For emerging field of mass communication researcher Paul Lazarsfeld proved to be seminal thinker and researcher in what way?

(A) For exploring the potential of Social Science methods.

(B) For providing training with a high level of entrepreneurial skill.

(C) For raising the standard of American Education System.

(D) For making assumptions that media have limited direct effect.

Choose the most appropriate answer from the options given below :

Paul Lazarsfeld (1901–1976), made significant contributions to media and communication theory. Some of his work, including the two-step flow model of mass communication reception, continues to resonate in studies of audience reception.

Key Points

• In the late 1930s and early 1940s, mass society notions began to be empirically investigated by Paul Lazarsfeld.
• Trained in psychological measurement, Lazarsfeld fled the Nazis and came to the United States on a Ford Foundation fellowship (Lazarsfeld, 1969).
• For the emerging field of mass communication research, he proved to be a seminal thinker and researcher.
• Lazarsfeld was interested in exploring the potential of newly developed social science methods, such as surveys and field experiments, to understand and solve social problems.
• He combined academic training with a high level of entrepreneurial skill. Within a few years after arriving in the United States, he had established a very active and successful social research center, the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia University.
• Lazarsfeld was committed to the use of empirical social research methods in order to establish the validity of theory.  
• Lazarsfeld’s most famous research efforts, the “American Voter Studies,” actually began as an attempt to document the media’s power during election campaigns.
• By the mid-1950s, Lazarsfeld’s work and that of other empirical media researchers had generated an enormous amount of data.
• Lazarsfeld's conclusion from survey research contrary to popular assumptions, the mass media cannot directly change most people's strongly-held attitudes or opinions.
• Though Lazarsfeld and others never labeled this theory, it is now referred to as limited-effects theory.

Thus based on the above facts both statements A and D are correct.