Herbert Irving Schiller (November 5, 1919 – January 29, 2000) was an American media critic, sociologist, author, and scholar. He earned his PhD in 1960 from

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

. Schiller warned of two major trends in his prolific writings and speeches: the private takeover of public space and public institutions at home, and U.S. corporate domination of cultural life abroad, especially in the developing nations. His eight books and hundreds of articles in both scholarly and popular journals made him a key figure both in communication research and in the public debate over the role of the media in modern society. He was widely known for the term “packaged consciousness,” that argues American

media Media may refer to: Communication * Media (communication), tools used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Broadcast media, communications delivered over mass e ...

is controlled by a few corporations that “create, process, refine and preside over the circulation of images and information which determines our beliefs, attitudes and ultimately our behavior.” Schiller used Time Warner Inc. as an example of packaged consciousness, stating that it “basically dominates publishing, cable television, recordings, tapes and filmmaking.” He was married to

librarian A librarian is a person who works professionally in a library providing access to information, and sometimes social or technical programming, or instruction on information literacy to users. The role of the librarian has changed much over time ...

and

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researc ...

Anita Schiller, and their children include sons Zach and Dan. Zach Schiller is a public policy analyst in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, and Dan Schiller is a

telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that fe ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

Writings

* ''Mass Communications and American Empire'' (1969) * ''Mind Managers'' (1973) * ''The Ideology of International Communications'' (Monograph Series / Institute for Media Analysis, Inc, No. 4) * ''Mass Communications and American Empire'' (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries) * ''Super-state; readings in the military-industrial complex'' * ''

Communication and Cultural Domination Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...

'' (1976) * ''Living in the Number One Country : Reflections from a Critic of American Empire'' * '' Who Knows : Information in the Age of the Fortune 500'' (1981) * ''Information and the Crisis Economy'', Oxford University Press (1984), Oxford University Press, Reprint 1986, * '' Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression'', Oxford University Press, 1989, ; Reprint 1996, * '' Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America'', Routledge 1995,

Secondary literature

*Richard Maxwell: ''Herbert Schiller'' (Critical Media Studies), Rowman & Littlefield, 2003,

External links

UCSD Department of Communication

Biography of Herbert Schiller

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20030828055832/http://www.libr.org/pl/16_Hudson.html Understanding Information Media in the Age of Neoliberalism: The Contributions of Herbert Schiller
Noted UC San Diego Communication Scholar, Media Critic Herb Schiller Dies

Public Information as a Function of Private Profit ''The Open Mind'' (1991)

Freedom of the Press or Cultural Imperialism ''The Open Mind'' (1979)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schiller, Herbert 1919 births 2000 deaths American media critics Communication theorists 20th-century American non-fiction writers