Public Opinion Communication Research Articles

Research on Public Opinion Transmission Mechanism Based on Social Network

With the rapid development of social network and self-media, the spread of information becomes increasingly fast and the public participation is high. What’s more, the information dissemination is presented with new laws and the control of information communication is challenged. In this paper, the social network analysis method is used to study the public opinion of Shandong's “humiliating murder” as an empirical analysis, and the research on the public opinion communication mechanism based on SNS is carried out. The results show that the control of key nodes can effectively control the speed and scale of information dissemination.

Media e comunicazione politica in Italia

The article briefly sketches the development of the studies on media and political communication in Italy, from the parties democracy (or so called First Republic) in which prevails the intra-elite political communication, to the spectacularization of extra-elite and public opinion communication in the berlusconian age, up to transition to a postmodern political communication, of which the pop politics is one of the prominent topics. Particular attention is dedicated to items as electoral campaigning and leadership personalization.

Hesitation Blues

Research in public opinion and political communication indicates that those who hold viewpoints that are in the minority may be more hesitant to express their opinion when compared to those in the majority. Gauging hesitation through response latencies has been put forth as a measure of the internalization of majority pressure. In a laboratory setting, participants are asked to offer simple judgments (e.g., “like” or “dislike”) for various digitized images of both political and nonpolitical persons, things, and ideas. Responses are recorded and categorized according to majority or minority status and then analyzed at both the subject and the object level in an attempt to better understand the link between the climate of opinion and response hesitancy. Overall, those in the minority take longer to offer “like” or “dislike” responses when compared to those in the majority. This relationship is positively correlated with the size of the majority. Furthermore, individual differences are found to moderate the minority slowness effect (MSE). The effect is also found to be stronger for political objects when compared to nonpolitical objects.

Public Opinion and Mass Communication

Public Opinion and Mass Communication