Wilbur Schramm: Biography Of This Pioneer Of Communicology
Communication studies have had several references in recent times, and Schramm has been one of the most important.
Below we will review his life through a biography of Wilbur Schramm, to find out the most important details about his life and 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.
Wilbur Lang Schramm, or simply Wilbur Schramm, He was born in 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 accomplished violinist as well as a lawyer.
For her part, Louise, her mother, played the piano. That is why it was not strange that Wilbur Schramm also felt interest in this discipline, and he soon began to be interested in the flute. One of the events that would mark this child’s life was an apparently routine surgical intervention in which his tonsils were removed. However, this operation triggered a stutter, which would remain with him forever.
He was five years old when he began to stutter; This condition caused him great anxiety 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 perform a piece of music with his flute.
Years of training
Wilbur Schramm began his career in political science at the prestigious institution of Marietta College. Not only that, but He graduated with the distinction of summa cum laude, under the excellence awarded by the Phi Beta Kappa society And, all of this, while she combined her studies with a job as a journalist for The Marietta Daily Herald publication. This time, Wilbur Schramm did give a speech at his graduation.
After this stage, He moved 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 complete his doctorate at the university in this city. Here he would have the opportunity to study with author Norman Foerster. Wilbur Schramm He completed his academic training, achieving the degree of doctor in American literature
His doctoral thesis was developed around the work The Song of Hiawatha, a poem with an epic theme that the author, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had written in 1855. He would still complete a postdoctoral degree directed by Carl Seashore, a prestigious psychophysiologist.
Wilbur Schramm’s career
After completing his postdoctoral degree, Wilbur Schramm began his career as a professor at the University of Iowa. He initially did so as an assistant, but was promoted to associate professor first and then full professor. Schramm combined his work with other ways of giving voice to the writings of other people, 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 initiated by Wilbur Schramm continue to be carried out today no less than in 1936. At the same time, he published his own works, some of which became popular quickly, such as Windwagon Smith, a story for which he won the O. Henry Award and which was adapted to film by Walt Disney .
But a historic event changed Wilbur Schramm’s career, giving him 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 brought him closer to behaviorism, one of the most powerful currents in psychology. After two years working with this organization, He returned to the University of Iowa, this time as director of the journalism school, an entity that he would direct for almost five years, before moving to the University of Illinois, to take the reins of the Communications Research Institute. It was the year 1947.
Next destinations and last years
He was in charge of this department for eight years, but more destinations still awaited him, such as Stanford University. Here he would also direct a communication institute, no less than between 1955 and 1973.
During this stage also He headed the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences He then went to Honolulu to direct the East-West Communication Institute Center in Hawaii.
After retiring from the first line of research, Wilbur Schramm still remained 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 able to make astonishing predictions about the future, since already in 1959 he ventured to say that in the times to come it would not be unreasonable to think that each person would have their own portable telephone to be constantly in communication. with the rest.
Besides, Thanks to him, the prestigious communication institutes were founded at both the University of Illinois and Stanford As a result of their 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 places around the world.
Importance as a communicologist
Throughout his career, Wilbur Schramm had the opportunity to investigate and evaluate the communication conditions of very different places in the world Some of these works took him, for example, to African and Asian countries to try to improve the way in which information was transmitted between large population centers. 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 in regions such as American Samoa. He even had influence in developing 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 carried out a complete analysis of the importance of the use of technologies aimed at communication as a predictor of the socioeconomic level of a country or a region.
As a result of these investigations, Schramm came to the conclusion that Communication capacity was key to ensuring that traditionally disadvantaged places managed to improve the living conditions of their inhabitants Wilbur believed that this goal could be achieved if said communication technology was used for three specific tasks.
The first of them 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 would benefit the population of that region.
Lastly, Wilbur Schramm 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 rights and freedoms guaranteed.
In addition to these proposals, Wilbur Schramm edited around thirty books throughout his entire career, in addition to several models that are still studied today in the field of communication, as Schramm continues to be a reference.
