[rm_-rf_slash]

Not just mass media.

In Bernays' Propaganda, he describes a new process to sell pianos based on psychoanalysis rather than traditional big-print advertisements.

Essentially, get leading architects to incorporate "music rooms" into their residential designs. Most architects will follow the greats and add music rooms as well. The average homeowner will then walk into the hardware store someday and notice a piano for sale - another Bernays innovation - and think to themselves that the idea to buy a piano was theirs all along. In fact, this all could have been done before the invention of the radio, maybe even the telegraph.

Propaganda itself is neither good nor evil. We must accept that biases and manipulable aspects are a part of all of us. We have to work with them, or ignore them at our peril.

One of Bernays' biggest early arguments pro-propaganda was that if the business and political elite don't figure it out now, someone else down the line will, and they'll use it to take you down. We as a species will have to consider this with every generation until Homo sapiens goes extinct.

[dalke]

How does the average homeowner know what's going on with the leading architects, without mass media?

I think you have mistakenly limited "mass media" to radio, telegraphy, TV, etc., and omitted print.

As a reminder, "big-print advertisements" have been around for a long time. The penny press predates useful electric telegraphy, though just barely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper#Industrial_Revolutio... says "In France, Émile de Girardin started "La Presse" in 1836, introducing cheap, advertising-supported dailies to France." 60 years previous, Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlet was distributed by the 100,000s during the US revolution, and I would put that as part of mass media and political propaganda.

Aspect of mass media in Europe of course go all the way back to Gutenberg. I'm not trying to establish a certain date, but rather demonstrate that mass media and its effects on propaganda have been part of the US for its entire history.

Even your 1917 is a semi-arbitrary date. Why not the yellow journalism of the 1890s, or more specifically the propaganda of the Spanish–American War ?

Going back further, the 1840 campaign song "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too", coupled with printed sheet music, helped bring Harrison to power. I'm a bit iffy of if that counts as mass media, but if not, it's close. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tippecanoe_and_Tyler_Too , that song "firmly established the power of singing as a campaign device", and surely was not ignored by future candidates.

[mindslight]

Let's not let different characterizations get in the way of our common understandings...

The local architects would follow the leading architects from their industry, but lumping it into "mass media" was probably a bad characterization. I'd describe it as as a kind of communication-based centralization, regardless of whether specifically enabled by periodicals, telegraph, train, etc.

You could accomplish the same thing with a more-local architect at the town or city level, but would the smaller gains pay off?

[dalke]

When it is slow enough, that's called a culture shift. Your piano seller wants change fast enough to call it personal profit. Mass-produced pianos require mass media as local changes won't pay off the cost of the production machinery. Might as well stay with local craftsmen.

"Communication-based centralization" includes Louis XIV of France's centralization at Versailles, yes?