Public Opinion [Paperback]

Public Opinion, by Walter Lippman, is a critical assessment of functional democratic government, especially the irrational, and often self-serving, social perceptions that influence individual behavior, and prevent optimal societal cohesion. The descriptions of the cognitive limitations people face in comprehending their socio-political and cultural environments, proposes that people must inevitably apply an evolving catalogue of general stereotypes to a complex reality, rendered Public Opinion a seminal text in the fields of media studies, political science, and social psychology. The introductory first part describes mans inability to functionally perceive and accurately interpret the world with much accuracy: The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance, between people and their environment (reality). That people construct a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world; therefore, to a degree, everyone's pseudo-environment is a fiction. Hence, people live in the same world, but think and feel in different ones. Human behavior is stimulated by the persons pseudo-environment and then is acted upon in the real world. The chapter highlights some of the general implications of the interactions among ones psychology, environment, and the mass communications media. The second part describes the social, physical, and psychological barriers impeding mans ability to faithfully interpret the world; Chapter II: Censorship and Privacy; Chapter III: Contact and Opportunity; Chapter IV: Time and Attention; and Chapter V: Speed, Words, and Clearness describe how, for a given event, all of the pertinent facts are never provided completely and accurately; how, as a fraction of the whole, they often are arranged to portray a certain, subjective interpretation of an event. Often, those who know the real (true) environment construct a favorable, fictitious psel³q