Answer to Question #176563 in History for Jaspreetsingh Sidhu

Question

What was the Mass Observation movement? What did the Mass Obeservation movement do?

Answer 1

Mass Observation movement was founded 75 years ago in 1937 by the South African poet, Charles Madge, a socialist and writer, and Humphrey Jennings, a filmmaker and polymath, and Tom Harrison, an anthropologist, and self-promoter are two English eccentrics. Mass Observation was established in the wake of the abdication crisis to fill the divide between how the media interpreted popular sentiment and what average citizens felt and believed. This was achieved by questioning them, which was a new strategy at the moment. People were required to hold diaries, document their dreams, and answer questions on everything from public love-making and Neville Chamberlain to newspaper horoscopes and the spread of fascism as part of the Mass Observation project.

           The Mass Observation campaign arose in the wake of the abdication crisis, with the aim of bridging the divide between how the media interpreted popular sentiment and what average citizens felt and believed. This was achieved by questioning them, which was a new strategy at the moment. People were required to hold diaries, document their dreams, and answer questions on everything from public love-making and Neville Chamberlain to newspaper horoscopes and the emergence of fascism as part of Mass Observation. It shifted anthropologists' attention to the British people themselves, and the data gathered provides a vital description of daily life, common culture, and average people's behavior, perceptions, and views from the 1930s to the 1950s. As a consequence, it enters areas of the database where most records can't. Here are some of my favorite observations from the Mass Observation campaign about life in Britain over the last century.