Public Opinion: Formation, Influence, and Media Impact
Item 11: Public Opinion
What is Public Opinion?
To understand public opinion, we should pay attention to the words that make up this expression. It’s called “opinion,” and opinion does not imply certainty or truth. Opinion is what we think or believe, a mixture of knowledge and sympathy or antipathy. It is a kind of hunch rather than a truth. There are no comments on evidence. If things happen, there is no opinion because they are testable truths. A survey of people would solicit an opinion as to what they think or what you think.
“Public” refers to an indirect majority. Often, the public is fragmented, resulting in variety. If you do not say anything more, “public opinion” is understood as the majority opinion, even if not well represented as such. This depends on the influence of the media in creating public opinion.
Public Opinion: Real vs. Influenced
It is possible to differentiate between real and mediated public opinion. The first corresponds to what people really think, though it is difficult to prove. Influenced public opinion is predominant in the media and information. This should be a reflection of the real. However, this is not so much because the media aim to capture public opinion but actually create it. Today, people think that opinion is changing and somewhat a conviction. You can change your mind, but as long as one is full of power: the vote.
The Law of Emotional Simplification
Feeding or convincing with a truth is hard work but conveying an opinion is not. For this, you do not need views, feelings, or topics. All this could be formulated as follows: the most difficult truth cannot object to an emotional simplification. It is true that the plurality of media with different ideologies and sensitivities means attempts to create public opinion are offset by attempts to the contrary. By the law of emotional simplification, the view is spreading at a geometric rate while its opponent does so in an arithmetical ratio.
Public Opinion and Freedom of Expression
The term “community communication” refers to communication within a community. The ideal explanations of communication in society say the media perform the task of reporting on the facts truthfully and showing the diversity of opinion. The pluralism of opinions is a consequence of freedom of expression. The right to freedom of expression is central to democracy. In undemocratic regimes, freedom of expression is absent, and the state controls the means of opinion. In democratic regimes, a pluralistic field of freedom of expression and the right of citizens to be informed of such pluralism are argued for. But this diversity is limited: the public media always try to better the performance of the government than the opposition.
Communication and Critical Sense
A large part of the contents of the press responds to the ideal purposes: to inform and to promote understanding. Thanks to television, events of general interest have an audience of millions of viewers. But the media, especially television, have defects because of the preponderance of understanding over information. Many great truths do not appear on television. There is nothing strange in the fact that television and media, in general, vulgarize very complex issues. This must be taken into account so as not to attribute too much importance to them.