Radio Workshop Committee Reveals Plans for Research in Social Science

Experimentation with broadcasting technique and research problems, will be the main fields covered by the Social Science division of the new Harvard Radio Workshop, Lawrence I. Radway '40, chairman of the committee announced last night.

In the field of broadcasting technique three subjects have been chosen for experimentation: dramatization of democracy on the air; survey programs of Non England regional problems such as tariff; and the effect of propaganda on different audiences.

It is in the dramatizing of democracy that a really new attack on the subject is planned, for by combining the formal symposium and the method of dramatic presentation now used, the committee hopes to evolve a new technique, correlating the appeal of the dramatic presentation with the open discussion of the symposium.

Also interesting in the work planned on the reactions to radio propaganda, which aims to use varied methods of approach on the same audience and by comparing results determine which is the most effective.

The research division will delve even further into the propaganda field, analyzing propaganda methods employed by the totalitarian stats and by the political parties in America. In addition, the difference between the interpretive and the "factual" news commentator in his appeal and influence, the question of free speech on the radio, and the problem of foreign language broadcasting will be covered.

Before actually broadcasting on the air the committee plans to work with Victoria records of their programs in order that they may eliminate errors. Radio popularization and arousal of undergraduate interest in broadcasting are the immediate aims of the committee.