Mnemonic multiples: the case of the columbia panel studies

This article uses the Bureau of Applied Social Research's mid-century book-length panel studies-The People's Choice (1944), Voting (1954), and Personal Influence (1955)-to identify and illustrate a neglected phenomenon in the remembered history of social science: mnemonic multiples. The article describes the way that the Bureau books, originally published into a post-World War II interdisciplinary social science milieu, have since come to be remembered along distinct disciplinary tracks by sociologists, political scientists, and communication researchers. A contextual analysis of references to the Bureau studies in the flagship journals of the three disciplines, from 1960 through 2011, provides tentative support for the mnemonic multiples concept.