Personal Influence's fifteen-page account of the development of mass communication research has had more influence on the field's historical self-understanding than anything published before or since. According to Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld's well-written, two-stage narrative, a loose and undisciplined body of prewar thought had concluded naively that media are powerful—a myth punctured by the rigorous studies of Lazarsfeld and others, which showed time and again that media impact is in fact limited. This “powerful-tolimited-effects” story line remains textbook boilerplate and literature review dogma fifty years later. This article traces the emergence of thePersonal Influence synopsis, with special attention to (1) Lazarsfeld's audience-dependent framing of key media research findings and (2) the surprisingly prominent role of Edward Shils in supplying key elements of the narrative.
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