The Phantom Public
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The Phantom Public
''The Phantom Public'' is a book published in 1925 by journalist Walter Lippmann in which he expresses his lack of faith in the democratic system by arguing that the public exists merely as an illusion, myth, and inevitably a phantom. As Carl Bybee wrote, "For Lippmann the public was a theoretical fiction and government was primarily an administrative problem to be solved as efficiently as possible, so that people could get on with their own individualistic pursuits". Bybee, 1999, p.48 Context ''The Phantom Public'' was published in 1925 following Lippmann's experiences observing the manipulation of public opinion during World War I and the rise of fascism in Benito Mussolini's Italy. It followed his better-known work ''Public Opinion'' (1922) and moves further toward disillusionment with democratic politics. The book provoked a response from philosopher John Dewey, who argued in '' The Public and its Problems'' (1927) that the public was not a phantom but merely "in eclipse" and ...
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Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann (September 23, 1889 – December 14, 1974) was an American writer, reporter and political commentator. With a career spanning 60 years, he is famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War, coining the term " stereotype" in the modern psychological meaning, as well as critiquing media and democracy in his newspaper column and several books, most notably his 1922 book ''Public Opinion''. Lippmann also played a notable role in Woodrow Wilson's post-World War I board of inquiry, as its research director. His views regarding the role of journalism in a democracy were contrasted with the contemporaneous writings of John Dewey in what has been retrospectively named the Lippmann-Dewey debate. Lippmann won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for his syndicated newspaper column "Today and Tomorrow" and one for his 1961 interview of Nikita Khrushchev. He has also been highly praised with titles ranging anywhere from "most influential" journalist of the 20th c ...
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Jay Rosen
Jay Rosen (born May 5, 1956) is a writer, and a professor of journalism at New York University. Rosen is a contributor to ''De Correspondent'' and a member of the George Foster Peabody Awards board of directors. Biography Rosen has been on the journalism faculty at New York University since 1986. From 1999 to 2005, he served as chair of the department. He was one of the earliest advocates and supporters of citizen journalism, encouraging the press to take a more active interest in citizenship, improving public debate, and enhancing life. His book about the subject, ''What Are Journalists For?'', was published in 1999. Rosen often is described in the media as an intellectual leader of the movement of public journalism. Rosen frequently writes about issues in journalism and developments in the media. Media criticism and other articles by Rosen have appeared in ''The New York Times'', ''Los Angeles Times'', ''Salon'', ''Harper's Magazine'', and ''The Nation''. He is known for ...
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Post-factual
Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics and post-reality politics) is a political culture where true/false, honesty/lying have become a focal concern of public life and are viewed by popular commentators and academic researchers alike as having an important causal role in how politics operates at a particular point in history (especially influenced by new communication and media technologies). Oxford Dictionaries declared that its international word of the year in 2016 was "Post-truth", citing a 20-fold increase in usage compared to 2015 and noted that it was commonly associated with the noun "post-truth politics." Popularized as a term in news media, and a dictionary definition, post-truth has developed from a short-hand label for the abundance and influence of misleading or false political truth claims into a concept empirically studied and theorized by academic research. Since post-truth politics are primarily known through public truth statements in specific m ...
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Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism (also neo-liberalism) is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent factor in the rise of conservative and libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominantly advocated by them, it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society. The defining features of neoliberalism in both thought and practice have been the subject of substantial scholarly debate. As an economic philosophy, neoliberalism emerged among European liberal scholars in the 1930s as they attempted to revive and renew central ideas from classical liberalism as they saw these ideas diminish ...
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Procedural Democracy
Procedural democracy or proceduralist democracy or proceduralism is a term used to denote the particular procedures, such as regular elections based on universal suffrage, that produce an electorally-legitimated government. Procedural democracy, with its centering of electoral processes as the basis of democratic legitimacy, is often contrasted with substantive or participatory democracy, which centers the equal participation of all groups in society in the political process as the basis of legitimacy. The term is often used to denote an artificial appearance of democracy through the existence of democratic procedures like elections when in reality power is held by a small group of elites who manipulate democratic processes to make themselves appear democratically legitimate. See also * Illiberal democracy * Substantive democracy Substantive democracy is a form of democracy in which the outcome of elections is representative of the people. In other words, substantive democracy ...
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Liberal Democracy
Liberal democracy is the combination of a liberal political ideology that operates under an indirect democratic form of government. It is characterized by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified (such as in the United States) or uncodified (such as in the United Kingdom), to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of expansion in the second half of the 20th century, liberal democracy became a prevalent political system in the world.Anna Lührmann, Seraphine F. Maerz, Sandra Grahn, Nazifa Alizada, Lisa Gastaldi, Sebastian Hellmeier, Garry Hindle ...
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Types Of Democracy
Types of democracy refers to pluralism of governing structures such as governments (local through to global) and other constructs like workplaces, families, community associations, and so forth. Types of democracy can cluster around values. For example, some like direct democracy, electronic democracy, participatory democracy, real democracy, and deliberative democracy, strive to allow people to participate equally and directly in protest, discussion, decision-making, or other acts of politics. Different types of democracy - like representative democracy - strive for indirect participation as this procedural approach to collective self-governance is still widely considered the only means for the more or less stable democratic functioning of mass societies.Diamond, Larry Jay and Plattner, Marc F. (2006)Electoral systems and democracy p. 168. Johns Hopkins University Press. Types of democracy can be found across time, space, and language.Jean-Paul Gagnon (2013)Evolutionary Basic ...
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Social Influence
Social influence comprises the ways in which individuals adjust their behavior to meet the demands of a social environment. It takes many forms and can be seen in conformity, socialization, peer pressure, obedience (human behavior), obedience, leadership, persuasion, sales, and marketing. Typically social influence results from a specific action, command, or request, but people also alter their attitudes and behaviors in response to what they perceive others might do or think. In 1958, Harvard psychologist Herbert Kelman identified three broad varieties of social influence. #Compliance (psychology), Compliance is when people appear to agree with others but actually keep their dissenting opinions private. #Identification (psychology), Identification is when people are influenced by someone who is liked and respected, such as a famous celebrity. #Internalisation (sociology), Internalization is when people accept a belief or behavior and agree both publicly and privately. Morton Deuts ...
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Rationality
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either ''arational'', if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or ''irrational'', if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards. There are many discussions about the essential features shared by all forms of rationality. According to reason-responsiveness accounts, to be rational is to be responsive to reasons. For example, dark clouds are a reason for taking an umbrella, which is why it is rational for an agent to do so in response. An important rival to this approach are coherence-based accoun ...
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Society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Societies are characterized by patterns of relationships (social relations) between individuals who share a distinctive culture and institutions; a given society may be described as the sum total of such relationships among its constituent of members. In the social sciences, a larger society often exhibits stratification or dominance patterns in subgroups. Societies construct patterns of behavior by deeming certain actions or concepts as acceptable or unacceptable. These patterns of behavior within a given society are known as societal norms. Societies, and their norms, undergo gradual and perpetual changes. Insofar as it is collaborative, a society can enable its members to benefit in ways that would otherwise be difficult on an individua ...
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Citizen
Citizenship is a "relationship between an individual and a state to which the individual owes allegiance and in turn is entitled to its protection". Each state determines the conditions under which it will recognize persons as its citizens, and the conditions under which that status will be withdrawn. Recognition by a state as a citizen generally carries with it recognition of civil, political, and social rights which are not afforded to non-citizens. In general, the basic rights normally regarded as arising from citizenship are the right to a passport, the right to leave and return to the country/ies of citizenship, the right to live in that country, and to work there. Some countries permit their citizens to have multiple citizenships, while others insist on exclusive allegiance. Determining factors A person can be recognized or granted citizenship on a number of bases. Usually, citizenship based on circumstances of birth is automatic, but an application may be required. ...
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