Concept
the Lippmann–Dewey debate
The name given in the 1980s to the disagreement between Lippmann’s 1922–25 books and Dewey’s 1927 book. According to historians there was no back-and-forth debate in the 1920s; the “debate” was constructed afterwards.
The Lippmann–Dewey debate is a story often told in communication studies. In its usual form, Lippmann argues that public opinion should be left to experts, and Dewey replies that the public can be revived through communication. Schudson (2008) shows that it was not really a debate: what we call the “debate” consists of Dewey’s favourable reviews in The New Republic of Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925), and The Public and Its Problems, delivered as lectures in 1926 and published in 1927. To Schudson’s knowledge Lippmann never replied to Dewey, and contemporaries did not interpret the reviews as a notable confrontation .
Jansen (2009) writes that the conversation was reframed as a “conflict” in the early 1980s, and that the frame rests on a casual rhetorical trope, not on historical documentation . Tell (2013) regards the 1980s invention of Lippmann as an “anti-democrat” as part of a founding story of cultural studies .
This does not mean there is no difference: in his book Dewey acknowledges his debt to Lippmann and discusses where he departs from him . What was added afterwards is the name; the disagreement is real.
Example
(Documented example.) In a footnote to his 1927 book Dewey acknowledges his debt to Lippmann’s Phantom Public and Public Opinion ; on the other side, Schudson’s article contains no record of a reply by Lippmann to Dewey.