Download or read book Constructing Public Opinion written by Justin Lewis and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2001-03-07 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is polling a process that brings "science" into the study of society? Or are polls crude instruments that tell us little about the way people actually think? The role of public opinion polls in government and mass media has gained increasing importance with each new election or poll taken. Here Lewis presents a new look at an old tradition, the first study of opinion polls using an interdisciplinary approach combining cultural studies, sociology, political science, and mass communication. Rather than dismissing polls, he considers them to be a significant form of representation in contemporary culture; he explores how the media report on polls and, in turn, how publicized results influence the way people respond to polls. Lewis argues that the media tend to exclude the more progressive side of popular opinion from public debate. While the media's influence is limited, it works strategically to maintain the power of pro-corporate political elites.
Download or read book Public Opinion written by Walter Lippmann and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In what is widely considered the most influential book ever written by Walter Lippmann, the late journalist and social critic provides a fundamental treatise on the nature of human information and communication. The work is divided into eight parts, covering such varied issues as stereotypes, image making, and organized intelligence. The study begins with an analysis of "the world outside and the pictures in our heads", a leitmotif that starts with issues of censorship and privacy, speed, words, and clarity, and ends with a careful survey of the modern newspaper. Lippmann's conclusions are as meaningful in a world of television and computers as in the earlier period when newspapers were dominant. Public Opinion is of enduring significance for communications scholars, historians, sociologists, and political scientists. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media written by Robert Y. Shapiro and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 804 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With engaging new contributions from the major figures in the fields of the media and public opinion The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media is a key point of reference for anyone working in American politics today.
Download or read book Reading Public Opinion written by Susan Herbst and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public opinion is one of the most elusive and complex concepts in democratic theory, and we do not fully understand its role in the political process. Reading Public Opinion offers one provocative approach for understanding how public opinion fits into the empirical world of politics. In fact, Susan Herbst finds that public opinion, surprisingly, has little to do with the mass public in many instances. Herbst draws on ideas from political science, sociology, and psychology to explore how three sets of political participants—legislative staffers, political activists, and journalists—actually evaluate and assess public opinion. She concludes that many political actors reject "the voice of the people" as uninformed and nebulous, relying instead on interest groups and the media for representations of public opinion. Her important and original book forces us to rethink our assumptions about the meaning and place of public opinion in the realm of contemporary democratic politics.
Download or read book The Making of Public Opinion written by Emory Stephen Bogardus and published by New York, Association Press. This book was released on 1951 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion written by John Zaller and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1992-08-28 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1992 book explains how people acquire political information from elites and the mass media and convert it into political preferences.
Download or read book Public Opinion written by Vincent Price and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 1992-06-16 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is perhaps most amazing about this little book is its comprehensiveness. In little more than a 100 pages, Price manages to discuss the relevance of ′public opinion′ to just about every major mass communication theory. . . . The reference list alone would be a valuable resource for anyone studying public opinion. . . . Price does a stellar job of explaining in easy-to-understand language what most of these references have to say about public opinion. . . . The two greatest contributions of the book are Price′s organization of the vast literature on public opinion, coupled with his distillation of major works, including some truly hefty tomes, into a few simple words. Those who have grappled with the thoughts of Habermas and Blumer, for example, will greatly appreciate Price′s succinct and insightful descriptions of the relevance of these difficult works to the study of public opinion. Another strong point is the book′s currency: while you will find references to works published in the 1920s, you also will find books, articles, and reports published in the 1990s. . . . If you are new to the study of public opinion and communication, this book is the most painless, yet valuable introduction I can recommend. If you think you already know a lot about public opinion, the book may be even more valuable: it may dispel you of the notion that anyone knows a lot about public opinion." --Journalism Quarterly Public opinion--is it a simple aggregation of individual views, or instead some kind of collective-level, emergent product of debate and discussion? What is the role of public opinion in popular government? How do the mass media shape public opinion, or link it to governmental decision-making? Price′s Public Opinion explores such questions by tracing the historical development and application of the concept of public opinion. It examines the concept′s origins in Enlightenment thought and follows its evolution as a tool for social-scientific research. Intended as a map of the sprawling research terrain, Public Opinion introduces the conceptual mechanisms underlying public opinion research and shows how these concepts are used in an attempt to resolve enduring theoretical, normative, and practical questions. Because public opinion is one of the most vital and enduring concepts in the social sciences, this book will enjoy wide application in psychology, sociology, political science, journalism, and communication research in both academic and applied settings.
Download or read book Public Opinion and the Political Economy of Education Policy around the World written by Martin R. West and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparative analyses of the influence of public opinion on education policy in developed countries. Although research has suggested a variety of changes to education policy that have the potential to improve educational outcomes, politicians are often reluctant to implement such evidence-based reforms. Public opinion and pressure by interest groups would seem to have a greater role in shaping education policy than insights drawn from empirical data. The construction of a comparative political economy of education that seeks to explain policy differences among nations is long overdue. This book offers the first comparative inventory and analysis of public opinion and education in developed countries, drawing on data primarily from Europe and the United States.
Download or read book Common Knowledge written by W. Russell Neuman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-10-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Photo opportunities, ten-second sound bites, talking heads and celebrity anchors: so the world is explained daily to millions of Americans. The result, according to the experts, is an ignorant public, helpless targets of a one-way flow of carefully filtered and orchestrated communication. Common Knowledge shatters this pervasive myth. Reporting on a ground-breaking study, the authors reveal that our shared knowledge and evolving political beliefs are determined largely by how we actively reinterpret the images, fragments, and signals we find in the mass media. For their study, the authors analyzed coverage of 150 television and newspaper stories on five prominent issues—drugs, AIDS, South African apartheid, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the stock market crash of October 1987. They tested audience responses of more than 1,600 people, and conducted in-depth interviews with a select sample. What emerges is a surprisingly complex picture of people actively and critically interpreting the news, making sense of even the most abstract issues in terms of their own lives, and finding political meaning in a sophisticated interplay of message, medium, and firsthand experience. At every turn, Common Knowledge refutes conventional wisdom. It shows that television is far more effective at raising the saliency of issues and promoting learning than is generally assumed; it also undermines the assumed causal connection between newspaper reading and higher levels of political knowledge. Finally, this book gives a deeply responsible and thoroughly fascinating account of how the news is conveyed to us, and how we in turn convey it to others, making meaning of at once so much and so little. For anyone who makes the news—or tries to make anything of it—Common Knowledge promises uncommon wisdom.
Download or read book News Narratives and News Framing written by Karen S. Johnson-Cartee and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: News Narratives and News Framing is a revealing look at how the media's construction of news affects our political, economic, and social realities. In this introduction to the theory behind news framing, Karen Johnson-Cartee pulls together elements from communication, journalism, politics, and sociology to create a picture of how news forms these realities for the public. With its comprehensive reference section and suggestions on how to influence the news agenda, this is a beneficial resource for students in political communication, media criticism, and communication theory. Visit our website for sample chapters!
Download or read book The Dynamics of Public Opinion written by Mary Layton Atkinson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A central question in political representation is whether government responds to the people. To understand that, we need to know what the government is doing, and what the people think of it. We seek to understand a key question necessary to answer those bigger questions: How does American public opinion move over time? We posit three patterns of change over time in public opinion, depending on the type of issue. Issues on which the two parties regularly disagree provide clear partisan cues to the public. For these party-cue issues we present a slight variation on the thermostatic theory from (Soroka and Wlezien (2010); Wlezien (1995)); our “implied thermostatic model.” A smaller number of issues divide the public along lines unrelated to partisanship, and so partisan control of government provides no relevant clue. Finally, we note a small but important class of issues which capture response to cultural shifts.
Download or read book Political Polling in the Digital Age written by Kirby Goidel and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2008 presidential election provided a "perfect storm" for pollsters. A significant portion of the population had exchanged their landlines for cellphones, which made them harder to survey. Additionally, a potential Bradley effect -- in which white voters misrepresent their intentions of voting for or against a black candidate -- skewed predictions, and aggressive voter registration and mobilization campaigns by Barack Obama combined to challenge conventional understandings about how to measure and report public preferences. In the wake of these significant changes, Political Polling in the Digital Age, edited by Kirby Goidel, offers timely and insightful interpretations of the impact these trends will have on polling. In this groundbreaking collection, contributors place recent developments in public-opinion polling into a broader historical context, examine how to construct accurate meanings from public-opinion surveys, and analyze the future of public-opinion polling. Notable contributors include Mark Blumenthal, editor and publisher of Pollster.com; Anna Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster; and Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center. In an era of increasingly personalized and interactive communications, accurate political polling is more difficult and also more important. Political Polling in the Digital Age presents fresh perspectives and relevant tactics that demystify the variable world of opinion taking.
Download or read book The Spiral of Silence written by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1993-11-15 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noelle-Newmann's classic on public opinion as a form of social control was originally published in German in 1980 and first published in English in 1984. This revised edition adds three new chapters to summarize ongoing research, new findings, and new developments. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Illusion of Public Opinion written by George F. Bishop and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a rigorous critique of public opinion polling in the U.S., George F. Bishop makes the case that a lot of what passes as "public opinion" in mass media today is an illusion, an artifact of measurement created by vague or misleading survey questions presented to respondents who typically construct their opinions on the spot. Using evidence from a wide variety of data sources, Bishop shows that widespread public ignorance and poorly informed opinions are the norm rather than definitive public opinion on key political, social, and cultural issues of the day. The Illusion of Public Opinion presents a number of cautionary tales about how American public opinion has supposedly changed since 9/11, amplified by additional examples on other occasions drawn from the American National Election Studies. Bishop's analysis of the pitfalls of asking survey questions and interpreting poll results leads the reader to a more skeptical appreciation of the art and science of public opinion polling as it is practiced today.
Download or read book Public Opinion written by David L. Weakliem and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is political polarization on the rise? Do various “populist” movements have anything in common? Is the opposition between left and right becoming obsolete and, if so, what might replace it? Many of the most pressing questions about contemporary politics involve public opinion. This incisive sociological introduction considers the formation of opinions as not just a matter of individual responses to external conditions, but as a social process in which people influence and are in turn influenced by others. David L. Weakliem illustrates how changes in economic and social conditions affect public opinion and how the distribution of opinions is shaped by the structure of interaction among people. He applies this approach to discuss topics such as political polarization, long-term trends in public opinion, and the prospects for democracy. Combining theory with up-to-date information on public opinion, the book will be of interest to researchers and students alike in sociology, political science, and communication studies.
Download or read book Researching the Public Opinion Environment written by Sherry Devereaux Ferguson and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2000-05-11 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of Contents
Download or read book Crystallizing Public Opinion written by Edward L. Bernays and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In writing this book I have tried to set down the board principles that govern the profession of public relations. It is certain that the power of public opinion is constantly increasing and will keep on increasing. It is equally certain that it is more and more being influenced, changed, stirred by impulses from below. The danger which this development contains for a progressive ennobling of human society and a progressive heightening of human culture is apparent. The duty of the higher strata of society-the cultivated, the learned, the expert, the intellectual-is therefore clear. They must inject moral and spiritual motives into public opinion. Public opinion must become public conscience.
