BASTIN The Mediatisation and Anonymisation of The World in The Work of Max Weber

[MWS 9.1/9.
2 (2009) 123-141]
ISSN 1470-8078
The mediatisation and anonymisation

of the world in the work of Max Weber
Gilles Bastin
Abstract
Webers journalistic activity is considered in its own right and common themes are
brought out from his involvement in the mass media. The role of the mass media
in Politics as a Vocation and in Webers proposed sociology of the press is analysed. There is a dialectic specific to the media and modernity and its key feature is
anonymisation. Capitalist newspapers tend to depoliticisation and journalists are no
allowed to use their own names, leading to a failure of journalist judgement detrimental to democratic discussion. Weber in outlining his press enquiry highlighted
the interaction between the press as an objective component of culture and its influence on the subjective personality of modern man. Webers enquiry anticipates the
later sociology of the press in America.
Keywords: anonymisation, journalism, mass media, Max Weber, mediatisation,
modern world, sociology of the press.
Introduction
From the very first paragraph of his introduction to Le savant et le politique, an important text widely read in the university circles closest
to those exercising political power as well as to the press, Raymond
Aron (1959: 7) says of Weber that although he was undoubtedly a
scholar, he was on occasion a political journalist. This slightly forced
characteristic should be construed as a pro domo plea for a singular
form of sociology being developed by Aron at the time and which
was nostalgic for politics. In some respects, the bringing together
of the scholar and the politician under the auspices of journalistic
practice and political editorials was at the heart of the project that
resulted in the publication of the two 1917 lectures in one and the
same book. Aron was, however, not alone in justifying the existence
of the editorialising sociologist, insofar as he was the embodiment of
it. Both the history of the early systematisation of Webers writings
Max Weber Studies 2010, Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University, 31
Jewry Street, London, EC3N 2EY.
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as well as the authors biography clearly show many links between

Weber and the media, before Aron undertook to firm them up.
Webers work as an editorial sociologist was outlined very early
on by Marianne Weber, who grouped together under the heading
of Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Collected political writings) texts
that had for the most part been published in newspapers. This collection gave credence to the idea that theoretical thought and media
engagement were indissociable in Webers work, or to use the terms
of Catherine Colliot-Thlne (2004: 83) in her introduction to the
recent French translation of these texts, they represented the committed side of Webers writings. Therefore his writing does not use
two separate registers but rather are two sides of one and the same
body of work, one showing commitment (the political writings) and
the other being detached from moral and political standpoints (economic and religious sociology).1
Webers life-long interest in the press and the work of journalists is
well known to his biographers. His intellectual and political development were influenced by people like Hermann Baumgarten, who had
experience of journalism (Mommsen 1959) and he was also involved
in Friedrich Naumanns political and editorial experiments.2 Yet for
the most part, Webers journalism developed most naturally in the
columns of the Frankfurter Zeitung, the great progressive newspaper
of the German intelligentsia, to which he gave many articles in the
first two decades of the 20th century.3 Several concordant indicators
1. It should be noted that these two sides, as is often the case, have not been
elucidated to the same degree in commentaries on Weber. The translation (in Weber
2004) of the terms writings (crits) to works (uvres) may be construed as the
assumption of greater clarity and legitimacy of the theoretical side. Arons reading of
Weber, itself, tends to oppose the engaged and theoretical sides rather than link them,
particularly because he deliberately skips Webers empirical sociology, although this
constitutes a possible link between the two, and draws this sociology towards an
abstract philosophy of history (Colliot-Thlne 2001).
2. Friedrich Naumann founded a weekly newspaper, Die Hilfe, which, at the
turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, propounded his ideas on social and liberal
reform.
3. The Frankfurter Zeitung was founded in 1856 by Leopold Sonneman, a
banker with liberal convictions, and quickly became the leading newspaper of the
progressive intelligentsia, as well as being very influential in economic circles (in
particular, it published pages of prices of stocks and shares). The Frankfurter Zeitung
defended parliamentary democracy and social reforms and was critical of the Reichs
foreign policy. With a circulation of over 50,000 in the aftermath of World War One,
it became the target of numerous attacks, including several launched by Hitler who
claimed that it was among those to be blamed for the defeat and that it represented
Max Weber Studies 2010.
Bastin The mediatisation and anonymisation of the world
125
suggest that Weber did not regard this occupation as a mere burden
imposed on a scholar, but as an activity in its own right.4
It would, however, be absurd to claim that Weber was really a
journalist, that is if there is any agreement regarding this term
although some like Weaver and McCombs (1980: 483) take the opposite view. His contributions to the German press were very much
examples of scholarly editorialism, as the topics of his main articles
attest: university policy, Bismarcks foreign policy, the drafting of
the constitution of the Weimar Republic, the holding of more than
one public office and so on. Yet there is no doubt that taking part
in the intellectual life of a newspaper was for Weber one form of
present-day service as he puts it in a short presentation text for the
revised version of five articles on the German political system published between April and June 1917 in the Frankfurter Zeiting in the
form of a booklet entitled Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten
Deutschland (cf. Heuss 1958: XXIV).
The issue of Webers relationship with the world of newspapers
and the media of his day deserves, however, to be addressed more
than simply on the biographical level. On several occasions Weber
writes about the ways in which the world was becoming mediatised in his time, as well as their effects on individual freedom of
judgement and on conduct (Lebensfhrung). As a knowledgeable
observer of the first great movement towards mass media which
came with the industrialisation of the press, Weber could not ignore
the effects of mass communication on modern regimes, both on
political issues and other areas of social life. Although, unlike some
the Jewish press. On the destiny of this newspaper during and after World War
One, and its short-lived rapprochement with the Deutsche Demokratische Partei in the
early years of the Weimar Republic, to collusion with the Nazis from 1933, until its
ultimate demise in 1943, see Eksteins 1971.
4. We know for instance that towards the end of his life, Weber envisaged the
possibility of joining a newspaper, a job, which, as he wrote in a letter to his wife
in 1920, would suit him better than professorial chattering (Marianne Weber 1926
[1950]: 748). The bibliography listed by Marianne Weber at the end of this work
explicitly includes the newspaper articles (it bears the title Verzeichnis der Schriften
von Max Weber, einschliesslich der politischen Zeitungsartikel [List of Max Webers
writings, including the political newspaper articles]. It includes 16 articles from
the Frankfurter Zeitung published between 1907 and 1919 (which constitute a fair
proportion of the political writings). The other newspapers in which Weber also
wrote were the Berliner Tageblatt, the Berliner Brsenzeitung and the Mnchner Neueste
Nachrichten. Webers contribution to the Frankfurter Zeitung has been analysed as
a kind of ersatz for the political career that the sociologist might have had and a
palliative for his boredom with teaching (Pttker 2001; Roth 1971).
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of his contemporaries such as Bcher (1915) and Tnnies (1922),

Weber did not leave a genuine theoretical opus in that field, it is
possible to find within several a priori heterogeneous texts convergent developments, which, on the issue of mediatisation, constitute
a kind of coherent underlying theme.
This theme will be approached here through the analysis of two
different corpora: on the one hand, the 1917 lecture on the Politik
als Beruf (Politics as a Vocation) and on the other the project of
a press survey (Pre-Enqute) presented around 1910 before the
German Sociological Society. The topics of these texts are not identical. In the first case the issue is the particular condition of politics
in a mass society and the means of production of information that
might guarantee both the extension of individual judgement and the
responsibility of political personnel in the face of political opinion
(the main theme of Politik als Beruf and Parlament und Regierung im
neugeordneten Deutschland). In the second case, they tackle the more
cultural issue of the forms of daily life in a world mediatised by the
existence of the press and by its economic and social structure (the
main theme of the project on the survey of the press and Webers
address to German Sociological Society in 1910).
From these texts we will draw a common thread which led Weber
to highlight a dialectic specific to media and modernity, that of
anonymisation of individual experience. This term figures in both
corpora and deserves closer attention in order to clarify firstly, developments concerning individual ethical issues which loom large in
the political texts and lead Weber to argue that anonymous writing
in the media, the type of communication characteristic of a facade of
democracy which the true politician should contest, and secondly,
developments concerning questions of economic and cultural history in which the anonymisation of information is treated as part of
the dynamic of modern capitalism, being both a condition for it to
develop and, paradoxically, contributing to its petrification into a
form which alienates individuals.
I.
Although the most political texts in which Max Weber addresses
the issue of journalism and a mass press are quite well known, they
are by no means easy to interpret, for instance the handful of pages
from the lecture on the political profession in which Weber refers
to journalists as modern representatives of the demagogic species.
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This text within the general framework of Webers reflections on

politicians and their training, has often been read as an apologia
for a group which escapes all specific social categorisation and
that society judges socially according to the behaviour of its morally most reprehensible representatives (Weber 1994: 331-2). While
noting that such characteristics turn journalists into veritable pariahs, Weber does not hesitate in these few paragraphs to underscore,
a contrario, the intelligence and sense of responsibility shown by
many of them.
This defence is, however, partly based in related fashion to an
organisational argument which clears journalists of much of the
responsibility of the results of their work. Although in the text the
issue of access to political power is crucial, Webers argument essentially follows economic lines as regards news professionals. The
reason why the political prospects of journalists in Germany, be it
in the social democratic or bourgeois (brgerlich) parties, are slim
is their lack of availability, i.e. the necessity of working for their
livelihoods in a context where the press was being industrialised
thus depriving them of the time required for political activities.5
The development of newspaper companies brought with it a loss
of power for journalists within these organisationsbig capitalist
newspaper concerns as Weber names themto the benefit of magnates like Lord Northcliffe, whom Weber cites in the text.6
While Weber considers this to be an indisputable fact, his analysis
goes beyond the issue of the industrialisation of the press and its
organisational and economic perspectives.7 The main thrust of his
5. The need to earn money by writing articles daily or at least weekly is like a
ball-and-chain round a politicians ankle, and I know of cases where this had been
an outward and, above all, an inward impediment to natural leaders in their rise to
power (Weber 1994: 332).
6. Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe, 18651922), launched his press career
by publishing newspapers made up of responses to practical questions posed by
readers. In 1896, he founded the Daily Mail, the first popular daily in Great Britain,
which had a circulation of one million around 1900. Alfred Harmsworth earned the
respect of Joseph Pulitzer (18471911) who along with Randolph Hearst (18631951)
invented the genre in the United States. In France, Mose Millauds (18131871) Petit
Journal was set up before its Anglo-American equivalents. In Germany, too, the second
half of the 19th century was marked by the development of a mass-circulation press
by capitalist entrepreneurs who built real media empires. Rudolf Mosse (18431920),
August Scherl (18491921) and Leopold Ullstein (18261899) were the main barons
of the Berlin press in the late 19th century.
7. Unlike some of his contemporaries who called more directly into question
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critique is cultural, with a violent charge against the media against

depoliticised communications which he considers to be typical
propagators of political indifference and which fall under the control of large concerns (e.g. newspapers such as the Moniteur gnral
cited in the French translation).8 It is in this context that the principle of anonymity (Anonymittsprinzip) here arises.9 This principle,
he alleges, holds back journalists careers, in particular by preventing them from gaining a reputation through their signature. It also
takes away from journalists the responsibility for the content of their
output. Weber does not cherish any illusions regarding how much
private ownership of the media and its financing in their analyses (and therefore
no doubt exaggerated the pristine character of a putative Golden Age, which was
always perceived as preceding the mass circulations of the late 19th century). The
case of Webers brother, Alfred, may be cited in particular. In 1923 Alfred Weber
published on behalf of the Verein fr Sozialpolitik a report entitled The poverty of intellectual workers which took up the theme of the loss of independence brought about
by the development of mass media. In that report he opposed, in somewhat utopian
fashion, a regime of economic sponsorship (the capitalist press regime) to the former
regime of intellectuals with independent means. Alfred Weber spoke out, in a most
pessimistic fashion, against the fact that the press was becoming a branch of the
economy, cf. Kalinowski (2005). Karl Bcher, who described the press as a cog in
the modern commercial machine, along with Alfred Schffle, proposed at the same
time possible reforms through the nationalisation of certain media, particularly the
classified ads press (Hardt 1979).
8. The French translation rests upon a parallel with newspapers such as the
Moniteur, founded by Panckoucke at the time of the Revolution and which became a
quasi-official organ of the Empire. They published many communiqus and rivalled
one another for political prudence to avoid censorship and to please the regime. In
fact, in his lecture Weber mentions the publication of official communiqus in time
of war, although this passage most explicitly refers to newspapers that publish small
ads. In particular, in 1883 August Scherl founded the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger and
the term Generalanzeiger referred, at the time of the lecture, to the mass-circulation
press which in Germany (as in France, Great Britain and the United States in very
similar forms) relied on the principle of what economists call a two-tier market.
Since then, newspapers are financed both by readers and advertisers (big and small).
To attract advertising, this model presupposes large circulations and consequently
leads for strictly economic reasons to very consensual editorial guidelines, which
are as apolitical as possible. Webers argument is, then, not aimed at the press under
government orders but at economic factors favouring the depoliticisation of content.
An interesting contemporary version of this debate has followed the development of
growing numbers of free newspapers in Europe in recent years.
9. The industrialisation of the mass-circulation press in the 19th century
brought with it the standardisation of writing formats and the use of articles which
were either unsigned or signed with a pseudonym, construed as a form of anonymisation rather than as a literary device, cf. for the case of France (Delporte 1999).
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a break with the principle of anonymity might be able to improve

the quality of newspapers, in particular because they might run into
another equally harmful pitfall besetting the commercial press, the
tendency to promote the notoriety of certain individual journalists,
as did the most notoriously revolting news sheets, which sought to
use such means to increase their circulation, and, as things turned
out, they succeeded perfectly. Nonetheless, the very principle of
media anonymity lies at the heart of his thinking in this short text.
The issue of journalistic anonymity and of the accountability which
goes with publishing political material, also lies at the heart of the
text on constitutional reform in Germany Parlament und Regierung im
neugeordneten Deutschland. In this text, which essentially deals with
an analysis of constitutional issues, and like the lecture on Politics as
a Vocation with the sociology of political personnel, the role of the
media in a modern democracy is approached through reflections on
the greater or lesser degree of publicity granted to political action.
The paradox is only apparent. By focussing on the issue of political
honour which covers most of Section IV of this text about the dominant position of civil servants in foreign policy, Weber in fact shows
how democratic political action relies on the greater or lesser capacity of those who seek to control the way in which it is publicised.
This concerns in particular the analysis of the disastrous effects of
the publication of purely personal pronouncements by the monarch in
questions of foreign policy through some dedicated court officials or
telegraph agencies (Weber 1994: 196). The commentary deals with
several diplomatic misadventures caused by the lack of reserve and
self-control displayed by Wilhelm II in his contacts with journalists.10
Once again, the meaning of Webers comments is not immediately
obvious. A superficial reading might suggest a defence of secrecy
and dissimulation and an attack on the freedom to inform. In the
preceding section of the text, entitled Public scrutiny of the administration and the selection of political leaders, Weber lambasts a
naively idealistic of transparency in news reporting:
The view, widespread in democratic circles, that conducting things
in public, particularly diplomacy, is a panacea and, above all, one
which will always operate in favour of peace, can be misleading when
10. The best known is the Daily Telegraph affair. On 28 October 1908, the Daily
Telegraph published an interview with Wilhelm II, in which he referred to the rivalry
between the Germany and British navies in a most provocative manner, in particular
by calling the British fools running around like brainless hares. Weber cites several
affairs of this kind.
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expressed in such general terms. It has some justification for final statements of a standpoint which has been considered carefully in advance.
As long as states are in competition with one another, there is as little
justification for publicising the deliberations themselves as there is in
the case of competing industries (Weber 1994: 186).
These comments need to be put into the wider context of a general discourse on the necessity of a parliament empowered to conduct enquiries and able to set a counterweight of transparency and
public communication against any majority order or disorder
(Weber 2004: 364). It thus becomes clear that what Weber is aiming
at by attacking the emperors lack of reserve, is not the preservation of higher state interests but rather the conditions for an accountable democracy, i.e. a democracy in which leaders face up to public
opinion by taking responsibility for the positions that they have
taken, which is the complete opposite of a situation as in this example where non-accountable authorities communicate the monarchs
declarations to the public, and in so go over the heads [of political
leaders] (Weber 2004: 376).11
In other words, what Weber is opposing is not the publicising of
political decisions but, following on directly from his observations
on journalists, the dangers of anonymising public discourse resulting from the bureaucratising of politics. This leads to a form of lack
of responsibility in the public sphere. Just as the journalist from the
mass-circulation newspaper loses part of his personality, and inevitably, his responsibility, the political leaders may well, in a mass
democracy run by civil servants, lose some of their originality and
personal individuality in the public domain. What Weber appears to
be saying in this is that alongside politicians, there is the civil servant
and information sources, and alongside the news professionals are
the capitalist magnate, both repulsive figures who take us further
from open democracy which the German sociologist was longing for
in the immediate post-war years.
As Ho Kim (2000)12 pointed out in a different context, Weberian
realism is best characterised in relation to neo-Tocquevillian idealism
12
11. This again takes up the theme of impregnable caesarism in mass states. It
is also this caesarism which guarantees that a certain number of personalities assume
in the face of public opinion, the responsibility which would be completely diluted in
an assembly governing with many members (Weber 2004: 353). The registry of publicity is systematically underlined by Weber in these passages, but here the emphasis
is mine.
12. The context is that of associations (Ho Kim 2000). The idea that voluntary
associations is a determining factor in civil society is one of the bases of this
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which gives rise to the idea that more information is always better
than less. Democratisation is not to be measured by the volume of
information available within a society, but rather, from this perspective, by the capacity of individuals (journalists and politicians) to
resist anonymisation and to take and maintain responsibility for
their judgements within a mediatised space.13 In Webers view public
space is not simply a matter of counting voices and opinions, but it
is also the struggle against anonymity and against anonymisation
which is the mark of both the development of political bureaucracy
and media capitalism.14 The notion of public opinion features for
instance very little in Webers writings, whereas for contemporaries
like Gabriel Tarde (1901) or Ferdinand Tnnies (1922) it characterises democratic modernity and helps to make the press part of the
very fabric of the social order. 15 For instance, the term is used only
four times by Weber in all of his political writings. In the Sociology
of rulership (chapter IX of the second part of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft), the so-called public opinion is mentioned in the passages on
mechanistic neo-Tocquevillian view point, for instance, in the form given to it by
Putnam (2000). In the area of media, this argument appeared, mutatis mutandis in
Sen (1999) and in the World Bank report of 2002 which suggest a mechanical link
between development of the media and economic growth.
13. Weber stated in a highly personal fashion his attachment to this open conflictual democracy, specifically by taking a series of lawsuits between 1911 and 1913
against a defamatory anonymous source of information concerning his honour and
against the journalist who had passed on these remarks. He turned these hearings into
public platforms to criticise anonymous reports. In an interview with a Heidelberg
newspaper in October 1912, he directly disputed the legitimacy of journalists use of
anonymous sources in matters which may affect the personal reputation of individuals and argued that in such cases newspapers should not publish information unless
their sources are willing to be named. On this issue see Bastin 2001 and Obst 1986.
14. Benedict Anderson (1983: 39) has shown for instance how the confidence of
the community in anonymity was a trademark of modern nations. Quoted in Carey
(2007: 13).
15. For Gabriel Tarde (1901: 83), newspapers transform the crowd into the
public by giving it mental cohesion. Ferdinand Tnnies (1922) saw public opinion
as a kind of social will which replaced religions in modern societies. The press
participates in the strengthening of Opinion according to a three-stage typology
(gaseous-liquid-solid). Tarde and Tnnies both highlight the capacity of the press
to create a second form of interaction between physically distant people and thus to
construct groups and societies. For Tarde the slide towards the formation of public
opinion according to numbers rather than by credit and reputation was one of the
markers of the democratic reign of the public. This theme, far removed from Webers
more pragmatic vision of the press was taken up again by the American interactionist tradition in the interwar period, in particular by Robert Park and Helen Hughes.
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bureaucratic rule, in which Weber essentially emphasises the dependency of this opinion on political parties and the press, and in mass
democracies, its irrational community character (Weber 1956: 721).
This position has been well described by Hennis (1987) in his
analysis of the differences between Webers voluntarism and the
contemporary liberal perspective. Hennis reminds us in particular
that although Weber was naturally opposed to the heavy wartime
censorship of newspapers, he never thought that the freedom of the
press might mean in and of itself an enlargement of individuals
faculty of judgement. On the contrary, as we shall see, Weber was
most concerned to place the issue of the development of the press in
social context, and to begin, not from the social system in which it
was developing, but as in other areas, the state of mind in which it
put its readers. From this perspective, the notion of public opinion is
far too abstract. Its use, for anyone interested in the emergence of the
modern active citizen, free both in his judgements and his movements in the public sphere, smacks of an idealism already belied by
reality. As Hennis (1987: 215) also says concerning a topic on which
we shall now be focussing: Webers major survey project shows
what aspects of the press were of interest to him: the reduction of
opinions to stereotypes, and the domination of the faculty of judgement rather than its liberation.
II.
It is necessary to reflect on Webers least political texts to understand
the pessimism which plagues his thinking on mediatised democracy.
Indeed, the issue of the mediatisation of social relations and the role
of the press in the general life of society also arises, albeit occasionally,
in Webers sociological work on economics and comparative religion.
In it the press is described as one of the distinctive characteristics of
western modernity and bourgeois enterprise capitalism. In the introduction to the Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion (Weber
1978: 3) Weber compares for instance China and the west as follows:
China invented various products from the art of printing, but only
the west witnessed the emergence of printed literature, i.e. designed
solely for printing which alone made it viable, as is the case in particular for the press and periodicals. Similarly, Webers lectures on
economic history contain references to the decisive emergence in the
west from the 18th century of organised news services.16

16. It thus became possible for a large-scale trade to develop, because a crucial
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Around 1910 Weber devised an in-depth study of this historical

phenomenon and its implications for modern culture. His proposed
survey, known as the Pre-Enqute, was presented to the first colloquium of the German Sociological Society, and vigorously defended
by Weber as the most important task to be carried out collectively
under the auspices of this learned association. In particular Weber
introduced his paper with these words: Allow me to make the
simple suggestion. Think for a moment of the world without the
press. What would modern life be like without the specific public
character created by it? (Weber 1988: 434).
For various reasons, the project was never completed (Kutsch
1988). Nonetheless, the analysis concords significantly with the
themes of the political texts. The Pre-Enqute is presented as a
project in both cultural and economic sociology (Bastin 2001). If
Webers objective in this project was to understand how with the
coming of the daily newspaper and the resulting ritualised reading, writing finds a new place in the social (Despoix 1992), it should
be recalled that Weber took a double perspective on the issue. On
the one hand, he wanted to understand the social construction of
the subjective personality of modern man, and on the other, to see
the press as an objective component of modern culture.17 It is in fact
prior condition was met in the sense that both information and traffic were satisfactorily organised. A public information service, like the one currently underpinning the
Stock Exchange only emerged relatively late. In the early 18th century, the English
Parliament kept its deliberations secret, as did the Stock Exchanges, which behaved
like merchants clubs with their information. They feared that if prices became
known outside that they might become unpopular and that their business would
suffer. The institution of the press only began to serve commerce quite recently.
Newspapers are not products of capitalism. The news that they published was at
first purely political, although they showed a penchant for the unusual wherever
it occurred in the world. On the other hand, advertisements only became a normal
part of newspapers very late. That is not to deny that they were never completely
absent, although to begin with they were largely concerned with family matters.
Commercial advertising, aimed at selling, was unusual until the late 18th century,
and first becomes established in the Times, the worlds leading newspaper for over a
century. The publication of the prices of stocks and shares only became commonplace
in the 19th century, since, at their inception, stock exchanges were clubs and as they
have remained in America until recent times. Thus in the 17th and 18th centuries
everything was still based on correspondence (Weber 1924; cf. Weber n.d.: 295).
17. The project thus follows on directly from the foreword to the first issue of
Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in which the question of the general
cultural significance of the development of capitalism is highlighted as the main
task of the journal. See also the survey of the Verein fr Sozialpolitik on large-scale
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these two lines of questioning on the public character of modernity

(the individual personality being formed by the exposure to mass
information and an objective culture marked by the industrial press
becoming part of capitalism) which most clearly manifests the dialectic of the mediatisation of the world which we have already seen
in the political works. The frame of reference here is not democracy
but capitalist economics since Webers starting point is the fundamental datum for the media of his time, i.e the fact that they were
capitalist enterprises.
It is therefore hardly surprising that the notion of anonymity also
plays a central role here in Webers argument. The term occurs three
times in the 1910 project and forms the link between the (objective)
economic aspects of the analysis and the issue of individual attitudes
moulded by the reading of newspapers. It is around this notion that
most of the argument concerning the political and cultural significance of newspapers as such is made, what Weber called in his
planned survey the mindset of the newspaper (Zeitungsgesinnung),
using the same term used to designate the Puritan mindset in his
work on the sociology of religion.18
At first anonymity appears to be a characteristic of a newspaper
article (Anonymitt der Artikel). The anonymisation of articlesa
theme discussed in relation to the 1917 lectureis in fact one of
the means of maintaining homogeneity of the newspapers position and the standardisation of what Weber calls the sharing of the
subject matter among the personnel. Yet far more than a division of
labour in the news business, anonymity is in the second part of the
planned survey analysed as a process going on within the newspaper to create a particular mindset. Here Weber refers to newspaper anonymity as such (Anonymitt der Zeitung). This corresponds
to a complex logic which appears to mingle commercial, social and
industry. Here again the Kulturbedeutung approach is emphasised cf. Weber (1908)
[1924: 59], and Hennis (1998).
18. It is thus clear that the projected press survey, like Webers other work in the
same period, was a kind of extension of the initial problem discussed in The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism i.e. the economic dimensions of the conditions which
brought about the conduct of modern life. Weber had drawn up guidelines for many
other objects of study and to add to the Puritan literature other still more modern
material. More things than have been claimed link the modern Weberian to the
original, cf. Clegg (2005): Today in age of mass media, a contemporary Weberian
seeking to gauge the spirit of the age would not confine attention to the homilies of a
Samuel Smiles or a Benjamin Franklin: not only would they watch The Office and The
Footy Show they would also read the tabloid television to tap into the geist.
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cultural factors.19 Most of all, however, in Webers view anonymisation appears to exert effects on the political and cultural significance
of the newspaper as such.
The importance of this process becomes clear, when Weber refers in
his planned survey to the fact that the newspaper thus anonymised,
educates its readers in formal changes in the way in which they
think and express themselves. Following this analysis he makes
particular mention of schematising and uniformising effects of
media products and the industrialisation of the press, which Weber
calls, like many of his contemporaries, its americanisation.20
The theme of the fabrication, not so much of public opinion by
the newspapers, but of individuals accepting of a certain anonymous
relationship to the world via newspapers lies right at the heart of
the 1910 project. Weber, however, does not limit himself to a purely
critical slant on this process. Concerning the influence of the press
on language and the both objective and emotional stylisation
of news presentation, he notes two possible and complementary
effects: A real and apparent widening of the intellectual horizon,
enrichment and schematising of thought. There is thus in Webers
work no nostalgia for a golden age, unlike other contemporary and
even later commentators.21
For Weber, the mindset constructed by mass media seems to bear
within itself both factors which widen and enrich the horizon of individual movement and factors which schematise and reify, to use a
term which figures in the survey project.22 Weber does not come out
19. See the paragraph entitled: The fabrication of a newspaper mindset (B
I): Collectivism and individualism in the preparation of newspaper content. The
reasons for newspaper anonymity: commercial (for instance, the subscription press as
opposed as to titles sold one issue at a time), political (e.g. the greater or lesser degree
to which political parties react), social (e.g. the will to maintain the tradition and the
prestige of the newspaper as such and the maintenance of the power relationship
between the newspapers owners (capital) and the journalists) and cultural (e.g. the
degree of authority over the readership in relation to their political knowledge, by
the articles printed, particularly if these are anonymous and appear to be a house
product (cf. Weber 1998: 117).
20. Americanisation is a frequent term at the time used generally in a pejorative
sense. It refers to the adoption of certain formats commonly accepted such as the
use of sections, large headlines, interviews and the descriptive style known as the
reverse pyramid.
21. In particular Lbl (1903) and Bcher (1915) who distinguishes between
Kulturpresse and Geschftspresse, cf. Retallack (1993). For a nostalgic account of that
process, see also Habermas (1989).
22. This concludes with the words: Such questions could be readily multiplied
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Max Weber Studies
in favour of either of the two directions, but limits himself even in

his formulation to juxtaposing then (enrichment and schematisation).
This juxtaposition moreover features in the socio-historical analysis
being discussed here, as an equivalent of the political and ethical
problem raised earlier, namely that of the necessary and impossible
publicising of the behaviour of the authentic modern politician.23
Conclusion
The Weberian trace in the sociology of mediatisation in modern
culture winds its own way, as far as can be judged from the texts
analysed here, at a distance from the two easiest and most frequently
trodden paths. To the nave liberalism which sees any extension of
media influence as progress for democracy, Weber opposes a realism devoid of complacency which leads him to see in the economic
imperatives of the production of information powerful factors
which simplify and manipulate the individual Gesinnung. Against
the hypercritical nostalgia which is despairing of the mass public
domain emerging before its eyes, he opposes both the rigour of a
survey to be carried out, the observation of everything in the press
that has contributed to the formation of modern humanity and a kind
of hope: that of seeing emerge within politics individuals who are
masters of their own discourse, and more generally, within each of
us, this personal freedom of lifestyle to which the press, along with
the city and other modern means of individuation contributes.24
and it is by following them up directly or by considering closely related questions,
that really important cultural issues of the significance of the press, of its participation in the content of modern cultural goods and its globalising (ubiquisierender)
uniformising (uniformierender), reifying (versachlicher) and moreover emotionally
coloured influence on the sensibilities and mindset of modern man in the areas of
politics, literature, art and the formation and break-up of mass judgements and collective beliefs (Weber 1998: 119).
23. The criticism of Webers former student, Georg Lukcs, may be read as a
reproach for not choosing between these two directions. The latent positivism apparent in Webers work behind the idea of possible genuine broadening of the horizon
of individual judgements in fact limits the scope of the intrinsic relativism contained
in the idea of reification associated with the effects of newspapers on modern
culture. This theme links Weber to western Marxism as described by Merleau-Ponty
(1955) and to the idea that a study of the socialising of society (Vergesellschaftung der
Gesellschaft) is necessary.
24. Colliot-Thlne (1995) has shown how in Webers work the modern western
city made possible the individuation of the citizen/city dweller and the emergence
of a personal freedom of lifestyle, which did not exist previously. This theme, which
137
While in politics, Weberian heroism may appear to be an ideal

line of conduct, his sociological thought, which underpinned his
proposed survey of the press, tends, in contrast, to be much more
pessimistic. On the one hand the press constructs rigid frameworks
on those who use them and only provides, on the other, means to
broaden the individuals capacity to judge and scope for action. It
remains an open question whether individuals will take hold of
these means or whether they will allow themselves to be locked into
the shell (Gehuse) frequently referred to in Webers political writings.25 The press does not seem to be excluded from the following
judgement:
the political and economic forces that brought about the modern
world, although claimed to be conducive to freedom tend to produce
new kinds of constraints, which are as fatal to freedom as were the
social structures of the past (Weber 2004: 88).
The position of the individual reader of the press constructing

his relationship to the world and his way of behaviour between
enrichment and anonymous schematisation, and that of the politician faced with the necessity of fighting to maintain ownership of a
discourse that quickly becomes anonymised through the dynamics
of public relations (for which civil servants and media people serve
as intermediaries) are thus equally uncomfortable. The analysis of
them recalls what some have been able to identify in Webers work
as a diagnosis of the unease of modern culture (Scaff 1987) or as a
recurrent theme in Simmels work regarding the difficulties experienced by individuals in protecting themselves against the reality
produced by culture and the pace of modern life (Faught 1985). This
analysis should also lead us to see Webers relation to critical theory
in terms of continuity rather than rupture (Lowy 1996).26
echoes the work of Georg Simmel, is reinforced by a fourth form of democratic
rulership, connected to the western city, in which figures such as the demagogue, for
whom the journalist in Webers eyes is a representative, can develop.
25. The term occurs seven times in the collection of Webers political texts and it
plays an important role in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
26. It is for instance striking to observe the relationship between the Weberian
theme of anonymisation of individual judgement and what it was to become in the
writings of Marcuse (1964), and in a rather different scholarly style, the spectre of a
world-wide administration served by the language of newspapers and magazines.
Marcuses analysis of the use of the genitive, dashes and acronyms in Time Magazine
and the overwhelming concreteness in the writing of the press, which prevents the
development of critical thought cannot but be compared to the methodological
138
Max Weber Studies
This last point leads to the hope that, as we get to know better certain frequently overlooked analytical traditions in the sociology of
the media, the canons of the history of the discipline can be revised.
The examination of Weberian lines of research concerning the mediatisation and anonymisation of the world through the influence of
the press, in fact shows clearly that one cannot date the beginning
of this branch of sociology from the emergence in the United States,
after the First World War, of the effects paradigm within social psychology and empirical sociology which coincided with the development of the new medium of the time, the radio. The tiny stock of
credit which migr German scholars enjoyed with the exponents of
an empirical sociology of the media, may have led to a narrow view
of European origins of the sociological analysis of the mass media.27
Yet the analysis of Webers work on the theme shows that an outline
for an empirical sociology, which did not abdicate its critical objectives had been developed in Germany around the turn of the century
(Hardt 1979).28
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The mediatisation and anonymisation

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as well as the authors biography clearly show many links between