How well can polls measure public opinion? Should government policies follow majority opinion? Do polls influence elections? Can there be polls under a dictatorship? Recent elections throughout the world have made these issues ever more crucial. "Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, "initially published under the title "Silent Politics, "is the first book to look upon polls and the awareness of poll results as forces that influence public opinion. It is a penetrating assessment of the uses of polls, their misuses, and the absurdities carried out in their name. Bogart argues that predictions based on polls can be misleading since they reflect a transient stage in a public opinion that is constantly and often rapidly changing.
Twenty years old when he entered the army in 1942, Leo Bogart was one of sixteen million Americans who served with the armed forces during World War II. Over the next four years he, and perhaps the nation, came of age. In numerous letters home, he provided a glimpse into the mind of a young American intellectual whose wartime journey carried him from New York to Germany and from adolescence to experience of the world's complexities. As shown by the letters and the narrative that fills in the gaps between them, the war engaged him, as it did many others, long before he put on a uniform. After a stint in the Army Signal Corps' enlisted reserve, he was inducted into active duty and assigned to the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) after which he was assigned to Signal Intelligence. The war presented him with a continually changing cast of characters and led him from a series of peculiar experiences with the vast military institution to the battle for Europe and finally to troubling confrontations with the defeated enemy. In 1946 Bogart was honorably discharged and, like millions of veterans, awarded a small gilt lapel pin bearing the stylized head of an eagle, nicknamed "the ruptured duck." The Second World War has been much celebrated in fiction and film portraying perilous exploits, death-defying bravery, and incessant action. But much of war involves inaction and boredom, stupid error as well as intrepid ingenuity. By showing how life moved from hour to hour and day by day, Bogart's running record illuminates some small homely aspects of the war that cannot be found in military histories focused on the marshaling of forces, the capture of cities, and the casualty counts.
This book reviews the challenges that face American newspapers at the end of the 1980s, after a decade of circulation losses for many dailies and several decades of accelerating social change. It describes how content of newspapers is changing in the context of a discussion of the nature of news.
Drawing upon both an immense experience and focussed social science research, Leo Bogart has long been our premier social critic of the mass media. Commercial Culture is by all odds the most deeply informed and telling critique of mass culture in this timid time of political correctitude." -Robert K. Merton, Columbia University "This remarkably readable, clear-sighted book thoroughly surveys the vast landscape of commercial media, both print and electronic. Leo Bogart's intelligent insights and sound proposals for change reflect a unique combination of scholarly research and years of practical experience on the frontline of the newspaper, advertising, and television wars."-Lawrence K. Grossman, former president, NBC News and PBS American mass media are the world's most diverse, rich, and free. Their dazzling resources, variety, and influence arouse envy in other countries. Their failures are commonly excused on the grounds that they are creatures of the market, that they give people what they want. Commercial Culture focuses not on the glories of the media, but on what is wrong with them and why, and how they may be made better. This powerful critique of American mass communication highlights four trends that sound an urgent call for reform: the blurring of distinctions among traditional media and between individual and mass communication; the increasing concentration of media control in a disturbingly small number of powerful organizations; the shift from advertisers to consumers as the source of media revenues; and the growing confusion of information and entertainment, of the real and the imaginary. The future direction of the media, Leo Bogart contends, should not be left to market forces alone. He shows how the public's appetite for media differs from other demands the market is left to satisfy because of how profoundly the media shape the public's character and values. Bogart concludes that a world of new communications technology requires a coherent national media policy, respectful of the American tradition of free expression and subject to vigorous public scrutiny and debate. Commercial Culture is a comprehensive analysis of the media as they evolve in a technological age. It will appeal to general readers interested in mass communications, as well as professionals and scholars studying American mass media. Leo Bogart has been an advertising strategist, the executive vice-president of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau, and president of the American and World Associations for Public Opinion research, the Society for Consumer Psychology, the Market Research Council, and the Radio and Television Research Council. He is the author of Preserving the Press, The Age of Television, Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, Press and Public, Strategy in Advertising, Project Clear, and Cool Words, Cold War.
The Newspaper Readership Project (1977-1983) was an unprecedented cooperative attempt by the American newspaper industry to halt the downward trend in readership and circulation. The Project had an enormous impact on American newspapers; it spurred such changes in their content as special sections and new graphics, and led to important innovations in distribution and promotion. Leo Bogart was a central figure in the conception and execution of the Project, so his account is truly an insider's view of the interplay of the Project and the people involved in it. Preserving the Press: How Daily Newspapers Mobilized to Keep Their Readers is an insider account that vividly describes the personalities, organizations, and policy debates of the American daily newspaper business at a critical moment in its history. Exciting and informative, it shows how this major American institution confronted the great social and technological changes that threatened its established position. Bogart demonstrates the difficulties of translating research findings into actual changes in practice, reviews controversies over the Project's promotional efforts, and reports on dramatic changes that occurred in newspaper distribution methods.
Clear was the code name for the research that led to the official desegregation of the U.S. Army at the time of the Korean War. This volume represents the two major troop opinion surveys that were the heart of the project, the first examining the performance of black troops in the Korean campaign, and the second, the problems encountered by black soldiers stationed in the continental United States. Although Project Clear dealt with a unique series of events and with a situation that existed for only a few transitional years, its findings were obvious: racial integration "worked." Recent years have witnessed renewed expression of racial tension and conflict. This study includes observations applicable to problems still unsolved and to situations yet to be encountered. Apart from such an intimation of future applicability, there is a drama to be found in the transformation of an institution as large and conservative as the army. For the social scientist, there is a particular interest in this example of how large-scale social research, conducted with tremendous speed and under great pressure, can be applied effectively to influence national policy. Leo Bogart is internationally known as a public opinion specialist and mass media executive. His books include Preserving the Press, Press and the Public, Premises for Propaganda, The Age of Television, and Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, published by Transaction.
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