Education, study and knowledge

Wilbur Schramm: biography of this pioneer of communicology

Communication studies have had several referents in recent times, and Schramm has been one of the most important.

Next we will review his life through a biography of Wilbur Schramm, to learn the most important details about his life and his career. We will discover what have been the most valuable contributions that he made during his years dedicated to communication and what their impact has been.

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Brief biography of Wilbur Schramm

Wilbur Lang Schramm, or simply Wilbur Schramm, was born in the year 1907 in the city of Marietta, in the state of Ohio, USA. His family was descended from former German emigrants. In his house there was a love for music, since all the members of the family unit were skilled in this art. Arch Schramm, Wilbur's father, was an expert violinist as well as a lawyer.

For his part, Louise, his mother, played the piano. That is why it was not surprising that Wilbur Schramm also felt concern about this discipline, and he soon began to be interested in the flute. One of the events that would mark the life of this child was an apparently routine surgical intervention in which his tonsils were removed. However, this operation triggered a stutter, which would accompany him forever.

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He was five years old when he started to stutter; this condition caused him great uneasiness. From then on he tried to avoid speaking in public whenever possible. So much so, that when he graduated, instead of giving a speech, like the rest of his classmates, he preferred to play a piece of music on his flute.

formative years

Wilbur Schramm began his career in political science at the prestigious institution of Marietta College. Not only that, but He graduated summa cum laude with the distinction of excellence awarded by the Phi Beta Kappa Society.. And all this while he combined his studies with a job as a journalist for The Marietta Daily Herald. This time, Wilbur Schramm did give a speech at his graduation.

After this stage, he transferred to Harvard University to major in United States History. At the same time, he continued to gain professional experience as a reporter, this time for The Boston Herald newspaper.

From Harvard he moved again, this time to Iowa, first of all because there was an important clinic there. where the problem of stuttering would be treated, but also to be able to do a doctorate at the university of this city. Here he would have the opportunity to study with author Norman Foerster. wilbur schramm he completed his academic training reaching the degree of doctor in American literature.

His doctoral thesis revolved around The Song of Hiawatha, an epic poem that the author, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had written in 1855. He would still do a postdoc directed by Carl Seashore, a prestigious psychophysiologist.

Wilbur Schramm's career

After completing his postdoc, Wilbur Schramm began his teaching career at the University of Iowa. In the first instance he did it as an assistant, but he promoted to associate professor first and to full professor later. Schramm combined his work with other ways of giving voice to other people's writings, especially students. That's why he founded the magazine American Prefaces: A Journal of Critical and Imaginative Writing.

Even more important was the creation of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where the creative writing programs started by Wilbur Schramm continue to be carried out to this day, no less than in 1936. At the same time, he was publishing his own works, some of which became rapidly popular, such as Windwagon Smith, a short story for which he won an O. Henry and that was adapted to the cinema by Walt Disney.

But a historical event was the one that changed the career of Wilbur Schramm, giving it a new direction. It was World War II. Because of this terrible war conflict, Wilbur joined the United States Office of War Information.. It is in this institution where he puts all his knowledge and experience at the service of the government, to fully understand the effects of war propaganda.

This task meant an approach to behaviorism, one of the most powerful currents of psychology. After two years working with this organization, he returned to the University of Iowa, this time as director of the school of journalism, entity that he would direct for almost five years, before moving to the University of Illinois, to take the reins of the Institute for Research in Communications. It was the year 1947.

Next destinations and last years

He was in charge of this department for eight years, but more destinations would still await him, such as Stanford University. Here he would also direct a communication institute, no less than between 1955 and 1973.

Also during this stage he was in charge of the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. He then went to Honolulu to direct the East-West Center Institute for Communication in Hawaii.

After retiring from the front line of research, Wilbur Schramm was still connected to this institute, as a distinguished member and director emeritus of the entity. In fact, he spent the last years of his life in Honolulu. His death would come in 1987, at the age of 80.. Wilbur left behind his wife, his daughter, and his grandson.

Wilbur Schramm dedicated a lifetime to teaching and researching the keys to communication. Being an eminence in this field, he was even capable of making amazing predictions about the future, since already in 1959 he ventured to say that in In the coming times, it would not be unreasonable to think that each person would have their own portable telephone to be constantly in communication with the the rest.

Besides, Thanks to him, the prestigious Institutes of Communication were founded at both the University of Illinois and Stanford.. As a result of his work, the new students were able to obtain a doctorate in communication and thus begin to work in this new field of knowledge in various parts of the world.

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Importance as a communicator

Throughout his entire career, Wilbur Schramm had the opportunity to investigate and evaluate communication conditions in very different parts of the world. Some of these works took him, for example, to African and Asian countries to try to improve the way in which the transmission of information between large population centers was carried out. He also worked to improve educational conditions in countries like El Salvador.

Likewise, Among his achievements is having managed to develop methods for broadcasting content in India thanks to satellite technology.. He also improved the television system of regions like American Samoa. He was even influential in drawing up a plan to found an open university in Israel.

One of his most important works was Mass Media and National Development, a volume that he published in 1964 thanks to a collaboration with UNESCO. In this book, Wilbur Schramm made a complete analysis about the importance of the use of technologies aimed at communication as a predictor of the socioeconomic level of a country or a region.

Following these investigations, Schramm came to the conclusion that the ability to communicate was key to ensuring that traditionally disadvantaged places were able to improve the living conditions of their inhabitants. Wilbur believed that this goal could be achieved by using such communication technology for three specific tasks.

The first of these was the task of doing surveillance and investigative journalism, where communicators have the function of contrasting facts and thus controlling the actions of politicians and powers in general. The second task had to do, precisely, with the proposal of new policies that were in favor of the population of that region.

Lastly, Wilbur Schramm He considered that communication should be the catalyst to modernize the structures of a country and thus achieve a change in its status., abandoning its status as a developing country and finally becoming a developed nation, where all its members have a series of guaranteed rights and freedoms.

In addition to these proposals, Wilbur Schramm edited some thirty books throughout his career, as well as several models that are still studied today in the field of communication, as Schramm continues to be a reference.

Bibliographic references:

  • Glander, T. (1996). Wilbur Schramm and the founding of communication studies. Educational Theory.
  • Glander, T. (1999). Origins of mass communications research during the American Cold War: Educational effects and contemporary implications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
  • McAnany, E.G. (1988). Wilbur Schramm, 1907-1987: Roots of the past, seeds of the present. Journal of Communication. ERIC.
  • Pooley, J. (2017). Wilbur Schramm: 'Evangelist of Communication Research'. communications. Half. Design.
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