对于包括大众传播在内的传播活动的研究,至少可以追溯到本世纪初。研究者的最初动机主要是考察、检验和提高教育、宣传、电信、广告、公共关系等领域的传播效果。研究活动始于对社会问题的实际关心,后来,随着心理学和社会的发展,实验、社会调查和统计等经验实证方法逐渐成熟,这又促进了传播领域的研究活动。因此,在相当长的一段时期内,经验主义便成为传播学研究的主导特征,这种状况在有着深远的经验实证主义传统的美国尤其明显。 第二次世界大战以后,美国等国家的传播学研究仍然是以经验主义方法为主,只是由于研究环境、 Studies of communication activities, including mass media, can be traced back to at least the beginning of this century. The initial motivation of the researcher is mainly to examine, test and improve the dissemination effects in the fields of education, publicity, telecommunications, advertising and public relations. Research activities began with practical concern for social issues. Later, with the development of psychology and society, experience-based empirical methods such as experiments, social surveys and statistics gradually matured, which promoted the research activities in the field of communication. Thus, empiricism has been the dominant feature of communication studies for quite some time, especially in the United States, with far-reaching tradition of empirical positivism. After the Second World War, researches on communication in the United States and other countries were still based on empirical methods only because of the research environment,