Stages and methods of forming public opinion

2024 Author: Miguel Ramacey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 06:11

Public opinion is made up of the desires, motivations and thinking of most people. This is the collective opinion of society or the state on some issue or problem.

This concept arose in the process of technological progress. During the last industrial revolution, for the first time, what people thought mattered as the forms of political strife changed.

Philosophical foundations

The emergence of public opinion as a significant force in the political sphere can be dated to the end of the 17th century. However, the formation of public opinion was considered something of exceptional importance from a much earlier time. The medieval declaration of Fama Publica or Vox et Fama Communis was of great legal and social significance.

John Locke, in his essay An Essay on Human Understanding, believed that man is subject to three laws: divine law, civil law, and, most importantly, according to Locke, the law of opinion orreputation. He considered the latter to be the most important, because dislikes and bad opinions force people to adapt their behavior to norms.

The prerequisites for the emergence of the public sphere were a rising literacy rate, stimulated by the Reformation, which encouraged people to read the Bible in the local language, and rapidly expanding printing presses. In parallel with the development of literature there was the growth of reading societies and clubs. At the turn of the century, the first public library opened in London, and reading became public.

German sociology

The German sociologist Ferdinand Tennis, using the conceptual tools of his Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft theory, argued (Kritik der öffentlichen Meinung, 1922) that "public opinion" performs in societies an equivalent social function (Gesellschaften) that religion performs in communities (Gemeinschaften).

The public sphere or the bourgeois public, according to Habermas, can form something approaching public opinion. Habermas argued that the public sphere was characterized by universal access, rational debate, and disregard for rank. However, he believes that these three features of how best to shape public opinion no longer apply in Western liberal democracies. Shaping public opinion in a Western democracy is highly susceptible to elite manipulation.

American Sociology

Americansociologist Herbert Blumer proposed a completely different concept of the "public". According to Bloomer, public opinion should be seen as a form of collective behavior (another specialized term). Blumer argues that people participate in public life in a variety of ways, which is also reflected in the formation of public opinion. A mass in which people make decisions on their own, such as which brand of toothpaste to buy, is a form of collective behavior that is distinct from social behavior.

Meaning

Public opinion plays an important role in the political sphere. All aspects of the relationship between government and society affect the study of voter behavior. They recorded the spread of opinions on a wide range of issues, studied the influence of special interest groups on election results, and contributed to our knowledge of the impact of government propaganda and policies.

Study Methods

Modern quantitative approaches to the study of public opinion can be divided into 4 categories:

• quantitative measurement of the distribution of opinions;
• exploring the internal relationships between individual opinions;
• study both the means of communication that spread the ideas on which opinions are based, and the ways in which these means are used by propagandists and other manipulators.

Stages in the formation of public opinion

Its emergence begins with the announcement of the agenda by the largest media,as a rule, within the framework of a whole country or the whole world. This agenda determines what deserves to be in the news, how, when and what will be reported to the people. The agenda for the media is driven by a number of different environmental and news factors that determine which stories are worth publishing. In authoritarian countries, the agenda is set by the central government.

Another key component in the technology of forming public opinion is its "framing". Framing is when a story or piece of news is presented in a particular way and is intended to influence consumer attitudes in one way or another. Most political questions are largely worded to persuade voters to vote for a particular candidate. For example, if Candidate X once voted on a bill to raise the middle class income tax, the headline in the box would read: "Candidate X doesn't care about the middle class." This puts Candidate X in a negative frame for the news reader.

Social desirability is another key component of public opinion formation. People tend to form their opinions based on what they think is the popular opinion of their reference group. Based on media agenda setting and media shaping, most often a certain opinion is repeated in various news media and social networks until a false vision is created, when the perceived truth can actually be very far from the actual one.truth.

Influencers

Public opinion can be influenced by public relations and political media. In addition, the media use a wide range of advertising technologies to get their message across and change people's minds. Since the 1950s, television has been the main vehicle for shaping public opinion.

There have been many scientific studies that have examined whether public opinion is influenced by "influencers" or people who have a significant influence on the opinion of the general public on any relevant issue. Many early studies modeled the transmission of information from the media as a "two-step" process. The media influences authority figures and then through them the general public as opposed to the media directly influencing the public.

Watts and Dodds model

While the “two-step” process regarding the influence of public opinion has prompted further research into the role of influencers, more recent research has been done by Watts and Dodds. This study found that while powerful individuals play a role in influencing public opinion, "non-authoritative" individuals who make up the general public can also (if not more) influence opinion, provided that the general public is made up of people who can be easily attacked. influence. This is referred to in their work as the "Influence Hypothesis".

The authors discusssuch results, using a model to quantify the number of people who are influenced by both the general public and influencers. The model can be easily customized to represent the different ways influencers interact as well as the general public. In their study, this model differs from the former "two-step" process paradigm. At the same time, the goal of forming public opinion is to ensure stability and solidarity in society. This is very important for any modern state.

Tools of influence and formation

The media play a crucial role among the mechanisms of public opinion formation: they convey the world to individuals and reproduce the self-image of modern society. Critics in the early-to-mid 20th century showed that the media was destroying a person's ability to act autonomously - sometimes credited with an influence reminiscent of the television screens of George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984.

However, more recent research has suggested a more complex interaction between the media and society, with people actively interpreting and evaluating the media and the information it provides. Manipulation through the media is the main method of forming public opinion.

Advertising and propaganda

Advertising and propaganda are two forms of changing opinion through the media. Advertising is a more explicit way to dothis by promoting the strengths of certain products or ideas (whether for retail products, services or campaign ideas). Propaganda is secret in its actions, but also serves to subtly influence opinion. Propaganda is traditionally used more for political purposes, while advertising is used for commercial purposes.

However, people are not completely immersed in the media. Local communication still plays a big role in determining public opinion. People depend on the opinions of those with whom they work, attend religious services, friends, family, and other small interpersonal interactions. Other factors in shaping public opinion are the economy, which has a big impact on people's happiness, popular culture, which can be dictated by the media but can also develop as small social movements, and massive global events such as the September 11 terrorist attacks that dramatically changed people's minds.

Two-step process

Paul Lazarsfeld argued that the public forms its opinion in a two-step process. He thought that most people rely on opinion leaders. These leaders are influenced by world events. They then relay opinions to less active members of society.

Lazarsfeld believed that the media were the main source of information for opinion leaders. But his theory may have missed the massive impact of the media on every citizen, notonly for the chosen ones. Most people gather all their information about current events from some form of media, be it major newspapers, TV news, or the Internet.

They also influence the formation of public opinion. The information that these people hold is largely colored by the opinions of those who represent them. As a result, many people accept the opinions of their influencers (although it can also be argued that they gravitate towards these broadcasters due to similar general opinions). Thus, the feeling of authority plays one of the main roles in shaping public opinion.