Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Democracy: Democracy is a system of government in which the people have the power to choose their leaders and make decisions about how they are governed. It is based on the principles of equality, freedom, and participation._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Walter Lippmann on Democracy - Dictionary of Arguments
Pariser I 58 Democracy/Information/Media/Lippmann/Pariser: Walter Lippmann: Everything the harshest critics of democracy have claimed is true unless there is a steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news. Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and disaster arise where people are denied access to the facts.(1) Pariser I 62 Lippmann: 1920: The crisis of Western democracy is a crisis of journalism. (2) Pariser I 65 Lippmann describes how the media was to be harnessed after World War I: he quoted a newspaper editor: "Governments called public opinion to war service ... It had to march at goose step. It had to stand at attention and salute." (3) Lippmann thesis: public opinion was too malleable - people were easily manipulated and influenced by false information. In 1925, Lippmann wrote "The Phantom Public," an attempt to dismantle the illusion of a reasonable, informed public once and for all. Information/democracy/Lippmann: Thesis: it is an illusion to assume that informed citizens are capable of judging the major current issues of the day. Such "omnicompetent" citizens simply do not exist. At best, ordinary citizens could be trusted to vote out a party that is doing too badly. The actual work of governing should be entrusted to experts.(4) DeweyVsLippmann: The promise of democracy, he said, is to be able to learn to be human - to develop an effective awareness of being an individually distinctive member of a community through the give and take of communication. That, he said, must not be abandoned. Journalists and newspapers could play a crucial role in breaking open the closed institutions of the 1920s. (5) >Newspapers, >Democracy, >Public Sphere, >Manipulation, >Institutions. 1. Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1920, S. 6. 2. Ibid. p. 64 3. Ibid. p. 4 4. Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public, New York 1925. 5. John Dewey, Essays, Reviews and Miscellany, 1939 –1941, The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925 –1953, vol. 2, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998, S. 332._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
PolLippm I Walter Lippmann The Phantom Public New York 1993 Pariser I Eli Pariser The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think London 2012 |
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