Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and Public Opinion Formation

‘The Sharpness of a Smooth Tongue’. Literary Texts and the Formation of Public Opinion in the Early Modern NetherlandsThe Low Countries hardly play any role in international debates about the history of the formation of public opinion in early modern Europe. In the wake of Jürgen Habermas, historians have focused in particular on late seventeenthand eighteenth-century England and France. Scholars have criticised the notion that it was during the eighteenth century that the formation of free public opinion came into existence due to a combination of the periodical press, its critical role and a national readership. Nevertheless, the period before 1700 is hardly referred to at all during discussions about the role of public opinion. During that time a permanent, structured public openness did not exist. However, in the early modern Low Countries many socio-cultural and institutional conditions seem to be present which made the formation of critical public opinion among the population possible. The literary culture of these regions offers an important research subject for studies into the formation of public opinion.

Public opinion and the responsiveness of the elected political parties are essential for a modern democracy to function. But to what extent do political parties play a part in the formation of public opinion, and is the party influence independent of ideological direction? In this article, I argue that citizens use their partisanship as a social group identity, which enables them to adopt the party’s policy opinions. By examining a survey experiment conducted with more than 3000 Danish voters (771 social democratic voters), this article finds that social democratic voters express more conservative (liberal) opinions when they are exposed to conservative (liberal) party cues from the Social Democratic Party. By disentangling party and ideology, the research design in this article offers the opportunity to examine party influence on public opinion in both ideological directions in a realistic Danish context.

Information and communication technology has helped to build communication between peoples of all different civilizations, bypassing the political, geographical, and cultural isolation that most human societies lived in. The online newspapers have played an effective role in providing people with a lot of information, attitudes and directions, contributing to this informing awareness and preparing it to be more able to influence and persuade others, And to witness a dynamic movement of development As a result of his transformation to text, visual and auditory media. Also helped to activate participation to fulfil the desire of each common category of interests, and it affected the interaction and the formation of public opinion. Nowadays online newspapers are among the means that play an important role in raising young people and giving them different habits and behaviors as a tool for social change and development since It provides them with opportunities to benefit from the new activities available to them to interact with other people, And therefore It reflects on forming a public opinion towards a social issue or phenomenon that is important to society, forms this point of view. This study came to know the effect of online newspapers on forming public opinion among high school students. The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of online newspapers on forming public opinion among high school students and the nature of the connection of high school students with the online newspapers, and how much benefit do they gain from this connection as well as know their usage rates, and reveal the students trust toward what online newspaper will publish. This study used Descriptive research; the researcher relied on the survey method, for the research tool the researcher designed a questionnaire form to survey students’ opinions, collect facts and information, and then analyse them. This study consists of three chapters: In the first chapter, we explained the methodology of the study; the second chapter is a literature review. The third chapter is the Field side of the study. Summarize the most prominent conclusions the study found are the following: The results of the study indicated that the use of the mobile device came first with 73.4%, while the use of the computer with 25% came in second place. The researcher believes that this is due to the availability of internet connection, and the time allocated for browsing inside and outside the high school campus, also it provides adequate privacy in the browsing process. While those reasons are not available in the use of computers, this on the one hand, and the other hand, clarified the youth’s addiction to mobile use significantly. And this needs more research and investigation. The results of the study show that a high percentage (63.3%) of the respondents believed positively about what was published by political party’s online newspapers; this confirms the influence and presence of political party’s among young people. The use of high school students for online newspapers for several reasons and motivated utilitarian, this is one of the most important factors influencing the formation of public opinion trends among high school students. The study proved the validity of the Alternative charging, that there is a statistically significant correlation between the demographic variables of high school students and the impact of online newspapers on forming their public opinion.
 In light of the findings of the study, the researcher recommended several recommendations and suggestions as follows: Enriching the scientific and academic effort by conducting sequential studies on the impact of online newspapers in general, it includes the various segments of society this is due to its role and importance in shaping public opinion in the Kurdistan Region. Spreading awareness among young people about the role of online newspapers and their impact on developing their personalities and guiding them to make optimal use of online newspapers.

Citizen participation is an essential component of modern democratic public administration. However, it is not provided automatically but requires efforts from both public authorities and citizens themselves. The formation of public opinion on the need for citizen participation contributes to the unification of these efforts on both sides. In the context of the development of the information society, public opinion can and should be formed with Web 2.0 tools and technologies, primarily social media, which have a significant impact on the formation of public opinion in modern societies. The purpose of this article is to explore the possibility of forming public opinion on the need to increase citizen participation using social advertising on social media as a Web 2.0 tool. To achieve this, three research tasks were solved: to determine the essential features of public opinion; to consider the features of analysis and formation of public opinion; to consider the use of social advertising as a Web 2.0 tool for forming public opinion. A separate section of the article is devoted to each of the tasks. Based on the results of the study, several conclusions are drawn. The authors propose a mechanism for shaping public opinion on the need to increase the level of citizen participation, which includes the following components: identification of social groups for further interaction; monitoring of the social mood of these groups; tracking and analysis of social information targeted at these groups; studying public opinion rooted in certain social groups through establishing communication with them; analysis of public opinion in terms of its contribution to increasing the level of citizen participation; application of Web 2.0 tools to identify and analyse public opinion.

Стаття розкриває процес формування громадської думки, суть якого полягає у взаємодії соціального суб'єкта та об'єкта формування громадської думки під впливом конкретних умов соціального буття, що відбивається у зміні соціальної свідомості. Визначено, що цей процес у межах певних соціальних груп та спільнот має загальний, внутрішній, суттєвий, повторюваний, необхідний та стійкий, тобто закономірний, характер.

The purpose of the study is to identify the impact of social media on the formation of public opinion in Ukraine. In the context of the war in Ukraine, public opinion plays a crucial role in resistance, morale, and support for government policies. This study examines the impact of social media use on the formation of Ukrainian public opinion during the conflict. Using a survey methodology (N=310), the relationship between social media use, interpersonal trust (ITS), and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) was assessed. Results reveal that active social media use is associated with lower interpersonal trust and a pronounced FOMO syndrome (R²=0.571), suggesting a reduced ability for critical evaluation of information. These findings have implications for the development of communication strategies, public policies, and psychosocial interventions aimed at counteracting disinformation and promoting informed public opinion in times of conflict.

With the development of information technology, the Internet has become an important channel of public opinion for expressing public interests, emotion, and ideas. Public emergency usually spreads via network. Due to the temporal and spatial flexibility and the information amplification of network, the opinions from different regions and background are easy to be represented as network public opinion, and have important impact on social and economic life. Thus, studying the formation mechanism of network public opinion has important theoretical and practical significance. Taking the formation process of network public opinion under emergencies as the research object, this paper first identifies the key factors influencing the formation of network public opinion, namely the internal characteristics (include individual education level, individual stubbornness, individual initial opinion, and so on) and external information of individuals (include external information intensity). Second, information intensity is introduced to describe the influence of external information feature on the formation of network public opinion. Individual education level, individual stubbornness, and individual initial opinion are analyzed to describe the influence of individual internal factors on the formation, and then its model is constructed. Through the simulation experiments, this paper analyzes the influence of external information intensity, individual education level, individual stubbornness, individual initial opinion, and other factors on the formation of network public opinion. The simulation results show that: (1) the greater intensity of public emergency reporting causes the easier formation of network public opinion; (2) the higher individual education level leads to the shorter time for completing the final formation and stable state of online public opinions, and after the formation of online public opinions, the opinion of the event is mainly neutral; (3) the greater individual's stubbornness makes the shorter formation time of online public opinion. When online public opinion reaches a stable state, the neutral opinion group dominates and firmly controls the development trend of public opinion; (4) the difference of opinions among individuals is the most important factor affecting the formation of network public opinion. Finally, the rationality and validity of the proposed model are verified by a real case. Compared with previous studies on the formation mechanism of network public opinion, this paper divides the formation process of network public opinion into three stages: individual information perception, individual decision making, and individual opinion transmission. Meanwhile, the influence of individual internal factors and external information characteristics on the formation process of network public opinion is also considered.

Book Reviews 669 Reading Public Opinion: How Political Actors View the Democratic Process. By Susan Herbst. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998; pp. χ + 256. $16.00. Following her much acclaimed 1993 book, Numbered Voices: How Opinion Polling has Shaped American Politics, Susan Herbst seeks to broaden our conceptions of public opinion and its role in democratic governance. She goes beyond simple public opinion polling to consider the many ways in which political professionals and activists assess and understand citizens' preferences. Through depth interviews and surveys, she analyzes the "lay theories" of the politically active and reveals how polled opinions play only a minor role in democratic policy making. Herbst draws from a wide range of past scholarship, including early studies of public opinion and group formation, postmodern theories, cultural studies, political science, and communications in order to lay the foundation for her argument that public opinion is socially constructed and affected by institutions, technology, and political culture. In contrast to much of the experimentally based literature on political cognition which fails to take account of culture, language, and experience, Reading Public Opinion employs a rhetorical psychological approach and depth interviews which clearly demonstrate the pragmatic ways political actors evaluate public opinion. Herbst's data come from a case study of Illinois state government. She conducted depth interviews with 44 working political professionals and party activists: legislative staff members, reporters who covered the Illinois capitol, and Illinois delegates to the 1996 Democratic and Republican party conventions. These rich qualitative data were supplemented with a survey of 528 convention delegates from across the United States. Using interpretive methods for querying her informants and analyzing their discourse , Herbst convincingly demonstrates the sharply contrasting views of public opinion held by these three differently situated groups of participants in the policymaking process. For the staff members interviewed in this study, two indicators of public opinion were particularly relevant: interest group communications and the content of the mass media. The journalists, on the other hand, talked about public opinion in terms of interpersonal dialogue and conversations with citizens. The party activists relied on yet another conception of public opinion and were more comfortable with public opinions expressed through polls and through conversations with friends and acquaintances. Drawing on the language of her informants, Herbst adeptly demonstrates how one's location in the social and political world constrains the ways in which public opinion is constructed. Her informants view public opinion in very pragmatic, instrumental terms that are shaped by their professional roles. For example, staffers discuss public opinion in terms of "which segments of the public will react to a legislative maneuver and how such reactions will become manifest" (153). Public opinion , as measured by polls, is not particularly useful. Polls are not conducted 670 Rhetoric & Public Affairs regularly on statewide issues. Moreover, polls capture only a fleeting snapshot of the public mood and fail to communicate the intensity, directional dynamic, and organization of opinion which are necessary to formulate politically successful policy. Interest groups and journalists are far better situated to articulate public sentiments for staff members because they are informed, accessible, and perceived as able to persuade an otherwise amorphous and indifferent public. Interestingly, staff members rely on interest groups and media to convey public opinion despite their acknowledged biases. Staffers think of themselves as knowledgeable enough to "'see through' media bias and still glean some useful data about public opinion" (72). The political roles of journalists and party activists are quite different from those of legislative staff members, as are their conceptions of public opinion. Herbst argues, however, that understanding each actor's position in the democratic process explains the observed variations in definitions of public opinion. Journalists' views of public opinion as conversation with citizens/readers fit in with their anti-authority bias in political coverage. Party activists see public opinion as aggregations of individual opinions either through conversations or polling. The activists' disregard for interest group and media related expressions of public opinion is completely consistent with their roles as delegates representing citizens' opinions to the political leadership of their respective parties. Although convention delegates' views on public opinion are interesting to examine and help to broaden the inquiry beyond the...

Mass media are considered to play an important role in influencing the perception of issues in political campaigns in terms of the way they are covered and the relative prominence they are given. Agenda setting has become the standard term for this process. The influence of political parties and public opinion on how the media and the press select issues and determine their relative prominence has received less attention and, so far, research conducted on this aspect of agenda setting has not yielded consistent results. Summaries of the agenda-setting literature and content analysis methods are presented. The empirical study examines the relationships between the national press, the public and the three mainstream political parties in the 2001 UK General Election Campaign, building on a study of press coverage of the 1997 UK General Election and subsequent work. The findings of a content analysis of all news articles that appeared in six national daily newspapers during the UK General Election 2001 campaign, with distinctions made between front page and inside coverage, editorial and straight news reporting, are presented. The relative incidence of issues is identified. A similar content analysis of press releases issued by the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties during the campaign period is carried out. Press releases are used by political parties to get messages into the press agenda and into the public domain. They are a useful source to trace the evolution of the political campaign agenda, as identified by the parties. The press releases are analysed using the same issue categories identified for the press. The results are compared and contrasted with data from two opinion polls conducted at the start and at the end of the campaign. The evidence is used to help establish the role that agenda setting played in the UK General Election Campaign 2001. The differences and relationships between the three agenda groups are shown. The results suggest that public opinion had an impact on those issues selected for priority by the political parties. Public opinion changed little throughout the campaign. There was no significant shift in how the public rated issues between the start and the end of the campaign. In this case the agenda-setting impact of the press on the public, in the short term, appears to have been limited, as was the impact of the parties and public opinion on press coverage. The extent to which these results are a consequence of the specific characteristics of this election is discussed.

پوختە ئامانجى سه‌ره‌كى ئه‌م توێژینه‌وه‌یه‌ بریتیه‌ له‌ زانینى لێکەوتەکانی دۆخی هۆشیاریی هاوڵاتیان وەک وەرگری پەیامەکانی میدیا لەسەر پێکهاتنی دیدیگشتی لە هەرێمی کوردستان سەبارەت بەو پرس و بابەتانەی ڕەهەند و بەرژەوەندی گشتیانی تێدایە. ئه‌م توێژینه‌وه‌ی له‌ جۆرى توێژینه‌وه‌ وه‌صفیه‌كانه‌، تیایدا میتۆدى ڕوو پێو به‌كارهاتووه‌، ڕووپێوى جه‌ماوه‌ر بۆ سامڵێك له‌ مامۆستایانی زانکۆ له‌ هه‌رێمى كوردستان. كه‌ مامۆستایانى به‌شه‌كانى ڕاگه‌یاندنى زانكۆ حوكومیه‌كانى هه‌رێمى كوردستان لە هەردوو پارێزگای سلێمانی و هەولێر وەرگیران لە بەشەکانی( ڕاگەیاندن و کۆمەڵناسیی) بەشێوەی مشت(سامپڵ)ی ناهەڕەمەکیی مەبەستدا، هه‌روه‌ها توێژینەوەكه‌ پشتی بە شێوازى چه‌ندێتى بەستووە به‌مه‌به‌ستى وه‌ڵامدانه‌وه‌ى پرسیار و ئامانجه‌كانى توێژینه‌وه‌كه‌. گرنترین ده‌رئه‌نجامه‌كانیش كه‌ توێژینه‌وه‌كه‌ پێى گه‌یشتووه‌ بریتین له : (تا ئاستی هۆشیاریی بەرزبێت لێکترازان و دابەشبوونی کۆمەڵگە لەسەر بنەمای حزب و لایەن و خێڵ و گروپی جیاواز کەمدەکات لەو پرسانەی پەیوەستن بە بەرژەوەندی گشت و گشتییەوە. نزمیی ئاستی هۆشیاریی هۆکارە بۆ دواکەوتوویی پشێویی و قەیرانی سیاسیی و ئابوریی و فەرمانڕەوایی. تائاستی هۆشیاریی و کۆهۆشیاریی باڵا بێت مامەڵەی دروست لەگەڵ پرسە گشتییەکان دەکرێت و بەپێچەوانەشەوە نزمییەکەی دەبێتەهۆی بەلاڕێدابردن و بوون بە بەشێک لە دیدیگشتیی درۆینە، نەبوونی میدیای نیشتمانی و كۆنتڕۆڵكردنی میدیا لەلایەن حزبە سیاسییەكانەوە، هۆكرێكە لە هۆكارەكانی درووستنەبوونی كۆهۆشیاری و دیدیگشتی سەرتاسەری. كلیله‌ وشه‌: دۆخ، هۆشیاریی ، لێکەوتە، دیدیگشتی، هەرێمی کوردستان.

Today, the public relations science plays a fundamental part in social, economic and political life. To achieve their goals, It is an exclusive need for all organizations whether local, international, political, commercial or even technological companies, to adjust themselves with the environment around through public relations. If public relations is important for the economy, business and promotion, it is more important for political parties and organizations, so that public relations in political organizations and parties have a crucial role in supporting their institutions and taking advantage of opportunities for their development and sustainability. The importance of role of public relations in political organizations during the existence of divisions, problems, crises and conflicts is more important. Wherever there is a crisis in a country or region or between political parties, public relations institutions must engage in dealing with the crisis through taking appropriate measures to communicate with the public and use all internal and external communication tools in their political institutions to deal with the public opinion and decision makers to ease the situation and create a positive atmosphere to restore the reputation of political institutions, as well as create a calm political environment and try to restore the pre-crisis situation. In this study, the researcher has tried to show the importance and role of public relations of six political parties (Gorran Movement, Kurdistan Islamic Union, Kurdistan Justice Society, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Kurdistan Communist Party) during political crises in the Kurdistan Region, which have been constantly controversial. The researcher has tried to present the factors which triggered the political crisis in the Kurdistan Region and present the consequences and possibilities of its resurgence. 1- The researcher has tried to reveal that the political crisis in the Kurdistan Region will continue due to the lack of constitutional institutions. 2- The researcher has tried to show the availability of capabilities of the public relations bureaus of the six Kurdistan parties, to help political parties through public relations to prevent crises and their occurrence, containment and resolve their effects when they occur. 3- The study shows the role of public relations in spreading awareness among the masses inside and outside the political parties through the use of public relations organs and their representation in public meetings, publications, audio and visual media as well as social networks. The study proved that political crises require quick public relations intervention to contain them 4- At the same time, the researcher has revealed that there is no clear plan for public relations in the political parties in the event of repeat of political crisis in the Kurdistan Region, especially the crisis of the presidency of the Kurdistan Region. 5. The study showed that the task of public relations does not end with the end of crises, but must be constantly ready to assess crises, which is a measure of success of public relations in crisis management. The study proved that public relations determines the material and human capabilities needed to deal with crises before, during and after they occur, which is essential to prevent crises from occurring, and to limit and stop them develop. 6. There should be a necessary budget for public relations that will help in formulating plans and programs, achieving its goals and deal with possible crises and political crises in the Kurdistan Region. 7. The study proved that the crisis management process requires the provision of an integrated team, which will be assigned a task to end the crisis. The form of this team varies according to the type of crisis and how to treat the crisis. Moreover, for managing the crises, the team needs coordination with the organs of the six political parties in the Kurdistan Region in public relations.

<p><strong><em>The purpose </em></strong><em>of the study is to analyze the problem of the specifics and effectiveness of the impact of PR technologies on the formation and use of public opinion in the processes of information warfare. </em></p><p><strong><em>Research methodology.</em></strong><em> The following methods and approaches were used in the study: system analysis – to clarify the characteristics, on the one hand, of modern information warfare, on the other – the state of mass consciousness and public opinion; structural and functional analysis – to study the peculiarities of the impact of information warfare and the reaction of public opinion to it; comparative analysis – to compare the effects of information warfare on different groups of the population of Ukraine. The empirical basis of the study is the data of an expert survey of representatives of a number of specific categories of the population: anti-terrorist operation soldiers, volunteers, teachers of socio-political departments of higher education institutions (32 people, 2016). </em></p><p><strong><em>Results. </em></strong><em>The article considers an important and little-studied problem related to the role of PR technologies and the specifics of their use by the subjects of information wars in the formation of public opinion in the population of both warring parties, and its use to solve various problems. war. </em></p><p><strong><em>Novelty.</em></strong><em> The specifics of using such technologies as image-making, branding, covert management on NLP-technologies, organization of PR-campaigns and some others are analyzed. The analysis is carried out mainly on the basis of consideration of the relevant problems that have arisen and are arising in the process of information war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which has been conducted since 2014. Examples of its use of PR-technologies are given. </em></p><p><strong><em>The practical significance.</em></strong><em> The formulated conclusions can be used both by scientists for the development of special sociological theories (sociology of mass communications, sociology of war, sociology of public opinion) and by practitioners, employees of public administration and security services of Ukraine to improve work in information security.</em></p><p><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> information war, public opinion, PR-technologies, image-making, NLP-technologies.</em></p>

The occurrence of popular social events causes fluctuations and changes of public emotions, while the rapid development of online social platforms and networks has made individual interactions more intense and further escalated public emotions into public opinion. However, there is a lack of consideration of individual emotions in the current research on online public opinion. Based on this, this paper firstly expounds the quantitative representation of attitude and emotion, analyzes the formation and propagation process of online public opinion by combining individual’s expression willingness, individual’s expression ability, attitude perception value, attitude change probability and other factors, and constructs a network public opinion propagation model that takes individual emotion into consideration. Finally, the main factors affecting the formation and propagation of network public opinion are discussed through simulation experiments. The results demonstrate that: (1) fear is conducive to the formation of online public opinion, but the speed is relatively slow; sadness is not conducive to the formation, but once enough people participate in the exchange of views, the formation of online public opinion will be faster; (2) the influence of online public opinion on individual emotions expands with the increase of the number of individual interactions; (3) different network structures impact differently on the propagation of public opinion. Among them, BA (BA network is a scale-free network model proposed by Barabasi and Albert in order to explain the generation mechanism of power law, BA model has two characteristics: growth and priority connection mechanism) and ER (ER network is a network with random connectivity proposed by Erdös-Renyi) random networks can promote the propagation of online public opinion, which is prone to “one-sided” online public opinion. WS small-world networks (proposed by Watts and Strogatz. It is a kind of network with short average path length and high clustering coefficient) and fully-connected networks have an inhibitory effect on the spread of online public opinion, easily maintaining the multi-dimensional nature of online public opinion.

This study examines the impact of social media on public opinion formation in the post-truth era, characterized by the spread of biased or inaccurate information. Social media platforms, while facilitating information dissemination, often contribute to the creation of echo chambers and filter bubbles, shaping political perceptions and influencing public discourse. Through a qualitative approach, this research investigates how misinformation and disinformation campaigns leverage social media to manipulate public opinion and the role of education and policy regulation in counteracting these effects. The findings provide insights into regulatory frameworks and digital literacy strategies needed to mitigate the adverse effects of social media on political opinion.

Studies on the effect of social media on political communication and participation have found that falsehood and promotion of agenda are common in Nigerian social media usage for political discussion. Some of Nigerian citizens are discouraged probably due to their belief that their votes may not count. The study therefore investigated the impact of social media on political discourse and public opinion before and during Nigeria's 2023 Election. The population of the study comprised 51 225 500 Facebook users in Nigeria. A convenience sample was used to select a sample of 500 participants for the study. Data was collected using a questionnaire through Qualtrics. Mean, Standard Deviation and Linear regression were used to analysed the data gathered for the study. The study found that social media has a high effect on political discourse, public opinion and political opinion during the Nigerian 2023 general elections. The study found that social media activeness has high impact on political expression opinions during Nigeria’s 2023 election; social media influenced political polarization and propaganda, but does not increase the spread of misinformation. The study concluded that electoral bodies and politicians must improve debate and public opinions through discussion of policies and ideologies to reduce polarization.