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The study of mass communications is a broad, multidisciplinary field to which sociology has made major contributions. Some of these contributions have been reviewed in earlier works by Riley & Riley (1959), Larsen (1964), Janowitz (1968), McQuail (1969), Davison & Yu (1974), DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach (1975), and Wright (1975a). Several chapters in the Annual Review of Psychology, although not explicitly sociological in orientation, report on communication studies of sociological relevance. Schramm (1962) reviews the social psychology of mass communication from 1955 through 1961. Tannenbaum & Greenberg (1967) update that review through 1966, and W. Weiss (1971) brings it up to 1970. Lumsdaine & May (1965) focus on educational media, a topic beyond the scope of this review. (For an account of recent developments in media of instruction, see Schramm 1977.) And a recent review by Liebert & Schwartzberg (1977), which focuses on the effects of the mass media, also presents data on patterns of media use, media content, and transmission of information and cultivation of beliefsall of which are topics of sociological concern. Current statistics on the distribution, structure, and uses of mass media are available in Frey (1973) and in a recent comprehensive review and guide to American communication industry trends by Sterling & Haight (1978). In
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