Public Opinion (book)
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 Title page of the first edition | |
| Author | Walter Lippmann |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Public opinion |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Publisher | Harcourt, Brace & Co. |
Publication date | 1922 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Text | Public Opinion at Wikisource |
Public Opinion is a book by Walter Lippmann published in 1922. It is a critical assessment of functional democratic government, especially of the irrational and often self-serving social perceptions that influence individual behavior and prevent optimal societal cohesion.[1] The detailed descriptions of the cognitive limitations people face in comprehending their sociopolitical and cultural environments, leading them to apply an evolving catalogue of general stereotypes to a complex reality, rendered Public Opinion a seminal text in the fields of media studies, political science, and social psychology.
The introduction describes the human inability to interpret the world: "The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance"[2] between people and their environment. Instead, people construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world, and to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. People "live in the same world, but they think and feel in different ones."[3]
Human behavior is stimulated by the person's pseudo-environment and then is acted upon in the real world.[4] The book highlights some general implications of the interactions among one's psychology, environment, and the mass communications media.
More recent research uses the term "social constructionism" or "constructed reality" to describe what Lippmann (1922) called "pseudo-environment".[citation needed]
News and truth
By definition, pertinent facts are never provided completely and accurately; by necessity they are arranged to portray a certain, subjective interpretation of an event. Those who are most familiar with the greatest number of facts about a certain environment construct a pseudo-environment that aligns with their own 'stereotypes' and convey this to the public, knowingly or not, to suit their own private needs. This is inescapable human nature. Propaganda inherently requires a barrier of censorship between the event and the public. Thus mass communication media, by their nature as vehicles for informational transmission, are essentially vulnerable to manipulation.
The blame for that perceptual parallax falls not upon the mass media technology (print, radio, cinema, or, inferentially, television) or logistical concerns, but upon certain members of society who attend to life with little intellectual engagement. That causes the following:
- The buying public: the "bewildered herd" (a term here borrowed from The Phantom Public) must pay to understand the unseen environment by the mass communications media. The irony is that although the public's opinion is important, it must pay for its acceptance. People will be selective and will buy the most factual media at the lowest price: "For a dollar, you may not even get an armful of candy, but for a dollar or less people expect reality/representations of truth to fall into their laps." The media have the social function of transmitting public affairs information and their business profit role of surviving in the market.
- Nature of news: people publish already-confirmed news that are thus less disputable. Officially-available public matters will constitute "the news" and unofficial (private) matters are unavailable, are less available, or are used as "issues" for propaganda.
- News truth and conclusion: the function of news is to signal an event, and that signalling, eventually, is a consequence of editorial selection and judgement; journalism creates and sows the seeds (news) that establish public opinion.
