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Cristiana Senigaglia
At the beginning of the twentieth century the German sociologist Max Weber regarded the new mass phenonmenon of the press as of major interest for sociological research. In 1909–10 he put forward two proposals for collaborative research on a grand scale into the place of the press in society, culture and politics. Only his own lawsuit with a newspaper, and possibly the difficulty he had in cooperating over a long period with other scholars, led to his abandoning the project. Later in life he frequently alluded to the influence of the press in his writings on politics, and himself used the newspapers extensively for them. He always saw the press as having an ambiguous role, as an important medium for forming public opinion, but also a weapon with which the unscrupulous could manipulate it. Cristiana Senigaglia shows how especially Weber's paper at a conference of German sociologists in 1910 stressed the political role of the press in relation to parliament and public opinion. His preliminary examination of the role of the press, which he never brought to fruition, nevertheless directed his attention to the working of parliamentary systems, and helped to form his preference for them as the best means for curbing the dangers inherent in powerful modern states ruling over mass societies. The press was the best guarantee of democracy, as long as it was so regulated by parliament that it could not be used to support a government seeking to bypass parliament.
