The War for the Public Mind
Molding Public Opinion
Nuño RodRíguez, Political ScieNtiSt aNd aNalySt
T
he rise of mass society was a turning point in history. The need to redirect
the population by the new parameters set by the ruling class, was a turning
point in governance. In the modern world, Napoleon was the first to
openly use propaganda for political purposes, with his creation of the office of
public opinion. Napoleon saw public opinion as something mechanical that could
be manipulated through psychology.1 As a matter of fact, Napoleon thought that
there were only two forces in the world: the sword and the spirit. He saw that
throughout history, the spirit had always defeated the sword.2 Therefore, he
thought that the strength of a state resided in the opinion that the population had
of the state itself. Napoleon summarized his belief in the power of public opinion
when he said that “three hostile newspapers are more dangerous than a thousand
bayonets”.3 The approval of the population was indispensable for the practice of
government. Thus, the of the masses and their emergence in political affairs was
one of the main reasons why the modern state needed propaganda.4 In mass soci174
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ety, the population knows its leaders through the media, and in this system, the
exercise of strong censorship is much more complex than in previous times. The
French philosopher Jacques Ellul claimed that if political leaders want to follow
their own agenda they must present a decoy to the masses; they must create a
screen between them and the masses that projects shadows representing a type of
policy, while the real policy is carried out on another stage.5 Thus, the emergence
of mass society has caused the emergence of a bizarre symbolic communication,
covered by the media, between the rulers and the governed.
In the twentieth century, American sociologist Daniel Bell criticized the dystopian vision of European authors against the new social reality. For Bell, these
authors only saw that in Europe, technology had devoured social ties, authorities,
and beliefs that had previously given meaning to lives; that society had become a
market where individuals had become speculators of fluctuating values and roles.6
Daniel Bell saw, in European authors, that the denunciation of this new social
situation, which had made individuals lose their sense of being and, thus, increased
their level of anxiety. The general idea was that society had lost the concept of
good and evil—had lost the Cartesian coordinates that allowed society to analyze
itself and the environment.7 This situation led people to look for new beliefs, new
messiahs—something that restored what mass society had destroyed.8 It was a
dystopian vision which authors such as José Ortega y Gasset and Hanna Arendt
shared. Clark MacPhail, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, suggests
that “the economic, social, and political confusion of the late nineteenth century
turned the masses into a formidable problem for the political status quo, as well as
for security in public places”9 and certainly history comes to us full of tumultuous
events in almost the entire globe. The study of the psychology of the masses that
emerged in Europe held that the assembled crowds generated all kinds of emotions among members, which transformed the “psychology of the individual into
a collective psychology”.10 In the United States, there was a more positive vision
of mass society, and the management of that society had been theorized.
American researchers saw this new mass society not as the sum of the individuals but rather the conversion of individuals into a single entity with unique
characteristics not previously found in isolated individuals.11 An individual that is
part of a mass thinks, feels, and behaves differently than he or she does as an individual; one switches from having an individual psychology to being part of a
social psychology.12 Ellul was not indifferent to this. The French philosopher explained that an individualistic society must, by nature, be a mass society; one
where the individual is reduced to a number. Mass society tears individuals out of
their primary groups to throw them into the whole of society. Thus, uprooted individuals begin to live in an unstructured mass society where social groups such as
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family or church have disappeared, where they must learn again to judge what is
good and bad. Thus, the uprooted individual is exposed to the propaganda currents of the state and of the masses13 Propaganda creates myths that try to entrap
the person in all aspects. For Ellul, the myth created by propaganda completely
invades consciousness. The myth created by propaganda totally controls the person, who becomes immune to other types of influences.14 The ideal life internalized by modern populations is a product of the propaganda that the ruling class
inject into the media. Mass society is made up of a multitude of atomized and
unstructured individuals eager to fill their emotional and existential emptiness
with currents of thought that link them with a psychological group that makes
them feel part of a group. That group psychology is the “public mind”.
British political scientist Terence Qualter has a more pragmatic view of the
new mass society. Qualter believes that the emergence of mass society forced the
ruling class to take the masses into account and to conform their own actions to
the popular will. This led to the development of sophisticated attempts at manipulating public opinion. He states that the growth of propaganda parallels the
rise of democracy. According to Qualter, the traditional ruling class was forced to
invest considerable time and energy in pretending to have social support.15 The
struggle to manage the public mind, i.e., public opinion, is at the root of mass
society and democracy. Qualter says that economic power reconciled with democracy once ruling class realized that the majority could not be detrimental to private property; trust came from new communication technologies and the manipulative knowledge of their uses.16
In this regard, Robert Entman, political scientist and professor at George
Washington University, suggests that ruling class monitor public attitudes so that
people would behave in ways that favor the ruling class. To influence the thinking
and actions of the population, the ruling class must filter information and link it
with knowledge already acquired by the population. Entman argues that to exercise power in a democracy, behavior must be influenced by telling people what to
think and how to do it.17 For the government in mass societies to work, the
thoughts and decisions of the population must always be in line with the filtered
information; the public mind must be molded with published information. In this
social scenario, the public mind is an influenced audience.
Many academics have studied the emergence of mass society, its nature, behavior, and influence in the social structure and people themselves. George Simmel
analyzed the differences between rural and urban environments; Gustave Le Bon,
the psychology of the masses; Gabriel Tarde, the relationship between mass and
public media; and Robert Parks told us that sociology is the science of human
behavior and shared the idea of differentiating crowds and audiences with Tarde.
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Parks thought that when the public ceased to be critical, it became a crowd again.18
Walter Lippmann offered the first analysis on the proven malleability of public opinion, and Edward Bernays explained how to manipulate that opinion for its own purpose. It is an encyclopedic task to gather and analyze all theorists of the psychology of
multitudes, mass society, and public opinion in an article. However, there are four authors who show the evolutionary linkage between the relationship of the masses with
the media and with the elites: Le Bon, Tarde, Lippmann, and Bernays.
Gustave Le Bon
The author of the “Psychology of the Masses” tells us that a crowd is a transitory construct, composed of heterogeneous elements that come together momentarily to form
a living being.19 Le Bon pointed out that for a group of individuals to form a crowd,
with their own feelings and behavior, elements must displace individual consciousness,
giving way to group unconsciousness. For him, the elements that made a race a unit
were, among others, religion, politics, and morals. Le Bon maintained that, although
individuals of the same race or society could be intellectually disparate, they were united
by common feelings and passions.20 For him, for the multitude to arise it is necessary
that individual consciousness be displaced; thus, a few hundred individuals gathered in
a square did not constitute a multitude in psychological terms, a common influence of
other causes was needed.21 Individuals dad to alienate their feelings and thoughts from
the collective of the crowd.22
According to Le Bon, there are three basic elements that form a crowd. The first is
the feeling of group strength, the individual becomes an irresponsible anonymous being.23 The second element according to the French author lies in social contagion, collective hypnosis; an individual can superimpose the interests of the collective over their
interests. The third element, according to Le Bon, is influence.24 With these characteristics mass psychology gives clear parameters of how the individual immersed in the
mass lacks individual consciousness and alienates himself to a collective unconsciousness, in which influence and contagion makes them into irrational beings.25 Le Bon
thought that those who managed to excite the imagination of the masses would be able
to control them. In fact, he thought that the masses were especially suggestible and
gullible.26 He wrote:
“The creation of the legends which so easily obtain circulation in crowds is not solely
the consequence of their extreme credulity. It is also the result of the prodigious perversions that events undergo in the imagination of a throng... that is soon totally
transformed.”27
The abstract theory of Le Bon was clear: simplified narrative was the way to transmit
ideas among the crowd. It remains the same today. One of Le Bon’s most interesting
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reflections on the mentality of the masses refers to the way in which the masses manage
their cognitive process:
“A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other
images, having no logical connection with the first... Our reason shows us the incoherence there is in these images, but a crowd is almost blind to this truth.”28
Le Bon delved deeper into the mentality of the crowds, suggesting that the projection of suggested ideas to crowds needs a simple form that can be translated into images. Ideas do not even have to be related to each other. For Le Bon, suggesting ideas
to the crowd is like projecting slides from a magic lantern; the most contradictory ideas
can be symbiotic in the minds of the crowd.29
This idea of projecting ideas onto the masses seems to have been a prophecy about
today’s current media. Le Bon’s ideas have been contested at various times and different
academic venues, but today his thesis is still valid and verifiable. Just as before “crowds
that only know how to think about images can only be impressed by images. Only
images can terrorize or attract the masses. The feelings suggested by images is what can
lead to motivate an act.”30 Undoubtedly, Gustave Le Bon has been one of the authors
who have influenced most political leaders of the twentieth century.
Gabriel Tarde
Gabriel Tarde obtained scientific recognition in academic circles, while Le Bon was
considered vulgar.31 Together with Le Bon, Tarde stated that crowds were a product of
industrial urban areas and that their disengagement from traditional institutions, together with exposure to various stimuli, resulted in their restlessness.32 However, Tarde
suggested that both crowds and societies responded to similar dynamics.33 The French
author was key to understanding the transition from psychology to sociology and how
communities transformed into societies.34 Tarde suggested that the transformation of
individual psychology to group psychology was achieved through imitation. He later
stated, in his book “The Laws of Imitation” (1890), how society consisted of a huge
network of imitations and how that imitation is sort of a sleepwalking.35 What was
“influence” for Le Bon, was “imitation” for Tarde. A similar concept will be basic in
sociology in later decades, such as the cognitive psychology of Albert Bandura.
Tarde added a vision of the human group relationship that changed the way of looking at society. Tarde suggested that the congregation of the multitudes might not be
physical but a psychic connection generated by the media. Therefore, Tarde thought
that while a crowd could physically congregate, the psychic connection produced by the
media was what created a new social entity: “the media created the public”. For Tarde,
the public congregated around ideas reflected in the press—not through physical suggestion but by influence without contact.36 Tarde had made the distinction between
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crowds and audiences, which would be an advance for the study and analysis of modern
societies: the theory on the connection node of the public’s mind.
For Tarde, the written press was society’s nervous system.37 Physical space had ceased
to be a determining variable for grouping individuals; mass media could do it mentally,
not physically. It was the media that generated influence, that generated a contagion.38
This made the media the necessary driving force for crowd mobility, as reflected by Le
Bon.39 Tarde’s contributions to the knowledge of mass society marked the evolutionary
step of the crowd into the masses themselves. However, his contributions to the academic knowledge of society have been obscured in history to the point of the apparent
oblivion of such a great thinker.
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann experienced World War I firsthand and the massive propaganda
campaign that had been carried out by Woodrow Wilson’s government. Lippmann
understood then that democracy was moving through strings manipulated by propaganda. In 1922, he wrote his work “Public Opinion”, in which he stated that stereotypes
and prejudices expressed in propaganda campaigns governed public opinion.40
Lippmann realized that people in the modern world did not know the world through
direct experience but through the media.41 He was certain that the media suggested the
masses to take one direction or another; but they did not distribute the concrete information, but rather specific visions about events. It was already a proven fact that Spain’s
war with the United States was promoted by different means of mass media; specifically it was a war promoted by the tabloid press of William Randolph Hearst, who
dedicated himself to cultivating war psychosis in American public opinion.42 In fact,
the war between Spain and the United States is known as “the Hearst War”.
Lippmann, after analyzing the media’s relationship with the audience, suggested that
propaganda acted as a filter between reality and the audience’s perception of reality itself. As he said, the media created “the images in our heads.”43 Lippmann revealed that
in a few hours a short report could go around the world and be read by millions of
people, and those words could draw an image in the public mind about what was happening in any other part of the world; and with that image propagandists could manipulate people’s emotions in one direction or another.44 Le Bon suggested that crowds
think with images, disjointed and irrational. According to Lippmann, the audience of
the media resembled Le Bon’s thesis. The mechanism of inserting images into the
minds of the audience resembled a trigger for Lippmann that, when pressed, produced
a series of images that could come from a reading or a speech. Those images made
emotions emerge. and when the images dissipated, only emotions remained, which
could continue to be used by a name or a symbol.45
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Lippmann considered that symbols are socially binding elements that had the power to
create coalitions and that these coalitions were more emotional than critical. Therefore,
struggling factions fought for possession of those symbols. He pointed out that the
public’s opinion could be totally manipulated and controlled through the media.
Lippmann’s next work would further reflect the skepticism of the author in reference
to public opinion, which may be the reason that his work “The Phantom Public” disappeared from circulation shortly after being published.46 Few authors have been so precise in expressing themselves on how the media creates and influences public opinion.
Edward Bernays
Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, considered Lippmann the father of public
relations. However, Lippmann was a theorist and not a practitioner. In the end, it was
Bernays who was recognized as the father of public relations, even though there were
other specialists in this field since the creation of social relations and its writings. Consistent with Bernays’ vision, Lippmann had proposed the theory and had put it into
practice.47 However, Bernays’ distortion of Lippmann has generated many theories on
how public relations can be applied in the media to influence the consumer of ideas,
products, or policies.
During World War I, Bernays was working for a propaganda organization created by President Wilson, the Committee on Public Information. Within this
huge propaganda campaign, Bernays began to take seriously the field of advertising and its application.48 Bernays suggested that the public relations (PR) advisor
should know how to generate propaganda that colored the minds of the public in
reference to the most disparate matters.49 He held that the masses aspired to gain
power and that the ruling class had found, in propaganda, the scientifically correct
weapon to channel the mentality of the masses. He maintained that propaganda
was the executive arm of the invisible government.50 According to Bernays, the
minority had again found a way to control the majority.
In 1923, Bernays wrote “Crystallizing Public Opinion”, clearly inspired by Lippmann.
However, Bernays focused more on the field of sales and marketing than on social
theory.51 In his book, Bernays states that public opinion is the aggregate sum of individual opinions and that the PR counselor must approach the individual to know the
group.52 Bernays said that public opinion is malleable if the PR advisor can influence
the thinking bodies of the audience, mainly the media.53 For Bernays, first, public opinion could be molded through social groups and institutions such as schools, churches,
and academics and then, through the media (press, movie films, radio Bernays’ , and so
forth).54 Bernays’ work extended between political and mercantile circles. In fact, he
used his status as a newly published author to convince New York University to create
a PR course for him to teach. Bernays only had a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, but
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he managed to compare PR studies with those of medicine or law.55 Bernays knew that
there was no exact science to manipulating public opinion, but he knew that experimental psychology had begun to mark the way, that psychology had taught the usefulness of emotions to manage individuals and audiences. He knew that sociology would
benefit by analyzing the behavior of the groups.56 He thought that, if the political
power thoroughly understood what strings to pull to change public opinion, it would
be as if a new instrument was added to an orchestra and the other instruments changed.
Bernays thought that to change public opinion, authoritarianism and influence groups
were needed. He hinted that ideas needed to be impressive and dramatic to change the
inertia of traditions.57
His book, “Propaganda”, published in 1928, has been described by many authors as a basic manual for political and commercial manipulation. The validity of
its ideas is more than evident and has given rise to innumerable investigations in
reference to psychological warfare, public relations, and propaganda. The book
begins with the chapter “Organizing Chaos” in this blunt way:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions
of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate
this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the
true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our
tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of… in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our
social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small
number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of
the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.”58
Summary
The emergence of mass society changed the relationship parameters between rulers
and governed. The change from fragmented agrarian societies to concentrated industrial societies meant a change in the nature of the human being and of society. The need
to readjust relations between rulers and governed implied the need for an agreement
between both parties. Control could no longer be exercised through coercion; the era of
control by influence was born. The elites had to convince the governed to follow the
parameters set by the rulers, and the media opened a door to the mind of each individual, thus becoming a new social entity: the audience. The use of propaganda, persuasion, and protopsychology was decisive when it came to changing mass societies into
easily manipulated democratic societies that did not jeopardize the power of the
ruling class. Convincing was cheaper and more reliable than imposing.
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Le Bon, Tarde, Lippmann, and Bernays marked the guidelines of the new relationship between rulers and governed: The psychology superior to the individual
that is articulated in images and emotional contagion, proposed by Le Bon; the
cohesion of the masses through the media and imitation as social learning, proposed by Tarde; media manipulation attracting individual psychologies to an artificial media psychology, suggested by Lippmann; and the use of psychology to
govern the masses without them suspecting that they have been influenced, as
Bernays proposes. All these constitute an action protocol for the molding of the
public mind through media propaganda.
Bernays was already clear in expressing that the world of propaganda was linked
to the academic knowledge of psychology and the manipulation of emotions to
eliminate and not tear down the barriers of the individual’s resistance to be
bought.59 Bernays, by way of working on the Committee on Public Information,
knew that the basis of all social dynamism was propaganda and psychological
warfare.60 This became yhe basis of the media as propaganda became a science.
The use of the manipulative elements applied to mass society required large investments of capital and human resources. World War I provided governments at
war with the opportunity to invest in the research of the manipulation of the
masses. From there, new academic fields in the application of psychology and
sociology have emerged to achieve those ends in peacetime. q
Notes
1. MEERLOO, Abraham Maurits. Total war and the human mind: A psychologist’s experience in occupied Holland. International Universities Press.1945. P 39.
2. GELFI, Manuel H. La acción psicológica como arma de guerra (Psychologic Action as a
Weapon of War). Revista ESG. Buenos Aires. 1955. P 168.
3. MCLUHAN, Marshall and Lewis H. Lapham. Understanding media: The extensions of man.
MIT press, 1994. P 13.
4. ELLUL, Jacques. 1973. P 122.
5. ELLUL, Jacques. 1973. P 122.
6. LEACH, Eugene E. Mastering the crowd: Collective behaviour and mass society in American
social thought, 1917-1939. American Studies, 1986. P 99.
7. SANJORGE, Gonzalo Hernández. “Reflexiones sobre la construcción del sujeto en la era post
cartesiana.” (Reflections on the creation of the individual in the post cartesian era) A Parte Rei: Philosophical Journal. 2003.
8. LEACH, Eugene E. 1986. P 99.
9. MCPHAIL, Clark. Blumer’s theory of collective behaviour: The development of a non-symbolic
interaction explanation. The Sociological Quarterly. Vol. 30, no 3. 1989. P 402.
10. LEACH, Eugene E. 1986. P 101.
182
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11. GUTIÉRREZ, Eduardo Gutiérrez. El barbarismo de las masas visto desde la perspectiva de tres
“pensadores de lo social”: Gustave Le Bon, Georg Simmel y José Ortega y Gasset. (The barbarity of the
masses as seen from the perspective of three “social thinkers”: Gustave Le Bon, George Simmel and Jose
Ortega y Gasset). Agora: Philosophical papers. 2017. P 103.
12. GUTIÉRREZ, Eduardo. 2017. P 104.
13. ELLUL, Jacques. 1973. P 90-94.
14. ELLUL, Jacques. 1973. P 11.
15. QUALTER, Terence H. Advertising and democracy in the mass age. Springer, 2016. P 5.
16. IBID P 10.
17. ENTMAN, Robert M. “Media framing biases and political power: Explaining slant in news of
Campaign 2008.” Journalism. 2010. P 392.
18. MCPHAIL, Clark. 1989. P 407.
19. LE BON, Gustave. 1896. P 6.
20. GUTIÉRREZ, Eduardo 2017 P 105.
21. LE BON, Gustave. 1896. P 2.
22. IBID. P 2.
23. IBID. P 10.
24. IBID. P 10.
25. GUTIÉRREZ, Eduardo. 2017. P 108.
26. TAGLIAVIA, Francesca Martínez. “La imaginación de las masas: la eficacia de una falsa hipótesis.” (The imagination of the masses: The effectiveness of a false hypothesis). Revisiones 3. 2016. P 2.
27. LE BON, Gustave. 1896. P 23.
28. LE BON, Gustave. 1896. P 23.
29. IBID. P 49.
30. IBID 1896. P 57.
31. BORCH, Christian. The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 2012. P 34.
32. LEACH, Eugene E. 1986. P 101.
33. BORCH, Christian. 2012. P 48.
34. LANG, Kurt; LANG, Gladys Engel. Mass society, mass culture, and mass communication: The
meanings of mass. International Journal of Communication, 2009, vol. 3, p. 20. P 1005.
35. BORCH, Christian. 2012. P 54.
36. LEACH, Eugene E. 1986. P 102.
37. IBID P 108.
38. NOCERA, Pablo. Masa, público y comunicación. La recepción de Gabriel Tarde en la primera
sociología de Robert Park. (Mass, the public, and communication. The reception of Gabriel Tarde in
Robert Parks’ first sociology). Nómadas. Vol. 19, no 3. 2008. P 151.
39. IBID P 152.
40. BORCH, Christian. 2012. P 151.
41. IBID P 151.
42. FELDMAN, Marc D. The military/media clash and the new principle of war: Media spin. Air
University Press, Maxwell AFB AL, 1993. P 5.
43. BORCH, Christian. 2012. P 151.
44. LIPPMANN, Walter. Public Opinion, with a new introduction by Michael Curtis. Transaction
Publishers, New Brunswick. Second edition. 1998. P 37.
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Rodríguez
45. IBID. P 203.
46. LIPPMANN, Walter. The Public Phantom. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick.
1993. P XVII.
47. JANSEN, Sue Curry. Semantic tyranny: How Edward L. Bernays stole Walter Lippmann’s mojo
and got away with it and why it still matters. International Journal of Communication. 2013. P. 1094.
48. EWEN, Stuart. PR! A social history of spin. New York: Basic Books, 1996. P 162.
49. BORCH, Christian. 2012. P 153.
50. EWEN, Stuart. 1996. P 167.
51. BORCH, Christian. 2012. P 153.
52. BERNAYS, Edward. Crystallizing the Public Opinion. Liveright Publishing Corporation. New
York. 1961. P 61.
53. IBID. P 76.
54. IBID. P 87.
55. JANSEN, Sue Curry. 2013. P 1095.
56. BERNAYS, Edward L. Manipulating public opinion: The why and the how. American Journal
of Sociology, 1928, vol. 33, no 6, p.960. In this article Bernays explains which techniques were used
through the media to change the opinion of the white population over the black population.
57. BERNAYS, Edward L. 1928. P. 958.
58. BERNAYS, Edward. Propaganda. Barcelona: Melusina, 2008. P 15.
59. BERNAYS, Edward. 2008. P 70.
60. EWEN, Stuart. 1996. P 162.
References
BERNAYS, Edward L. Manipulating public opinion: The why and the how. American Journal of
Sociology. vol. 33, no 6. 1928.
BERNAYS, Edward. Crystallizing the Public Opinion. Liveright Publishing corporation. New
York. 1961.
BERNAYS, Edward. Propaganda. Barcelona: Melusina, 2008.
BORCH, Christian. The Politics of Crowds: An Alternative History of Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2012.
ELLUL, Jacques. Propaganda. the formation of men’s attitudes. Vintage Books New York. 1973.
ENTMAN, Robert M. “Media framing biases and political power: Explaining slant in news of
Campaign 2008.” Journalism 11.4 .2010.
EWEN, Stuart. PR! a social history of spin. Chapter 8 Unseen engineers: biography of an idea New
York: Basic Books, 1996.
FELDMAN, Marc D. The military/media clash and the new principle of war: Media spin. Air
University Press, Maxwell AFB, Al. 1993.
GELFI, Manuel H. La acción psicológica como arma de guerra (Psychologic Action as a Weapon of
War). Revista ESG. Buenos aires. 1955.
GUTIÉRREZ, Eduardo Gutiérrez. El barbarismo de las masas visto desde la perspectiva de tres
“pensadores de lo social”: Gustave Le Bon, Georg Simmel y José Ortega y Gasset (The barbarity of the
masses as seen from the perspective of three “social thinkers”: Gustave Le Bon, Geore Simmel and Jose
Ortega y Gasset). Agora: Phisophical Papers. vol. 36, no 2. 2017.
JANSEN, Sue Curry. Semantic tyranny: How Edward L. Bernays stole Walter Lippmann’s mojo and
got away with it and why it still matters. International Journal of Communication. vol. 7. 2013.
184
JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAS THIRD EDITION
The War of the Public Mind
LANG, Kurt; LANG, Gladys Engel. Mass society, mass culture, and mass communication: The
meanings of mass. International Journal of Communication. vol. 3. 2009.
LE BON, Gustave. The Crowd; a study of popular mind. Chapter I The Mind of the Crowd. The
Macmillan co. New York. 1896.
LEACH, Eugene E. mastering the crowd: collective behaviour and mass society in American social
thought, 1917-1939. American Studies. vol. 27, no 1. 1986.
LIPPMANN, Walter. Public Opinion, with a new introduction by Michael Curtis. Transaction
Publishers, New Brunswick. Segunda edición. 1998.
LIPPMANN, Walter. The Public Phantom. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick. 1993.
MCLUHAN, Marshall and Lewis H. Lapham. Understanding media: The extensions of man.
MIT press, 1994.
MCPHAIL, Clark. Blumer’s theory of collective behaviour: the development of a non-symbolic
interaction explanation. The Sociological Quarterly. vol. 30, no 3. 1986.
MEERLOO, Abraham Maurits. Total war and the human mind; a psychologist’s experience in occupied Holland. International Universities Press, 1945.
NOCERA, Pablo. Masa, público y comunicación. La recepción de Gabriel Tarde en la primera
sociología de Robert Park (Mass, the public, and communication. The reception of Gabriel Tarde
in Robert Parks’ first sociology). Nómadas. vol. 19, no 3. 2008.
QUALTER, Terence H. Advertising and democracy in the mass age. Springer, 2016.
SANJORGE, Gonzalo Hernández. “Reflexiones sobre la construcción del sujeto en la era post
cartesiana.” (Reflections on the creation of the individual in the post cartesian era). A Parte Rei:
Philosophical journal 26.6. 2003.
TAGLIAVIA, Francesca Martínez. “La imaginación de las masas: La eficacia de una falsa
hipótesis.” Revisiones 3 .2016.
Nuño J. Rodríguez, Political Scientist and Analyst
Director and analyst at Quixote Communications, a political, diplomatic, public relations, and strategy consulting firm. Rodríguez is a
graduate political scientist from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and specialized in Political Communication at the University of
Amsterdam. He is an expert in intelligence and counterintelligence and
has extensive knowledge in audiovisual language, narratives, and counternarratives. He has worked on research funded by the European Union
on the influence of the media on society, for this reason he has developed
analytical and critical capacities on the influence of the media system on
the formation of patterns of behavior in society. He has also conducted
research on psychological warfare, propaganda, and intelligence. Additionally, Rodríguez is a political analyst for different television programs
with an international scope.
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