International Conference: Science, Politics and Public Opinion. A century after Walter Lippmann’s The Public Opinion
Chieti, 4-6 May 2022
“The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular moment what men will do”, argues Walter Lippmann in one of his best-known expressions in today’s book. This famous American journalist and political analyst’s life and work extended across the Twentieth Century, from the First World War battlefields to the Vietnam War, through the rise of totalitarianisms, Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Cold War (a term made famous by Lippmann himself in 1947).
This book is The Public Opinion, the best known, but not the only book by this author. Lippmann’s name is primarily linked to the analysis of the relations between media, public opinion and democracy, gained initially from his experience of war propaganda during the First World War and later presented here and in successive works. Reflections from this first period are connected to the author’s criticism of the New Deal and promotion of the neoliberal movement through the Colloquium named after him and are not unrelated to the geopolitical reflections of The Cold War’s author. Although touching upon a set of issues still topical now, the contribution of this influential and controversial figure did not achieve the attention it deserved in Italy, as it did more generally in Europe.
This conference aims to stimulate a critical reflection on Lippmann’s thought as a starting point to debate knowledge and knowledges, communication and democracy, and democracy and economic policies, geopolitics and international relations.
