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.