International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

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Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann was a German scholar who died in 2010. Her name stands for a paradigm shift in the field of media effects research. In 1972 she presented her → spiral of silence theory in Tokyo in a lecture entitled “Return to the concept of powerful mass media.” This paper can be seen as a break with the “minimal effects” hypothesis (→ Media Effects ). Noelle-Neumann argued that research confined itself to short-term media influences, used poor measures, and failed to see crucial factors such as the consonance of the media, their cumulative effects, and their influence on the climate of opinion (→ Media Effects Duration ). She argued that these effects could only be measured by using a combination of media content analyses and representative public opinion polls – preferably by conducting several waves of → surveys . Above all in the US, her spiral of silence theory gave rise to a great number of empirical investigations, which made her one of the best-known figures in communication research worldwide. Born in 1916, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann studied Zeitungswissenschaft (newspaper science), history, philosophy, and American studies in Berlin. In 1937/1938, she received a scholarship at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. In 1940, she obtained her doctorate in Berlin with a dissertation on public opinion research in the USA, Emil Dovifat being her doctoral ... log in or subscribe to read full text