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was neither a network, nor a community or a crowd; it
followed the pattern of a “foam”, spontaneous and temporary.
8.1.1.
The role of controversies in democracies
Walter Lippmann and John Dewey have both theorized
the role of the public in Western democracies. They both
start from the principle that the growing complexity of
societies at the dawn of the 20th Century calls for new ways
to apprehend them. These methods are journalism for
Lippmann and education for Dewey. However, the two
authors reach very different conclusions regarding the role of
the public in the political organization of modern States. For
the first, the public is fickle by nature; it uses “stereotypes”
(“picture in our heads”, see [LIP 22, p.3]) which allow it to
quickly shape its opinion about a topic or a particular event.
Furthermore, he argues that the public is not interested in
public affairs unless these have previously been
“melodramatized” (see [LIP 27, p.65]). Lippmann's famously
bitter statement is in order here:
The public will arrive in the middle of the third
act and will leave before the last curtain, having
stayed just long enough perhaps to decide who is
the
hero
and
who
the
villain
of
the
piece.
[LIP 27, p.65]
On the other hand, still following Lippmann's argument,
contemporary democracies require the presence of educated
men and women, who are capable of understanding the
diversity of national affairs. However, these
“omnicompetent” citizens [LIP 27, p.39] remain mythical for
Lippmann, as staying informed on public affairs requires an
investment of time that few people can afford to make. As a
result of these challenges, Lippmann concludes that the
public is not in actual fact able to manage public affairs and
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