chapter of this book (‘Concluding Thoughts’) we review our six
core concepts and demonstrate their usefulness (and interrelatedness) in a brief
case study of contemporary sport. For example, sport provides an important
source of collective identification, and many people are members of sports-­
related groups and communities. Sports fans are perhaps the best example of
this and these individuals will often feel a sense of loyalty to their favourite team
or club. However, devotion of this sort can sometimes take an extreme and
toxic turn, notably in the case of football hooligan or ‘ultra’ groups. Likewise,
we can identify a number of important sporting influencers who have used their
visibility and celebrity to speak out on social issues and support causes, some-
times at a personal cost. Examples here include the tennis player Billie Jean
King, the American footballer Colin Kaepernick, and the soccer player Megan
Rapinoe.
In concluding this book, I also point to a number of potential downsides to
our communicator-focused theoretical journey and consider gaps, omissions,
and alternative approaches. For example, in prioritising human actors, it is
arguable that our analysis gives insufficient attention to social forces and insti-
tutions that shape and influence our lives, sometimes profoundly. To put it
another way, while the dynamic of structure and agency is touched upon
throughout this book, our tendency is to lean somewhat towards the latter,
which invariably means that we sometimes give insufficient attention to broader
power dynamics. For example, while digital networked media have to some
extent blurred the lines between media producers and users, giant corporations
still dominate our media landscape. Indeed, Robert McChesney (1999: 91)
likens the global media market to ‘a cartel’. Equally, there is undeniably a ten-
sion at work here between our interest in ‘humans’ and our reliance on theories
that are ‘Western’ in origin, though this is offset to some degree by scholarly
examples drawn from across the world. Lastly, there are clearly a number of
20 N. O’BOYLE

important theoretical concepts, approaches, and works that we simply do not

have space to consider—or do consider, but not in nearly as much detail as they
deserve. An example of one such work that I will briefly dwell on is Nick
Couldry and Andreas Hepp’s important book The Mediated Construction of
Reality (2017).
Couldry and Hepp argue that the character of our social world has radically
changed and that the term ‘social’—or rather how it has been described and
understood in social theory—requires rethinking and updating. They begin
with the observation that the evolution and expansion of media—and the
arrival of social media networks in particular—mean that it no longer makes
any sense to distinguish ‘reality’ and ‘mediated reality’, as if these were sepa-
rate. To a greater or lesser extent, most people now living on the planet live in,
through, and with media, and therefore media can no longer be considered
mere channels of content but rather ‘comprise platforms which, for many
humans, literally are the spaces where, through communication, they enact the
social’ (2017: 2). Couldry and Hepp use the concept of ‘mediatisation’ to
frame their analysis. This is still a relatively new concept in the field of com-
munication studies and refers to the gradual penetration and embedding of
media in all social institutions (education, politics, religion, sport, etc.)—a
development that has accelerated over time in much the same way that globali-
sation has. In other words, mediatisation is a not a recent phenomenon; it is a
long-term process, but a process that nevertheless seems to be accelerating.
Couldry and Hepp describe three historical waves of mediatisation: mechanisa-
tion (the invention of the printing press and print media), electrification (the
invention of the telegraph, telephone, and broadcast media), and digitalisation
(the emergence of computer technologies, the internet, digital media, and
mobile phones). However, they suggest that with datafication (the transforma-
tion of human activities into data) we may be entering a new phase of ‘deep
mediatisation’:

Deep mediatization involves all social actors in relations of interdependence that

depend, in part, on media-related processes: through these relations, the role of
‘media’ in the social construction of reality becomes not just partial, or even per-
vasive, but ‘deep’: that is, crucial to the elements and processes out of which the
social world and its everyday reality is formed and sustained. At the same time,
and connectedly, media outlets and platforms become themselves increasingly
interconnected in both production and usage, creating a many-dimensional space
of possibility that we have called the media manifold. (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 62)

Couldry and Hepp are not suggesting that deep mediatisation is turning
human actors into unreflective, mindless automatons who lack any sort of
agency; rather, their work compels us to think critically about how the wider
infrastructure of contemporary communications operates, the kinds of social
knowledge it produces, and the processes of data extraction, categorisation,
and ordering that drives it. We will draw on insights from Couldry and Hepp
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

throughout this book; however, it bears repeating that there is a great deal
about mediated communication and mediatisation that we simply do not have
space to explore. For all of these reasons I am compelled to reiterate that this
book should be approached as a companion reader and not as a standalone
text; like each of the theories we will encounter, it is undeniably and unavoid-
ably partial.

Conclusion: An Ode to the Imagination

Writing in the late 1950s, the American sociologist Charles Wright Mills (1959)
encouraged his peers to develop what he called the ‘sociological imagination’.
Mills argued that to properly understand human life, one must attempt to see
the big picture as well as the small—or to put it another way, one must develop
a faculty for spotting interconnections between larger social forces and indi-
vidual human experiences, or what Stones (2008: 31) describes as ‘meaningful
links between public issues and private troubles’. Couldry and Hepp’s (2017:
71–72) reflections on deep mediatisation (described briefly above) likewise
suggest that simplistic separations of the social world into micro and macro,
and online and offline, are no longer tenable because the media environment
and social world of which it is part are ‘manifolds’—that is, highly complex,
many layered, and many-dimensional configurations. Couldry and Hepp are
not alone in observing the immense complexity of the current conjuncture.
For example, Silvio Waisbord (2019: 153) argues that social problems and
theoretical questions have become so complex that they simply cannot be tack-
led by isolated disciplines. What is required, he argues, is ‘a communication
imagination’—an imagination that is open to and embracing of different disci-
plinary approaches and viewpoints.
If the ‘imaginations’ described by Mills and Waisbord pertain mostly to
scholars, there is another kind that pertains to all of us. For Jenkins et al. (2020:
5), the ‘civic imagination’ is ‘the capacity to imagine alternatives to current
cultural, social, political, or economic conditions’. Simply put, they argue that
one can hardly expect to change the world if one cannot first imagine alterna-
tives. This suggests another point of potential difference between the imagina-
tions just described. If the forms Mills and Waisbord describe are chiefly
analytical, the form Jenkins, Peters-Lazaro, and Shresthova describe is chiefly
agential—that is, it entails envisioning oneself as a civic agent capable of chang-
ing the world. This book aims to cultivate theoretical sensitivity in readers, to
encourage them to read, study, and critique communication theory, and to try
to find meaningful connections between their own lives and the works they are
studying. However, my hope is that it also stimulates the ‘imaginations’ of
readers—however defined—and that it inspires them to think deeply and freely,
to act collectively and conscientiously, and to daydream productively.
22 N. O’BOYLE

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 CHAPTER 2

Actors: An Introduction to Symbolic

Interactionism

Human society is to be seen as consisting of acting people.

—Blumer (1998[1969]: 85)

Introduction
In this chapter we explore symbolic interactionism, a theoretical and method-
ological perspective that is almost a century old and yet still very much relevant
in the present day. It is important that we begin with this broad perspective
because the thinkers and theories we will encounter in later chapters have all
been influenced by it in one way or another and all regard human beings as
active, creative, and reflexive meaning-makers. Of course, the world is much
changed in the century or so since the American philosopher George Herbert
Mead first laid out the foundations of symbolic interactionism. His was a world
of print and radio—a world in which the internet could scarcely even be imag-
ined, let alone selfies, tweets, memes, and emoji. And yet despite advances in
media technology, his suggestion that social interaction and the shared produc-
tion of meaning are central to human life remains entirely valid. Indeed, it
largely explains why we find ‘social distancing’ so difficult.
In this chapter we first trace the historical roots of symbolic interactionism
and describe some of the individuals who influenced Mead and put his (and
their own) ideas into practice. We then examine Mead’s thinking in more detail
and elaborate on his view of human beings as actors (our core concept in this
chapter) and his suggestion that ‘the self’ is developed through communica-
tion, interaction, and role-taking. For Mead, the self is fundamentally a social
product: ‘The self is something which has a development; it is not initially
there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience’ (Mead 2015[1934]:
135). It is important for readers to note that books published under George
Herbert Mead’s name were published posthumously, due to the diligent efforts

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Switzerland AG 2022
N. O’Boyle, Communication Theory for Humans,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02450-4_2
28 N. O’BOYLE

(and notetaking) of some of his former students at the University of Chicago.1

In fact, it was one such student, Herbert Blumer, who developed and refined
Mead’s ideas and later coined the term symbolic interactionism. Following our
examination of Mead’s work, we look in detail at the particular contribution of
Herbert Blumer, who not only formalised the broad theoretical perspective but
also advocated for the use of particular research methods, such as participant
observation. Throughout this chapter we examine a range of studies, new and
old, that have applied symbolic interactionist ideas in a variety of contexts. In
concluding, we describe a number of criticisms that have been made of this
general perspective and consider some aspects of human society and interaction
that it arguably gives insufficient attention to. Most importantly perhaps, sym-
bolic interactionism as originally conceived assumed a world of face-to-face
interaction; however, our world today is ‘fundamentally interwoven with
media’ (Couldry and Hepp 2017: 16). As Deuze similarly suggests, ‘media
have become infinitely intertwined with every single way of being, seeing,
moving, and acting—without replacing the world of lived experience’ (2012:
3). This does not mean that symbolic interactionism has outlived its usefulness,
but it does require us to rethink some of its founding assumptions in light of
new communicative practices. We begin, however, by very briefly examining its
historical roots.

Interpretivist and Pragmatist Roots

To understand symbolic interactionism, it is important to have a sense of the
historical circumstances from which it emerged and the intellectual traditions
that shaped its development. For starters, the work of German sociologist Max
Weber, who along with Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim is generally considered
one of sociology’s ‘founding fathers’,2 was profoundly important. Weber is
credited as having ignited an ‘interpretivist’ turn in sociology; in other words,
he argued that sociologists should study social action and how individuals make
sense of (or ‘interpret’) their own behaviour, what he called verstehen. Unlike
most sociologists who came before him, Weber felt it was important to study
subjective viewpoints and opinions as well as the feelings and motives that drive
human action. In particular, he argued that the behaviour of individuals is always
bound up with the behaviour of all those others who make up his or her social
world. In short, that each of us has a ‘relational consciousness’ (Scott 2015: 1).
George Herbert Mead shared many of Weber’s views. In fact, the men were

1
Readers should be aware that there are three main strands or ‘schools’ of symbolic interaction-
ism: The Chicago School, the main variant and the one examined here, and the lesser-known Iowa
and Indiana Schools.
2
In his excellent Key Sociological Thinkers (2008: 1), Rob Stones notes that some have used the
capital letters of these three thinkers’ names—D, W, M—to disparagingly refer to them as ‘dead
white males’. While he acknowledges some valid criticisms made of their work, Stones insists that
it is vital that we continue to study the seminal contributions of these thinkers. I quite agree. In
fact, I am making a similar case here on behalf of George Herbert Mead and Hebert Blumer.
 2 ACTORS: AN INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 29

contemporaries and were born only a year apart: Mead in 1863 and Weber in
1864. However, Mead’s ideas were also shaped by others much closer to home.
In the late nineteenth century, right about the time Mead was born, a new
philosophical tradition known as ‘pragmatism’ was emerging in the United
States. This tradition espouses the view that knowledge and ideas should be
judged on their usefulness and practicality and the extent to which they directly
help human society, and one of its chief proponents, John Dewey, would in
time become a close friend and colleague of George Herbert Mead. Dewey was
an advocate of educational reform and felt that a functioning democracy
depended on having educated and informed citizens. At the University of
Chicago, he established a new kind of school that worked much like a scientific
laboratory in the sense that young people were encouraged to test and experi-
ment with ideas. The school was purposely attached to the university and
taught students all the way from kindergarten to the end of high school. It still
exists today and is known as ‘the lab’ or laboratory school—a name that per-
fectly reflects Dewey’s ‘pragmatist’ orientation. Mead and Dewey developed a
close relationship while working alongside each other, first at the University of
Michigan and later at the University of Chicago, and Aboulafia (2020) sug-
gests that this relationship was hugely significant in shaping Mead’s thinking
about communication and interaction.
However, before we move on, it is important to briefly mention one other
individual who influenced the development of symbolic interactionism. While
working at the University of Chicago, both Mead and Dewey became friends
with the American activist, social worker, and sociologist Jane Addams, who
would later win the Nobel Peace Prize (1931) for her work as an international
peace advocate. As noted above, symbolic interactionism is associated with the
philosophy of pragmatism, and the work of Jane Addams, perhaps more than
any other scholar of the period, best demonstrates this association. Addams is
mainly remembered because her work ‘applied’ interactionist and pragmatist
ideas in ‘real life’; most notably, she was the founder of the American settle-
ment house movement in 1889. Settlement houses were first established in
England and were created to better the lives of marginalised and low-income
people by bringing them into regular contact with middle-class volunteers who
would live alongside them and teach them a variety of subjects, such as math-
ematics, languages, and music. Addams brought this approach to America,
opening Hull House in Chicago in 1889, and to this day she remains known as
the ‘mother of social work’. However, Hamington (2019) notes that in recent
times feminist philosophers and historians have drawn attention to Addams’s
considerable scholarly output, which challenges the view that she simply applied
the ideas of Mead and Dewey. On the contrary, it appears that she spent just as
much time reflecting on, writing about, and theorising from her practical
endeavours; and although she never became a member of faculty at the
University of Chicago, her influence on Mead and Dewey was considerable.
Mead himself was not a social worker but he was actively involved in civic life
in Chicago and lent his support to many of Addams’ causes, including march-
ing in solidarity with the suffragette movement and delivering frequent lectures
30 N. O’BOYLE

at Hull House. In summarising the contribution of Jane Addams, Hamington

(2019) argues that ‘through her integration of theory and action’, she ‘carried
pragmatism to its logical conclusion, developing an applied philosophy
immersed in social action’.
Our ‘whirlwind’ examination of the roots of symbolic interactionism here
has left out much. Nevertheless, the broader point for readers—and it is a point
I will return to—is that theories are never purely individual endeavours but are
always the products of collaboration and dialogue, even if history sometimes
fails to acknowledge this.

Objects, Actors, and Others

On the very first page of Mind, Self and Society, Mead tells us that ‘no very
sharp line can be drawn between social psychology and individual psychology’
(2015[1934]: 1). These words neatly summarise what his entire book is about:
that each of us comes to develop a sense of self only by interacting and com-
municating with those around us. When Mead began his studies in the early
twentieth century, behavioural psychology or ‘behaviourism’ was dominant.
This perspective is concerned only with observable behaviour in humans and
animals and investigates how such behaviour is conditioned by environments.
John B. Watson was the leading proponent of behaviourism at the time and
was entirely uninterested in studying human consciousness (or the ‘mind’) and
insisted that psychologists should concern themselves only with external behav-
iour. In developing his ideas, Watson closely studied the bodies of animals and
linked body parts (the larynx, vocal cords, ocular muscles, etc.) to behavioural
reflexes. However, George Herbert Mead considered Watson’s approach
deeply flawed and oversimplified. In his view, Watson’s efforts to make psychol-
ogy more objective and scientific had the effect of reducing human beings to
lab rats who are entirely controlled by their physical environment. Most impor-
tantly, he felt that Watson’s behaviourism entirely overlooked the social nature
of human behaviour. Mead saw his own work as an attempt to correct the
inadequacies of behaviourism and he developed a unique approach that he
called ‘social behaviourism’—an approach that starts not with the individual
and works outwards, but rather starts with the objective social world and works
inward (Morris 2015).
For Mead, the behaviour of any individual can only be understood ‘in terms
of the behaviour of the whole social group of which he is a member’
(2015[1934]: 6). Therefore, he insists that the study of human communica-
tion must begin with the ‘social act’—‘acts which involve the cooperation of
more than one individual’ (ibid. 7). Social acts can range from the short and
simple to the long and complicated, and even seemingly ‘individual’ acts—such
as going for a walk alone—will involve a variety of interactions and shared
meanings with others (Littlejohn and Foss 2011). In distinguishing his own
approach from that of Watson’s, Mead begins by advancing a particular under-
standing of language. He suggests that communication between animals can
be understood as a ‘conversation of gestures’. For example, a dog snarling or
 2 ACTORS: AN INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 31

baring its teeth (gestures of anger or threat) suggest that it may be about to
attack. Human beings sometimes communicate in much the same way. For
instance, a raised fist, much like a dog’s snarl, can be a gesture of anger or
threat. However, Mead argues that we cannot reduce human behaviour to a
mere process of action and reaction. In contrast to a snarling dog or a gazelle
that has just spotted an approaching tiger, the behaviour of human beings is
generally accompanied by ideas and thoughts; and when these are mutually
understood, they are no longer mere gestures but what he calls ‘significant
symbols’: ‘Gestures become significant symbols when they implicitly arouse in
the individual making them the same responses which they explicitly arouse, or
are supposed to arouse, in other individuals’ (2015[1934]: 47).
For Mead, language is the most important symbol system of all, and it is
through language and interaction that we develop minds and selves. As we
grow up, we acquire language and through it the ability to think and commu-
nicate; we learn the meanings of words and ideas and the values attached to
them. For example, Jodi O’Brien observes that the words ‘bachelor’ and ‘spin-
ster’ have the very same meaning—that is, both refer to the state of being
unmarried. However, she notes that ‘spinster raises much less attractive images
in the minds of most people than does the term bachelor’ (2006: 70). What
O’Brien is highlighting here is that meaning-making is much more compli-
cated than merely learning words and involves a whole system of values and
judgements, both positive and negative. Mead was amongst the first to
approach language and thought this way, but it is important to stress that he
was not suggesting that all human behaviour involves conscious reflection.
Sometimes we act unconsciously or unthinkingly, much like a soldier carrying
out a drill or unquestioningly following an order. However, he argues that the
behaviour of human beings cannot be reduced to mere impulses or condi-
tioned reflexes and that it is our ‘reflective intelligence’ (p.118) or ‘reflexive-
ness’ (p.134)—our ability to think through our own behaviour and anticipate
the behaviour of others—that distinguishes us from lower animals.3
Following this broad overview, Mead goes on to explain the development of
the self in some detail and at the centre of his theory is the notion that each of
us becomes an ‘object’ to ourselves and others. All of us have been told at one
point or another to look at something from someone else’s point of view. ‘Look
at it from your father’s point of view’. ‘Look at it from your sister’s point of
view’.4 In a very real sense, Mead suggests that this process of perspective-tak-
ing or imagining the world through the eyes of others not only begins at a very

3
It is important to add here that some scholars have challenged Mead’s rigid distinction between
humans and animals. For example, in drawing on their own research on ‘human-feline interaction’,
Alger and Alger (1997) conclude ‘that there is growing evidence that symbolic interaction is
widely distributed throughout the animal kingdom’ (p.65).
4
Sometimes fantasy and science fiction films explore this idea as a literal possibility. For example,
in the film Being John Malkovich (1999), a puppeteer discovers a portal that leads directly into the
head of Hollywood actor John Malkovich. This scenario is also beautifully played out in the anime
film, Your Name (2016), in which a boy named Taki and a girl named Mitsuha discover that they
have inexplicably switched bodies.
32 N. O’BOYLE

young age through various forms of ‘role-taking’ (as we examine below) but is
in fact the very essence of human society. When we are communicating with
other people, when we are addressing someone else, Mead suggests that we are
also to some extent addressing ourselves; indeed, for him, thinking is essentially
a conversation that one has with oneself. He also observes that we modify our
communication depending on who we are with: ‘We are one thing to one man
and another thing to another … We divide ourselves up in all sorts of different
selves with reference to our acquaintances’ (ibid. 142). Consequently, he argues
that it is perfectly normal for human beings to have ‘multiple personalities’.
Mead was not alone in arguing that the development of a ‘self’ begins when
one becomes an object to others. In fact, a contemporary of his named Charles
Cooley advanced a very similar argument, central to which was his concept of
the ‘looking glass self’. Like Mead, Cooley argued that the mind is social, and
the looking glass self was his way of demonstrating this. The concept has three
elements: (1) we imagine our appearance to others; (2) we imagine their judge-
ment of our appearance; and (3) based on their judgement, we feel something
(pride, humiliation, etc.)—what Cooley (1902) called a ‘self-feeling’. When
someone is trying on clothes in front of a mirror, they are essentially putting
Cooley’s looking glass self into practice. With each new outfit they try on, they
imagine the reactions of others—their appraisals, judgements, and potential
criticisms—and this invariably influences what the individual eventually chooses
to wear. (Sometimes the imagined judgement is so awful that they abandon their
plans altogether and just stay home!). A good movie example of the looking
glass self is the comedy Dodgeball (2004). The movie is about a group of misfit
gym-goers, one of whom is ‘Steve the pirate’ (played by actor Alan Tudyk), who
enter a dodgeball competition in the hopes of saving their beloved local gym,
‘Average Joe’s’. Steve is a delusional young man who talks and dresses like a
pirate—behaviour that is simply accepted by his fellow gym-goers. However, at
one point in the movie when things are going poorly for the team, gym owner
Peter LaFleur (played by Vince Vaughn) angrily tells Steve that he is not a pirate,
prompting Steve to quit the team. Out on the street, he looks into a mirrored
wall panel and removes his cap. At that moment a pickup truck screeches by and
one of the young men inside throws a milkshake at him and shouts, ‘go back to
treasure island!’ Steve, now dejected and humiliated, abandons his pirate iden-
tity. He cuts his long hair and swaps his ‘swashbuckler’ clothes for more ‘con-
ventional’ attire. When analysed in terms of the looking glass self, we can suggest
that Steve’s appraisal of his own appearance following negative judgement—first
by his friend Peter LaFleur and later by strangers out on the street—causes him
to feel shame. However, at the end of the movie (apologies for the spoiler!) his
pirate identity is validated once more. Cooley’s point, much like Mead’s, is that
our sense of self is always shaped and affected by other people.
Mead suggests that the development of the self occurs in two stages—what
he calls the ‘play’ and ‘game’ stages. In the play stage, a child takes on different
roles as a form of play. He or she plays at being a father or a mother, an uncle
or an aunt, a teacher or a police officer, a postal worker or a shopkeeper—in
 2 ACTORS: AN INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 33

other words, the roles of various persons who are present in his or her life.
What is crucial for Mead here is that the child imaginatively ‘enters into’ each
role, that he or she attempts to fully inhabit it and respond accordingly: ‘He
plays that he is, for instance, offering himself something, and he buys it; he
gives a letter to himself and takes it away; he addresses himself as a parent, as a
teacher; he arrests himself as a policeman’ (ibid. 150/1). The second stage—
the ‘game stage’—builds on the play stage but now the child participating in a
game with others must understand what everyone else is doing. For example, if
a child is playing hide-and-seek, at a minimum he or she needs to know who is
hiding and who is seeking. As games become more complicated, especially in
sports, the developing self becomes increasingly aware of what teammates are
doing and how roles ‘fit together’. Therefore, during each stage, the human
being becomes more fully aware of other people, more competent at meeting
their expectations, and more capable of negotiating a whole range of social
situations. In fact, Mead likens the individual in the game stage to a baseball
player who at some moments must ‘have three or four individuals present in his
own attitude’ (Mead 1934: 151). Moreover, he suggests that if it is to function
correctly, human society depends ultimately on this ongoing cooperation and
mutual responding between individuals. Indeed, sometimes this can take on
life or death significance—as gruesomely depicted in the hit Korean series
Squid Game (2021), which as of October 2021 was ‘the most-watched Netflix
series of all time’ (James 2021).
As already noted, throughout these two stages (the play and game stages)
the individual gradually orientates him or herself to other people. Here Mead
introduces what is perhaps his most well-known concept: the ‘generalised
other’. This concept refers to the broad community or social group to which
an individual belongs. As we grow older and move into the game stage, we
become members of other social groups besides our family, such as friendship
groups, sports teams, chess clubs, and so on, and each can be thought of as a
generalised other. This is the crux of Mead’s argument about the social self. He
insists that it is only by taking the attitudes of the groups to which we belong,
by ‘participating’ in them, that we develop a self. To a great extent he uses the
concept of the generalised other much like Cooley’s looking glass self—that is,
as a way of showing how others exercise control over our conduct. However, it
is important to stress that Mead is not painting a picture of human beings as
‘identikit’ community members who blindly conform with the judgements and
expectations of others. Rather, he is arguing that traditional psychology’s ten-
dency to treat the self as something isolated and independent is mistaken and
that it is only by first becoming a member of a community that each individu-
al’s self eventually takes shape:

Of course we are not only what is common to all: each one of the selves is differ-
ent from everyone else; but there has to be such a common structure as I have
sketched in order that we may be members of a community at all. We cannot be
ourselves unless we are also members. … Selves can only exist in definite relation-
ships to other selves. (Mead 2015[1934]: 163/4)
34 N. O’BOYLE

The ‘I’ and the ‘Me’

So far, we have established that for Mead, a self develops when we begin to
view ourselves from the perspective of the wider community—when we become
an ‘object’ to ourselves and others. Mead suggests that the resulting ‘self’ is
made up of two parts (or two phases)—what he calls the ‘I’ and the ‘Me’. His
description and differentiation of these can sometimes be confusing but what
he is essentially proposing is that the ‘Me’ is the part of our self that we are
aware of; it is the part that is shaped and determined by the attitudes of oth-
ers—the part that understands what is expected of us, what is ‘normal’, and
generally ‘goes along with the gang’ as it were. As already established, all of us
have ‘others’ in our lives: we have families, associates, neighbours, friends,
work colleagues, classmates, college peers, teammates, fellow citizens, and so
on. Mead suggests that each of these different groups (or generalised others)
imposes obligations on us and requires us to act and behave in particular
ways—to be certain persons. In short, each group demands a particular ‘Me’
(2015[1934]: 182).
The ‘I’, on the other hand, is the more instinctive, creative, and unpredict-
able part of ourselves—the part that generates unique responses to social situ-
ations. Unlike the ‘Me’, we are not immediately aware of the ‘I’ in any given
moment; rather, we become aware of it after we have responded to a situation.
Mead gives the example of a baseball player involved in a game. In each passing
moment the player will remain ever alert; he will be acutely aware of his posi-
tion on the field and the position of his teammates; he will be aware of his
particular role and the expectations placed upon him by his teammates, coach,
and fans. All of these make up his ‘Me’ in the situation at hand. However,
human beings (and baseball players!) are not robots and how we respond to
situations is not always predictable. When the ball is suddenly sent in the play-
er’s direction, he might catch it, he might fumble it, he might make a brilliant
play or fall flat on his face. The point is that nobody knows—not even him. It
is this uncertain element in our response in any given moment that constitutes
the ‘I’. Again, what Mead is suggesting is that the ‘Me’ carries the weight of
social expectation and generally responds in kind: ‘The “Me” is essentially a
member of a social group …’ (ibid. 214). The ‘I’, however, ‘is the answer
which the individual makes to the attitude which others take toward him’ (ibid.
177). The ‘I’ offers a degree of freedom and spontaneity; it is the unpredictable
and novel element in how we respond to situations.
Mead suggests that the ‘self’ is best thought of as an ongoing process that is
made up of these two elements or phases, and that our responses—the particu-
lar mix of ‘Me’ and ‘I’—will depend largely on the situation at hand. Sometimes
our responses will be entirely predictable and conventional, and in those
moments we will be just like everybody else—or ‘hardly more than a “Me”’
(2015[1934]: 200). However, at other times, the ‘I’ may forcefully assert itself
and our response may astonish us (and everybody else). As we all know, there
are times when we behave impulsively, recklessly, even aggressively. However,
the influence of the ‘I’ need not be so dramatic. In fact, Mead argues that
 2 ACTORS: AN INTRODUCTION TO SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM 35

throughout the course of our lives we are shaped by social environments and
we in turn shape those environments, if only in minute ways. Great scientists,
artists, and inventors might have a more pronounced and celebrated impact
than the man or woman on the street, but Mead argues that each of us shapes
the world to some degree:

As a man adjusts himself to a certain environment he becomes a different indi-

vidual; but in becoming a different individual he has affected the community in
which he lives. It may be a slight effect … [but] There is always a mutual relation-
ship of the individual and the community in which the individual lives. (Mead
2015[1934]: 215)

Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method

George Herbert Mead died in 1931 but one of his protégés, Herbert Blumer,
developed and refined his ideas and in time became a leading scholar in his own
right. However, unlike the quintessential academic Mead, Blumer’s career path
did not lead him straight to the university but rather to the football field. He
played American football for a team that is now known as the Arizona Cardinals,
though in his day it was known as the Chicago Cardinals. He got a bad knee
injury and eventually gave up football, and it was at that point that he turned
to an academic career. Interestingly, Manning and Smith (2010: 37) suggest
that ‘Blumer the football player would have developed an ability to read the
details of opponents’ conduct as symbolic indicators of their next moves, a
concern central to the sociology he subsequently developed’. Under the guid-
ance of the sociologist Robert Park, Blumer’s initial research at the University
of Chicago focused on ‘collective behaviour’ and distinguished in particular
between ‘crowds’ and ‘publics’ (Pooley 2021). (We will explore these and
other group-related terms in Chap. 4.) However, in the post-war years Blumer
returned to Mead’s ideas about the self and society and began to develop a new
approach to studying the lived experiences of humans. In doing so, he came up
with the name ‘symbolic interactionism’—which he later facetiously described
as ‘a somewhat barbaric neologism that I coined in an offhand way …’
(1998[1969]: 1). On the opening page of his important book, Symbolic
Interactionism: Perspective and Method, he outlines two specific aims: first, to
offer a ‘clear formulation’ of the broad perspective, and second, to offer ‘a
reasoned statement’ of its ‘methodological position’. Regarding the first aim,
Blumer outlines three foundational ideas or ‘premises’ associated with sym-
bolic interactionism:

1. Human beings act towards objects based on the meanings they have
for them.
2. Meanings arise out of interaction with those objects.
3. Meanings are constantly being interpreted and modified by people’s
interaction with those objects (1998[1969]: 2).
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min., sd., color, videotape (3/4 inch) in cassette. © Ambassador
College; 22Jan74; MP25765.

MP25766.
Garner Ted Armstrong. Program 458. Ambassador College. 28
min., sd., color, videotape (3/4 inch) in cassette. © Ambassador
College; 24Aug73; MP25766.

MP25767.
Birds of Bharatpur. A Don Meier production. 23 min., sd., color, 16
mm. (Mutual of Omaha’s Wild kingdom) Appl. author: Mutual of
Omaha. © Mutual of Omaha; 13Sep74; MP25767.

MP25768.
Brink of extinction. A Don Meier production. 23 min., sd., color, 16
mm. (Mutual of Omaha’s Wild kingdom) Appl. author: Mutual of
Omaha. © Mutual of Omaha; 4Oct74; MP25768.

MP25769.
 Control and extinguishment of LNG spills and spill fires at high
LNG boil-off rates. American Gas Association. 15 min., si., color, 16
mm. © American Gas Association; 8May74; MP25769.

MP25770.
Concepts of data control. Edutronics Systems International, Inc. 8
min., sd., color, 16 mm. © Edutronics Systems International, Inc.;
2Aug74; MP25770.

MP25771.
The Data control function. Edutronics Systems International, Inc.
10 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Data control) © Edutronics Systems
International, Inc.; 24Jun74; MP25771.

MP25772.
Debugging techniques. Edutronics Systems International, Inc. 11
min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Data communications) © Edutronics
Systems International, Inc.; 2Aug74; MP25772.

MP25773.
The 129 card data recorder. Edutronics Systems International, Inc.
12 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Keypunch I/O) Add. ti.: The 129 data
recorder. © Edutronics Systems International, Inc.; 14Aug74;
MP25773.

MP25774.
The 029 data transcribing device. Edutronics Systems
International, Inc. 13 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Keypunch I/O) ©
Edutronics Systems International, Inc.; 10Jul74; MP25774.

MP25775.
Mechanical models of psychotherapy. Division of Instructional
Aids, University of Oregon Medical School. 33 min., sd., color,
videotape (3/4 inch) in cassette. Appl. author: Paul H. Blachly. ©
Paul H. Blachly; 23Sep74; MP25775.

MP25776.
Handi Wipes 1001 uses with bowling tag. Colgate Palmolive
Company. 30 sec., sd., color, 16 mm. © Colgate Palmolive Company;
15Jul74; MP25776.

MP25777.
Handi Wipes 1001 uses, revised. Colgate Palmolive Company. 30
sec., sd., color, 16 mm. © Colgate Palmolive Company; 15Jul74;
MP25777.

MP25778.
VSAM macro coding and debugging. International Business
Machines Corporation. 58 min., sd., color, videotape (1/2 inch) in
cassette. (IBM independent study program) © International
Business Machines Corporation, accepted alternative: IBM
Corporation; 25Mar74; MP25778.

MP25779.
VSAM concepts and access method services usage (DOS/VS)
International Business Machines Corporation. 34 min., sd., color,
videotape (1/2 inch) in cassette. (IBM independent study program)
© International Business Machines Corporation, alternative
designation: IBM Corporation; 25Mar74; MP25779.

MP25780.
Basic shooting techniques. Sports Instruction Aids. 6 min., sd.,
color, 16 mm. © Sports Instruction Aids; 15Nov73; MP25780.

MP25781.
 Fakes and drives. Sports Instruction Aids. 6 min., sd., color, 16
mm. © Sports Instruction Aids; 15Nov73; MP25781.

MP25782.
Jump shot from the dribble. Sports Instruction Aids. 5 min., sd.,
color, 16 mm. Add. ti.: Jump from the dribble. © Sports Instruction
Aids; 15Nov73; MP25782.

MP25783.
Close to the basket moves. Sports Instruction Aids. 6 min., sd.,
color, 16 mm. © Sports Instruction Aids; 15Nov73; MP25783.

MP25784.
Free throws. Sports Instruction Aids. 6 min., sd., color, 16 mm. ©
Sports Instruction Aids; 15Nov73; MP25784.

MP25785.
Alpen satisfied revised. Colgate Palmolive Company. 30 sec., sd.,
color, 16 mm. Add. ti.: I’m satisfied revised. © Colgate Palmolive
Company; 1Sep74; MP25785.

MP25786.
Dominion. Stan Brakhage. 5 min., si., color, 16 mm. © Stan
Brakhage; 24Sep74; MP25786.

MP25787.
The Nature and control of canine hookworm disease. Jensen-
Salsbery Laboratories Division, division of Richardson-Merrell, Inc.
17 min., sd., color, 16 mm. © Jensen-Salsbery Laboratories Division,
division of Richardson-Merrell, Inc.; 22Jul74 (in notice: 1973);
MP25787.
MP25788.
Pinocchio’s birthday party. Family Entertainment Corporation
presentation. Made by Intercom Films, Ltd. Released by K-tel
Motion Pictures. 85 min., sd., color, 35 mm. © Family
Entertainment Corporation; 10Aug74 (in notice: 1973); MP25788.

MP25789.
Food: more for your money. Alfred Higgins Productions, Inc. 14
min., sd., color, 16 mm. © Alfred Higgins Productions, Inc.; 1Oct74;
MP25789.

MP25790.
Examination of the foot. The American Humane Association. 11
min., sd., color, videotape (3/4 inch) in cassette. (Introduction to
horse care) © The American Humane Association; 1Jun74 (in notice:
1973); MP25790.

MP25791.
Loading and transportation. The American Humane Association.
13 min., sd., color, videotape (3/4 inch) in cassette. (Introduction to
horse care) © The American Humane Association; 1Jun74 (in notice:
1973); MP25791.

MP25792.
Haltering and restraint. The American Humane Association. 14
min., sd., color, videotape (3/4 inch) in cassette. (Introduction to
horse care) © The American Humane Association; 1Jun74 (in notice:
1973); MP25792.

MP25793.
Flight. Stan Brakhage. 5 min., si., color, 16 mm. © Stan Brakhage;
13Aug74; MP25793.
MP25794.
Kaybolt Wrecking Company. Division of Archives, History and
Records Management, Florida Department of State. Made by Joyous
Lake, Inc. 28 min., sd., color, 16 mm. © Division of Archives, History
and Records Management, Florida Department of State; 21Mar74;
MP25794.

MP25795.
Respect. Corridor Productions, Inc. 3 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
(Contemporary values series) © Corridor Productions, Inc.;
23Aug74; MP25795.

MP25796.
Shorin ryu kata, goju-shiho. Kenjer Martial Arts Productions. 17
min., si., color, Super 8 mm. Add. ti.: Shorin ryu, goju-shiho kata. ©
Kenjer Martial Arts Productions; 6Jun74; MP25796.

MP25797.
Bookkeeping and accounting: how do you figure in? Coronet
Instructional Media, a division of Esquire, Inc. 11 min., sd., color, 16
mm. (Bookkeeping and you, 2nd ed.) © Coronet Instructional
Media, a division of Esquire, Inc.; 21Feb74; MP25797.

MP25798.
Gliding motility in the algae. Ryan W. Drum & Robert Day Allen. 6
min., si., color, Super 8 mm. in cartridge. (Cells and cell processes)
© Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc.; 8Oct73; MP25798.

MP25799.
Albert Camus: a self portrait. Learning Company of America, a
division of Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. 20 min., sd., color, 16
mm. NM: a new film incorporating some prev. pub. material. ©
Learning Company of America, a division of Columbia Pictures
Industries, Inc.; 18May72 (in notice: 1971); MP25799.

MP25800.
Selling to women. Chrysler Corporation. 18 min., sd., color, Super
8 mm. in cartridge. Appl. au.: Ross Roy, Inc. © Chrysler
Corporation; 25Jul74; MP25800.

MP25801.
Play—is trying out. Allegra May, Kathy Sylva & Jerome S. Bruner.
Distributed by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 25 min., sd., color, 16 mm.
(Bruner series—cognitive development) © Allegra May, Kathy Sylva
& Jerome S. Bruner; 1Dec73; MP25801.

MP25802.
One, two, many: early object handling. Karlen Lyons, Allegra May
& Jerome Bruner. Distributed by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 15 min.,
sd., color, 16 mm. (Bruner series—cognitive development) © Karlen
Lyons, Allegra May & Jerome Bruner; 1Dec73 (in notice: 1972);
MP25802.

MP25803.
Garner Ted Armstrong. Program 559. Ambassador College. 30
min., sd., color, videotape (3/4 inch) in cassette. © World Wide
Church of God; 21Feb74; MP25803.

MP25804.
Auto-body sheet metal man’s helper: removing a dent and pulling
out a simple dent (basic hand skills) Robert Heller Productions, Inc.
6 motion pictures (4 min. each), si., color, Super 8 mm. in cartridges.
(Automotive damage correction series, set 1) © Robert Heller
Productions, Inc. & McGraw-Hill, Inc.; 12Sep73; MP25804.
MF25805.
Auto-body sheet metal man: applying a patch and repairing a torn
section (basic hand skills) Robert Heller Productions, Inc. 8 motion
pictures (4 min. each), si., color, Super 8 mm. in cartridges.
(Automotive damage correction series, set 2) © Robert Heller
Productions, Inc. & McGraw-Hill, Inc.; 12Sep73; MP25805.

MP25806.
Auto painter’s helper; removing a scratch (basic hand skills)
Robert Heller Productions, Inc. 7 motion pictures (4 min. each), si.,
color, Super 8 mm. in cartridges. (Automotive damage correction
series, set 3) © Robert Heller Productions, Inc. & McGraw-Hill, Inc.;
12Sep73; MP25806.

MP25807.
Auto painter: refinishing a panel (basic hand skills) Robert Heller
Productions, Inc. 7 motion pictures (4 min. each), si., color, Super 8
mm. in cartridges. (Automotive damage correction series, set 4) ©
Robert Heller Productions, Inc. & McGraw-Hill, Inc.; 12Sep73;
MP25807.

MP25808.
Gillette Street. A production of KERA-TV newsroom. 29 min., sd.,
color, 16 mm. (Urban design issues in Texas) Appl. au.: Public
Communication Foundation for North Texas. © Public
Communication Foundation for North Texas; 16Oct74; MP25808.

MP25809.
ABBA presents. ABBA Productions. 3 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. ©
ABBA Productions; 23Sep74; MP25809.

MP25810.
 Not a sparrow falls. Sparrow Productions. 28 min., sd., color, 16
mm. Appl. au.: The Salvation Army. © The Salvation Army; 1Jun74;
MP25810.

MP25811.
Growth of cassava (Manihot utilissima) Film Production Unit,
Iowa State University of Science and Technology. Produced in
cooperation with Escuela Agricola Pan Americana & the
Organization for Tropical Studies. 3 min., si., color, 16 mm. (Tropical
biology) © Iowa State University a.a.d.o. Iowa State University of
Science and Technology; 1Oct74 (in notice: 1973); MP25811.

MP25812.
Before it’s too late. Woroner Films, Inc. Produced in cooperation
with National Crime Prevention Institute, University of Louisville. 28
min., sd., color, 16 mm. © Woroner Films, Inc.; 26Sep74; MP25812.

MP25813.
Basic security surveys. Woroner Films, Inc. 25 min., sd., color, 16
mm. (Crime prevention) © Texas Criminal Justice Division, State of
Texas; 16Oct74; MP25813.

MP25814.
Introduction and theory of crime prevention. Woroner Films, Inc.
23 min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Crime prevention) Add. ti.: Introduction
to crime prevention. © Texas Criminal Justice Division, State of
Texas; 16Oct74; MP25814.

MP25815.
Penny Lane. Albert Davidson. Produced in association with the
Mechanical Bank Collectors of America. A film created by Arnold L.
Leibovit. 10 min., sd., color, 16 mm. © Albert Davidson (in notice: Al
Davidson); 24Aug74; MP25815.
MP25816.
The Text of light. Stan Brakhage. 75 min., si., color, 16 mm. © Stan
Brakhage; 2Oct74; MP25816.

MP25817.
The Struggle for Vicksburg. Centron Educational Films. 19 min.,
sd., color, 16 mm. Appl. au.: Centron Corporation, Inc. © Centron
Corporation, Inc.; 12Jul74; MP23817.

MP25818.
In the year of the pig. The Monday Film Production Company.
Released by New Yorker Films. 97 min., sd., b&w, 16 mm. NM: 60%
new footage. © The Monday Film Production Company; 25Oct68;
MP25818.

MP25819.
The View from the crib. The American Institutes for Research. 15
min., sd., color, 16 mm. (Early childhood education series) ©
American Institutes for Research; 16Apr74; MP25819.

MP25820.
Science of survival. The Virginia Tech Film Unit & Department of
Food Science and Technology, College of Agriculture and Life
Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. 21 min.,
sd., color, 16 mm. © Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University; 30Mar74; MP25820.

MP25821.
El Camino—a beautiful value. General Motors Corporation. 8 min.,
sd., color, Super 8 mm. in cartridge. Add. ti.: 1975 Chevrolet El
Camino. © General Motors Corporation; 13Aug74; MP25821.

MP25822.
 1975 Chevrolet Camaro. General Motors Corporation. 5 min., sd.,
color, Super 8 mm. in cartridge. Add. ti.: Camaro ’75. © General
Motors Corporation (in notice: Chevrolet Motor Division, General
Motors Corporation); 23Aug74; MP25822.

MP25823.
Bearcat Baker’s Filmed boxing course. George Williams known as
Bearcat Baker. 5 min., sd., color, 16 mm. Add. ti.: Bearcat Baker’s
Filmed basic boxing course. © George Williams known as Bearcat
Baker; 2Oct74; MP25823.

MP25824.
Back to school. Colgate Palmolive Company. 30 seconds, sd., color,
16 mm. Add. ti.: A Neat glue for neat people—back to school. ©
Colgate Palmolive Company; 13Aug74; MP25824.

MP25825.
Use of art therapy in a vocational milieu. ICD Rehabilitation and
Research Center. 22 min., sd., b&w, videotape (1/2 inch) in reel. ©
ICD, a.a.d.o. ICD Rehabilitation and Research Center; 30Jul74;
MP25825.

MP25826.
Manual positive pressure ventilation (bag and mask) American
College of Physicians. 7 min., sd., color, Super 8 mm. in cassette.
(American College of Physicians medical skills library) Add. ti.:
Manual positive pressure measurement (bag and mask) © American
College of Physicians; 1Aug74; MP25826.

MP25827.
Meet Lynd Ward and May McNeer. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min.,
sd., b&w, videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline
Shachter; 26Feb74; MP25827.
MP25828.
Meet Jean Fritz. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w, videotape
(1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter; 28Mar74;
MP25828.

MP25829.
Meet Letta Schatz. Jaqueline Shachter. 60 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25829.

MP25830.
Meet Kristin Hunter. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25830.

MP25831.
Meet Judy Blume. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25831.

MP25832.
Meet Keith Robertson. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25832.

MP25833.
Meet Eve Merriam. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25833.

MP25834.
 Meet Arnold Lobel. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25034.

MP25835.
Meet Pura Belpre. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25835.

MP25836.
Meet Richard Lewis. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25836.

MP25837.
Meet Marguerite de Angeli. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25837.

MP25838.
Meet Joe and Beth Krush. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25838.

MP25839.
Meet Elizabeth Gray Vining. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd.,
b&w, videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline
Shachter; 28Mar74; MP25839.

MP25840.
Meet Joan Lexau. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25840.
MP25841.
Meet Tom and Muriel Feelings. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd.,
b&w, videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline
Shachter; 28Mar74; MP25841.

MP25842.
Meet Madeleine L’Engle. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25842.

MP25843.
Meet Lloyd Alexander, Evaline Ness, Ann Durrell. Jaqueline
Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w, videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in
literature) © Jaqueline Shachter; 28Mar74; MP25843.

MP25844.
Meet Jeanne and Robert Bendick. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min.,
sd., b&w, videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline
Shachter; 28Mar74; MP2584.

MP25845.
Meet Joseph Krumgold. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25845.

MP25846.
Meet Eleanor Cameron. Jaqueline Shachter. 30 min., sd., b&w,
videotape (1/2 inch) (Profiles in literature) © Jaqueline Shachter;
28Mar74; MP25846.

MP25847.