 Welcome friends, today I am going to talk about public opinion and a lot of what happens in the media and a lot of what happens in the political field and in public life as such is attributed to public opinion and that's one term that is so often used in so many contexts that it's important for us to have a clear understanding of what public opinion actually is. Is it just an aggregate of opinion of individuals or is it an objective fact in itself and how have we come to the present context of public opinion and how media plays such an important role in public opinion. So a public opinion can be regarded as an aggregate of the individual views, attitudes and beliefs. So we'll talk about the differences between views, attitudes and beliefs in details later on but that's one way of defining public opinion. It's an aggregate of the individual beliefs or attitudes or even views and it's expressed by a significant proportion of the community. So if a significant proportion of the community is not expressing that view then that would not be regarded as public opinion and we have that interesting definition by VOK who said that opinions held by private persons which governments find prudent to heed. So if governments don't find prudent to heed then probably that's not regarded as public opinion. Before we begin our discussion on public opinion very important to understand the Lipman debate that went on about public opinion and this is a seminal book by Walter Lipman published in 1922 and in the first chapter of the book he talks about the world outside and the pictures in our heads and that's where he provides an overview of how the idea of public opinion might be distorted in certain ways and he talks of the structural barriers which prevent ordinary citizens from gaining access to truth. So that's a very important way of looking at public opinion. So let's discuss what Walter Lipman has to say on public opinion. So Walter Lipman suggests that the artificial censorship and the limitations of social contact because everybody is not going to have equal access to information to people to documents and they're not even going to have equal attention to public affairs. So that is one structural barrier which makes it difficult for people to have a clear understanding or have a overall understanding holistic understanding of public affairs and this distortion also is because of how the mass media puts its message across. So they have to be compressed into very short messages and that makes it very difficult to understand the complications of the real world and according to Lipman that's an important barrier to correct public opinion or to form correct opinions. And he also goes on to suggest that human beings are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety and so much variety. So this is the direct quote from the book and so many permutations and combinations that we have to go across in our everyday life. And that is why we have to since we have to interact in that kind of an environment we have to reconstruct whatever is happening in the real world into a much simpler model and that is why he suggests that this makes it into a kind of a pseudo environment. There's another book that he wrote around that time and that is known as the Phantom Public and that is again you know this kind of a view is strengthened in this book as well. So this suggests that the random collection of bystanders who constitute the public even if they had a mind they will not be able to get a very clear understanding of what everyday politics is about and he in that book even suggests that a common man is not supposed to know the intricacies of physics for example. So how and why should he be expected to understand everything about politics and that's where it has had a lot of contention and a lot of debates on that. That Lipman suggests that the ideal is to leave this kind of opinion forming to more or less eminent people who have a clear understanding of what is happening. So this is where he suggests some kind of proxy to a professional public and we'll see that that is what is known as democratic elitism where intelligence is or decision making is not done by all the masses but towards a centralized body of intelligent elites and as we can understand on the face of it this this this appears problematic because we are not providing that agency to human beings we are just providing it to certain class of people whom we assume will who are better equipped to provide judgments or to provide opinion on important issues. English jurist James Bryce and is a very popular historian as well in 19th and 20th century in late 19th century early 20th century he suggested that since people do not have the leisure or an inclination to arrive at a position on every question that that concerns the public so it will not be proper for governments to have have their opinion on all issues. So as we can understand we are just trying to kind of give a crux of the argument this is a lot more layered but he suggests that the government based on popular consent will give the nation very great stability and strength but public opinions should not determine the details of policy so we can see that is also one element of democratic elitism we see in this kind of an argument. This was challenged by DV and although there are a lot of similarities between DV and Liebman's argument also but one of the important thing is that the argument that human beings are passive spectators is probably not correct so the argument that everybody is passive and it has to be and representative democracy is not the right way to go about it that is that has been challenged by John DV and the suggestion is that democracy is an end in itself democracy is not merely a means to an end but it's an end in itself this is an idea of community life itself so the democracy provides citizens both self-realization and a fraternal association so the idea that people do not spend a lot of cognitive effort in in making decisions is probably flawed in in John DV's argument so in early 20th century there has been a lot of debate as we just saw in these three works just before so this is from Robert C. Binkley and these were the kind of ideas that people were thinking about public opinion so the first and most important is whether there should be one single public opinion so whether there's a necessity for one single public opinion to be there and whether we are regarding opinion as public because of the subject matter or to the kind of people who hold it so is it the subject matter that that decides whether an opinion is public or is it because there are certain kind of people who are holding that opinion and the third important part is to understand that what part of the public must conquer in an opinion what part of the public must agree to the opinion to make it public so is it is it majority and what kind of majority and what must be what must those people who do not agree with that opinion do so should they acquiesce to that or should there be resistance to this opinion so there are as we can understand lots of ideas about how we decide how we describe public opinion so as we've seen political scientists have regarded public opinion as equivalent to national will so this is a reflection of what the national will is but as we'll soon see that social scientists regard public opinion as a product of social interaction and communication if we are not communicating our opinion to our peers and to our colleagues and to our fellow citizens then there will be no public opinion so unless members of the public communicate with each other there is no public opinion so this expression of your beliefs and your attitudes and values is very important for the formation of public opinion and for the realization of public opinion. Irving Crispy provides these important standards for the public opinion process so it's an interactive process it is multi-dimensional and it is continuously changing so we'll talk about this factor of you know whether it perpetuates or whether this changes at regular intervals but firstly there must been issue that's the first important point of public opinion and there must be a significant number of people who have an opinion on the issue and they express their opinions on the issue that's important so just as an issue and people do not express opinions then there is no public opinion and some of these opinions must reflect some consensus so people have all these opinions so there must be some kind of consensus in at least some of these opinions and these this consensus must also have some kind of an influence towards policy making so this is this in cracks is what public opinion is according to Irving Crispy so we know that individuals have a perception so often whether it may not be correct it may be correct so all of us do have opinions on certain things so but when we talk of public opinion it is it is it is regarded as something which is independent or something which is an objective social fact so when the media talks about public opinion it is about an objective social fact or it's it's something independent from from what individual opinions are so as I said earlier beliefs will not constitute a public opinion unless they are conveyed to others either through the mass media or social media or through phone or through computer media communication or through other conversations so communication is very important for public opinion to take shape so now it's important for us to find out what an opinion is so we we know that opinion is a statement of preference so we when we say that we have an opinion we suggest that we have a preference for one side of an argument or one of the choices which is presented to us but at the same time there's a there's a thinking process goes on so it's a cognitive process but we also judge according to our values according to our beliefs and and so many other things and we evaluate those opinions so it has a specific character and and and a person can have many opinions on different topics without any necessary cohesion and it's also provisional because our opinions keep on changing so we're saying that opinion itself is a multi-layered construct and there are many things which determine how how we form opinions on a given issue and and whether that opinion stays with us or not so we've already discussed the importance of the environmental factor so that's one factor your political social and cultural environment that decides what kind of opinion we might have at that point of time of course mass media has a very very important role to play in the public opinion process and we'll talk about the impact of mass media or the influence of mass media in our everyday life there are interest groups at certain places and they are are capable of influencing opinion at one point of time or or to a certain kind of people or to a certain group of people so interest groups are also an important factor that influences public opinion then of course there are influence opinion leaders or influence influences as we say these days who who determine how public opinion is formed on certain issues and there are complex cognitive and psychological and all these issues which which help us form opinion at that point of time on a given issue so there are multiple factors and and they might be working at the same point of time in the same on the same issue or with the same person so so there are quite a number of factors which influences public opinion so opinion vary in strength so there are certain opinions which which we strongly hold on to or or there are certain opinion which which we we correct when we get more information on that so when we aggregate this and you know when we aggregate this opinion then we are talking about some predominant leaning or some of views of the population so when we aggregate the opinion that's when we talk of public opinion and this is from Alex the talk ability and he suggests that once an opinion has taken root among a democratic people and established itself in the minds of the bulk of the community it afterwards persists by itself and is maintained without effort because no one attacks it and as we said at the beginning this is what happens when we talk of public opinion because it has a has an objective value it is accepted as a social fact because everybody has acquires to it or everybody agrees about it so that's a very important a characteristic of public opinion that it perpetuates by itself so now we talk about the attitudinal systems in human beings and we've already spoken about how values and interest and how knowledge and belief and how our feelings and behavioral interests contribute to forming of opinion so it could be so these are very different terms so a value for example could be a strongly held belief and knowledge and belief is based on evidence and feelings are our effective responses to various information that is provided to us and it again depends on the different mechanisms we go for understanding about various situations and also our inherent beliefs about certain things so for example we have this confirmation bias where we if something does not conform to what we already believe in then there is a resistance to that kind of an information so attitudes are our valuations and attribution made by individuals so when we're talking of public attitude we talk of it in a group or aggregate and we'll just see that opinion is often referred to as an public expression of these attitudes so public opinions are basically verbal expressions of these underlying attitudes and measurement of opinion might provide us an insight into attitudes we'll talk about opinion polling at the end of today's presentation and there we'll find out how these opinions are measured or how they are pulled so it is it is possible and that's what the attitude theory suggests is that if you have a certain attitude if you change by changing opinions your attitude can change or vice versa that if you change opinion your attitude will change or if you change attitude your opinion will change so there are various dimensions of this cognitive turn in communication so Dennis McQuill gives us a very comprehensive understanding about how media impacts opinion attitudes for example how much we are impacted by a particular media message or a particular media content depends on the perceived authority legitimacy and the credibility of the source if we regard the source as credible then probably we are going to take it more seriously the second important feature of media which impacts opinions and attitudes is the consistency of the content of media messages whether they are consistent whether they're repetitive whether they are bringing us a similar kind of information in various ways so that's another factor that determines the impact on opinions and attitudes and of course there is this attachment and loyalty to sources so if you regard a certain source as credible or if you're attached to those particular sources or if you identify with the sources then their message will have greater value for you and of course what are the motives or what are the reasons that you are using that media content for that particular time it's also about the amount and quality of attention paid so if we are paying more attention to the media message and we are spending more cognitive resources on those messages then probably they'll have greater impact on us so that again is related to the fast thinking system and slow thinking system that we've discussed in another video also the congruence of the content with existing opinions so if the media content is similar to the beliefs then that I hold then that will have greater impact on me or that will have then I'll use that to reconfirm things that I already believe in this skill and appeal of message and presentation so what are the persuasive skills they are employing to convince us that again is an important factor of media impact and again the support from personal contacts and environment so whether what we see in our environment and what we discuss with our peers whether that is very similar to what the media is presenting so as we can understand there's a there's a different there are different ways of looking at how media impacts us or how we use the media content provided to us we'll talk about the different approaches to public opinion so we are going to talk about three major approaches to public opinion in the next three slides the first of this is the populist approach this assumes that public opinion shifts as individuals interact with each other so it depends on the individuals so if I have a particular opinion and I interact with a lot of other people who have have a different opinion then then my opinion might change or it might evolve so that's one approach of which which provides the centrality of the human agency to the opinion formation process so this social constructionist approach assumes that communication has these manipulative aspects and there are various strands of opinion on a particular issue and people are trying to establish the predominance of one opinion over another so this assumes that the elite have have an important role to play in the public opinion process and people form opinions based on a number of other factors and not on the factor of just their interaction with others of course there is the critical approach to opinion formation which suggests that the general public has absolutely no role on public opinion which is largely controlled by those in power through their various apparatuses so this is also known as the radical functionist approach where public opinion is more a reflection of those in power or the expression of public opinion is a reflection of those in power we'll now discuss about the various theories around public opinion and there are a number of ways in which we discuss about how public opinion is formed and how they're expressed and one of the most well-known theories is that of the spiral of silence by Elizabeth Newell Newman where she suggests that opinion expressed in public differ from those expressed in private and there are reasons for that and in the next slide we'll talk about how the spiral of silence works so there are three important elements of spiral of silence the first is that society threatens deviant individuals with isolation and this fear of isolation is pervasive that we are we are extremely scared of being isolated by our peers our colleagues and those who matter to us so this try this causes us to try and assess the climate of opinion at all times that we are trying to find out what is the dominant shade of opinion and our behavior or an open expression of an opinion is based on this assessment so this leads to a certain kind of a spiral of silence if I assume that my behavior or my opinion is not the dominant opinion then I will be extremely careful of not expressing that in public and that is a very very important aspect of public opinion that it's not only about what what people say in the public but what what they hold to themselves there's another very important part of public opinion and we'll be talking about the media theories about public opinion as well but this is about the knowledge gap theory about how different people react to different content in the media and the one is this knowledge gap theory which suggests that if we have prior information about certain things or if we have prior knowledge about about certain things and we get to know more about those things then it will be much easier for us to fit in that new information but if if it is that information which I have not been exposed to before or which I have decided to ignore earlier then I will not be elaborating on that information a lot more so this explains why a lot of these campaigns do not work a lot of social campaigns a lot of political campaigns a lot of marketing campaigns because our idea of of of what what exists or what is what is reality is is is is dependent on on on a number of factors and if which I already regard as as something that I know and I get information that is that is that adds to that information then it's much easier for me to take on that information the propaganda effect has always has been studied after world war two in in in various ways and that's also one one aspect of public opinion that that has to be studied and it started with last wills study as I said after world war one and world war two basically and his theory explained how public opinion can be cultivated and organized around master symbols and that was before this this advertising and branding and all these things about symbols that we know and also about how propaganda films influence thinking about so thinking about certain things so that we know about these offline experiments and we found out that propaganda films would work only in certain conditions where we already believed in those kind of things and if we did not believe in those kind of things or if we had inherent opposition to the the kind of propaganda but which was provided in those films then we were less likely to be affected by that we have also known about about the person influence theory about the two-step flow hypothesis by by by Lazar's field about the role of opinion leaders so it's not always about what media tells us it's also about what how opinion leaders act as gatekeepers and express their opinions to us through our interpersonal challenge channels for example so i'm going to talk about how how media influences public opinion so there are three or four ways in which media influences public opinion and one of them is by publishing this opinion poll result so when when there is an opinion poll result media is telling us that this is the existing public opinion and that is how they can influence public opinion in one way by suggesting that this is the national will or this is the public opinion or also they could be using their editorial columns to suggest what is the public view so we understand that media has has a very important role in in creating public opinion in that form so as we've already discussed that when they bring in new information which which people are not comfortable with then they are less likely to influence attitudes and opinions and they can they can change only by by repetitions of these messages as we've seen when we discussed McQuail's ideas about how media impacts opinions and attitudes so there are there's this very important concept of mediaization and why media is such an important element of the opinion formation process first of all the media extends the natural limits of human communication so it's not just related to how and what I communicate with my fellow beings but it's also about what the media discourse is and often the media substitute the social activities and social institutions so a lot of activities we we just see on on media and and we participate in that vicariously so it's a substitute for a lot of these social interactions they also amalgamate with various non-media activities in social life so even our non-media activities they have a media element about what media has to say or or what what is that the media regards as as dominant and not dominant or as proper as a not proper and the the actors in in in the society they are also influenced or impacted by what is known as the media logic so there are there are these elements of a mediaization that that we must be clear about and of course there is this idea of the public sphere where it's an idealized public space where citizens they voluntarily and autonomously they get together to discuss on issues of public interest of of general interest so that is one idea about public opinion where people get together on a public space and it's the strength of their argument which helps them build up what what is the right public opinion or what is the what is the general will of the people agenda setting of course is a very very important aspect of media and it is what gives media most of its power about because it tells us what to what to think about so public agenda generally originates from from from from the media agenda or we've seen the correlation of the public agenda and the media agenda and as we know that there is always always a you know a sense of competing interest and people want to promote their salience of their issues so one group might want one particular issue to be there in the in the media agenda the other group would want the other thing to be there in the media agenda but whatever is there in the media agenda becomes the talking point for the real world so this is a very important role that media performs in the initiation of the public opinion formation process so one of the reasons is that the the outcome in the media or the exposure in the media or the relative prominence given to issues in the media this gives public recognition to the current agenda and it also provides us with what could be an opinion or what could be an evaluation of of of that particular thing which is covered in the media so we'll be talking about the first and the second level agenda setting effects so it's not only about what to talk about but but how to talk about it so media has a very important role to play in that because as we know this they provide the visibility to certain kind of issues and that's what say so media it's not only about telling what to think about but also how to think about so we'll see there are resonances with the framing concept here as well. Another important factor or another media theory that has a very important factor to play in the public opinion process is known as the third person effect so it suggests that many people think that other people are affected by various kind of media content that we are not affected but others might be affected so that's when a lot of people they even lobby for some kind of censorship because it might they think that it might impact others badly so it is a very important attribute of media and about media consumers about what we want to see in media and what we do not want to see in media. Priming is also an extension of the agenda setting approach where individuals assign way to particular issues when they make evaluations of a particular government so what are the yard sticks on which to measure a government or what are the yard sticks on which to measure the legislature or whatever so the priming effect is another effect of the media which has an impact on the public opinion so when I'm judging a particular government or when I'm judging a particular regime what are the issues that I should be thinking about and that is where the media primes us to to one of those evaluative criteria and that again has an impact on the public opinion process so we just said that it the priming hypothesis suggests that mass media by making some issues more salient influences the standards by which the governments are judged and of course many people regard framing as an extension of the second order agenda setting that we said that we just discussed so framing makes certain aspects of a reality more salient so that the media is promoting a particular problem definition or even a causal interpretation so you are providing salience to not not to the topic but how to cover or how that is explained in the public so framing news framing is a very very important aspect of the public opinion formation process I have discussed framing in in much greater detail in another video of mine so in the last part of today's presentation I'm going to talk about polling and how it has been done and how people have how regard public opinion polling as so this is one very recent book about by Jacobs and Shapiro it says politicians don't pander and it suggests that politicians track public opinion not to make policy but how to craft their public presentation so that's a very important we are looking at public opinion polling that we are trying to find out the public opinion not to change our policy but just to make just to kind of craft our response to those policies in public so when it came about in the 1930s polling was and it was George Gallup and his company which started this polling and this was one this was regarded as one empirical way of finding out the will of the majority of the citizens at all times and it was also supposed to provide a democratic counterweight to the political elites so we keep on asking people about their opinion on various issues at various point of time and we present that as the will of the majority of the people and that's how we keep people in power in check and this is also a solution for the growing democratic deficit or that's how it was portrayed as and this is what George Gallup had to say in this book in his article on the changing climate for public opinion research in 1957 published in the public opinion quarterly and it was 25 years of public opinion research which started in 1932 as I just said so here George Gallup suggests that without polls elites would be guided only by letters to congressmen the lobbying of pressure groups and the reports of political henchmen so according to George Gallup this is one very authentic way of finding out what people actually believe in or what the national will is but there are a lot of people who do not agree with that kind of assessment and they say that public opinion does not stimulate stimulate public discussion but it prevents or even replaces it and the main purpose of public opinion or public opinion polling is not to find out what is the public opinion but as I said a little while earlier the main purpose of polling by government could be manufacturing citizens opinion and changing those which are not congruent with the course of action thus marginalizing the power of public opinion so we find out the state of public opinion to convince people who don't agree with our point of view to agree with our point of view so it marginalizes the power of public opinion thank you very much for your participation in today's session