Harold Lasswell

Harold Dwight Lasswell was born on February 13, 1902. He was a leading political scientist and the United States and a founder of the theory of communication. He also is a member of the Chicago School of Sociology and is a professor of the Chicago School of Sociology at Yale University, In addition he is also the President of the American Political Science Association (APSA) and the World Academy of Arts and Science (WAAS). According to a biography written by Gabriel Almond Lasswell at the time of death issued by the National Academy of Sciences in 1987, Lasswell included in the ranking of creative innovators in the social sciences in the twentieth century. "At that time, Almond asserts that" some people will assert that he is a political scientist of the most original and most productive in his time. "



Field of research in which work is the importance of personality Lasswell, social structure, and culture in the explanation of political phenomena. In the future he will be recorded using a variety of methodological approaches which later became the standard in a variety of intellectual traditions, including interview techniques, content analysis, para-experimental techniques, and statistical measurement.


He was renowned for his comments on the theory of communication:
Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel (with) What Effect
Who (says) What (to) Who (in) What Channel (with) What Effect




Lasswell studied at the University of Chicago in 1920,
and strongly influenced by the pragmatism taught there, especially since advanced by John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. He was more influential on the philosophy that informs much Freudian analysis of propaganda and communication in general. During World War II, Lasswell served as Chief of the Division of Experimental for the Study of War Time Communications at the Library of Congress. He analyzed Nazi propaganda film to identify the mechanisms of persuasion used to secure the approval and support of the German people for Hitler and the atrocities of the war. Always looking ahead, at the end of his life, Lasswell experimented with questions about astropolitics, the political consequences of the colonization of other planets, and "Colony of Man Machine."


Lasswell is an important role in the development of post-World War II. Similarly, the definition of propaganda is also seen as an important development for understanding the purpose of propaganda. Lasswell studies on propraganda, which is making inroads on the subject to broaden the current view of the manner and purpose to be achieved through propaganda to include not only changes but also changes in the opinion of the action. His books aim to indoctrinate viewed as typical propaganda. He inspired the definition given by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis.


"Propaganda is an expression of opinion or action taken deliberately by individuals or groups with the intent to influence opinions or actions of another person or group for purposes that have been determined through psychological manipulation"