How useful is public opinion as a tool for politicians and the media?

Dear Jolopa, 

Public opinion is usually a very helpful tool in shaping policy and
suiting it to the public's needs. In order to understand public
opinion, we should first understand the development of the concept.
This concept has been marked already in the days of Plato, but became
more important after Enlightenment (see for more on the history of
public opinion, Bangalapedia
<http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/P_0308.htm>). However, one should
be careful in using this tool, of several reasons.

The first reason is the validity of the results. The reflection of
public opinion in polls is sometimes misleading: the wording of the
questions, the honesty and level of understanding of the respondents,
and their ability in general to evaluate a situation strategically,
not based on populist, temporary, notions.

Before modern polls have developed, the media had a more central role
in reflecting public opinion in the UK:
"With no opinion polls or other ways of judging public opinion,
politicians paid exaggerated respect to newspapers and their owners,
learning to give interviews and to exert influence behind the scenes.
David Lloyd George, in particular, as one of the new breed of populist
politicians, associated himself closely with these newspaper owners
and editors and they played a part in his becoming Prime Minister in
December 1916.

Despite many myths after the war, there was in 1914 no fully developed
British government organisation or plan for propaganda or the
manipulation of public opinion. Just as with the army recruiting
drives, so the posters, newspaper proclamations and claims of German
'atrocities' were the product of a complex mix of spontaneous action,
national and local politics, and business initiatives. Only as the war
continued did the government start to extend its grip on propaganda
and public opinion, as on many other aspects of society."
(SOURCE: Dr Stephen Badsey, "Mass Politics and the Western Front",
01-03-2002, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwone/war_media_01.shtml>).

This doesn't mean that the public opinion did not exist: "In recent
years increasing attention has been paid by media theorists to the
notion of the public sphere as developed by German philosopher Jürgen
Habermas. Habermas, implacable opponent of postmodernist theorizing,
argues that in eighteenth century England there was the emergence of a
'public sphere ... which mediates between society and state', in which
'the public organises itself as the bearer of public opinion'
(Habermas, 1989) [...] according to Habermas, after the first half of
the nineteenth century the situation changed, as the public sphere
became dominated by a strong, expanded state and a press which
represented organized economic interests. The media, from having been
part of the public sphere of reasoned discussion, became part of the
process of 're-feudalization' of the public sphere as state,
industrial conglomerates and the media undergo a process of fusion.
The media became the manipulators of public opinion, conditioning the
public into the rôle of passive onlookers and consumers." (SOURCE:
Mick Underwood, 2003. "Mass Media Effects" - Mass Media as Fourth
Estate, <http://www.cultsock.ndirect.co.uk/MUHome/cshtml/media/4estate.html>).

Underwood, however, adds: "Does it necessarily follow that, because
ownership is concentrated, because media conglomerates and the state
share common interests, the media are powerful shapers of public
opinion? It is a widely held view that that does follow - for example
after the 1992 General Election, won by the Conservatives after
confident predictions of a Labour victory, the Sun newspaper
proclaimed triumphantly in a banner headline: 'It's the Sun wot won
it!'; Lord McAlpine, Conservative Party treasurer, thanked the
Conservative press for securing the victory; Neil Kinnock, the Labour
leader, blamed the Conservative press for Labour's defeat. There is
plenty of evidence from the reception studies of the 'new audience
research', though, that there is no such simple linkage between the
views expressed by the media and people's political (or other)
choices. Reception studies show that readers do readily develop
oppositional readings of media texts. That is clear from the simple
fact that somewhere around 40% of the Sun's readership - a fairly
constant figure - are not Conservative voters." (ibid)

The second, is that these public opinion trends could be abused by
populist media or politicians in order to manipulate the public and
make changes that are in fact unfavourable to them. As a participants
in the Hansard forum puts it:
"We know the public has been mislead on issues such as immigration and
the European Union by the media, leading to a misguided public
opinion. When a politician makes a mistake the media has a frenzy but
vise versa and nobody questions it. It is essential to have freedom of
speech in the media, but shouldn't the media be made answerable when
incorrectly influencing public opinion?" (SOURCE: The Parliament in
the Public Eye, Submission 18, Hansard Society,
<http://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publiceye/node/view/47>).

For example, this Indian site states: " The media has bred the public
opinion with negative stereotypes. Ask an average Englishman or woman
on the streets of London about India. They will say, India is a nation
of Snake Charmers, Sadhus, Rajas, and Beggars etc. You have to remind
them that the person who runs their computer system in their office is
an Indian and  that too a highly qualified person from India! "
(SOURCE: Hari Sud, 2004, "India Shining and the British Media", South
Asia Analysis Group, Paper no. 939, 01. 03. 2004,
<http://www.saag.org/papers10/paper939.html>).

To this aspect of manipulation, one could add the fact that even
without manipulation, the psychological elements of public opinion are
very crucial in its dynamics with politicians and the media (see:
Barry Richards, 2003. "Politicians, media and audiences as
psychological actors" paper presented at
Can't Vote, Won't Vote: are the media to blame for political disengagement? 
Political Studies Association Conference held at Goldsmiths College, London SE14 
Thursday 6 November 2003, PDF version:
<http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/departments/media-communications/pdfs/barryrichards-paper.pdf>).

It might, then, be difficult to assess the public opinion accurately.
In order to do that, social science must develop tools "to comprehend
the forces at work in the citizen?s assessment of scientific issues, a
task which requires sustained and high quality tracking of public
opinion and mediation, not with occasional sallies into the press
clippings, but with careful examination of all the circuits of
communication which come into play in an era of instant and ubiquitous
public communication." (SOURCE: Ian Hargreaves, 2001. "Who's
Misunderstanding Whom?", Pantaneto issue 1 Nov. 2001,
<http://www.pantaneto.co.uk/issue1/hargreaves.htm>), inclusing those
psychological elements.



Further Reading: 

BBC, Agenda Setting 2003: Mass Media and Public Opinion 
a speech by Roger Mosey, Head of Television News
11 September 2003
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/mosey_bonn.shtml> 

Michael Barry, 2004. "MEPs, the European Parliament and Public
Opinion" , Euromov, August 2004. PDF document -
<http://www.euromove.org.uk/publications/meps.pdf>

Dickon Hooper, "The court of public opinion", BBC, Monday, 19 April,
2004, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/3639961.stm>

Jenkins, Ph (1992) Intimate Enemies: Moral Panics in Contemporary
Great Britain, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1992.

Stokes, J. And Reading, A. (1999) (eds.) The Media in Britain: Current
Debates and Developments. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Taylor-Gooby, P. (1985) Public Opinion, Ideology and State Welfare,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul

I hope this answered your question. Please contact me if you need any
clarification on this answer before you rate it.

How useful is public opinion as a tool for politicians and the media?

Public opinion is vitally important to both politics and the media,
dictating both policy and programming. It is a two way street in terms
of accurate sampling and manipulating opinion. Both political parties
in the U.S. are adept at molding public opinion to justify political
goals. Corporate ownership of the media and fragmentation of an
increasing variety of news sources magnifies the importance of public
opinion.

Since the 1970's, both parties in the U.S. have tried to apply
American style politics and media manipulation to gain allies abroad.
Consultants from liberal to conservative have tried to apply the
principles that work in the U.S. to every continent with widely
varying results. Savvy voters in some countries readily detect the
influence of American style persuasion and reject it. The U.S. and the
U.K. have significant differences in style, but trial and error
improves the influence over time. Rupert Murdoch might be the single
best example of succeeding in both arena's.


http://www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/ConstructingPublicOpinion

"Constructing Public Opinion
How Politicians and the Media Misrepresent the Public
(2001)

Summary: 
The media regularly use public opinion polls in their reporting of
important news stories. But how exactly do they report them and to
what end? In this insightful and accessible interview, Professor
Justin Lewis demonstrates the way in which polling data are themselves
used by the media to not just reflect what Americans think but instead
to construct public opinion itself. Addressing vital issues (e.g., the
role the media play in "manufacturing consent" for political elites,
what polls really tell us about public opinion, what Americans
actually think about politics), Constructing Public Opinion provides a
new way to think about the relationship between politics, media and
the public.

Exploding the myth that most Americans are moderate or conservative,
Constructing Public Opinion demonstrates the way in which political
elites help to promote the military industrial complex and how the
media sustains belief in an electoral system with a built-in bias
against the interests of ordinary people. Well illustrated with
graphics and many examples of media coverage, it is the first film of
its kind to present a critical analysis of media and public
opinion...."

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/opinion.htm

"Public opinion is a dominant force in American politics and
especially so during the long electoral process. If a presidential
candidate fails to hit it off with the media at the first primary,
then that presidential candidate is likely to have a political
mountain to climb up to the November election.
The media : "Television and the press dominate the setting of American
politics." (Bowles). Research produced by the Statistics Department in
Washington for the end of the 1990's indicated that in one year the
average American would:
·	watch about 1000 hours of network television 
·	watch about 400 hours of cable television 
·	spend 150 hours reading a newspaper 
·	spend 100 hours reading magazines 
Of these, the prediction for the first decade of the 21st century, was
that the figures for network television would stabilise for a number
of years and then slightly decline; the hours spent watching cable
television would increase and that reading whatever would stabilise
but not increase.

There are more than 3000 television and radio stations in America.
60% of Americans subscribe to cable television with the figure growing annually.
There are over 30 million Internet subscribers in America - more than
in the rest of the world put together - and this figure continues to
grow...?


http://logic.cqpress.com/publicopin/study.asp

?Politicians and the media often point to polls or surveys as examples
of public opinion on issues. In many cases, however, polls and surveys
more closely reflect the opinions and methods of their sponsors than
they do any actual "will of the public." For a variety of reasons,
determining what "the people" want or believe is not as simple as the
final poll numbers might imply.
Although scientific methods of polling have greatly reduced
methodological errors in polling, detecting stable or "informed"
opinions at the individual level is still difficult. People construct
attitudes based on their own personal experiences as well as the
indirect experiences passed on through socialization. Most individuals
have little reason to construct organized, well-informed political
ideologies, primarily because they could spend their time better doing
other things. For this reason, they are ambivalent on most issues and
can shift their stated positions because of small changes in survey
wording or framing.?

The most recent Canadian elections saw a concerted effort by the Bush
administration to sway the outcome. The current election campaign in
the U.K. has consultants from both sides involved.