Robert K. Merton's Mass Persuasion (1946) and related 1940s communications research represent a body of work that repays those who read it carefully today. Merton charted a world that became our own, one marked by the interplay of mass media, celebrity, and '' public images'' that traversed cultures of entertainment, moral life, and politics. In this essay, I read Mass Persuasion through a later Merton article discussing the role of reading and rereading classic texts in the human sciences. After extending Merton's arguments about the functions of predecessor texts, I amplify aspects of Mass Persuasion that remain instructive within political communication and related fields today.
%0 Journal Article
%1 simonson_celebrity_2006
%A Simonson, Peter
%D 2006
%J Political Communication
%K celebrity classic-work-treatment intellectual internalist merton political-communication sociology united-states
%N 3
%P 271--284
%R 10.1080/10584600600808794
%T Celebrity, Public Image, and American Political Life: Rereading Robert K. Merton's Mass Persuasion
%V 23
%X Robert K. Merton's Mass Persuasion (1946) and related 1940s communications research represent a body of work that repays those who read it carefully today. Merton charted a world that became our own, one marked by the interplay of mass media, celebrity, and '' public images'' that traversed cultures of entertainment, moral life, and politics. In this essay, I read Mass Persuasion through a later Merton article discussing the role of reading and rereading classic texts in the human sciences. After extending Merton's arguments about the functions of predecessor texts, I amplify aspects of Mass Persuasion that remain instructive within political communication and related fields today.
@article{simonson_celebrity_2006,
abstract = {Robert K. Merton's Mass Persuasion (1946) and related 1940s communications research represent a body of work that repays those who read it carefully today. Merton charted a world that became our own, one marked by the interplay of mass media, celebrity, and '' public images'' that traversed cultures of entertainment, moral life, and politics. In this essay, I read Mass Persuasion through a later Merton article discussing the role of reading and rereading classic texts in the human sciences. After extending Merton's arguments about the functions of predecessor texts, I amplify aspects of Mass Persuasion that remain instructive within political communication and related fields today.},
added-at = {2019-08-29T01:56:31.000+0200},
author = {Simonson, Peter},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2dbaade273139c1bdd41bcfd63b8958ad/jpooley},
doi = {10.1080/10584600600808794},
interhash = {1aeb22108e50822c5248fb01e317f151},
intrahash = {dbaade273139c1bdd41bcfd63b8958ad},
journal = {Political Communication},
keywords = {celebrity classic-work-treatment intellectual internalist merton political-communication sociology united-states},
number = 3,
pages = {271--284},
timestamp = {2019-08-29T01:56:31.000+0200},
title = {Celebrity, {{Public Image}}, and {{American Political Life}}: {{Rereading Robert K}}. {{Merton}}'s {{Mass Persuasion}}},
volume = 23,
year = 2006
}