The following is based on “Manufacturing Consent – The Political Economy of the Mass Media;” a speech given by Noam Chomsky in 1989 that you can watch on YouTube
The printing press brought about a fundamental change to the way people communicated. People learned to read and had access to periodicals and books (see this essay). As important they had the means to publish their own periodicals. European populace began to question authority and share philosophical and political ideas previously alien to them.
“They have made the people thereby so curious and arrogant that they will never find humility enough to submit to a civil rule.” – Clement Walker
The question; “will mass communication affect anarchy in society?” is what Walker is addressing. This question is pertinent today. The answer some philosophers of Western civilization have for this question may surprise you.
John Locke was a proponent of limited liberal government that he believed should serve the people’s best interest. He believed in religious tolerance and an inclusive education system. He did not believe that people necessarily knew what their best interests were. Therefore, he concludes, the leaders of society should tell them what to think.
“day-labourers and tradesmen, the spinsters and dairy-maids … hearing plain commands, is the sure and only course to bring them to obedience and practice. The greatest part cannot know, and therefore they must believe.” John Locke
Reinhold Niebuhr was a Protestant theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary. He developed the philosophy known as Christian Realism. The idea is that humanity cannot attain perfection on earth and must settle for the best possible outcome. Compromise truth if necessary for the greater good.
“The naïve faith of the proletarian is the faith of the man of action. Rationality belongs to the cool observers. There is of course an element of illusion in the faith of the proletarian, as there is in all faith. But it is a necessary illusion, without which some truth is obscured. The inertia of society is so stubborn that no one will move against it, if he cannot believe that it can be more easily overcome than is actually the case.” Reinhold Niebuhr
Walter Lippman was a journalist and political philosopher. His belief was also the common man didn’t have the mental capacity to calculate what their best interests were let alone how to achieve them. Therefore, according to Lippman, moral men must control the flow of information in the best interest of society and the people in it.
“Lippman argues that, when properly deployed in the public interest, the manufacture of consent is useful and necessary for a democratic society, because, in many cases, “the common interests” of the public are not obvious except upon careful analysis of the collected data, a critical intellectual exercise in which most people are uninterested or are incapable of doing” Wikipedia
Frederick Paxson was interested in the problem faced by American politicians during World War I. People in the US were isolationists and had no interest in being involved in European imperial wars. Without US involvement the results of WWI could have been different.
“Paxson coined the term ‘Historical Engineering’ to describe the wartime work he had done in revising textbooks to suit the mood of the era of the World War, by ‘explaining the issues of the war that we might the better win it‘.” Wikipedia
This basic philosophical question is addressed by Plato in the “Republic.” Do people have the capacity to fully govern themselves or will the great variety of self interest groups cause a purely democratic society to devolve into anarchy? According to Plato the latter is the answer. He continues that anarchy, being a power void, will inevitably be filled with totalitarian dictatorship.
The propaganda machine is justified by these philosophers as designed to influence the masses in the people’s best interest. If this is to be the model of communication, of media, then who controls the reigns of this machine becomes all important. The obvious complication; what if oligarchs or dictators gain control of the media machine?