Research in the field of political communication has traditionally reflected a behavioral approach which has focused largely on the influence of mass communication on the public's political behavior. The role of the individual in selecting, interpreting, and processing political information has received significantly less attention. The descriptive survey and experimental data of the behaviorist paradigm can describe some correlations within the range of all political behavior, but behaviorism has not explained the individual as a single processor of information. In the future, research theory in political communication should be directed toward a phenomenological or functional approach in which man is perceived as an active rather than a passive agent. Whereas the behavioral approach describes how individuals are affected by their environment, a phenomenological methodology attempts to investigate and explain how individuals react to their environment and why particular attributes of individuals are related to communication behavior patterns. (EE)