Hypodermic Needle Theory

HAROLD LASSWELL – Concept 1: Model of Communication

At the end of World War II, social science researchers began to investigate the way in which we communicate, particularly political communication, and how it was used to disseminate propaganda. From the end of the 1940s and start of the 1950s there was an expansion of new media forms for example, the number of TV licenses shot up from 763,000 in 1951 to 3.2 million in 1954 which was heavily due to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II which took place in 1953, but there was also an expansion of research into the effects of television.

Harold Lasswell developed the tool of ‘content analysis’ and in 1927 he wrote ‘Propaganda Technique in the World War’ which aimed to highlight the ‘subtle poison which industrious men injected into the veins of a staggering people until the smashing powers…knocked them into submission’. Lasswell is a behaviour scientist researching the areas connected with political communication and propaganda whereby he believed each government had ‘manipulated the mass media in order to justify their actions’ during World War 1

In 1948 Lasswell developed the Linear Model of Communication that breaks down the line of communication from point A to B:

SENDER transfers a MESSAGE through a MEDIUM that has a direct effect on the RECEIVER

[WHO? SAYS WHAT? THROUGH WHAT CHANNEL? TO WHOM? WITH WHAT EFFECT?]

The Hypodermic Needle Theory proposes a clear linear connection between message sent -> message received which he believes is through passive consumption. Further, there is a clear relationship between sending a message and receiving it.

SHANNON AND WEAVER:

This approach was later adapted by Shannon and Weaver in 1949 as the Transmission Model of Communication, which included other elements such as:

NOISE, ERROR, ENCODING and FEEDBACK

This contradicts Lasswell’s theory as there is the suggestion that the process of sending and receiving a message is NOT linear or predictable but rather dependant on a range of factors that need to be taken into consideration. Simply that there are interruptions with the communication.