COMM 411

Public Opinion Research

Public Opinion Defined

Starting Definition

Dynamic and tacit social agreement that determines the ethical and aesthetic values in every society.

Public Opinion: A Semantic Analysis

Opinion

Plato distinguishes in the  REPUBLIC, “opinion” and “knowledge”. Opinion is, according to this author, something darker than knowledge, but clearer than ignorance.

Opinion will always imply a judgment.

Public

The term “public” has three denotative meanings:

  • “Public”, in legal sense, emphasizes the etymological origin of the term. Public is something that is open to everyone, a public space, a public path.
  • “Public” might also express the involvement of the state.
  • “Public”, as a substantive, refers to group of people, a collectivity formed by anonymous individuals. This “public” can also act as a tribunal (public eye).

Public Versus Published Opinion

Published Opinion is the tenor opinion of what you read, hear or watch in the Mass-Media. The published opinion will become public opinion only if it is adapted to the nature and characteristics of Public Opinion. Mass Media cannot create public opinion, but they can articulate it – give the public opinion an expression.

The Opinion of the Majority?

  • The Majority of the population may be in favor of a particular position or opinion, but if they do not express it, this opinion will never become “public opinion”.
  • Silent Majority
  • Pluralistic ignorance

Fundamental Names

Edward A. Ross

  • Public Opinion as a means of social control
  • Public Opinion will always be conservative.
  • It will always preserve the STATUS QUO.
    • We defined the Status Quo as the system of beliefs, values and social structures that characterizes a society.
  • It always will promote conformism.

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann

  • “Spiral of Silence”
  • Opinions that are not expressed tend to fade away, and finally to disappear.
  • The individual is afraid of feeling isolated – and therefore avoids expressing ideas against what he/she perceives to be the majority.
  • Ideas that are un-expressed, become un-thought, and finally, un-thinkable.

Paul Lazarsfeld

  • Band-Wagon effect.
  • People join those opinions and ideas that are perceived as generally accepted to feel in the “winning side”, to belong with the winner.
  • The last-minute election swing

Final and Official Definition

  • A tacit and public consensus, a general agreement concerning issues that have a strong moral or aesthetic load, and that determines the ideas you can express or the behaviors you can adopt in public without taken the risk of being isolated.
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