Weapons of Mass Persuasion: Direct and Compelled Speech by the State in the United States

• In Event: 066 - Section on Political Sociology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. The Politics of Knowledge

Abstract

Governments “speak”—often, and loudly. Examples of government speech in the U.S. are numerous, and include messages and campaigns to promote citizenship, educational attainment, access to social services, safety, health, and cooperation and compliance with government. This speech covers an astounding array of topics, and campaigns can reach enormous proportions—as evidenced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Real Cost campaign aimed to preventing uptake and encouraging cessation of tobacco use among youth. I argue that such speech is an important social and political phenomenon, and has been largely neglected in contemporary sociology. I introduce a typology of government speech, which includes (1) direct speech, (2) compelled commercial speech, and (3) compelled professional speech. I argue that developing a sociology of government speech would be a very useful enterprise, and suggest a few first steps in that direction.

Author

• Mark Wolfson, Wake Forest School of Medicine