Forgotten Forefather of the Empirical Study of Public Opinion and Mass Communication

Tarde was well known to turn-of-the-century sociologists in both Europe and the United States and influenced a number of important scholars. However, he dropped out of sight gradually, although not completely. He is best remembered for two things that did him in. One is the famous intellectual duel he lost to Durkheim defending his voluntaristic social psychology of action against Durkheim's exteriorized normative pressures. The other is the unfashionable choice of the concept imitation as the basis for his general theory and especially for his theory of diffusion.


Tarde should be regarded as one of the forefathers of opnion and communication in general. He was all the more deserving for making diffusion so central to his thinking. The diffusion idea can be found in Tarde's better-known book-The Laws of Imitation. Furthermore, there was also a neglected essay-L'opinion et la foule, only parts of which have appeared in English.

The word "imitation" implies the influencee knows he is copying the influential, but the influential may not be aware of his role. If Tarde used the generic word "influence" instead of "imitation", he would be much better remembered. The interpersonal influence was overshadowed by the copycat aspect of imitation and by its proximity to the unthinkingness of suggestion and contagion. Maybe he chose "imitation" because he really believed that interconnected individuals copied each other in a semi-conscious way.

In his later work, as he moved from an interest in crowds to an interest in publics, he made it abundantly clear that conversation—not one-side copying—was the key to imitation, which was closer to the concept of influence. He also saw conversation as a major element in the formation of uniformities of opinion and behavior.