Parochialism, propaganda and Public Opinion: Reading Lippmann in Zuboff’s Age of Surveillance Capitalism

By comparing the theoretical assessments of the effects of propaganda on liberal democratic discourse about the role of media in liberal democracy made by Walter Lippmann in Public Opinion in 1922 and Shoshana Zuboff in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019) nearly a century later, this historically grounded article considers the two critics’ analyses of the threat posed by propaganda to the reproduction of free speech in a liberal democracy. The cross-century comparison of their respective critiques of media demonstrates the relevance of Lippmann’s ‘stereotype’ and his frustrated, but still useful, three-part dynamic of public opinion: journalism, the public and the government. For both scholars, the rehabilitation of the public ‘un-commons’ from domination by state and corporate-driven propaganda is paramount.