Some researchers mark forever by their work, their methods, their findings. Others radiate around them, they are team leaders, coaches. Jay G. Blumler, who died on January 30 at the age of 96, possessed these two talents at the top.
Born February 18, 1924 in New York, of Russian origin, a father who remained a Marxist in the United States and a fervent mother in support of Roosevelt and the New Deal, Blumler studied at Antioch College (Ohio), which had been the first American university to receive women and blacks. There the fundamental humanism of young Jay was forged, in this institution whose maxim is: ” Be ashamed to die until you have achieved the slightest victory for humanity. “
Passed by Georgetown University, then enlisted in the American army in 1944, as an interpreter in Russian, Blumler became, at the liberation of Berlin, president of the American Veterans Committee of the city. Decades later, he will still remember having hosted Eleanor Roosevelt there for tea! He hesitates then between a university career and music (he had been part of a quartet in Georgetown called “Four Freedoms”). He will remain an incredible singer, with a strong baritone voice, willingly singing – at the end of work meetings, and even in his lessons – tunes of folklore, popular songs or jazz.
Theory of “uses and gratuities”
Fortunately for sociology, Blumler chooses the university. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1949, where he took up a post as professor of political theory at Oxford, before joining the University of Leeds in 1963. It was there that he became passionate about the subject which was his. will occupy all his life: communication, and especially audiovisual, and its impact on politics. It was there that, in 1966, he founded a research center devoted to television, which quickly gained a global aura.
In conjunction with researcher Elihu Katz, Jay Blumler and his team put forward a theory of “uses and rewards”, according to which the influence exerted by a media on an individual, or on a social group, cannot be uniform, since ‘it depends on the uses that it expects from the means of communication.
Depending on whether the voter, for example, seeks in a program the acquisition of knowledge, or a distraction, or a means of guiding him in his choice, or arguments to convince others, the different link established between television and television viewer will imply various influence mechanisms. Rather than asking “what is the impact of the media on the public?” “, One therefore asks” how does the citizen use the media, and why? ” »This allows us to break with the endless answer« we hardly find media influence in surveys », to reveal that the citizen himself plays an active role in the choice he makes of a medium, and that , thereby, this medium can see its impact multiplied.
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