The Debate Regarding The Formation Of Public Opinion

In the studying public opinion and political psychology, the major concern is whether citizens can form and uphold sensible attitudes and beliefs about politics. Previous studies have been skeptical about the capacities of mass public as they emphasized on the merits of basic heuristics in assisting citizens make sensible choices (Lupia 75). Milton Lodge and Charles Taber’s The Rationalizing Voter lays emphasis on the unique aspects of politics- how the masses respond to the prominent political issues and figures. Lodge and Taber focus on the ways in which the automatic affective responses define information processing and opinion updating. They argue that these sentimental responses are stored and rationalized in the long-term memory, and

McCombs, M. (2013). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion. John Wiley & Sons.

“Public opinion is formed and expressed by machinery. The newspapers do an immense amount of thinking for the average man and woman. In fact, they supply them with such a continuous stream of standardized opinion, bourne along upon an equally inexhaustible flood of news and sensation, collected from every part of the world every hour of the day, that there is neither the need nor the leisure for personal reflection. All this is but part of a tremendous educating process. It is an education at once universal and superficial. It produces enormous numbers of standardized citizens, all equipped with regulation opinions, prejudices and sentiments according to their class or party.” – Winston S. Churchill

Partisan news has recently become under scrutiny for the biasness that they hold. With CNN being exposed for their fake news and their relentlessness to undermine Trumps presidency. Despite this embarrassment, there have been some pros proclaimed by an author in the article, Public Opinion and the Media: Is Partisan Media Exposure Bad for Democracy? Sides believes that partisan news doesn’t create polarize news rather they attract already polarized people (Sides 5). Additionally, Sides states that partisans are the ideal citizens in our democracy (6). With this being said, Sides believes he is onto some correlation between partisan news and participation amongst citizens.

This paper scrutinizes the use of propaganda and the consequential effects during the Iraq War. It will look at certain specific events such as George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished moment, as well as other incidents during the war that may have been a tactic to mislead the American public. This paper will also examine the censorship used by the main news media outlets as to how it affected the perspectives of the public. As one of the only means of getting information about a large war the United States was part of, these news outlets, in any type of media, whether it be newspaper or the television, could tell its audience anything, and they would have to accept it without doubt. By using these examples from the Iraq War the

(2006). Does the Media Matter? A Field Experiment Measuring the Effect of Newspapers on Voting Behavior and Political Opinions. Retrieved April 2016, from Social Science Research Network: http://ssrn.com/abstract= 903812

The media can link people to the government by spreading opinions, ideas, or facts about political subjects that could affect policy or behavior for example, “heavy users of social media, relying on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to connect them with more than just friends and family. Eighty-eight percent … said they use Facebook to find news. This reliance on social media has fueled debates about how social media and personalized web searches influence political polarization. At the same time, social media also provides opportunities for people to actively engage in politics,”(Kelsh 1). This example proves the reliance that society and the American people have on the media, including the opinions and bias found in many online

People are what they consume does not just apply to the foods they eat, but also to the news they take in (Arceneaux). The opinions people have are shaped by the information they receive. These opinions help to form the views and beliefs a person considers their values. Opinions also affect how people view others, most importantly those who have different values. Most often people consume their news from media outlets such as news stations, and these networks tend to be biased toward a certain party’s beliefs and values. Biased news can lead to reports that taint people’s opinions and views of those who associate with a party different than their own. Major news outlets’ bias causes society to have poor opinions of the political party opposite them because they paint the other party as liars and reinforce a party’s way of thinking.

In his master piece The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (1992), John Zaller highlights the role of political elites in the development of public opinion. During this extensive analysis, the author complements his theory with four basic pillars: a) individuals’ interest to politics varies significantly, so does the attention they pay to elite’s messages; b) citizens react to political information solely if they are politically involved and have political knowledge (not all participate critically in politics); c) people’s issue position varies according to the issue (therefore, they are not necessarily consistent); and d) individuals use the most salient ideas (those which are at the top of their head) to build their political attitudes.

“The press is very effective in telling us what to think about” says Dr. Srinivas Melkote, in his article on the way in which the times framed events leading up to the Iraq war. I believe him to be entirely correct, for this has been the often subtle desire of the press in all of its forms: to influence its readers to think in the way they want us to. For this section however, I will confine myself to merely reviewing the variety and scope of the articles before I delve into their meanings and biases. As a prominent news organization, the Times sees itself as responsible for reporting newsworthy events to the public to inform them and better equip them for living in and responding to society, as well as protecting them from manipulation. The Iraq war, from the initial motivation to reaction by the acts on 9/11 to the aftermath that is still being dealt with, is certainly a newsworthy event which any American news company worth the paper they print on surely covered. With such a massive story however, involving so many facets and sprawling over such a protracted amount of time, the Times could not encompass it within a single article, nor would it have been right to do so if there goal is a properly informed public. This being the case, many hundreds of articles were written by the Times in order to give the public access to as much information and as many different perspectives as they could, so as to better encapsulate the ever evolving narrative that is the Iraq war. It is from reading these articles that I hope to better understand the motivations behind any predisposition of opinion that I find within the

Whether by exit/entrance, in-person, internet, or telephone, over time, political polls have been used by mass media outlets to strategically create interest groups and objectively measure public opinion. Political scientist, V.O. Key, Jr., described public opinion as “those opinions held by private persons which government finds it prudent to head.” The media relies on polls the right amount because it’s only a general sample and doesn’t include every potential factor such as question ambiguity, non-response, and non-attitudes. In addition, as discussed in lecture, many citizens are unconnected, uninformed, or inconsistent in their ideologies. Given these potential errors, the media’s use of polls has a mixed effect. On one hand, polls are able to keep audiences updated in public opinion and political

Throughout the semester we have been discussing the idea of polarization and political trust among the mass public. Hetherington and Rudolph’s central theory was based around the idea that polarization is at an all-time high in the United States. Many Americans are consistently displaying polarization in their policy preferences as well as how they feel about members of the opposite party. Due to the public lack of trust in the government, the probability of Congress compromising reduces. Since there is already an increasingly polarized political environment that has difficulties passing laws, the book discovers that trust in the government helps explain the reason why Washington is dysfunctional. Political trust helps create consensus in the public by providing a bridge between individuals across both party lines. A challenge in measuring polarization comes from the idea that many American’s don’t want to view themselves as extreme so they will typically take on moderate views. Also some individuals are not as politically knowledgeable so they usually fall in the middle. They solved this challenge by employing alternatives to a literal definition of polarization. Lastly, Hetherington and Rudolph stated that “a polarization of trust stands in the way of the emergence of public consensus on things, such as, public policy (H&R, 2015, pg.25)”. Also, a polarization of trust has cause people to become unwilling to make ‘ideological sacrifices.’

Gelpi’s main findings were not what he thought they were going to be. In the article he presented “two distinct cues within the context of a newspaper story to test four theoretical models of the public’s reliance on cues”. After doing his study, he concluded that the “surprising events” model was fairly consistent of opinion formation, “which suggest that individuals will attend to news events that conflict with their expectations in an effort to update their attitudes toward the war”. Also the results support the formation on public opinion on the war and a strong support on “the literature on casualty tolerance during military conflicts”.

The question of value and liability for democracy arises here, when one considers how public opinion is formed. Does political ignorance pose a danger to the integrity of our political system? What controls are in place to ensure that public opinion is not completely swayed by those in power,

Agenda-setting is one of the most important factors in shaping public opinion. Agenda-setting can be defined as the ability of the media to direct public attentions toward the issues they believe are important to the public. But whose choice is it that determines which issues are more important over others? The news media can set an agenda-setting by focus attention on selected issues on which the public will form opinions from (McCombs). The media can paint a memory in your head by repeatedly repeating the issues on different media sources as Internet, network televisions, newspapers, etc. Since these sources are the cheapest and easiest to access, the information can be view by vast number of audiences. As quoted in a 1922 classic called “Public Opinion” by Walter Lippmann,