Public opinion


Public opinion, or popular opinion, is the collective opinion on a specific topic or voting intention relevant to society. It is the people's views on matters affecting them.
In the 21st century, public opinion is heavily influenced by the media; many studies have been undertaken which look at the different factors which influence public opinion. Politicians and other people concerned with public opinion often attempt to influence it using advertising or rhetoric. Opinion plays a vital role in uncovering some critical decisions. Sentiment analysis or opinion mining is a method used to mine the thoughts or feelings of the general population. One of the struggles of public opinion is how it can be influenced by misinformation.

Etymology

The term "public opinion" was derived from the French opinion publique, which was first used in 1588 by Michel de Montaigne, one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, in the second edition of his famous Essays.
The French term also appears in the 1761 work Julie, or the New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Precursors of the phrase in English include William Temple's "general opinion" and John Locke's "law of opinion".

History

The emergence of public opinion as a significant force in the political realm dates to the late 17th century, but opinion had been regarded as having singular importance much earlier. Medieval fama publica or vox et fama communis had great legal and social importance from the 12th and 13th centuries onward. Later, William Shakespeare called public opinion the "mistress of success" and Blaise Pascal thought it was "the queen of the world".
In his treatise, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding c, John Locke considered that man was subject to three laws: the divine law, the civil law and most importantly in Locke's judgement, the law of opinion or reputation. He regarded the latter as of the highest importance because dislike and ill opinion force people to conform in their behaviour to social norms, however he did not consider public opinion as a suitable influence for governments.
In his 1672 essay On the Original and Nature of Government, William Temple gave an early formulation of the importance of public opinion. He observed that "when vast numbers of men submit their lives and fortunes absolutely to the will of one, it must be force of custom, or opinion which subjects power to authority". Temple disagreed with the prevalent opinion that the basis of government lay in a social contract and thought that government was merely allowed to exist due to the favour of public opinion.
The prerequisites for the emergence of a public sphere were increasing levels of literacy which was spurred on by the Reformation, which encouraged individuals to read the Bible in the vernacular, and the rapidly expanding printing presses. During the 18th century, religious literature was replaced by secular literature, novels and pamphlets. In parallel to this was the growth in reading societies and clubs. At the turn of the century the first circulating library opened in London and the public library became widespread and available to the public.

Public opinion in British politics

Coffee-houses

An institution of central importance in the development of public opinion, was the coffee-house, which became widespread throughout Europe in the mid-17th century. Although Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them. For several decades following the Restoration, the Wits gathered round John Dryden at Will's Coffee House in Russell Street, Covent Garden. The coffee houses were great social levellers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism.
More generally, coffee houses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and The London Gazette read. Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business. By 1739, there were 551 coffeehouses in London. Each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center. Joseph Addison wanted to have it said of him that he had "brought philosophy out of closets and libraries to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses". According to one French visitor, Antoine François Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government", were the "seats of English liberty".

Gentleman clubs

s proliferated in the 18th century, especially in the West End of London. Clubs took over the role occupied by coffee houses in 18th century London to some degree and reached the height of their influence in the late 19th century. Some notable names were White's, Brooks's, Arthur's and Boodle's which still exist today.
These social changes, in which a closed and largely illiterate public became an open and politicized one, was to become of tremendous political importance in the 19th century as the mass media was circulated ever more widely and literacy was steadily improved. Governments increasingly recognized the importance of managing and directing public opinion. This trend is exemplified in the career of George Canning who restyled his political career from its aristocratic origins to one of popular consent when he contested and won the parliamentary seat in Liverpool, a city with a growing and affluent middle class which he attributed to the growing influence of "public opinion".
Jeremy Bentham was an impassioned advocate of the importance of public opinion in the shaping of constitutional governance. He thought it important that all government acts and decisions should be subject to the inspection of public opinion, because "to the pernicious exercise of the power of government it is the only check". He opined that public opinion had the power to ensure that rulers would rule for the greatest happiness of the greater number. He brought in Utilitarian philosophy in order to define theories of public opinion.

Public meetings and newspapers

By the 1820s public opinion became a central force in British political life, increasingly influencing government policy and party strategy. The power of public opinion was closely tied to the expansion of literacy, the growth of the press, and the rise of mass political participation. Politicians held large local meetings and their speeches were widely disseminated. Newspapers played an increasingly central role. According to historian Aled Jones, the energies released by Victorian politics promoted a "lively and heterogeneous press, and the emergence of reformed political and administrative systems were the subjects of intense scrutiny and speculation by journalists and their readers throughout Britain."
The expansion of the electorate was the major theme of 19th century British reform movements. The Reform Acts progressively expanded the franchise, allowing more men—especially from the middle and working classes—to vote. The reforms greatly enlarged the political power of the fast growing cities, and sharply reduced the role of small rotten noroughs controlled by elite families. Each reform was a response to social pressures and the growing recognition of public opinion's legitimacy. By 1900, about 40% of the men could vote, and the political parties competed vigorously to appeal to a broader public.
Political analyst A.V. Dicey argued that public opinion ruled England more than any other country, due to its advanced civil society and responsive constitution.

Theory

The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, by using the conceptional tools of his theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, argued, that 'public opinion' has the equivalent social function in societies which religion has in communities.
German social theorist Jürgen Habermas contributed the idea of public sphere to the discussion of public opinion. According to Habermas, the public sphere, or bourgeois public, is where "something approaching public opinion can be formed". Habermas claimed that the Public Sphere featured universal access, rational debate, and disregard for rank. However, he believes that these three features for how public opinion are best formed are no longer in place in western liberal democratic countries. Public opinion, in western democracy, is highly susceptible to elite manipulation.
The American sociologist Herbert Blumer has proposed an altogether different conception of the "public". According to Blumer, public opinion is discussed as a form of collective behavior which is made up of those who are discussing a given public issue at any one time. Given this definition, there are many publics; each of them comes into being when an issue arises and ceases to exist when the issue is resolved. Blumer claims that people participate in public in different capacities and to different degrees and public opinion polling cannot measure the public. An educated individual's participation is more important than that of a drunk. The "mass" in which people independently make decisions about, for example, which brand of toothpaste to buy, is a form of collective behavior different from the public.
Public opinion plays an important role in the political sphere. Cutting across all aspects of relationship between government and public opinion are studies of voting behavior. These have registered the distribution of opinions on a wide variety of issues, have explored the impact of special interest groups on election outcomes and have contributed to our knowledge about the effects of government propaganda and policy.
Contemporary, quantitative approaches to the study of public opinion may be divided into four categories:
  1. Quantitative measurement of opinion distributions.
  2. Investigation of the internal relationships among the individual opinions that make up public opinion on an issue.
  3. Description or analysis of the public role of public opinion.
  4. Study both of the communication media that disseminate the ideas on which opinions are based and of the uses that propagandists and other manipulators make of these media.