James Bryce's 19th-Century Theory of Public Opinion in the Contemporary Age of New Communications Technologies

In the 1880s, Lord James Bryce traveled extensively throughout the United States to study and write about the American democracy. As part of his multivolume work, he developed a theory of the nature and power of public opinion with a central role for the media (newspapers). Today, new communications technologies vastly increase the exposure of politicians and voters to each other, resulting in an increase in the power of public opinion. Bryce's theory is formalized into 12 propositions and a theorem is derived that has significant implications for society in the contemporary age of multiple channels of communication.