Concept
the phantom public
Lippmann’s claim in his 1925 book: the idea of a public that steers the course of events is an abstraction; the real public is a changing set of people who join an affair only by taking sides with or against the actors.
The Phantom Public (1925) is the more pessimistic book Lippmann published three years after Public Opinion . Its opening image: the private citizen is like a deaf spectator in the back row who ought to keep his mind on the mystery on stage but cannot stay awake . In the sixth chapter he writes plainly: the belief in a public that directs the course of events is mistaken; this public is “a mere phantom”. The public is not a fixed body of individuals but those persons who are interested in an affair and can affect it only by supporting or opposing the actors .
The public’s job is not to write policy but to intervene occasionally in the actors’ work; Dewey described the book as “a statement of faith in a pruned and temperate democratic theory” (as Schudson quotes him) . Dewey’s 1927 book answers this phantom with “eclipse”: it does not say there is no public, it says the public is in eclipse . For the later debate see the Lippmann–Dewey debate.
Example
(Hypothetical example.) A voter says she will not vote for the governing party, influenced only by corruption stories, without knowing the technical details of a municipal tender: Lippmann’s public judges the actors, not the details.