ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Walter Lippmanns ideas on public opinion and then details how those ideas directly influenced Edward Bernays. It examines the writings on public relations and public opinion in the 1920s and 1930s to discover how this debate played out in the public relations fields search for identification. Lippmanns Public Opinion provided Bernays with a moral and pragmatic justification for public relations. The public relations counsel communicated to a heterogeneous public by appealing to broad social purposes, the most ethical of Lippmanns ways of achieving group cohesion: self-governance through the voluntary exchange of common ideals. John Dewey's philosophy entrusted the public with meaning creation, aligned group action with group participation, associated communication with community and individual humanity, and identified social inquiry and the communication of social inquiry as the sources for public opinion. In the same way Walter Lippmann and John Dewey expressed two philosophies of public opinion, Bernays and Harlow expressed two disparate philosophies of public relationsone elitist.
