#EDWARD BERNAYS ENGINEERING OF CONSENT PROFESSIONAL#

TodayвЂ™s leaders have become more remote physically from the public, yet, at the same time, the public has much greater familiarity with these leaders through the system of modern communications.Increased influence of mass media is due to widespread and enormously rapid diffusion of literacy.

There are two divisions in media: commercial and organized group information systems.

The United States has become a small room where a single whisper is magnified thousands of times.

The author's observations in the essay include the following: The essay first appeared in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Marketing is often based on themes and symbols that unconsciously influence consumer behavior.

To some observers, consumer psychologists have already made the choice for people before they buy a certain product.

Were the manipulated voter to become the normal voter, the government he supports could hardly be said to rest on his consent in any traditional sense of that word. Consent that is thus engineered is difficult to distinguish in any fundamental way from the consent that supports modern totalitarian governments.

The threat of engineered consent in democracy has been expressed in a textbook on American government: Under modern conditions of political advertising and manipulation, it has become possible to talk of the engineering of consent by an elite of experts and professional politicians. Their dispassionate approach and methods may be likened to those of the engineering professions which stem from the physical sciences.'

In his own words, Bernays describes engineering consent as 'use of an engineering approach-that is, action based only on thorough knowledge of the situation and on the application of scientific principles and tried practices to the task of getting people to support ideas and programs.' Д«ernays explained, 'Professionally, activities are planned and executed by trained practitioners in accordance with scientific principles, based on the findings of social scientists.

#EDWARD BERNAYS ENGINEERING OF CONSENT PROFESSIONAL#

Edward bernays engineering of consent