Harold Dwight Lasswell

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Harold Dwight Lasswell

Harold Dwight Lasswell (born February 13, 1902 in Donnellson , Illinois , † December 18, 1978 in New York City ) was an American political scientist and communication theorist .

Life

Lasswell studied at the University of Chicago in the 1920s , where he was influenced by the pragmatism of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead . But Freud's philosophy is even more reflected in his work, which is the basis of his analysis of propaganda and communication in general. During World War II he was the head of the Department for the Study of War Time Communications in the Library of the American Congress. In 1957 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , in 1974 to the National Academy of Sciences . Always looking ahead, he occupied himself in the last years of his life and a. with the political consequences of a possible colonization of other planets and a "machinehood of humanity".

Democracy theory

With other liberals of his time, such as Walter Lippmann , he argued that democracy , as the most complex form of government, required propaganda in order to convince the largely uninformed citizens, in accordance with the political system and decisions, that a specialized political class for them to hold on. As he wrote in his entry on propaganda in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences , the democratic dogmas that people can best judge their own interests (“democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests "), Because people are often very unsuitable in their judgment of their own interests, they move quickly and without good justification from one alternative to another (" men are often poor judges of their own interests, flitting from one alternative to the next without solid reason ").

effect

His academic students included a. Gabriel Almond , VO Key, Jr. , Herbert A. Simon , Bruce Lannes Smith, and David Truman .

Famous quotes

Politics is who gets what, when, where, and how.
Who (says) What (to) Whom (in) Which Channel (with) What Effect. (see: Lasswell formula )
Opinion management is cheaper than violence or bribery.

Works

  • Propaganda Techniques in the World War (1927 - Reprinted with a new introduction, 1971)
  • World Politics and Personal Insecurity (1935 - Reprinted with a new introduction - 1965)
  • Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)
  • The Garrison State (1941)
  • Power and Personality (1948)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Quoted from: Jacquie L'Etang: Public Relations: Critical Debates and Contemporary Practice . Routledge, 2012, ISBN 978-1-136-76475-2 ( google.de [accessed December 10, 2016]).
  2. ^ Klaus Merten : Biography of Harold D. Lasswell . In: Christina Holtz-Bacha , Arnulf Kutsch (Hrsg.): Key works for communication science . Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-531-13429-9 , p. 253.