Canned Speech: Selling Democracy in the Phonographic Age
研究了留声机如何首次大规模用于总统竞选，让候选人通过录制演讲直接接触选民，既推动了信息民主化，也带来了操纵风险，对理解今日社交媒体有启示。
The phonograph presented American presidential aspirants with an opportunity to surmount eighteenth-century campaigning standards and meet the challenges of an expanding democracy and electorate. Thomas Edison’s invention—with its corresponding records—arguably was the first mechanical media technology to find its way into political campaigning on a mass scale. By 1908, canned, recorded speeches were poised to become a marketable alternative to soliciting ballots in person while also facilitating a candidate’s direct engagement with voters, thus enabling contenders and media firms like Edison’s National Phonograph Company to curate personas that were sold both commercially and at the polls. As a result, the phonograph’s practical role allowed the public to hear candidates directly and in their own words, marking an important but underrecognized step forward in the democratization of access to information (and the concomitant risk of manipulation and distortion that came along with it) that one finds in today’s social media.