THEORY CONSTRUCTION

THEORY CONSTRUCTION

How can one build theory from ideographic case studies of fugitive events with mass observation data? Do they amount to no more than descriptive ethnography? We unhesitatingly admit that neither our study of the Graham crusade nor of MacArthur Day was planned to test a specific hypothesis or to identify causal variables that “explained” what happened or why people acted as they did. Nor did we pretend that such ethnographic data as we collected would allow us to make quantitative estimates about the diffusion of religious sentiment or of political support for MacArthur. Rather, we looked upon these two events as strategic research sites in which to explore firsthand and to

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refine by direct observation our understanding of conversion rituals and of the behavior of crowds. The analysis was to be “from within.”

Our point of departure was Herbert Blumer’s (1956:686) exhortation to “look upon human life as chiefly a vast interpretative process in which people, singly and collectively, guide themselves by defining the objects, events, and situations which they encounter.” The conceptual structures behind their everyday acts as revealed to observers are not themselves social-scientific explanations. They do, however, provide the raw material out of which theories are constructed. Our procedure of theory development in the empirical studies was that of “analytic induction” (see further Chapter 2 in this volume on that procedure). Our two case studies bear directly on how collective definitions develop in response to the news media.

Mass observation certainly lends itself to a “debunking,” a scaling down of what the mass media accounts blow up out of proportion, or as an authentication of the view “from below” against the tide of “pseudo-events.” We recall here the discrepancy between our own observations of two noteworthy events and other accounts of these same events. More important is how media recognition feeds on itself. It magnifies and, to some extent, modifies anything that comes into its purview. The coverage of MacArthur Day, even more clearly than the play given to the Graham crusade, documents how the image of events conveyed through the lens of the media is subject to “refraction.” Notwithstanding Boorstin (1962:11), who contrasts “God-made” events, like a train wreck or an earthquake, with non-spontaneous pseudo-events, we see no clear line that sets pseudo-events, largely contrived for the benefit of audiences, apart from other events which are immutably natural but then symbolically transformed into “disasters.”

In both cases, our interest was not in the event per se but in the process through which such events unfold and enter into public consciousness. Similar processes can be observed in communication networks other than the mass media. Public definitions also develop through oral networks, some of them linked to what the press reports. The generation of rumors exhibits many similarities, as well as some differences, with the way in which reporters produce what is certified as genuine “news” (Lang and Lang, 1961; Shibutani, 1966; for an explicit statement in favor of a “process” sociology, as distinguished from a “unit” sociology, see Bigus et al., 1982).

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The two case studies also document the interplay between the media perspective and that of participants in the event. Stepping forward in response to Graham’s appeal was more than a strictly private decision. The act was encouraged by companions and by the atmosphere generated through the staging in Madison Square Garden. Beyond that, those heeding the call could not possibly avoid seeing their decision as a statement of support for a religious crusade in which they wanted a part. In the case of MacArthur, the chance to participate in a historic spectacle was equally hard to resist even for people without any further political commitment. Here the two perspectives were merged whenever crowds responded directly to the presence of the TV cameras (see, for example, Dayan and Katz, 1987). Evidence of a more indirect consequence of media recognition comes from surveys of the beleaguered citizens of Berlin during the long months of the Soviet blockade, when they were totally dependent for all their needs on the airlift from the West. Seeing themselves through the media with the attention of the whole Western world focused on their struggle was a real boost to their morale (Davison, 1956).

More generally, we point to the part played by so-called third parties that are somehow perceived, however vaguely, in the transactions between newsmakers and reporters which define what becomes news. The involvement of a large and diffuse public tends to transform ceremonies originally designed only for those present into spectacles. Regardless of what participants may feel, they will

be perceived more as performers acting in behalf of “everyone” within an integrated structure of motives. On the other hand, being conscious during a controversy of the presence of a third party usually has a moderating effect. It creates pressure to play by the rules or at least to make it appear so. Such changes as have occurred in electioneering practices over the years might fruitfully

be approached with this concept in mind. In conclusion, we submit that observational techniques combined with informant interviews can be more than a continuous pilot, a grandiose fishing expedition for interesting but impressionistic data. They are especially useful in probing the processes behind the social construction of events and in explaining how things ultimately come to be remembered, that is, how events come to be defined in the collective memory.

Chapter 12

Social contexts and uses of research Media, education, and communities

Michael Green