Episode 42: stereotype
We normally think of stereotypes today as a kind of lazy thinking: they're vicious assumptions about, say, demographic groups or even whole regions of the world. The word comes into English as the combination of two Greek stems that were used around 1800 to describe a new method of printing. This early history of the term "stereotype" in printing practices anticipates its later use by Walter Lippmann, one of the most important media theorists of the twentieth century. In this episode, we consider his landmark 1922 work Public Opinion and its anticipation of today's anxieties about "bespoke realities" and "echo chambers" in our digital lives.
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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
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