Page 45 - Myths for the Masses An Essay on Mass Communication

Mass Communication and the Promise of Democracy

Moreover, public opinion became a valuable intellectual product
with the rise of polling and an interest in prediction and control of
opinions – especially for political purposes, like elections. Polling
turned into a lucrative business, the credibility of whose social sci-
entific methods only added to its success with politics and com-
merce, both always eager to know the outcome of their respective
campaigns.Yet there are problems with its principal claim to be able
to measure opinions about complex subjects when communicative
competence, expert understanding, and historical consciousness are
missing from the intellectual make-up of a contemporary society
(or where they are incomplete). Thus, the response of audiences
whose education lacks depth, whose interests are vague, and whose
knowledge is technical rather than practical, may jeopardize the
intent of a question. Immersed in the world of mass communica-
tion, which is the world of commodified distractions, individuals
most likely react with knowledge about the immediate, which
rewards spontaneity, but lacks thoughtfulness.
Public opinion polling is a form of mass communication that
benefited from the rising popularity of science in the nineteenth
century and from the subsequent reduction of all fields of know-
ledge to the dimensions of a natural science. It is cultivated by poll-
sters (and journalists) and recreated with scientific methods that are
compatible with earlier definitions of the individual as a machine
and the world as a mechanism. These ideas reappear in organismic
theories of society – such as Comte’s idea of society as a collective
organism with structure and specialized functions – which treat
communication as a binding force in society and public opinion as
a response that reflects the real needs of the masses. Since public
opinion deals with matters developed in the minds of others, it is
incapable of producing new ideas, or even recognizing them, before
they are presented. Mass communication, whether or not it creates
or manipulates public opinion, converts pending questions of rele-
vance or meaning into statements of fact through the act of publi-
cation, when public opinion becomes real, and reality demands a
response.
The pursuit of public opinion is the concrete manifestation of
a fundamental shift of the culture of mass communication (in the

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