12 - Epilogue: The question of elite domination of public opinion

Summary

The voice of the people is but an echo. The output of an echo chamber bears an inevitable and invariable relation to the input. As candidates and parties clamor for attention and vie for popular support, the people's verdict can be no more than a selective reflection from the alternatives and outlooks presented to them (p. 2).

–V. O. Key, Jr., The Responsible Electorate

In the 1930s and 1940s, many observers feared that the rise of the modern mass media would bring a new era of totalitarian domination. Mass circulation newspapers, the newly invented radio, and motion pictures seemed ideal tools for playing upon the fears of the new mass societies, and the great though temporary success of Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Stalin in the Soviet Union seemed to confirm everyone's worst fears.

George Orwell's famous novel 1984 is perhaps the best-known expression of this foreboding over the dark potential of the mass media, but many social scientists shared Orwell's apprehension. As a result, attempts to measure the effects of the mass media on public opinion were a staple of early opinion research.

This early research turned out to be reassuring, however. Compared to what many feared the media might be able to accomplish, surveys found media effects to be relatively small (Klapper, 1960).