Public Opinion

Staats- und Gesellschaftswissenschaften

Rhomberg, Markus

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization Public Opinion, Hrsg: Ritzer, George

Rhomberg, Markus: Public Opinion, in: Ritzer, George (Hrsg.): The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, 2. Auflage, Boston, Blackwell Publishing, 2015: 1721-1722: http://10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog476.pub2 (download: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog476.pub2/abstract) .

Lexikonartikel

The concepts of public opinion differ within the European and Anglo-Saxon research cultures. Whereas the European model of public opinion is placed within the discourses of public sphere and public debate along a normative idea, the Anglo-Saxon alternative is rather focused on demographic surveys to measure and quantify public opinion. These different perspectives certainly affect the transnational or even global idea of public opinion. In a US perspective, public opinion is seen as the simple addition of individual opinions (Frankovic 1998), for example in the case of the concept of agenda-setting and the formation of a public agenda (McCombs & Shaw 1972). In turn, the European perspective on public opinion negates a rather statistical aggregate of public opinion and attributes its own version as a product of collective communication and discourses in the public sphere. In this normative understanding, public opinion emerges from the triangle of reason, argument and dialogue. Public opinion in a European perspective is not the addition of all individual opinions in a discourse but the result of this discourse. As a medium of societal requirements, demands, and discourses, public opinion manages the public agenda and sets issues for societal and political decision making (Noelle-Neumann 2001; Gerhards & Neidhardt 1993). Interestingly, the European concept is based on the ideas of the US scholar Walter Lippmann (1922). This view was also reflected in the United States, but was operationalized foremost in European studies. The US scholar Maxwell McCombs stated: “Walter Lippmann consciously prefaced Public Opinion with Plato's allegory of the cave where the prisoners in the cave could see only the reflections of reality on the wall before them” (McCombs et al. 1991: 10). In particular, the origins of the concept of public opinion stem from the eighteenth and nineteenth century: European intellectuals like Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville developed this concept in opposition to authoritarian monarchs.

http://10.1002/9780470670590.wbeog476.pub2

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