1. Walter Lippmann argued that people form "pictures inside our heads" and rely on stereotypes to understand the world, as most knowledge comes indirectly through limited and filtered sources. 2. These simplified mental pictures and stereotypes are influenced by media and culture and often fail to accurately reflect reality. They can be manipulated for political propaganda. 3. Lippmann was skeptical about the ability of the public to make informed decisions in the modern mass society, and argued elites must guide public opinion, in contrast to democratic ideals of an engaged citizenry.

1. Walter Lippmann and Public
Opinion in early 20th century
America

2. Lasswell on Communication and
Political Propaganda
• We need to link what we were discussing in the
previous lecture about propaganda with our
concentration on the ideas of Harold Lasswell
with today’s discussion about Walter Lippmann
who was specifically concerned with public
opinion.
• Lasswell communications model
Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) What Channel
(with) What Effect
and on politics:
 Politics is who gets what, when, and how

3. Lasswell: propaganda 1)form; and 2)
channels
1. FORM in which the significant symbols are
embodied to reach the public may be spoken,
-written, pictorial, or musical, and
2. CHANNELS : number of stimulus carriers is
infinite: newspapers, (as students mentioned
propaganda warfare between the two parties
in PNG) leaflets, placards, posters, billboards,
sports grounds, public transport;
(today: radio, TV, Internet)

4. LASSWELL: definition of propaganda in his
article on “The Theory of Political
Propaganda” (1927)
• “the management of collective attitudes by
the manipulation of significant symbols”
• attitude is taken to mean a tendency to act
according to certain patterns of valuation that
may not be based on direct experience.

5. History and increasing importance of
propaganda as a tool of government
In earlier times rulers could impose their will through
force, rule by the sword; but this changes with the
coming of the Reformation and the Renaissance, the
printing press, the industrial revolution and the rise
of the middle classes, and finally the working class
Now public opinion matters, leaders have to win the
consent of the governed. This is summed up by
Lasswell in the last paragraph of the reading from
“The Theory of Political Propaganda” (1927):

6. • The ever-present function of propaganda in
modern life is in large measure attributable to
the social disorganization which has been
precipitated by the rapid advent of technological
changes. Impersonality has supplanted personal
loyalty to leaders. Literacy and the physical
channels of communication have quickened the
connection between those who rule and the
ruled. Conventions have arisen which favor the
ventilation of opinions and the taking of votes.
Most of that which formerly could be done by
violence and intimidation must now be done by
argument and persuasion. Democracy is the
dictatorship of palaver (Lasswell, 1927)

7. Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion ,
“The Pictures inside our Heads” and
Stereotypes
• Walter Lippmann was a key figure in the
shaping and studying of Public Opinion in the
20th century.

8. Context for the ideas of Lasswell &
Lippmann
PROPAGANDA IN THE NEW AGE OF MASS COMMUNICATIONS
1.Propaganda played an important part in WWI
2. Nature of 20th century American society
• Mass communications, mass society, urbanization, European
migration, people on the move to America and across America,
cars on the highways, trains criss-crossing America, factories,
cinema introduced new visual age (power of visual imagery) radio
introduced, mass production in industry, capitalism, advertising
industry to sell the goods being produced by the new technologies
• Result: whole new type of society; connected society, beginnings
of a wired world
• Conclusion: this is the essential historical background to the new
theories about mass communication being developed… by
thinkers like Lasswell and Lippmann

9. Lippmann on Public Opinion &
Democracy in America
Idea of American style democracy:
• Public opinion would be expressed
periodically through elections and as a
constant pressure on officials.
• Public opinion, in turn, would be cultivated by
a free and vigorous press
But, Lippmann thought that the 18th century
equation of a free press, informed citizens and
viable was no longer possible in the modern
age (then first half of 20th century)

10. Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922
• Ideas about formation of public opinion
developed; using terms like: pictures inside our
heads, fictions and symbols, and stereotypes
• (Anecdote to illustrate: 1914, a number of
Germans, Frenchmen, and Englishmen trapped
on an island at the outbreak of the First World
War, were friends until news of the outbreak of
war arrived by boat - because no access to
information)
–

11. Pictures inside out heads
• Discrepancy between the world and the
“realities’ we perceive and act upon;
• Most of what we know of the environment we
live in comes to us indirectly, but
“whatever we believe to be a true picture, we
treat as if it were the environment itself”

12. Most knowledge of environment
through Fictions and Symbols
• IMPORTANT FOR EXISTING SOCIAL ORDER
• IMPORTANT TO HUMAN COMMUNICATION
• Nearly every individual deals with events that
are out of sight and hard to grasp. Lippmann
(1922) observes,
• "The only feeling that anyone can have about
an event he does not experience is the feeling
aroused by his mental image of that event."

13. • We often respond as powerfully to fictions as
to realities, and often we help create those
fictions.
• In every case, there has been inserted
between us and the environment a
pseudoenvironment, and it is to this
pseudoenvironment that we respond.
• Propaganda, is an effort to alter the pictures
to which we respond.

14. Why pictures inside our heads often mislead us in
our dealings with the outside world:
• censorship;
• limitations of social contact;
• meagre time available each day for paying
attention to public affairs;
• distortions as a result of compressing events into
short messages—abstraction
• The use of a small vocabulary to describe a
complex world ;
• and the fear of facing facts that threaten our lives

15. Lippmann’s conclusion about democratic
government in 20th century mass society
• In Public Opinion (1922), Lippmann compared the
masses to a “great beast” and a “bewildered herd” that
needed to be guided by a governing class.
Phantom Public (1925)
"The individual man does not have opinions on public
affairs... I cannot imagine how he could know, and
there is not the least reason for thinking, as mystical
democrats have thought, that the compounding of
individual ignorances in masses of people can produce
a continuous directing force in public affairs

16. STEREOTYPES: Lippmann introduced
the term
• “Stereotype: A fixed, commonly held notion or
image of a person or group, based on an
oversimplification of some observed or imagined
trait of behaviour or appearance.” (modern
definition)
• http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/special_initiatives/toolkit/stereotypes/what_are_stereotypes.cfm
• Some examples (not from Lippmann) Mexicans
are lazy and came into America illegally; all Arabs
and Muslims are terrorists; the English have bad
teeth; Italian or French people are the best
lovers; African Americans are all good at sport;
blondes are dumb.

17. Lippmann and Stereotypes
• Lippmann presented “stereotypes” as a
characteristic element of human perception.
He argued that they were essential in the
modern world because the global reach of
contemporary society, made it impossible for
people to make sense of the world on the
basis of first-hand knowledge.

18. Where stereotypes come from
• For Lippmann, the stereotypes did not come from the
individual. For the most part we do not first see, and
then define, we define first and then see.
• We pick out what our culture has already defined for
us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked
out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.
• Media trades in stereotypes
• Characteristic of modern mass societies in contrast to
the more closed societies before the mass
communications revolution

19. QUESTIONS
1. What does Lippmann mean by “the pictures
inside our heads”?
2. Why does he think people respond to the
modern environment by forming pictures
inside their heads and through mental maps
or stereotypes?
3. What connection do you see between
Lippmann’s ideas and communication for
development?