Readers only aware of 1984 and The Road to Wigan Pier may be unaware that Orwell wrote very extensively on a range of topics. Our starting point here is taken from Bernard Bailyn’s The Ideological Origins of the America Revolution, footnote 3 on page 2:
‘Orwell’s spirited introduction in Orwell and Reynolds British Pamphleteers was sparked by his belief that in twentieth-century society the press does not adequately represent all shades of opinion. “At any given moment there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact.” Orwell looked back to the days of vigorous, highly individualistic pamphleteering with nostalgia, and hoped that people ‘would once again become aware of the possibilities of the pamphlet as a method of influencing opinion…’
The method of reproduction is now different. Instead of printer’s broadsheets, we now have the internet.
Nonetheless: Orwell, your wish has been granted!
We are here!
Yeah, he’s pretty much describing post-World War II American politics until say the early ’80s where there were 3 viewpoints only shared nationally in ABC, CBS, and NBC (who were pretty close to one another in terms of point of view) and the “variety point of view” was provided by whatever newspapers you had in your community, where if you heard something different from orthodoxy depended on where you were.
The existence of the internet is a libertarian wet dream of sorts in it was for a long period of time a free-for-all. I don’t think it really got going in a political and news sense until circa 2000 election, coinciding with the creation of Google and guided search. The medium has now reached middle-age and has its health problems. Can be a force for good and freedom, can be a force for bad and dictatorship.
The internet may allow for highly individualized messages but it equally allows for highly individualized reception. The broadsheet could be used to deliver to a target audience a message they did not want to hear but they would have to look at it long enough to at least recognize what it was. In political campaigns it remains useful to put a piece of printed material in the hand, or at least on the door, of the voter and ensuring exposure to a message. On the Internet the sermon is rarely heard by those not already members of the choir.