The self-adjusting propaganda system: Toward a midrange theory of the press

This study is a macrosociological exploration into the relationship between news content and social change. News production is depicted as occurring within the context of a self-adjusting propaganda system (SAPS). The SAPS is internally hegemonic and produces propaganda in the form of news. It is self-adjusting in a triple sense: Internal hegemony is maintained through a complex negotiated order that adjusts the self-processes of SAPS actors. The negotiated order is adjusted to changes in the SAPS' social context through the joint construction of lines of action by those who work within it. Finally, the SAPS partially constructs its political, economic, and cognitive boundaries through its propaganda output. News content is conceptualized as the concrete residuals of morality, defined as a struggle between mentalities over what ought and ought not be. The internal, hegemonic morality of the SAPS consists of a business mentality struggling with a journalist mentality. This struggle is traced from the 1920s through the late 1970s in the context of a broader national morality. The national morality was found to change, in large measure with changes in news content, from one of class struggle in the 1920s to one of a fascist war against communism versus a counter-cultural war against fascism in the sixties and seventies. The domestic contributions to fighting World-War II, the war against fascism, were identified as the most significant historical events in the construction of the SAPS, its hegemonic morality, and the national morality. The interaction of establishment news (propaganda) with the broader national context was found to be changeable, at times seemingly linear in nature and at other times seemingly dialectical in nature. The dialectical nature of establishment propaganda is, in part, found to be one of the underlying factors in the development of the "sixties" resistance to domestic establishment fascism. Areas for further research are identified and research methods are discussed.