Opinión pública y propaganda: su definición, interpretación y significado en los Estados Unidos de la primera postguerra (1918-1922)

Abstract

The present work reconstructs the way in which the concepts of ‘propaganda’ and ‘public opinion’ were defined and perceived by American intellectuals and poli­cy-makers during the first years following the end of the Great War. The documen­tary sources analyzed for this study were produced by social scientists (academics works), journalists (press articles) y politicians (presidential speeches) of that time. The central thesis of the research is that, as for the interpretation of the notion of ‘propaganda’ and ‘public opinion’, a radical interpretative shift took place in that period as a consequence of the propagandistic experiences of the war, the recurrent radical movements’ informative campaigns and the emergence of new and more effi­cient mass media. It is stated that these first scholarly postulates constituted the breeding ground for the emergence of the well-known debate on the manufacture of consent that characterized the interwar period.