THE CONTENT OF COMIC STRIPS: A STUDY OF A MASS MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION.

The article focuses on the content of comic strips as a mass medium of communication. All communications research is concerned with the factors which facilitate or impede the relationships between communicators and interpreters via communications content. It is important to establish, at least tentatively, the theoretical frame of reference as a basis for hypotheses regarding these relationships. There is conceived to be an inter-dependent relationship between the individual's need-value system and the structured pattern presented by the content. It is the purpose of content analysis to identify, isolate, and, if possible, quantify any or all of these aspects of a particular communications content. The Sunday comic strips, reaching an audience of sixty million Americans and, in translation, millions more in foreign countries, is .an important mass medium of communication, and as such, is of interest to social psychologists concerned with the communicative process. A complete communications analysis of comic strips would be concerned with a study of the intent of the producers of the strips, an analysis of the content, and a study of the audience's responses.