Democracy: Under the Influence Research Paper

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The current course has significantly enlarged my scope of knowledge in various conceptions of the public and its role in a democracy. In this paper, I would like to resort to this knowledge to focus on the perspectives that I find missing in the works of the authors we have learned so far. The authors whose arguments I find rather debatable ones are in this way or another concerned with the role of education and communications in society as a whole and structuring it in terms of elite and non-elite, in particular.

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My point is that P. Bachrach and C. Wright Mills in The Theory of Democratic Elitism and The Power Elite, correspondingly, underestimate the role that education and communications might possibly have in obtaining more equalitarian relationships in society. I believe that the views like these disregard the importance of education and communications in democratic societies and do not contribute to their well-established image.

Education and communications are phenomena that affect other spheres the life of society is built on. Still, P. Bachrach does not find them effective in establishing equal relationships between people. He claims that the democratic system presupposes the rule of elite and mass passivity and that “any suggestion that a departure from the system in the direction of obtaining a more equalitarian relationship between elites and nonelites, is on objective grounds, unrealistic” (Bachrach 129). I am inclined to think that it is possible to obtain equality between them through education and communications; the gap between the two groups is brought down to a minimum of education and various means of communication are adequately handled in a democratic society.

Elite and non-elite classes can afford education of different quality and prestige levels. As a result, different issues of misunderstanding appear. As any kind of communication may potentially result in theoretical, non-practical, and practical knowledge, with different education, got the communication gap between the classes increases. In non-capitalistic countries where the problem of the economic gap is a burning one, the increase of the communication gap is especially relevant. Not only the issue of making money that one gets through education but moral values that education propagates in both systems are different there. The communication gap between the two classes increases not only in terms of the current generation, but in terms of subsequent ones as well, and this speaks for the barest necessity to solve the problem of the role of education and communication influences on this gap.

Investigating the transformation in the function of education throughout American history C. Wright Mills states that the function has undergone significant changes. Firstly, it was merely politic: “to make the citizens more knowledgeable and thus better able to think and judge of public affairs.” (Mills 317) In time, the function of education transformed from the political to the economic that meant that people were trained to get better-paying jobs and thus to get ahead (Mills 317). Therefore, those who could get such education got more chances to succeed in any entrepreneurship; moreover, they were more willing to have the changes in their lives as education proved the appropriateness of these changes and provided them with knowledge of how to do it. But I believe that the functions of education in American society should not restrict to that of dividing the society into classes but to uniting these classes as well.

The problem is not simply rooted in the way people are affected by education and communications, but in the extent to which they are capable to interpret correctly the ideas, these two systems bring and, what is more important, the extent to which they are allowed to do it. The thing is that in modern democratic societies people’s opinions are manipulated in different ways. Those who do realize the causes and the essence of this manipulation (which is due to the education they have or they are getting now) are less manipulated and are more capable of acting according to their own principles and needs. People should be well equipped with the knowledge on this or that issue propaganda touches upon not to be misled by its drastic influence. This is where the elite and nonelite masses differ: representatives of the elite are less subjected to be influenced by propaganda, whereas those of nonelite if they are not adequately educated are not provided with the apparatus to evaluate the information they are suggested.

In Social Responses to Twentieth-Century Propaganda J. Michael Sproule singles out four perspectives of propaganda in mass communication: the humanist, professional, scientific, and polemical one (Sproule 5). Each of them, he further claims, may be considered as a social responsibility “to the conflict between traditional American democracy and modern practices and techniques of social influence”. According to the author each of the perspectives answers the question about how citizens may make informed decisions about political problems when their knowledge of those problems is influenced by the very elites they are supposed to control (Sproule 5). The concept of propaganda is a rather vague one and it does not influence the masses’ political decisions only. To consider the influence of propaganda on public opinion let us investigate the concept in terms of its historical development.

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The term propaganda that stands to represent the idea that the mass media driven by advertising and public relation techniques can serve as a significant factor of influencing public opinion appeared some months before the United States entered World War I (Sproule 7). It is obvious that the wartime views on propaganda were rather restricted and isolated. Propaganda was seen as dishonest communication in campaigns by a foreign enemy. Thus, the phenomenon was understood as a political tool, and its social grounds were not properly evaluated. When the war ended several factors established a new context for understanding propaganda:

  • the postwar revisionist thinking about the origins of the war;
  • disillusionment with the high human costs of the war;
  • disillusionment with the terms of the Versailles Treaty (Sproule 8-9).

These factors helped to open the public to postwar propaganda consciousness. During the postwar period more and more often the term was understood as doublespeak and disinformation. If we consider advertising as one of the commonest ways of public disinformation and going by Daniel J. Boorstin will analyze its implications we will see that advertising, as well as other communications, help to overshadow the problem of knowledge by the problem of persuasion (Boorstin 258).

In Rhetoric of Democracy, the author claims that “democratic societies tend to become more concerned with what people believe than with what is true, to become more concerned with credibility than with truth.” The large-scale democracy like the American one, he states further, which possesses the apparatus of modern industry is more subjected to such problems as they are accentuated by “universal literacy, by instantaneous communication, and by the daily plague of words and images.” (Boorstin 259) The role of advertising has changed throughout history: in the early days, advertisings were considered a kind of news which could educate society somehow, but in the course of time the role of advertising changed to be that of persuading and appealing rather than that of educating and informing. This means that those who advertising have intended need to be especially cautious of the things they hear, see, and digest here and there.

Boorstin states that

the special role of advertising in our lives gives a clue to a pervasive oddity in American civilization. A leading feature of past cultures […] is the tendency to distinguish between “high” culture and “low” culture between the culture of the literature and the learned on the one hand and that of the populace on the other. In other words, between the language of literature and the language of the vernacular (Boorstlin 264).

Those who can distinguish between advertising as a way of presenting news and advertising as a way of influencing public opinion will adequately react to it. Those who are not capable of this will fall victim to this means of propaganda. Representatives of elite and nonelitism will differ in their attitudes to advertising, as they see it in the two different concepts mentioned above. Dewey suggests that the problem of misunderstanding may be solved in terms of the relations of personal intercourse in the local community (Dewey 125). I believe that the problem should be considered on a state level. The fact that education and communications serve the filter in the relationships between the two classes is obvious in developed societies. What the governors have to do is to provide each class with education sufficient for an adequate understanding of the realities of contemporary life. I do realize that it is easier to manipulate uneducated people, but one day the vital difference between elite and nonelitism will speak for itself and the consequences will not restrict to the sphere of education and communications only.

Thus, I conclude that it is in men’s hands to establish equality between classes through adequate use of education and communications systems. Bachrach was mistaken in his pessimistic views on possible changes in the relationships between the representatives of elite and nonelite and Wright Mills would have been more objective if he spoke of uniting function of education and communication as well. The success in decreasing the gap between the two classes depends on relying on education and propaganda’s positive impacts instead of the ruining ones that governors most often make use of.

Works Cited

Bachrach, Peter. “The Theory of Democratic Elitism.” Democracy. Ed. Philipp Green. Humanities Press: New Jersy, 1993. 126-130.

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Boorstin, Daniel J. “The Rhetoric of Democracy.” About Language. Ed. William H. Roberts. Houghton Miflin Company, 1998. 258-266.

Dewey, John. “The Public and Its Problems.” Democracy. Ed. Philipp Green. Humanities Press: New Jersy, 1993. 120-125.

Lippman, Walter. “The Image of Democracy.” Public Opinion and Propaganda. Ed. Daniel Katz. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1938. 27-32.

Mills, Wright C. The power Elite. Oxford University Press, 1956.

Sproule, Michale J. “Social Responses to Twentieth-Century Propaganda.” Propaganda. Ed. Smith III Ted J. Praeger, 1956. 5-22.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Democracy: Under the Influence." September 28, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/democracy-under-the-influence/.

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