The genesis of social responsibility theory: William Ernest hocking and positive freedom

This chapter intends to show that William Ernest Hocking, in his work on the Hutchins Commission, generated a theory of positive freedom that empowers ethical conversation toward the new social media and democratized news. It discusses the ontological basis created by Hocking and offers a theoretical core to the concept of positive freedom. Social responsibility theory has not achieved its full potential because intellectual work since 1947 has typically followed the report’s superficial version of social responsibility. For social responsibility to be the normative framework of journalism in the age of global media, its conceptual core ought to be radical positive freedom. Hocking’s Freedom of the Press, along with all philosophical work on positive freedom from Rousseau through Taylor, gives us conceptual clarity on this phrase. Social media technologies are reorganizing society, and they need a social responsibility concept that is rooted in community to understand and direct them.