RECONSTRUCTING MASS COMMUNICATION THEORY (LIBERALISM, DEMOCRACY, PRAGMATISM, MESMERISM)

The dissertation is a philosophical and historical study of the foundations of mass communication theory. It examines the unacknowledged political commitments that inform thinking about mass communication and society. The commitments are two-fold. The most basic is to the individual mind as autonomous. Chapter 1 addresses the evolution of this notion in three classic liberal theorists: John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Alexis de Tocqueville. Chapter 2 examines the history of the word communication in the nineteenth century. The concept evolved in movements such as mesmerism and referred to the direct contact of two or more minds at a distance without a material intermediary. The argument is that the notion of communication developed this way because of the liberal tendency to exalt the individual mind and to denigrate public forms of discourse as confusing or potentially tyrannical.;The other commitment is more recent historically: a belief that mass communication is directly linked to the health of American democracy. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze the development of this link in American social thought of the Progressive era, focusing on such thinkers as John Dewey, Charles Horton Cooley, William James, Walter Lippmann, Robert Park, and Josiah Royce. Chapter 3 explores their ambiguous attitude toward communication. On the one hand, mass communication was seen as the savior of American democracy because of its power to create communities; on the other, it was seen as the destroyer of American democracy because of its leveling of old moral standards and its destruction of the traditional small-town community. Chapter 4 surveys the attempts to articulate a new theory of liberal democracy by Dewey in particular. He built on classic liberal ideas, and yet did not see the individual mind as autonomous. The chapter examines Lippmann's criticisms of Progressive ideas, which illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of Dewey's ideas.;The conclusion examines Paul Lazarsfeld's thinking in the light of the previous chapters. The study concludes by arguing that a deeper awareness of political commitments would strengthen both mass communication theory and research.