Walter Lippmann and Public Opinion

Abstract

Walter Lippmann’s seminal writing, Public Opinion, remains a classic text in communications studies a century after its first publication. By examining Lippmann’s unpublished notes and drafts alongside key contemporary works, new light is shed on how the book’s origins predated the First World War and how its argument went beyond debates about technocratic government. Lippmann’s main agenda was to contest liberal-constitutionalist theories of public opinion; his core intervention was to develop a social psychology of opinion formation. He drafted and wrote Public Opinion as a descriptive account of democratic politics under modern conditions. Instead of simply prescribing technocratic solutions, Lippmann framed a starker paradox: democracy through public opinion defined modern politics, but modernity also made opinion formation ever more difficult.