Revisiting the Origin of the Administrative versus Critical Research Debate

Abstract

This scholarly essay by Elihu and Ruth Katz recounts the story of the “high moment” of the original debate between administrative and critical theory. The tensions between the Frankfurt and Vienna schools of immigrant scholars of the 1930s are captured in the conflict between Paul Lazarsfeld, who engaged with the then-new commercial model of media research, and Theodor Adorno, a critical scholar, who disdained it, over the Princeton Radio Research Project (1937–1944). In the end, they conclude that something of the other's model rubbed off on each of them.