mediations: Bernays, Goebbels and Paul Seaman

Mediations: Philip Young

Mediations comments on public relations, journalism, and communication ethics, often in the context of social media. Philip Young is a senior lecturer in public relations and journalism at the University of Sunderland, specialising in media ethics. He is also a lead researcher for the Euprera EuroBlog project. All views expressed here are personal and should not be seen as representing the University of Sunderland.

Scoop!

Scoop!
Journalists appear in fiction in many guises and play many roles. Sometimes they provide central characters, often they intrude on the action, their attentions as unwelcome as they often are in real life. Scoop! gathers together these appearances under a variety of themes, some amusing, some trivial, some giving an insight into how the Press works and how it is seen to impact on our society.

For my money, one of the best writers among the growing battalion of PR bloggers is Paul Seaman. He has just posted a lengthy (and contradictory?) post, Psychobabble will not make PR credible, sparked by Toni Muzi Falconi's PR Conversations essay Improving stakeholder relationships through nets, neuros and algorithms.

It is hard to disagree with someone who punctuates a complex argument with this observation:

"The success of the Bernays-Goebbels axis (so far as it existed except in the mind of Adam Curtis) was not the success of science, not even in its Freudian form, but the failure of the German mass-mind to detect bollocks"

Paul's post is well worth reading, as is Heather Yaxley's comment. As Paul says, she is more often than not, spot on.

I don't think we now enough about Toni Muzi Falconi's methodology to begin to critically appraise its contribution but I do know enough about David Phillips's work on semantic analysis to see real value in a related approach.

At the same time, I am with Paul when he expresses concern about the dangers of PR and networked messaging working to limit choice. The web allows me to know less about more things, and worse, it positively encourages me to think in tandem with people with whose attitudes and opinions I already agree.

That is dangerous.

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.