Henry: "Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of manners, Kate."
-- Henry V, Act V, Scene II
In "Manipulating Public Opinion," Bernays makes an eloquent case for public relations. He writes: "This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas" (p. 971). He notes that before mass communication, public opinion was shaped by other outlets -- tribal chiefs, kinds, and religious leaders (p. 959). When viewed through this lens, the art of manipulating public opinion can be viewed as democratic, since anyone (who can sway the press) can now work to change public sentiment. Bernays also argues that propaganda (public relations by its original moniker) and education are very similar. The former is more overtly partisan while the latter proclaims objectivity -- "attempts to be disinterested" (p. 959). An objective observation shows that education is often propaganda as well -- indeed, schoolbooks are still the most influential form of mass communication.
Bernays insists that manipulating public opinion is actually teaching the public to "ask for what it really wants" and thereby teaching "the public how to safeguard itself against his own possible tyrannous aggressiveness" (p. 960). So, Bernays says we're not manipulating opinion, we're just helping people identify their true beliefs. The notion requires a rather large suspension of disbelief. Bernays argues that somehow making people adopt a position is somehow helping them exercise their own free will. One wonders if Bernays truly believed what he was saying. Of course, Bernays would hope that we not discount this view the public relations is fundamentally good. Perhaps, he's right. After all, public relations campaigns fail all the time. Perhaps because you can't get people to believe something that fundamentally disagrees with their core beliefs. Bernays offers a laundry list of PR success and none of them seem overtly disturbing to core beliefs -- anti-lynching, hat buying, margarine. But, one wonders how Bernays would have responded to the propaganda tactics used by the Nazis. Was hatred for the Jews something that the public really wanted? Perhaps this is the difference between a mass and a public -- a mass can be led astray away from their core beliefs (just like a mob) but a public will remain true to their values.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Is Dewey's Theory of the Public Realizable? No
Dewey holds that public come into existence when things get bad: “Indirect, extensive, enduring and serious consequences of conjoint and interacting behavior call a public into existence having a common interest in controlling these consequences”
p. 126
Dewey makes it clear that obstacles to good public discourse do exist:
Special interests
Powerful corporate capital
Numbing and distracting entertainment
General selfishness
Vagaries of public communication make effective public deliberation difficult.
But, he argues, we can overcome this with good communication:
"Without such communication the public will remain shadowy and formless … Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a great community." p. 142
According to Alejandro's summation (p. 169), the following conditions for emergence of the public:
1) Dissemination and application of scientific knowledge
2) "Communication of the results of social inquiry," which "is the same thing as the formation of public opinion." (31)
3) The organization of effective and organized inquiry." (32)
4) Record and communication, which "are indispensable to knowledge" (33)
-- Footnotes from Chapter 6 of Hermeneutics, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere, by Roberto Alejandro
Dewey makes the best argument against his public
Given these requirements, Dewey's own points at the beginning of his book work against the creation of a public.
Dewey states that "political facts are not outside human desire and judgment." (p. 6) So, how do we ascertain what facts we should follow?
Dewey argues that "the difference between facts which are what they are independent of human desire and endeavor and facts which are to some extent what they are because of human interest and purpose, and which alter with alteration in the latter, cannot be got rid of by any methodology."
Dewey suggests we "appeal to facts" and pay attention to the "distinction between facts which condition human activity and facts which are conditioned by human activity." If we ignore this difference "social science becomes "psuedo-science."
Well, how do we pay attention to the distinction, when the people paying attention are not "outside human desire and judgment."? In effect, positivism is easily dismissed because nobody can actually agree upon which facts they agree are truthful. And, if the public sphere begins with scientific knowledge and a dissemination of this knowledge, then the realization of the public sphere breaks down right there.
p. 126
Dewey makes it clear that obstacles to good public discourse do exist:
Special interests
Powerful corporate capital
Numbing and distracting entertainment
General selfishness
Vagaries of public communication make effective public deliberation difficult.
But, he argues, we can overcome this with good communication:
"Without such communication the public will remain shadowy and formless … Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication can alone create a great community." p. 142
According to Alejandro's summation (p. 169), the following conditions for emergence of the public:
1) Dissemination and application of scientific knowledge
2) "Communication of the results of social inquiry," which "is the same thing as the formation of public opinion." (31)
3) The organization of effective and organized inquiry." (32)
4) Record and communication, which "are indispensable to knowledge" (33)
-- Footnotes from Chapter 6 of Hermeneutics, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere, by Roberto Alejandro
Dewey makes the best argument against his public
Given these requirements, Dewey's own points at the beginning of his book work against the creation of a public.
Dewey states that "political facts are not outside human desire and judgment." (p. 6) So, how do we ascertain what facts we should follow?
Dewey argues that "the difference between facts which are what they are independent of human desire and endeavor and facts which are to some extent what they are because of human interest and purpose, and which alter with alteration in the latter, cannot be got rid of by any methodology."
Dewey suggests we "appeal to facts" and pay attention to the "distinction between facts which condition human activity and facts which are conditioned by human activity." If we ignore this difference "social science becomes "psuedo-science."
Well, how do we pay attention to the distinction, when the people paying attention are not "outside human desire and judgment."? In effect, positivism is easily dismissed because nobody can actually agree upon which facts they agree are truthful. And, if the public sphere begins with scientific knowledge and a dissemination of this knowledge, then the realization of the public sphere breaks down right there.
"Public Opinion" -- Walter Lippman
Lippmann -- Public Opinion
Introduction
Lippman points out the obvious -- that nobody can make decisions based only on things their know empirically -- at some point, everyone must rely upon someone else's (friend, mass media, teacher) communication to make decisions
P. 16:
"This, then, will be the clue to our inquiry. We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him."
But everybody comes up with their own beliefs in a complicated fashion -- not just by what their told.
p. 17:
"The very fact that men theorize at all is proof that their psuedo-environments, their interior representations of the world, are a determining element in though, feeling and action."
"Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them."
So, don't think figuring out why people think what they think is easy -- it's not. Particularly with politics.
Wikipedia's Hermeneutics definition appears appropriate:
"Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook."
Lippman was a little ahead of his time...
P. 18
"The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight and out of mind." -- so, we have to create our own images.
And it's impossible to create a real image of what's out of sight.
"Chief factors which limit their access to the facts": (p 18)
1) Artificial censorships
2) Limitations of social contact
3) Comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to public affairs
4) Distortion from compressing complicated events into shot messages
5) Difficulty in using simple words to express complicated world
6) Fear of facing facts that would threaten established routines
Interesting. But, must the public have access to all these facts to engage in rational-critical debate?
Perhaps a belief, based on previous experience, nullifies the need for specific knowledge of facts.
belief that corporations will always screw over the little guy
belief that free-market works best
belief that we live in a constructed reality
belief that higher taxes hurt job creation
Points out that socialists believe there "exists in the hearts of men a knowledge of the world beyond their reach." (p. 19) Is that true?
States flatly that we must drop the "intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us must acquire a competent opinion about all public affairs." (p. 19). Is this true?
Yes, but that's not necessarily bad
I don't know anything about insuring a car either -- why must I? Everyone has different interests
NOT ELITISM
Elitism is thinking that you're the only one smart enough to make decisions about public affairs because the public are stupid.
Lipppman isn't saying that (according to my reading)
A more realistic view is that some people just don't care -- doesn't mean they couldn't do a great job if they did care.
We shouldn't confuse "interest in public affairs" with "competence in managing public affairs"
In the Phantom Public, here's a little more elitist: "The socialist scheme has at its root the mystical fallacy of democracy, that the people, all of them, are competent." (1925, p. 38)
But, still, he's just saying that some people don't pay enough attention to make their vote worthwhile. Is this elitism? (No.)
Concludes introduction by saying: "That public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as is the case today."
Makes sense too -- he's just saying that journalists don't necessarily know the right way to look at things either
Obviously, you want to have competing interests shaping their opinions. Otherwise you'd just get propaganda.
Stereotypes
Makes the case that you can't not have stereotypes:
p. 60
"But there are uniformities sufficiently accurate, and the need of economizing attention is so inevitible that the abandonment of all stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to experience would impoverish human life."
Great point -- right?
We do teach about high-context and low-context cultures in SPCH 1000 -- that's a stereotype.
But he points out that we must be careful: "What matters is the character of the sterotypes, and the gullibility with which we employ them."
How do we do that? Hermeneutics:
Don't assume that the world is "codified according to a code which we possess." Instead, understand the "each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects of a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly."
p. 60
Intelligence work
Wow! He predicted the creation of the CIA!
"The [State] Department should be able to call on its own intelligence bureau to assemble the facts in a way suited to the diplomatic problem up for decision. And these facts the diplomatic intelligence bureau would obtain from the central clearing house."
"The central agency would, thus, have in it the makings of a national university."
p. 246
Toward the end, he offers some viewpoints on the masses:
"You cannot take more political wisdom out of human beings than there is in them. And no reform, however sensational, is truly radical, which does not consciously provide a way of overcoming the subjectivism of human opinion based on the limitation of individual experience." P. 249
So, we've really got to make sure people don't just vote on what they think they know -- so, we must make sure we inform them correctly.
So that they do not "elaborate their prejudice instead of increasing their knowledge."
But, who gets to decide what they know?
He never really says, other than deciders must influence the press
I'm not sure he believes one entity must decide.
Marketplace of ideas, and whatnot.
The appeal to the public
States the obvious again:
"The amount of attention available is far too small for any scheme in which it was assumed that all the citizens of the nation would, after devoting themselves to the publications of all the intelligence bureaus, become alert, informed, and eager on the multitude of real questions that never do fit very well into any broad principle. I am not making that assumption." p.250
"The purpose, then, is not to burden every citizen with expert opinions on all questions, but to push that burden away from him towards the responsible administrator."
This is very different from: "The public are stupid"
Lippman understood the dangers of the press controlling the message:
"For the practice of appealing to the public on all sorts of intricate matters means almost always a desire to escape criticism from those who know by enlisting a large majority which has had no chance to know. The verdict is made to depend on who has the loudest or the most entrancing voice, the most skillful or the most brazen publicity man, the best access to the most space in the newspapers. For even when the editor is scrupulously fair to "the other side," fairness is not enough. There may be several other sides, unmentioned by any of the organized, financed and active partisans."
Seems reasonable.
"The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence."
Calls for experts to hash things out:
"That can be done by having the representative inside carry on discussion in the presence of some one, chairman or mediator, who forces the discussion to deal with the analyses supplied by experts. This is the essential organization of any representative body dealing with distant matters. The partisan voices should be there, but the partisans should find themselves confronted with men, not personally involved, who control enough facts and have the dialectical skill to sort out what is real perception from what is stereotype, pattern and elaboration..."
"The value of expert mediation is not that it sets up opinion to coerce the partisans, but that it disintegrates partisanship." p. 253
Expert mediation didn't really settle the case of Bush v. Gore, though.
Conservatives thought it was great; liberals decried it -- no partisanship disintegration
So, Lippman's got a great message up to a point -- but he loses me on the "experts make the decisions" -- are the public to simply let the experts figure out everything and never question anything? Seems untenable.
Agrees with Dewey, says that "education is the supreme remedy, the value of this education will depend upon the evolution of knowledge. And our knowledge of human institutions is still extraordinarily meager and impressionistic."
But, just because we're educated, doesn't mean will can interpret facts correctly.
Suggests teaching critical thought:
"What he can do is to prepare them to deal with that world with a great deal more sophistication about their own minds. He can, by the use of the case method, teach the pupil the habit of examining the sources of his information."
Do we teach this now?
I don't think so; I think we teach that there's one correct way to look at the world.
Introduction
Lippman points out the obvious -- that nobody can make decisions based only on things their know empirically -- at some point, everyone must rely upon someone else's (friend, mass media, teacher) communication to make decisions
P. 16:
"This, then, will be the clue to our inquiry. We shall assume that what each man does is based not on direct and certain knowledge, but on pictures made by himself or given to him."
But everybody comes up with their own beliefs in a complicated fashion -- not just by what their told.
p. 17:
"The very fact that men theorize at all is proof that their psuedo-environments, their interior representations of the world, are a determining element in though, feeling and action."
"Public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them."
So, don't think figuring out why people think what they think is easy -- it's not. Particularly with politics.
Wikipedia's Hermeneutics definition appears appropriate:
"Essentially, hermeneutics involves cultivating the ability to understand things from somebody else's point of view, and to appreciate the cultural and social forces that may have influenced their outlook."
Lippman was a little ahead of his time...
P. 18
"The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight and out of mind." -- so, we have to create our own images.
And it's impossible to create a real image of what's out of sight.
"Chief factors which limit their access to the facts": (p 18)
1) Artificial censorships
2) Limitations of social contact
3) Comparatively meager time available in each day for paying attention to public affairs
4) Distortion from compressing complicated events into shot messages
5) Difficulty in using simple words to express complicated world
6) Fear of facing facts that would threaten established routines
Interesting. But, must the public have access to all these facts to engage in rational-critical debate?
Perhaps a belief, based on previous experience, nullifies the need for specific knowledge of facts.
belief that corporations will always screw over the little guy
belief that free-market works best
belief that we live in a constructed reality
belief that higher taxes hurt job creation
Points out that socialists believe there "exists in the hearts of men a knowledge of the world beyond their reach." (p. 19) Is that true?
States flatly that we must drop the "intolerable and unworkable fiction that each of us must acquire a competent opinion about all public affairs." (p. 19). Is this true?
Yes, but that's not necessarily bad
I don't know anything about insuring a car either -- why must I? Everyone has different interests
NOT ELITISM
Elitism is thinking that you're the only one smart enough to make decisions about public affairs because the public are stupid.
Lipppman isn't saying that (according to my reading)
A more realistic view is that some people just don't care -- doesn't mean they couldn't do a great job if they did care.
We shouldn't confuse "interest in public affairs" with "competence in managing public affairs"
In the Phantom Public, here's a little more elitist: "The socialist scheme has at its root the mystical fallacy of democracy, that the people, all of them, are competent." (1925, p. 38)
But, still, he's just saying that some people don't pay enough attention to make their vote worthwhile. Is this elitism? (No.)
Concludes introduction by saying: "That public opinions must be organized for the press if they are to be sound, not by the press as is the case today."
Makes sense too -- he's just saying that journalists don't necessarily know the right way to look at things either
Obviously, you want to have competing interests shaping their opinions. Otherwise you'd just get propaganda.
Stereotypes
Makes the case that you can't not have stereotypes:
p. 60
"But there are uniformities sufficiently accurate, and the need of economizing attention is so inevitible that the abandonment of all stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to experience would impoverish human life."
Great point -- right?
We do teach about high-context and low-context cultures in SPCH 1000 -- that's a stereotype.
But he points out that we must be careful: "What matters is the character of the sterotypes, and the gullibility with which we employ them."
How do we do that? Hermeneutics:
Don't assume that the world is "codified according to a code which we possess." Instead, understand the "each man is only a small part of the world, that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects of a coarse net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly."
p. 60
Intelligence work
Wow! He predicted the creation of the CIA!
"The [State] Department should be able to call on its own intelligence bureau to assemble the facts in a way suited to the diplomatic problem up for decision. And these facts the diplomatic intelligence bureau would obtain from the central clearing house."
"The central agency would, thus, have in it the makings of a national university."
p. 246
Toward the end, he offers some viewpoints on the masses:
"You cannot take more political wisdom out of human beings than there is in them. And no reform, however sensational, is truly radical, which does not consciously provide a way of overcoming the subjectivism of human opinion based on the limitation of individual experience." P. 249
So, we've really got to make sure people don't just vote on what they think they know -- so, we must make sure we inform them correctly.
So that they do not "elaborate their prejudice instead of increasing their knowledge."
But, who gets to decide what they know?
He never really says, other than deciders must influence the press
I'm not sure he believes one entity must decide.
Marketplace of ideas, and whatnot.
The appeal to the public
States the obvious again:
"The amount of attention available is far too small for any scheme in which it was assumed that all the citizens of the nation would, after devoting themselves to the publications of all the intelligence bureaus, become alert, informed, and eager on the multitude of real questions that never do fit very well into any broad principle. I am not making that assumption." p.250
"The purpose, then, is not to burden every citizen with expert opinions on all questions, but to push that burden away from him towards the responsible administrator."
This is very different from: "The public are stupid"
Lippman understood the dangers of the press controlling the message:
"For the practice of appealing to the public on all sorts of intricate matters means almost always a desire to escape criticism from those who know by enlisting a large majority which has had no chance to know. The verdict is made to depend on who has the loudest or the most entrancing voice, the most skillful or the most brazen publicity man, the best access to the most space in the newspapers. For even when the editor is scrupulously fair to "the other side," fairness is not enough. There may be several other sides, unmentioned by any of the organized, financed and active partisans."
Seems reasonable.
"The private citizen, beset by partisan appeals for the loan of his Public Opinion, will soon see, perhaps, that these appeals are not a compliment to his intelligence, but an imposition on his good nature and an insult to his sense of evidence."
Calls for experts to hash things out:
"That can be done by having the representative inside carry on discussion in the presence of some one, chairman or mediator, who forces the discussion to deal with the analyses supplied by experts. This is the essential organization of any representative body dealing with distant matters. The partisan voices should be there, but the partisans should find themselves confronted with men, not personally involved, who control enough facts and have the dialectical skill to sort out what is real perception from what is stereotype, pattern and elaboration..."
"The value of expert mediation is not that it sets up opinion to coerce the partisans, but that it disintegrates partisanship." p. 253
Expert mediation didn't really settle the case of Bush v. Gore, though.
Conservatives thought it was great; liberals decried it -- no partisanship disintegration
So, Lippman's got a great message up to a point -- but he loses me on the "experts make the decisions" -- are the public to simply let the experts figure out everything and never question anything? Seems untenable.
Agrees with Dewey, says that "education is the supreme remedy, the value of this education will depend upon the evolution of knowledge. And our knowledge of human institutions is still extraordinarily meager and impressionistic."
But, just because we're educated, doesn't mean will can interpret facts correctly.
Suggests teaching critical thought:
"What he can do is to prepare them to deal with that world with a great deal more sophistication about their own minds. He can, by the use of the case method, teach the pupil the habit of examining the sources of his information."
Do we teach this now?
I don't think so; I think we teach that there's one correct way to look at the world.
Thinking about Mass Publics
What are the theoretical, ethical, aesthetical and political challenges associated with mass publics?
Theoretically -- How exactly does one define a mass public, as opposed to a public? It appears that these authors refer to a mass public as a group that's easily swayed by mass media. Publics -- as conceptualized by previous authors -- are groups that engage in critical-rational debate. Of course, publics must get their information from some source, but if it's not the mass media, then it must be all right. The concept of "mass public" looks a lot like the hypdermic needle theory -- the mass public will believe whatever they're told by the mass media. Of course, this theory breaks down on many levels. Most dismiss it because of the rise of Lazarfeld's limited effects theory, but those theorists have come under fire as well. Perhaps, the real reason publics don't really act as mass publics (swayed at the whim of the mass media) is because publics have so many media choices and other opinion leaders. And, at the end of the day they take what propaganda was fed to them -- from various sources -- and make up their own minds.
Ethically -- Bernays insists that manipulating public opinion is actually teaching the public to "ask for what it really wants" and thereby teaching "the public how to safeguard itself against his own possible tyrannous aggressiveness" (p. 960). So, Bernays says we're not manipulating opinion, we're just helping people identify their true beliefs. The notion requires a rather large suspension of disbelief. Bernays argues that making people adopt a certain position is somehow helping them exercise their own free will -- an interesting ethical position. One wonders if Bernays truly believed what he was saying. Of course, Bernays would hope that we not discount this (manufactured?) view the public relations is fundamentally good. Perhaps, he's right. After all, public relations campaigns fail all the time, perhaps because you can't get people to believe something that fundamentally disagrees with their core beliefs. Bernays offers a laundry list of PR success and none of them seem overtly disturbing to core beliefs -- anti-lynching, hat buying, margarine. But, one wonders how Bernays would have responded to the successful propaganda tactics used by the Nazis. Was hatred for the Jews something that the public really wanted? Perhaps this is the difference between a mass and a public -- a mass can be led astray away from their core beliefs (just like a mob) but a public will remain true to their values.
On another ethical matter, Bernays makes a good point. Media leaders hold a great ability to shape public opinion. But, he points out that public opinion was once shaped by kings, tribal chiefs, and religious leaders. As Henry V said, "Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of manners, Kate" (Act V, Scene II.) When viewed through this lens, the art of manipulating public opinion can be viewed as democratic, since anyone (who can sway the press) can now work to change public sentiment. Is this ethically defensible?
Aethetically -- Dewey, Cooley and Park are all quite quite skeptical of new media and their effect on culture. None of them viewed film (the newest media at the time) as a cultural improvement. They may have simply been reflecting their times, many early films weren't adding much to their culture. Obviously, they have grown in stature as a truly independent form of art. All new media offer both a benefit and detriment to society. To embrace or dismiss them (radio, television, Internet, cell phones) wholly doesn't really make sense.
Politically -- Assuming that propaganda works to sway mass publics, we must ask how can governments work to make sure their people are swayed by the correct kind of propaganda. First, an acknowledgment that some propaganda is good. Many mass publics have been swayed by good PR -- e.g., civil rights, smoking, and seat belts. Also, an acknowledgment that public schools are the best forum for propaganda in the world. (Bernays says PR is overtly partisan while education "attempts to be disinterested" (p. 959).) But, how does an elected government determine what propaganda is the one which should sway the masses. For instance, some people blame the U.S. obesity epidemic in part on the USDA and their food pyramid that overstated the need for breads. Also, how can we tell what is fact-based propaganda vs. ideology-based propaganda. Who gets to decide? The IPA was criticized because their efforts at identifying propaganda seemed to contain political bias (p. 163). Only capitalists engage in propaganda, never communists or labor unions. Propaganda's easy to spot -- when the propagandist doesn't belong to your political party.
Interesting question: What do we make of Park and his almost theological bend toward sociology? Czitrom said the he treated it as a religion -- "defining unities and wholeness in the modern world" (p. 120) -- and could have easily gone into the seminary. Park's quote: "We have only to open our eyes to see organization; and if we cannot do that no definition will help us." Hmm.
Theoretically -- How exactly does one define a mass public, as opposed to a public? It appears that these authors refer to a mass public as a group that's easily swayed by mass media. Publics -- as conceptualized by previous authors -- are groups that engage in critical-rational debate. Of course, publics must get their information from some source, but if it's not the mass media, then it must be all right. The concept of "mass public" looks a lot like the hypdermic needle theory -- the mass public will believe whatever they're told by the mass media. Of course, this theory breaks down on many levels. Most dismiss it because of the rise of Lazarfeld's limited effects theory, but those theorists have come under fire as well. Perhaps, the real reason publics don't really act as mass publics (swayed at the whim of the mass media) is because publics have so many media choices and other opinion leaders. And, at the end of the day they take what propaganda was fed to them -- from various sources -- and make up their own minds.
Ethically -- Bernays insists that manipulating public opinion is actually teaching the public to "ask for what it really wants" and thereby teaching "the public how to safeguard itself against his own possible tyrannous aggressiveness" (p. 960). So, Bernays says we're not manipulating opinion, we're just helping people identify their true beliefs. The notion requires a rather large suspension of disbelief. Bernays argues that making people adopt a certain position is somehow helping them exercise their own free will -- an interesting ethical position. One wonders if Bernays truly believed what he was saying. Of course, Bernays would hope that we not discount this (manufactured?) view the public relations is fundamentally good. Perhaps, he's right. After all, public relations campaigns fail all the time, perhaps because you can't get people to believe something that fundamentally disagrees with their core beliefs. Bernays offers a laundry list of PR success and none of them seem overtly disturbing to core beliefs -- anti-lynching, hat buying, margarine. But, one wonders how Bernays would have responded to the successful propaganda tactics used by the Nazis. Was hatred for the Jews something that the public really wanted? Perhaps this is the difference between a mass and a public -- a mass can be led astray away from their core beliefs (just like a mob) but a public will remain true to their values.
On another ethical matter, Bernays makes a good point. Media leaders hold a great ability to shape public opinion. But, he points out that public opinion was once shaped by kings, tribal chiefs, and religious leaders. As Henry V said, "Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of manners, Kate" (Act V, Scene II.) When viewed through this lens, the art of manipulating public opinion can be viewed as democratic, since anyone (who can sway the press) can now work to change public sentiment. Is this ethically defensible?
Aethetically -- Dewey, Cooley and Park are all quite quite skeptical of new media and their effect on culture. None of them viewed film (the newest media at the time) as a cultural improvement. They may have simply been reflecting their times, many early films weren't adding much to their culture. Obviously, they have grown in stature as a truly independent form of art. All new media offer both a benefit and detriment to society. To embrace or dismiss them (radio, television, Internet, cell phones) wholly doesn't really make sense.
Politically -- Assuming that propaganda works to sway mass publics, we must ask how can governments work to make sure their people are swayed by the correct kind of propaganda. First, an acknowledgment that some propaganda is good. Many mass publics have been swayed by good PR -- e.g., civil rights, smoking, and seat belts. Also, an acknowledgment that public schools are the best forum for propaganda in the world. (Bernays says PR is overtly partisan while education "attempts to be disinterested" (p. 959).) But, how does an elected government determine what propaganda is the one which should sway the masses. For instance, some people blame the U.S. obesity epidemic in part on the USDA and their food pyramid that overstated the need for breads. Also, how can we tell what is fact-based propaganda vs. ideology-based propaganda. Who gets to decide? The IPA was criticized because their efforts at identifying propaganda seemed to contain political bias (p. 163). Only capitalists engage in propaganda, never communists or labor unions. Propaganda's easy to spot -- when the propagandist doesn't belong to your political party.
Interesting question: What do we make of Park and his almost theological bend toward sociology? Czitrom said the he treated it as a religion -- "defining unities and wholeness in the modern world" (p. 120) -- and could have easily gone into the seminary. Park's quote: "We have only to open our eyes to see organization; and if we cannot do that no definition will help us." Hmm.
"New Communication or Old Propaganda" -- Michael Sproule
Chapter 7 of Sproule's work continues exploring the leftist critique on mass media. Between the 1930s and the 1950s, researchers began studying "communication," rather than "propaganda" (p. 224). Propaganda criticisms seen in the IPA were largely case study, qualitative research. In the 1950s, communication researchers favored quantitative methods. Researchers saw these quantitative studies as more reliable and less likely to contain biases from the researcher. Stouffer spoke of the "white light of a statistical appraisal" (p. 225). Communication researchers went out their way to keep ideology out of the picture, probably in part to the heavily ideological bias of the IPA (p. 227). They noted that propaganda analysis assumed the hyperdermic needle -- "somehow and somewhere, society got moved when the media sopke" (p. 227, 234). Propaganda criticis tended to look at the public as a "mass." By keeping away from the extremes, the new wave of communication researchers didn't run foul with grantors and agencies (p. 230). Despite this less-fervant political agenda, McCarthyism led to great scrutiny of media researchers, large foundations (p. 246). Some groups did combat what was perceived as a McCarthyism-media cabal (p. 252). Media critic Lee ("How to Understand Proganda") emerged but was ignored. He brought back the idea of the public as a "public." Lee said that a "consumer does not need to be highly skilled" to break free of propaganda's hold. With proper analysis people could get back their "town hall spirit" (p. 249). In the 70s, Adorno and the Frankfurt school were introduced widely into U.S. media criticism. Many dismissed Frankfurt ideas for a number of reasons, but the most obvious isn't mentioned: the predicted collapse of capitalism that never materialized. Media criticism evolved into the "social responsibility" model -- where media manufacturers display restraint, and the government doesn't get too involved (p. 255).
"Toward a New Community? Modern Communication in the Social Thought of Charles Horton Cooley, John Dewey, and Robert E. Park" -- Daniel J. Czitrom
Czitrom's chapter covers the life history and evolution of Cooley, Dewey and Park. The chapter notes that the three men "construed modern communication as an agent for restoring a broad moral and political consensus to America" (p. 92) This consensus was needed because of the "wrenching disruptions" caused by urbanization, industrialization and immigration. They hoped that "broadly based public opinion, rooted in the wide diffusion of organized intelligence, could counteract the modern gesellschaft, but feared that the expressive side of the new media would reinforce it." So, if everyone could get educated, and the public would be informed, then they could make intelligent decisions. But, if "express" media like films continued to gain in popularity, then the public sphere would continue its decline. Cooley saw communication as a key to helping people relate to the world -- in an almost metaphysical, we're-all-connected sense. Cooley (p.99) "envisioned a society in which the individual is self-concious and devoted to his work, yet he feels himself and that work, as part of a larger and joyous whole" (a.k.a "organicism.") Dewey enjoyed a grand unified theory as well, hence his attraction to Hegelian philosophy. Dewey: "Hegel's synthesis of subject and object, matter and spirit, the divine and the human, was, however, no mere intellectual formula; it operated as a immense release, a liberation" (p. 103). He hoped that a "Great Community" (of interconnectedness) could be achieved through "free and full communication" (p. 111). After unsuccessful attempts at actually implementing changes into communication system (e.g., "Thought News"), Dewey retreated to a more comfortable identity: "a philosopher of communication, absorbed in the metaphysical complexities of the communicative process" (p. 112). Park also saw communication as a way to create a collective thought. Park argued "that the press must go beyond merely orienting the public to issues, it must "bring into existence a collective will and a political power which, as it mobilizes the community to act, tends to terminate discussion" (p. 118). He saw the press as a mechanism for "controlling collective attention" (p. 115). So, all three men saw these new communication tools as a elements that could "promote unity and a democratically achieved consensus in American public life" (p. 119). But, they all also worred about "expressive" media (e.g., pop culture, like movies and periodicals) which could prove to be the public sphere's undoing. "The darker side of modern communication's potential was in the cultural sphere" (p. 120). What would they say if they watched "America's Got Talent"?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
