11 May 2009
Persuasion Science
It is really dishonest for the media to decry the expense of political campaigning. In fact, that expense mainly consists of media buys. What the pundits should point out is the sorry state of our politics, which have become overly dependent on the media for opinion leadership.
Opinion leaders have been an important part of our body politic since the beginning of the republic. Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams and many others helped bind the nation together in rebellion against the British crown through their printed words. Today the wide exchange of political opinion is facilitated by the IT revolution, which has made the Internet a broad network of communication independent of printed media and publishers.
Nevertheless, our body politic, the democratic majority, has relinquished its freedom of thought, even in this age of weblogs, to those who are expert not in analyzing and resolving political problems, but in manipulating the means of communication in order to influence public opinion. They are engineers of the science of persuasion, combating the intellectual autonomy made possible by modern technology. The goal of their sponsors and patrons is to preserve commercial advantage and civic authority by pandering to a public that has become too apathetic to think for itself.
The media are just as guilty of this distortion of democratic ideals. Their goal is not to help their readers and viewers to draw well-considered conclusions; it is to fill the vacuum of intellectual activity with ideas that lead to their dominance of the channels of information distribution. These channels have value because they can be used to sell consumer goods and to convince voters to keep politicians in office.
It is really dishonest for the media to decry the expense of political campaigning. In fact, that expense mainly consists of media buys. What the pundits should point out is the sorry state of our politics, which have become overly dependent on the media for opinion leadership.
Opinion leaders have been an important part of our body politic since the beginning of the republic. Thomas Payne, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams and many others helped bind the nation together in rebellion against the British crown through their printed words. Today the wide exchange of political opinion is facilitated by the IT revolution, which has made the Internet a broad network of communication independent of printed media and publishers.
Nevertheless, our body politic, the democratic majority, has relinquished its freedom of thought, even in this age of weblogs, to those who are expert not in analyzing and resolving political problems, but in manipulating the means of communication in order to influence public opinion. They are engineers of the science of persuasion, combating the intellectual autonomy made possible by modern technology. The goal of their sponsors and patrons is to preserve commercial advantage and civic authority by pandering to a public that has become too apathetic to think for itself.
The media are just as guilty of this distortion of democratic ideals. Their goal is not to help their readers and viewers to draw well-considered conclusions; it is to fill the vacuum of intellectual activity with ideas that lead to their dominance of the channels of information distribution. These channels have value because they can be used to sell consumer goods and to convince voters to keep politicians in office.
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