重返美国传播研究史前史:宣传远离传播学的原因和反思

Return to the Prehistory of Communication Studies in the United States:Reasons and Implications for the Departure of Propaganda from Communication Studies

美国主流传播学史叙事中对于“批判的宣传分析”出现集体性误读,将“批判的宣传分析”误解为一种原始的功能主义研究,本文通过补全20世纪初美国传播研究史前史,对“批判的宣传分析”诞生的背景、发展的脉络及其与美式主流传播研究的勾连进行梳理与再叙述,试图回答宣传远离传播学的原因并进行反思。研究发现,尽管“批判的宣传分析”曾经作为主流出现在美国的社会研究领域中,但是它并非一种学术范式而是美国进步主义语境下出现的社会思潮,随着这一社会历史语境发生根本逆转,“批判的宣传分析”落寞退场。随后传播学的建制化以及社会科学的底层逻辑不断将宣传的概念边缘化、意识形态化,往后美国传播学史对于“批判的宣传分析”的有意误读,反映出美式现代性危机下传播研究的合法性焦虑,美国理性主义语境中宣传的价值理性与工具理性的矛盾与张力始终难以解决。

In the narrative of the history of US mainstream communication study,there has been a collective misreading of“propaganda analysis”.This paper attempts to find the reasons and reflections of propaganda’s departure from communication studies by retelling the background of the birth of propaganda analysis,and completing the prehistory of US communication research in the early 20th century.It is found that although“propaganda analysis”once appeared as a mainstream in the field of social science research in the US,it is not an academic paradigm but a social trend in the context of US progressivism.With the fundamental reversal of this social context,“propaganda analysis”has fallen into disuse.Subsequently,the institutionalization of communication research and the underlying logic of science continue to marginalize and ideologize the concept of propaganda.The intentional misinterpretation of“propaganda analysis”in the history of communication studies originates from the legitimacy anxiety of US communication studies,as the contradiction and tension between value rationality and instrumental rationality in the context of US rationalism could not be solved.