ABSTRACT
In the late 20th century, Leon Mayhew, a U.S. sociologist, set out to prove that public relations1 exerts enormous persuasion and in uence upon the mass public of Western culture, and that the consequent rationalization “erodes the social organization of public opinion” (Mayhew, 1997, p. ix). To support his argument, he drew deeply from the work of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas and, to a lesser extent, American systems theorist Talcott Parsons. Habermas, in terms of the Mayhewian position, questioned separately the validity of existence of modern differentiated society without the input of the opinions of an integrated mass public. Mayhew visualized his “New Public” as hybrid, emerging from Habermas’s generalist public sphere. Mayhew forged his idea in Jürgen Habermas’s overheated furnace. He applied heat to Habermas’s mythical public sphere, strenuously beating and hammering, until he had reshaped it into his own public sphere. In doing so he argues from two competing, and at times unsupportive, viewpoints. His rst is that public relations has the capacity to persuade and in uence without revealing the truth or reality of what it is that is the subject of the in u-
ence (thus implying that a mass public receives inaccurate information with which to frame its opinions). Second, he implies the mass public of the late 20th century, while unable to provide inputs to social policy, were suf ciently informed to develop sound opinions and make rational decisions. This dichotomy rests on an assumption that journalism is not persuasive or in uential, a consideration we shall return to shortly.2
