Communication, Public Opinion, and Democracy: New Challenges

Marita Carballo; Esteban López-Escobar; Maxwell McCombs

doi:10.15581/003.31.4.121-133

Marita Carballo

(Login required) , Esteban López-Escobar

(Login required) , Maxwell McCombs

(Login required)

PDF (

471)

View in DADUN

Published: Oct 1, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15581/003.31.4.121-133

How to Cite

Carballo, M., López-Escobar, E., & McCombs, M. (2018). Communication, Public Opinion, and Democracy: New Challenges. Communication & Society, 31(4), 121-133. https://doi.org/10.15581/003.31.4.121-133

Authors

Marita Carballo

(Login required)

National Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of Argentina

Esteban López-Escobar

(Login required)

Universidad de Navarra.

Maxwell McCombs

(Login required)

University of Texas at Austin.

Abstract

954

This essay addresses the relationship between communication, public opinion, and democracy, which is evident in Athenian democracy. It briefly considers the complexity of the concept of public opinion, and how it was understood as a political phenomenon accepted in general thinking and political action, as a consequence of the democratic dynamism originated by the printing press. After briefly considering some of the most relevant ideas about this relationship throughout the 19th century, this essay discusses the main attitudes that emerged in the face of public opinion after the First World War, from which the most relevant theories about the effects of media on opinion, behaviours, and action begun to be developed. The study takes into account the development of an empirical science of public opinion, linked to scientific opinion surveys. It summarises how the investigation of the effects of the media goes through a stage in which they are considered irrelevant, until some studies – especially the theories of agenda setting and the spiral of silence– recovered the idea of the powerful effects of the media. Finally, the essay addresses the new challenges posed by the disenchantment with democracy, the loss of credibility of the media, and the way of understanding communication, at a time in which digital technology has facilitated the creation of social media, causing a situation described as the post-truth era, in which the global need for information becomes more evident. The new challenges affect the political science, research on public opinion, and the science of communication, which requires a foundation of greater consistency than the current one.

References

Albig, W. (1957). Two Decades of Opinion Study: 1936-1956. Public Opinion Quarterly, Spring, 14-22.

Allport, F. H. (1937). Toward a science of public opinion. Public Opinion Quarterly, 1, 7-23.

Baker, K. M. (1990). Inventing the French Revolution: essays on French political culture in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bentham, J. (1995). Securities against misrule. In The works of Jeremy Bentham, T. VIII, Bristol: Thoemmes Press [reprint of the 1843 edition].

Bentham, J. (1995). Constitutional code. In The works of Jeremy Bentham, T. IX, Bristol: Thoemmes Press [reprint of the 1843 edition].

Berelson, B. R. (1956). The Study of Public Opinion. En L. White (Ed.), The state of social sciences (pp. 299-318). Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Berelson, B. R., Lazarsfeld, P. F. & McPhee, W. N. (1954). Voting: a study of opinion formation in a presidential campaign. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Bernays, E. L. (1923). Crystallizing public opinion. New York: Boni and Liveright.

Bernays, E. L. (1928). Propaganda. New York: H. Liveright.

Blumer, H. (1948). Public opinion and public opinion polling. American Sociological Review, 13, 542-549.

Boorstin, D. J. (1962). The image or what happened to the American dream. New York: Atheneum.

Bryce, J. (1995 [1888]). The American Commonwealth. New York: Macmillan Company.

Bryce, J. (1923). Modern democracies. London: Macmillan.

Buffin de Chosal, C. (2014). La fin de la démocratie. Editions Saint-Rémi (English version: The end of democracy. Tumblar House. 2017) Cacciatore, M. A., Scheufele, D. A. & Iyengar, S. (2016). The End of Framing as We Know It… and the Future of Media Effects. Mass Communication and Society, 19(1), 7–23.

Carballo, M. (2017). El malestar de la democracia: nuevo desafío del siglo XXI. Buenos Aires: Academia Nacional de Ciencias Morales y Políticas.

Carballo, M. & Hjelmar, U. (Eds.) (2008). Public Opinion Polling in a Globalized World. Berlin: Springer.

Carlyle, T. (1959 [1841]). On heroes, hero-worship, and the heroic in history. London: Oxford University Press.

Chaffee, S. H. & Metzger, M. J. (2001). The End of Mass Communication? Mass Communication & Society, 4(4), 365–379.

Childs, H. L. (1957). The first editor looks back. Public Opinion Quarterly, XXI, 57(1) (Spring), 7-13.

Commission on Freedom of the Press. (1969 [1947]). A free and responsible press: a general report on mass communication: newspapers, radio, motion pictures, magazines, and books. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Comte, A. (1907). Discours sur l’ensemble du positivisme. Paris: Société Positiviste Internationale.

Comte, A. (1967 [1851-1854]). Système de politique positive, ou traité de sociologie, instituant la religion de l’humanité. Osnabrück: Zeller.

D’Ancona, M. (2017). Post truth: the new war of truth and how to fight back. London: Ebury Press.

Dean, J. (2002). Publicity’s secret: how technoculture capitalizes on democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Donsbach, W. & Traugott, M. (2008). Introduction. In W. Donsbach & M. Traugott (Eds.), Handbook of public opinion research (pp. 1-5). Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Fay, B. (1965). Naissance d’un monstre: l’opinion publique. Paris: Librairie Académique Perrin.

Fishkin, J. S. (1995). The voice of the people: public opinion and democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Fishkin, J. S. (2009). When the people speak: deliberative democracy and public consultation. Oxford / New York: Oxford University Press.

Fung, A. & Wright, E. O. (1999). Experiments in Empowered Deliberative Democracy: introduction. Retrieved from http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/deliberative.html.

Gallup, G. & Rae, S. F. (1940). The pulse of democracy: the public-opinion poll and how it works. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Gerbner, G. (1956). Toward a general model of communication. Audio-Visual Communication Review, 4(3) (Summer), 171-199.

Gunn, J. A. W. (1983). Beyond liberty and property: the process of self-recognition in eighteenthcentury political thought. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Gunn, J. A. W. (1995). Queen of the world: opinion in the public life of France from the Renaissance to the Revolution. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation.

Guo, L. & McCombs, M. (Eds.) (2016). The Power of information networks: new directions for agenda setting. New York: Routledge Studies in Global Information, Politics and Society.

Herbst, S. (2011). Critical perspectives on public opinion. In R. Y. Shapiro & L R. Jacobs (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of American public opinion and the media (pp. 302-314). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Independent High Level Experts Group on fake news and online disinformation. (2018). A multi-dimensional approach to disinformation. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Holtzendorff, F. von. (1879). Wesen und Werth der öffentlichen Meinung. Munich: Rieger.

Katz, E. (1966 [1955]). Personal influence: the part played by people in the flow of mass communications. New York: Free Press.

Kaufman, L. (2004). Entre fiction et realité. L’opinion publique dans la France du XVIIIe siècle. In J. Fernández Sebastián & J. Chassin (Coords.), L’Avènement de l’opinion publique: Europe et Amérique, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles (91-107). Paris: L’Harmattan.

Kim, Y., Kim, Y. & Zhou, S. (2017). Theoretical and methodological trends of agenda-Setting Theory. A thematic analysis of the last decades of research. The Agenda Setting Journal, 1, 1, 5-22.

Klapper, J. T. (1949). The effects of Mass Media. New York: Bureau of Applied Social Research, mimeo.

Klapper, J. T. (1967 [1960]). Effects of mass communication. New York: Free Press.

Lasswell, H. D. (1971 [1927]). Propaganda technique in World War I. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B. & Gaudet, H. (1968 [1944]). The people’s choice: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign. New York: Columbia University Press.

Le Bon, G. (1898, 2nd ed. 1902). Psychologie du socialism. Retrieved from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/bpt6k55493.

Le Bon, G. (1915). Enseignements psychologiques de la guerre européenne. Paris: Flammarion. Retrieved from http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/le_bon_gustave/enseign_ psycho_guerre_euro/lebon _ensei_psy_guerre.pdf.

Le Bon, G. (1905 [1895]). Psychologie des foules. Paris: Édition Félix Alcan, 9th edition.

Lippmann W. (1950 [1922]). Public opinion. New York: Macmillan Company.

Lippmann, W. (1993 [1925]). The phantom public. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.

Lippmann, W. (1931). The press and public opinion. Political Science Quarterly, 46(2) (Jun), 161- 170.

Locke, J. (1959 [1690]). An essay concerning human understanding. New York: Dover Publications.

López-Escobar, E. (2008). La opinión pública, ‘héroe de la política’: la contribución de J. Necker. Doxa, 7, special number; 25-41.

López-Escobar E. (2014). Comte y la teoría ‘positivista’ de la opinión pública. In C. PérezSalazar & I. Olza (Eds.), Del discurso de los medios de comunicación a la lingüística del discurso (pp. 381-402). Berlin: Frank & Timme.

López-Escobar, E. & Martín Algarra, M. (2013). ‘Toda comunicación es comunicación política’: Aportaciones del pensamiento clásico y medieval para la comprensión actual de la comunicación. In R. Gutiérrez (Coord.), Poéticas de la persona: Creación, responsabilidad y vigencia en la Comunicación Pública y la Cultura (pp. 39-53). Salamanca: Comunicación Social.

MacKinnon, W. A. (1971 [1828]). On the rise, progress, and present state of public opinion in Great Britain, and other parts of the world. Shannon: Irish University Press.

McCombs, M. (2014). Setting the Agenda: the mass media and public opinion. Cambridge: Polity Press.

McCombs M. & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media. The Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2) (Summer), 176-187.

Minogue, K. (2010). The servile mind: how democracy erodes the moral life. New York / London: Encounter Books.

Mounk, Y. (2018). The people vs. democracy: why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Necker, J. (1784). De l’administration des finances de la France. En Oeuvres complètes de M.

Necker. Tomo IV.1, reprint by Adamant Media Corporation, 2003.

Noelle-Neumann, E. (1973). Return to the concept of Powerful Mass Media. Studies of Bradcasting, 9 (March), 67-112.

Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The spiral of silence: a theory of public opinion. Journal of Communication, 24(2), 1st June, 43-51.

Noelle-Neumann, E. (1983). The spiral of silence: public opinion –our social skin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Oncken, H. (1914). Politik. Geschichtsschreibung und öffentliche Meinung. Historischpolitische Aufsätze und Reden, I, 203-243. Munich R. Oldenbourg. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/historischpoliti01onckuoft.

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (2017). Joint declaration on freedom of expression and “fake news”, disinformation and propaganda. Retrieved from: https:// www.osce.org/fom/302796.

Palmer, P. A. (1950/1953). The concept of public opinion in political theory. In B. Berelson & M. Janowitz (Eds.), Reader in public opinion and communication (pp. 3-13). Glencoe: The Free Press.

Peters, J. D. (1995). Historical tensions in the concept of public opinion. In Th. L. Glasser & Ch. T. Salmon (Eds.), Public Opinion and the Communication of Consent (pp. 3-32). New York: Guilford Press.

Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Price, V. (1992). Public opinion. Newbury Park: Sage.

Reynié, D. (2007). L’opinion publique organique: Auguste Comte et la vraie théorie de l’opinion publique. Archives de Philosophie, 70, 95-114.

Rosen J. (1999). What are journalists for? New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Runciman, D. (2018). How democracy ends. London: Profile Books.

Shaw, D. L., McCombs, M., Weaver, D. H. & Hamm, B. (1999). Individuals, groups, and agenda melding: a theory of social dissonance. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 11(1), pp. 2–24.

Stalder, F. (2017). The digital condition. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Tarde, G. (1969 [1901]). On communication and social influence: selected papers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tocqueville, A. de. (1989 [1835-1840]). La democracia en América. Madrid: Aguilar.

Tönnies, F. (1922). Kritik der öffentlichen Meinung. Berlin: Springer.

Vargo, C. J., Guo, L., McCombs, M. & Shaw D. L. (2014). Network Issue Agendas on Twitter During the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, Journal of Communication, 64, 296-316.

Weaver, D. H. (1977) Political issues and voter need for orientation. In D. L. Shaw & M. E.

McCombs (Eds.), The emergence of American political issues: The agenda-setting function of the press (pp. 107–119). St. Paul, MN: West. Also reprinted in D. L. Protess & M. E.

McCombs (Eds.), Agenda setting (pp. 131–139). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991.

Weber, M. (1978 [1922]). Economy and society: an outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Wilson, F. G. (1962). A theory of public opinion. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.

Metrics

Details

Issue

Vol 31 No 4 (2018) + Special Issue: 30th Anniversary

Section

Special Issue: Articles: 30th Anniversary

RIGHTS TRANSFER

By submitting the article for evaluation and subsequent publication in Communication & Society, the AUTHOR exclusively assigns the rights of public communication, reproduction, distribution and sale for commercial exploitation to the University of Navarra through its Publications Service, for the maximum legal term in force -the entire life of the author and seventy years after his death or declaration of death-, in any country, and in any of the current and future edition modalities, both in print and electronic versions.

In the event that the article is not accepted for publication , this transfer of rights lapses with the communication of the refusal to the AUTHOR.

The AUTHOR affirms that the article is unpublished, that it has not been sent simultaneously to another publication medium and that the rights have not been transferred exclusively previously. He is responsible to the University of Navarra through its Publications Service for the authorship and originality of his work, as well as for all pecuniary charges that may arise for the University of Navarra through its Publications Service, in favor of third parties due to actions, claims or conflicts arising from the breach of obligations by the AUTHOR.

Article Sidebar

Main Article Content

Authors

Abstract

References

Metrics

Details

Article Details

RIGHTS TRANSFER