Theory Of Public Opinion Research Articles

Research on Public Opinion Guidance Strategies of Political Microblogs in the Context of Emergencies

This study takes "Gansu 12-18 Jishishan Earthquake" as an example to explore the strategies of guiding public opinion on government microblogs in the context of emergencies. Using the life cycle theory of public opinion, the study divides the development process of public opinion into four stages: latency, growth, maturity and decline, and systematically analyzes the performance of government microblogs, such as @Gansu Firefighting, @Gansu Public Security, and @Gansu Publishing, in the development of public opinion on emergencies, as well as their guiding effects in the various stages of public opinion development. The study shows that governmental microblogs perform better in terms of timeliness and authority of information release in emergencies, and are able to rapidly convey official information and stabilize public sentiment. However, there are still deficiencies in the interactive mechanism, public opinion monitoring and early warning, and evaluation and feedback. Based on this, it is proposed to optimize the public opinion monitoring and warning mechanism, enhance public interaction, and improve the feedback and evaluation system, so as to improve the public opinion management ability of government microblogs in emergencies, and to ensure the efficient communication of government information and the effective guidance of public opinion.

The representation of public opinion in reporting poll results on environment issues

This study examines how Japanese newspapers reporting the results of public opinion polls represent a unified picture of public opinion on environmental issues. Focusing on public opinion poll coverage, we argue that certain results are emphasized to the exclusion of others. To this end, this study analyzes articles and headlines of public opinion poll results on environmental issues published by three Japanese newspapers, the Asahi newspaper, the Yomiuri newspaper, and the Mainichi newspaper, from 1988 to 2010. In total, we located 64 articles that contain 179 headlines and subheadings. Findings suggest that the news coverage most often emphasized people's fears and concerns about environmental issues, followed by individuals' willingness to adopt environmentally friendly behaviors and practices, such as energy conservation and recycling. Overall, the headlines tend to give the impression that many respondents support this view. However, some media outlets that follow this trend selectively emphasize only one aspect of the poll results in their headlines without pointing out the existence of a conflict. They interpret poll results using second person or collective nouns to indicate the distribution of opinions. They then imply an overarching, unified public opinion that indicates a certain direction. This paper concludes that media representations of public opinion based on the results of Japanese public opinion polls on environmental issues legitimize existing political and economic structures and attribute responsibility for environmental problems to individuals.

Digital Pseudo-Identification in the Post-Truth Era: Exploring Logical Fallacies in the Mainstream Media Coverage of the COVID-19 Vaccines

Because of China’s new wave of COVID-19 in May 2023, the issue of tackling COVID-19 misinformation remains relevant. Based on Lippmann’s theory of public opinion and agenda setting theory, this article aims to examine the concept of digital pseudo-identification as a type of logical fallacy that refers to supporting journalists’ opinions with ‘false’ arguments that lack factual evidence. To do so, the study applied computer-aided content analysis, as well as rhetorical and critical discourse analyses, to examine 400 articles related to four COVID-19 vaccines (‘Oxford-AstraZeneca’, ‘Pfizer-BioNTech’, ‘Sputnik V’ and ‘Sinovac’) published on the online versions of two major British and American mainstream media sources between August 2020 and December 2021. The results of the study show that journalists of the ‘The New York Times’ and ‘The Guardian’ used similar logical fallacies, including the opinions of pseudo-authorities and references to pseudo-statistics and stereotypes, which contributed to creating distorted representations of the COVID-19 vaccines and propagating online misinformation. The study also reveals political bias in both of the mainstream media sources, with relatively more positive coverage of the European vaccines than non-European vaccines. The findings have important implications for journalism and open up perspectives for further research on the concept of digital pseudo-identification in the humanities and social sciences.

Rethinking Public Opinion in the Digital Era: Towards a Post-representational Theory

The quasi-ubiquity of ICT is transforming contemporary politics and seems to deteriorate democracy, for the technologies undermine debates, contest the grounds of reason and truth, and influence people’s votes. Donald Trump’s election and Brexit are good examples of their effects on public opinion. More fundamentally, these technologies cause theoretical problems to the way we traditionally conceive public opinion. Thus, I seek to rethink public opinion beyond conventional approaches. Departing from Deleuze and Guattari’s work, I develop the first steps of a post-representational theory of public opinion as a regime of political truths that has new dimensions of truth production with information and communications technologies.

Mobilizing the Shy and Closed-Minded into Politics: The Mediating Role of Political Trust for Conventional Participation in the Americas

Abstract Political participants tend to be extraverted and open to experience, but we know virtually nothing about the exceptions to the rule. Why do individuals low in extraversion and openness sometimes engage in public affairs? The answer to this question has implications for political equity in the expression and representation of public opinion, regardless of personality traits. To address my query, I turn to political trust as a mediator of the relationship between personality and political participation. I argue that extraverts often feel disappointed about the impersonal nature of public affairs and thus possess a lower level of political trust than introverts; meanwhile, people high in openness value progress and ideals, likely perceive a disconnect between their political preferences and political reality, and thus may be more likely to distrust government than the closed-minded. For the trust–participation link, I contend that trusting citizens will be inclined to perpetuate the status quo through conventional behaviors such as voting, attending government meetings, and contacting government officials. Using mediation analysis of AmericasBarometer survey data from North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean, I find that introverted and closed-minded individuals tend to be more politically engaged—through their higher levels of political trust.

(Mis)Informing the public? The public's responsiveness to reliable and unreliable information in illiberal information environments

AbstractBackgroundPublic opinion has a dynamic relationship with policy and real‐world outcomes in liberal settings where reliable information is abundant. In these settings, the public continuously updates its opinions with reliable policy‐relevant information, and the changes in public opinion go on to affect policy and outcomes. It is unknown whether this dynamic exists in illiberal settings where the public's access to reliable information is heavily restricted.ObjectivesThis article advances a theory of public opinion's dynamic relationship with policy and outcomes that applies to illiberal settings.MethodsOur study examines a vital public good in one of the world's most restrictive information environments and estimates a dynamic model of relationships among three variables—public opinion, policy, and outcomes—with a focus on public opinion and outcomes as the key dependent variables. The analysis looks at air pollution remediation in 274 Chinese localities.ResultsWe find that public opinion reacts to objective air pollution outcomes and not to misleading information that downplays air pollution severity, which suggests the public can accurately evaluate the reliability of available information. We also find that local public opinion's impact on local air pollution is substantively meaningful on timescales as short as 1 to 2 years, indicating that the additional policy effort prompted by public opinion change is sufficient to yield tangible real‐world outcomes even in the short term.ConclusionPublic opinion has a dynamic relationship with policy and real‐world outcomes even in highly illiberal settings. We argue that these findings are likely to generalize across issue domains with outcomes that can be directly observed by the public.

Sorting a public? Using quali-quantitative methods to interrogate the role of algorithms in digital democracy platforms

ABSTRACT Following concerns about social media’s role in politics (fostering polarization and spreading disinformation), many activists and civic hackers have developed alternative digital democracy platforms for both deliberation and the representation of public opinion. But how are we to study the role of these platforms, and in particular, their algorithms in the development of issues and the publics that gather around them? This article employs a simple quali-quantitative data visualization to study how a particular digital democracy platform, vTaiwan (an implementation of Pol.is – a tool for generating opinions and consensus about public issues) – formats political participation. We investigate how one particular issue (Uber legalization) was formed and reformed by users, moderators, and algorithms on the vTaiwan platform over time. while the algorithm sorted opinions into a binary of pro and anti-Uber positions, we find that the comments themselves and their sequence suggest more nuanced positions and the potential for dialogue. We argue that vTaiwan may be limited by its focus on simple quantitative data points (positive or negative votes as opposed to the texts themselves) and a forced separation of participants into in-or-out opinion groups. This study contributes to critical algorithm studies and digital democracy studies by offering an effective way to analyse the role of algorithms in democratic politics.

Prediction of Twitter Sentiment Analysis by Using Naive Bayes Algorithm

The purpose of our study is to do a sentiment analysis of tweets to determine whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. Many businesses use sentiment analysis to determine how well their products and companies are performing in the marketplace. In a burgeoning discipline, sentiment analysis is now being used to predict the outcome of political elections and polls. Twitter is an internet platform that allows users to send tweets with a maximum of 140 characters. We intend to get a representation of public opinion by analyzing the sentiments conveyed in the tweets due to the enormous amount of data we are using. This research investigates sentiment analysis, which involves extracting many tweets and analyzing them using a machine-learning technique like the naive Bayes classifier. Results are classified as several positive, negative or neutral and it is also expressed in the pie chart and bar chart. With the speedup development of websites, informal organizations, websites, online entries, surveys, feelings, proposals, evaluations, and criticism are created by scholars. This author created opinion content that can be about books, individuals, lodgings, items, research, occasions, and so on. These sentiments become extremely useful for organizations, state-run administrations, and people. While this content is intended to be helpful, a greater part of this essayist's produced content requires utilizing the message mining procedures and feel analysis. In any case, there are a few difficulties confronting the opinion examination and assessment process. These difficulties become snags in dissecting the exact significance of feelings and distinguishing the appropriate opinion extremity. Opinion analysis is the act of applying regular language handling and text examination strategies to recognize and remove abstract data from text. This paper presents a review of the feeling examination challenges pertinent to their methodologies and strategies

Corruption and Political Support: The Case of Peru’s Vacuna-gate Scandal

AbstractClassic theories of public opinion suggest that negative shocks can undermine system support in weak democracies, but scant work has systematically assessed this thesis. We identify Peru’s explosive Vacuna-gate scandal as a most-likely case for finding a connection between corruption and political support. The scandal’s unexpected revelation in the middle of the 2021 AmericasBarometer Peru survey created conditions for a natural experiment. Applying an unexpected-event-during-survey design, we consider the consequences of the scandal for perceptions of corruption, system support, and support for democracy. We find robust evidence that the scandal increased even already high perceptions of corruption and lowered system support. Contrary to expectations derived from prior theories, we find no effect on explicit support for democracy. In the conclusion, we discuss the nuanced ways that scandal may shape democratic stability.

Walter Lippmann and Public Opinion

Walter Lippmann’s seminal writing, Public Opinion, remains a classic text in communications studies a century after its first publication. By examining Lippmann’s unpublished notes and drafts alongside key contemporary works, new light is shed on how the book’s origins predated the First World War and how its argument went beyond debates about technocratic government. Lippmann’s main agenda was to contest liberal-constitutionalist theories of public opinion; his core intervention was to develop a social psychology of opinion formation. He drafted and wrote Public Opinion as a descriptive account of democratic politics under modern conditions. Instead of simply prescribing technocratic solutions, Lippmann framed a starker paradox: democracy through public opinion defined modern politics, but modernity also made opinion formation ever more difficult.

Government Rhetoric and the Representation of Public Opinion in International Negotiations

The role of domestic public opinion is an important topic in research on international negotiations, yet we know little about how exactly it manifests itself. We focus on government rhetoric during negotiations and develop a conceptual distinction between implicit and explicit manifestations of public opinion. Drawing on a database of video recordings of negotiations of the Council of the European Union and a quantitative text analysis of government speeches, we find that public opinion matters implicitly, with the exact pattern depending on governments’ stance toward the EU. Pro-EU governments are responsive to public opinion in their support for compromises and attempts to stall negotiations, whereas Euroskeptic governments tend to remain silent when confronted with a public positively disposed toward the EU. Our results show that although governments implicitly represent public opinion, they do not systematically invoke their voters explicitly, suggesting the public matters but in different ways than often assumed.

The Representation of Public Opinion in Routine U.S. Network News

ABSTRACT Against a backdrop of increasing opinion polarization and distrust in mainstream news media, we investigate when and how U.S. evening newscasts represent citizen opinions. This paper focuses on the different public opinion displays presented in the news and the viewpoints they portray. Using a content analysis of 1,577 items from CBS, ABC, and NBC evening news, we find that public opinion is represented relatively more often in foreign and political news. Broad inferences to public opinion are most common in news coverage, followed by protests and vox pops. Lastly, we find that public opinion representation does not present notable viewpoint diversity.

Foreign Policy Attitudes and National Alignments in Times of Chinese and Russian Threats

The increased support for NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is hardly surprising and matches theories of public opinion in times of war. This article unpacks this headline, considering not just Russian and Chinese pre-war behaviour but the underlying foreign policy attitudes of citizens across three different NATO member states. When grey-zone tactics were the preferred mode of action for both Russia and China, were citizens in NATO countries such as the US, the UK and a former Soviet state such as Lithuania in agreement on how to respond to threats? Using survey data from March 2021, Catarina P Thomson finds that although NATO is generally perceived as the first port of call, the dynamics underlying such support vary between these three countries.◼

“Secrecy or Silence with Her Finger on Her Mouth”: Jeremy Bentham’s Other Model of Visibility and Power

To challenge the Foucauldian legacy of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon prison, scholars often highlight Bentham’s later writings on the democratic power of public opinion. In doing so, they reaffirm Bentham’s reputation as a unreserved proponent of transparency. To recover the limits of Bentham’s embrace of publicity, I examine the model of visibility exemplified by his designs for the Sotimion, a residence for unmarried, pregnant women. The Sotimion draws our attention to Bentham’s appreciation for concealment as a method of preventing individual and social harms caused by publicity and his criticisms of ascetic sexual norms. By being able to see visitors without being seen by them, the residents of the Sotimion would have avoided social censure while continuing to meet with friends, family, and even lovers. The Sotimion designs eschewed the panoptic principle, the use of asymmetric surveillance to reform moral behavior, and offered what I call the “soteric principle,” the use of asymmetric surveillance to protect the observer from punishment. By comparing the Sotimion to the Magdalen Hospital for Penitent Prostitutes and Bentham’s discussions of panoptic institutions for women, I examine the Sotimion’s distinctiveness while acknowledging its normalizing effects for residents from lower socioeconomic classes. Just as the panopticon captured Bentham’s commitment to publicity, applying the soteric model to Bentham’s theory of public opinion highlights his commitment to secrecy for protecting critics of government abuses from retribution.

Josep Stalin y su época según la percepción en jóvenes modernos

The objective of the paper was to find out particularities of the way how I. V. Stalin's personality and controversial role in Russian history are perceived by modern young people. The principal method of this research was that of survey; it enabled the authors to consider the subject problem in an integrated way within the general context of everyday life history and the shared value set of the contemporary Russian society. The survey was conducted at the end of 2020 – beginning of 2021 among young students aged 15 to 18 (schoolchildren, vocational college students, and the university ones) in Saransk, Republic of Mordovia. In the course of the survey, the young people's evaluation of I. V. Stalin's person and activity was found to remain controversial, yet with a clear trend of positive views prevailing. The said trend is a representation of public opinion on this question current in the entire Russian society, with the latter basically characterized by the lack of consensus on a number of tough political and ideological topics. Materials of the paper are of practical importance for tailoring youth policy in the sphere of civic and patriotic education.

Factors influencing college students’ behaviours of spreading internet public opinions on emergencies in universities

PurposeThis study aims to explore the influencing factors on college students’ behaviours of spreading Internet public opinion on emergencies in colleges and universities. This study provides a reference for these institutions to cope with and reduce the influence of Internet public opinion on emergencies and maintain their normal teaching order.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, a research model by using motivation theory and design a questionnaire on the basis of relevant literature are constructed. This paper surveys college students and collects a total of 317 valid questionnaires. On the basis of the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, this study verifies the proposed model by using Smart PLS.FindingsThe results show that social motivation and information source preference have significant positive influences on college students’ willingness to spread Internet public opinion on emergencies in colleges and universities. Moreover, information source preference has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between social motivation and dissemination willingness. If college students’ information source preference is high, then the moderating effect is significant. The extent of college students’ interaction and involvement has a significantly positive influence on their trust in the dissemination platform for Internet public opinion on emergencies in colleges and universities. Egoism has a significantly positive influence on the social motivation of college students to spread Internet public opinion on emergencies in colleges and universities. Involvement degree has a significant moderating effect on the relationship between social motivation and trust. If college students’ involvement degree is low, then the moderating effect is significant. Thus, when the involvement of college students in Internet public opinion on emergencies in colleges and universities is low, the influence of social motivation on trust is great.Originality/valueThis study increases the influencing factors in the literature on Internet public opinion, enriches the research theory of Internet public opinion on emergencies in colleges and universities and expands the application scope of the theory of social motivation. The conclusion provides guidance for colleges and students to govern Internet public opinion on emergencies and improve the ability of these institutions in dealing with Internet public opinion on emergencies.

КОММУНИКАТИВНЫЕ СТРАТЕГИИ КОНСТРУИРОВАНИЯ КОНЦЕПТА «ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОЕ БЛАГОПОЛУЧИЕ»

Актуальность. Установление закономерностей конструирования концепта «политическое благополучие» в плотной сети коммуникаций современной культуры является научной проблемой и позволяет сформировать новое междисциплинарное предметное поле в современных философско-культурологических исследованиях. Цель: выявить коммуникативные стратегии конструирования концепта «политическое благополучие», обусловленные закономерностями протекания процессов стереотипизации в социокультурных коммуникациях и особенностями познаваемости мира посредством его конструирования. В статье использован ряд методов, позволяющих осуществить философский и социально-психологический анализ сущности и взаимообусловленности концептов «благополучие» и «политика». На основе теории общественного мнения У. Липпмана исследуется роль стереотипов в конструировании концепта «политическое благополучие». Результаты: политическое благополучие рассматривается как переживание совокупности объективных обстоятельств, обусловленных системой властных отношений и институтов власти во взаимосвязи с субъективным состоянием. Конструирование концепта «политическое благополучие» напрямую связано с коммуникативными процессами как способами говорения о мире политики, которые характерны для различных социальных групп и влекут за собой различные социальные действия. В процессе конструирования ключевыми становятся две коммуникативные стратегии: в рамках первой формируется «образ для себя» – понимание политического благополучия как собственного блага, которое складывается из комплекса личных традиционных благ. Вторая коммуникативная стратегия – это «образ для других» (политико-культурные и иные реальности, обычаи, национальные мифы, символы, верования, стереотипы). В основе данной стратегии лежат механизмы формирования общественного мнения, особо подчеркивается значение процессов социальной стереотипизации. Выводы: конструирование концепта «политическое благополучие» осуществляется посредством двух коммуникативных стратегий. Парадоксальность ситуации в том, что концепт «политическое благополучие» в формате «образ для себя» в представлениях граждан строится на стереотипах формата «образ для других».

The Politics of Petitioning: Parliament, Government, and Subscriptional Cultures in the United Kingdom, 1780–1918

AbstractOver the course of the long nineteenth century, people in the United Kingdom signed a wide variety of petitions, addresses, testimonials, and related documents. Though many forms of subscriptional culture had medieval and early modern origins, their transformations across this period reveal the shifting perceptions of the crown, parliament, the administrative state, and local government. The article draws on a dataset of more than 1 million petitions to the House of Commons and surviving data from the House of Lords, alongside qualitative evidence of signed addresses to other authorities. This reveals a pattern whereby applications and requests increasingly took new, bureaucratic forms, and petitions became more closely associated with the representation of public opinion. The study suggests the value of examining the practices and processes, alongside the languages and ideas, that shaped political culture. This emphasises the participatory and representative politics of name‐signing as a means to materialise popular opinion in a responsive ‐ but not democratic ‐ state.

Catherine E. de Vries: Euroscepticism and the Future of European Integration

The European Union (EU) is facing one of the rockiest periods in itsexistence. At no time in its history has it looked so economically fragile, soinsecure about how to protect its borders, so divided over how to tackle thecrisis of legitimacy facing its institutions, and so under assault byEurosceptic parties. The unprecedented levels of integration in recentdecades have led to increased public contestation, yet at the same the EU ismore reliant on public support for its continued legitimacy than everbefore. This book examines the role of public opinion in the Europeanintegration process. It develops a novel theory of public opinion thatstresses the deep interconnectedness between people’s views aboutEuropean and national politics. It suggests that public opinion cannotsimply be characterized as either Eurosceptic or not, but rather that itconsists of different types. This is important because these types coincidewith fundamentally different views about the way the EU should bereformed and which policy priorities should be pursued. These types alsohave very different consequences for behaviour in elections andreferendums. Euroscepticism is such a diverse phenomenon because theEurozone crisis has exacerbated the structural imbalances within the EU. Asthe economic and political fates of member states have diverged, people’sexperiences with and evaluations of the EU and national political systemshave also grown further apart. The heterogeneity in public preferences thatthis book has uncovered makes a one-size-fits-all approach to addressingEuroscepticism unlikely to be successful.

Partisanship, elite messages, and support for populism in power

AbstractDiscontent is seen as a critical driver for the appeal of populism, yet studies have typically focused on cases of populism in opposition. We argue that scholars’ emphasis on populism in opposition led them to overlook the roles of elite messages and partisanship in the adoption of populist attitudes. Drawing on theories of elite-driven public opinion, we contend that populist attitudes do not need to be rooted in discontent. In cases of populism in power, those who are more satisfied politically and economically, and partisans of the ruling party should display higher levels of populist attitudes. We provide observational and experimental survey evidence in this direction from Turkey, where a populist party has long been in power. We also find that the dominant characteristic of support for populism in power is an emphasis on popular sovereignty at the expense of institutions of horizontal accountability.