Social Control of Intellect: Four Features of the Academic–Media Nexus

Abstract

Intellect in social theory is often presented as an ideal type—the critical, iconoclastic side of the mind—but it must anticipate an audience in mediated contexts, unlike in the Kantian realm of transcendent reason. The terrain in which academia and media meet, consequently, is ripe for exploration into the fate of intellect when transgressive. This article explicates four features of the academic–media nexus that contribute to social control of intellect: instrumental rationalism of faculty, strategic management of university communication, journalistic appropriation of the “public intellectual” role, and surveillance of academic discourse. The article situates the features in a framework to recognize whether they originate primarily in academia or media, and whether the controlling process occurs through internalized norms or calculated practice. While social control is understood as recursive and reinforcing, reflexivity induced in an inter-field dynamic implies the possibility of reconciling intellect with news work.