Originally a student of Karl Bühler at university in Vienna, Herzog elected to do her dissertation under Paul Lazarsfeld, a survey about the then-new medium of radio.
After a brief period as research assistant to Robert Staughton Lynd, Herzog joined the Radio Project as the Associate Director for consulting studies.
[2] At the Radio Project, she was part of the team of that conducted the groundbreaking research on Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds in the study The Invasion from Mars.
After Massing's death in 1979, Herzog returned to academia, teaching at University of Tübingen and Vienna, and publishing scholarly articles, most famously about the reception of American prime-time television soap operas (primarily Dallas and Dynasty) in Germany as well as one study about antisemitism in Austria.
[6] Herzog's On Borrowed Experience: An Analysis of Listening to Daytime Sketches was published in the Studies in Philosophy and Social Science journal in 1941.
It was published alongside Paul Lazarsfeld’s Administrative and Critical Communications Research, Theodor Adorno’s On Popular Music, Max Horkheimer’s Art and Mass Culture, Harold Lasswell’s Radio as an Instrument of Reducing Personal Insecurity and Herbert Marcuse’s Some Social Implications of Modern Technology.
[10] Herzog alludes to three main types of gratification for listening: Critics[14] now see On Borrowed Experience as part of the Columbia School.