What Reading Does to People - A Summary of Evidence on the Social Effects of Reading and a Statement of Problems for Research #266204

A third stage is reached when the controversies have led to some program of social action, for example, the declara tion of a foreign war, which thereafter must be supported by all the pressures which the arts of public communication can bring to bear. Throughout this stage of the crisis the public communicator becomes or shares responsibility with the party organizer, or commander-in-chief, and both displace the business executive or man Of affairs as makers of social policy. Regardless of their competence to under stand the issues involved, and despite the mistakes they make by following their hunches instead of the available evidence, the individuals collectively responsible for mass communications in the public interest during periods of national crisis have autocratic power.