As early as prewar Japan, thinkers of various intellectual proveniences had begun discussing the most important topics of contemporary media and communication studies, such as ways to define the social function of the press, journalism and the formation of public opinion. In Public Opinion – Propaganda – Ideology, light is particularly shed on press scholar Ono Hideo, his disciple the sociologist and propaganda researcher Koyama Eizō, Marxist philosopher Tosaka Jun and sociologist and postwar intellectual Shimizu Ikutarō. Besides introducing the different approaches of the aforementioned figures, this book also contextualizes the early discursive space of Japanese media and communication studies within global contexts from three perspectives of transnational intellectual history, i.e. adaptation reciprocities and parallels.
