Background

 Wilbur Schramm was born in Marietta, Ohio, to a

musical, middle-class family whose ancestry hailed
from Schrammburg, Germany.
 He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from 
Marietta College, where he received a bachelor's
degree in political science while working as a
reporter and editor at The Marietta Daily Herald. 
Early career (1930s)
 In 1935 he was hired as an assistant professor in the
University of Iowa's English department.
 In 1935, he founded a literary magazine called American
Prefaces
 The outbreak of World War II led Schramm to join the 
Office of War Information in 1941 to investigate the
nature of propaganda; it was during this time when he
began employing behaviorist methodologies.

Later career (1943–1975)

 In 1943, Schramm returned to academia as director of
the University of Iowa's School of Journalism.
 In 1955 he moved to Stanford University to serve as
founding director of the Institute for Communication
Research until 1973.
 In 1959, in an interview published by Canadian Press (CP)
on February 3, Schramm stated that communications will
become more personalized within the next 10 years and
that "It is conceivable that you will be carrying around
your own telephone within that time.
Contribution to the Mass Communication field

 Wilbur Schramm established the first academic

units called "communication" at Illinois and then
at Stanford.
 Wilbur Schramm introduced social scientific,
empirical methodology in communication
research.
Wilbur schramm’s model of communication