Communication As Play: A Study Of William Stephenson’s Play Theory Of Mass Communication

William Stephenson is a British-American physicist, psychologist and communicationscholar.During Youth his main research interests focus on the field of physics, but it is alsobecause of the profound influence of the quantum physics led him step by step to changeresearch interests from physics to the study of human subjective mental world of psychology,this is the first important turns in his academic career;Stephenson announces the birth ofQ-methodology in the journal nature in1935, discovering that human subjectivity can bemeasured with Q-method, but a controversy focused on the psychological research method isstranded because of the outbreak of world war ii.After the war, Stephenson honorabledischarge as a British brigadier general from India and after a short academic career in the UK,he soon acrosses the sea to the US, joins the department of psychology at the university ofChicago in the United States.That is in Chicago, he publishes his most famous book which iscalled The study of behavior: Q-technique and its methodology;Seven years later, Stephensonchooses to abandon school business and become the advertising research director of anadvertising company which is called D’Arcy, though successful in advertising world, but it isshort-lived, and he returns to academia circle in1958, accepting a position as adistinguished professor in the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Stephenson’scomeback becomes the second important turns in his academic career: turn from psychologyto communication study.In1958, when he first lookes seriously at mass communication,to find that little wasbeing done in it to study the connection with entertainment, he is very puzzled,and he findsthat the mainstream of communication academic circle is staring at the grand media effect tooexcessive.In view of this, Stephenson writes a paper named The Ludenic Theory ofNewsreading and then a book named The play theory of mass communication for this defectsubsequently and "play theory"is put forwarded as we know. In Stephenson’s view, newspaperreading in its subjectivity seems to be play, pleasing one’s self as in a child’s game,so it ismore better to see the media as a playful toy rather than a utilitarian tool.In the book The playtheory of mass communication, Stephenson points out:"it is the thesis of this book that at itsbest mass communication allows people to become absorbed in the subjective play." On theone hand, the play theory was inspired by the Dutch scholar, John Huizinga’s famous book named Homo,ludens.In this book John Huizenga praises "Homo ludens " highly. He usesthis to against the "Homo Faber" and "Homo Sapiens" which are repressed repression ofhuman play spirit since modern times. Stephenson gets inspirations from Huizinga’s classicalwork and has a humanistic research perspective of cultural anthropology and humanisticpsychology,Stephenson uses the "play" to reveals the initiative, individuality, freedom of massin the face of the medias, and in the process of using media to get communication-pleasure;On the other hand, Q-method is a revolution in the field of psychology research, the methoditself also can be regarded as an important theory, it is a revolutionary method to study humansubjective psychological experience, it is the unity of quantitative research and qualitativeresearch, and the unity of scientism and humanism, and it is for the important development ofthe traditional "factor analysis" method, its characteristic is especially emphasize the value ofhuman subjectivity and individuality in the scientific research.Essentially speaking, Stephenson’s play theory is a "scientific humanism paradigm"which is a kind of opposition to the mainstream scientific positivism paradigm.If we cancombine Stephenson’s play theory with James Carey’s"ritual view of communication" whichis landed on china before long,we can also call play theory "play view ofcommunication",further more, since the ritual is culture, and play breeds culture, so that wecan even call them "new humanism paradigm" of communication studies together, and as forresearch method,we can also combine interpretation method with Q-method together.If Stephenson’s "play theory" has a bit "untimely " in half a century ago, we will findthat a kind of personalization, point-to-point, interactive mode of the new media is changingold communication theory and realistic context profoundly in magnificent networktimes.Today we rediscover Stephenson and play theory can provide a kind of important theoryand method for reference to face with lots of new problems and challenges of communicationresearch definitely.