Mass media vs. personal sources of information about the presidential assassination: A comparison of six investigations

John Milton said “Where there is much desire to learn, there will of necessity be much arguing, much writing, and many opinions, for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.” One of the most unsettled parts of the field of communication research and theory is the area of “ricochet” or “two‐step” information flow (briefly, the mass media tell the opinion leaders who tell others face‐to‐face). The assassination of President Kennedy provided an opportunity for a number of researchers to investigate the diffusion of information in a crisis situation. One of these studies, by Harold Mendelsohn, was published in the Spring 1964 issue of the Journal under the title “Broadcast vs. Personal Sources of Information in Emergent Public Crises: The Presidential Assassination.” In the present article, Stephen Spitzer compares the results of six different studies of information dissemination in connection with the presidential assassination. Because his conclusions directly contradicted Dr. Mendelsohn's study,...