Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century

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Caroline Jack

Business as Usual

How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century

Caroline Jack

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Hardback

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English

University of Chicago Press
22 October 2024

How corporations used mass media to teach Americans that capitalism was natural and patriotic, exposing the porous line between propaganda and public service.

Business as Usual reveals how American capitalism has been promoted in the most ephemeral of materials: public service announcements, pamphlets, educational films, and games—what Caroline Jack calls ""sponsored economic education media."" These items, which were funded by corporations and trade groups who aimed to ""sell America to Americans,"" found their way into communities, classrooms, and workplaces, and onto the airwaves, where they promoted ideals of ""free enterprise"" under the cloaks of public service and civic education. They offered an idealized vision of US industrial development as a source of patriotic optimism, framed business management imperatives as economic principles, and conflated the privileges granted to corporations by the law with foundational political rights held by individuals. This rhetoric remains dominant—a harbinger of the power of disinformation that so besets us today. Jack reveals the funding, production, and distribution that together entrenched a particular vision of corporate responsibility—and, in the process, shut out other hierarchies of value and common care.

By: Caroline Jack
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 513g
ISBN: 9780226835129
ISBN 10: 022683512X
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 22 October 2024
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: Left to Perish in Debris Chapter 1: The Contradictions of Economic Education Chapter 2: Selling America to Americans Chapter 3: Expertise and Affirmation Chapter 4: The Great Free Enterprise Campaign Chapter 5: The New Economics Chapter 6: From Institutions to Markets Chapter 7: The Triumphs of Economic Education Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Index

Caroline Jack is assistant professor of communication at the University of California, San Diego.

Reviews for Business as Usual: How Sponsored Media Sold American Capitalism in the Twentieth Century

“Business as Usual is anything but. This sharp-eyed media history lifts the lid on the twentieth-century fight to bend our imaginations to the will of capital. Think ‘Duck and Cover’ for the C-suite set. You’ll be surprised at every turn—by the stories and by the lessons they offer for our digital era.” -- Fred Turner, author of The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties