The New Public: Professional Communication and the Means of Social Influence

by Leon H. Mayhew

Overview

Professional specialists have come to dominate public communication, and the modern public of the Enlightenment has been replaced by a "New Public", subject to mass persuasion through systematic advertising, lobbying, and other forms of media manipulation. Leon Mayhew examines this sociological development in terms of discourse and social influence, offering an original theory that bridges Talcott Parsons and Jürgen Habermas. He concludes that the present social order is unstable because good-faith, two-way discourse has been undermined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521481465
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/04/1997
Series:	Cambridge Cultural Social Studies
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.02(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. Rhetoric and the Integration of Society: 1. Public influence in modern society; 2. Rhetoric and reason; Part II. Influence: 3. Influence: capacity to persuade; 4. Habermas and Parsons: critical issues regarding influence; 5. Public influence: a new paradigm; 6. The differentiation of rhetorical solidarity; Part III. The New Public: 7. The emergence of the New Public: advertising, market research and public relations; 8. Political communication in the New Public; 9. Forums for the redemption of influence; 10. The rhetoric of presentation.