Dean Jamieson selected it just as Katz came to Penn. What I fear in this prophylactic approach . . . As Katz sees it, he would prefer to teach that these freedoms are more important than protecting children against sex and violence on television. Katz has been researching the work of Jean-Gabriel de Tarde. A lawyer, criminologist, and sociologist, Tarde ranks as one the most outstanding social thinkers of France in the last century.
Conversation is the generator of considered opinion, and opinion is the prerequisite to action.
Tarde was influenced by the Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish army officer was wrongly prosecuted, as well as the salon society of Paris, where conversation was considered essential. He wants to learn what opinion research and communication research can tell us better or differently from what Tarde told us 100 years ago. The media make it possible to redefine these relations and to accelerate the pace of change. The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications . Published in the mid 1950s, it was a pioneering work that was later translated into Japanese, German, and Italian.