The Politics of Consumption and the Consumption of Politics: How Authoritarian Regimes Shape Public Opinion by Using Consumer Marketing Tools
Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
Queen Mary, University of London
Editor’s Note:
This Speaker’s Box looks at the relationship between populist/authoritarian governments and consumerism. The underlying phenomenon is relevant to our era, which has been termed the “engineering of consent” (Bernays, 1955). This is the notion that public opinion does not exist in a defined form, but instead is tentative and somewhat malleable. The argument offered here by Nicholas O’Shaughnessy ...