Public opinion refers to the opinions or views of people in a community or country on issues of public interest or concern. Such issues may deal with any subject that is open to differing beliefs and attitudes. For example, it is a matter of opinion whether all the nations in the world should attempt to cooperate in some sort of international organization, and, if so, what form this organization should take. In matters of opinion, reasonable people may hold widely different viewpoints.
On the other hand, it is no longer considered to be merely a matter of opinion that Earth is a sphere rotating on an axis and revolving in an orbit around the sun. It is a matter of fact, which can be demonstrated and about which reasonable people do not differ.
When a problem affects a number of people, they may discuss it and argue about it. These activities help develop a common opinion that may create consensus (broad agreement) or may reveal dissensus (disagreement). When discussion is open or public, these matters are public opinions. Public opinion, in this sense, varies widely in its character and content. Public opinion may be merely the variety of individual opinions in the early stages of discussion, when issues are not sharply defined and people are not well informed about them. At other times, the opinions of many individuals may become similar enough to form a majority opinion or even a consensus that determines the kind of action a group will take. At still other times, public opinion may remain deeply divided.
There is no definite way in which public opinion affects the decision-making process of government leaders and groups. Elections are one important way the public can express its judgment about a candidate or a political party. However, the process of shaping government policy is often slow and uneven. Expressions of opinion may influence politicians or organizations such as political parties, interest groups, and the media. These politicians and organizations may then convey these opinions to political leaders. But such expressions also may be disregarded, because public opinion can be changeable or emotionally charged, or it may represent only a small, visible, or vocal portion of the population. The balance of the population, sometimes called the silent majority, does not express its views as regularly or as visibly.
Nevertheless, one of the major concerns of a democratic society is to determine the extent and significance of the opinions held by individuals and groups. The most common technique today, the public opinion poll, is used to survey the opinions of a sample of the population. The accuracy of the results depends on the knowledge and skill of the pollsters in selecting the sample and in developing good interview questions. There is always some margin for error in the results.
There is no one “public”
A public is any group of people within which discussion about a political issue arises. They are the people who take part in discussion and deliberation about the issue and who are, or may be, affected when the issue is finally settled. This group may be fairly stable or organized, such as the residents of a local community or the citizens of a country. A public may also be made up of a number of individuals who are unorganized and hard to identify, but who for widely varied reasons have a common interest in the matter at issue. Sometimes a public may be so small and compact that discussion takes place almost wholly through conversation, deliberation, and speechmaking in face-to-face situations.
Today, however, when modern means of communication make vast numbers of people aware of controversial issues and common interests, publics can be large and impersonal, though the internet also allows small groups that are geographically dispersed to find their common interests through electronic communication. These publics often involve people who are not known to one another and are widely distributed throughout a country, or even among a number of countries. The members of such publics rarely meet each other face to face or have much direct communication. They are held together by the press, radio, television, motion pictures, and the internet. These impersonal but powerful publics are numerous in today’s highly complex society. Many of them have their own specialized means of communication—newspapers and magazines, sponsored radio and television programs, and local and national organizations representing opposing sides in controversies about issues. Many publics connect through forums on the internet such as blogs, bulletin boards, and social media.
The same person may be a member of several publics at one time. An individual may thus take part in discussions on a number of different problems and develop opinions in one area that conflict with those held on other subjects. An opinion about some economic issue, for example, may not be wholly in agreement with other opinions about moral, religious, or political issues. Intense public controversies sometimes arise out of efforts to reconcile opinions about problems in one field with opinions in others.
The process of forming opinion
Many factors affect the position people may take on any public issue. People’s values and attitudes influence the opinions they hold. Some people are well informed or make an effort to become. Other people make quick judgments based on casual impressions. Some people act quite independently. Yet other people are influenced mainly by the views of their friends and associates. Equally well-informed people often form differing opinions because they interpret facts differently, or because they have different interests, desires, anxieties, and prejudices.
Some individuals, especially celebrities, or opinion leaders, frequently have much more influence than others in the process of opinion formation. Such a person often appears to know all the facts and has an ability to connect facts together and determine how problems should be handled. Thus, this person may aggressively urge people to support a particular idea or course of action. Leadership may also be taken by unknown or ordinary people who, either as individuals or as small groups, spread their ideas slowly by word of mouth. In an era of immediate electronic communication over the internet, there may be more opportunities than ever for ordinary citizens to gain information and become opinion leaders. In time, these opinion leaders can make a deep impression on the opinion of the mass public.
Events can also influence public opinion if they are dramatic enough, near enough, or personal enough to attract the attention of large numbers of individuals. The Great Depression of the 1930’s focused public attention sharply on the need for economic reforms. Unemployment and widespread need changed more opinions than hundreds of lectures, radio talks, editorials, or sermons ever would have done. Various controversial topics quickly generate public opinion responses. Such topics include abortion; drug legislation; foreign policy issues; government authority; gun control; and gay rights (now generally called lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ] rights). Issues affecting war and peace are also a powerful force in influencing public opinion. 
Agencies of public opinion
An agency of public opinion is simply the carrier of information about public issues, and of views about these issues. The agency may be an individual, a group, or a mechanical device that helps them to communicate with other people. An agency of public opinion is not necessarily its originator or maker, but it may be so.
The oldest agency
of public opinion is what Walter Bagehot, an English publicist of the 1800’s, called common talk. Ordinary conversation among friends and acquaintances on the street, in public meeting places, in homes, or elsewhere is still a powerful agency in forming public opinion. In early times, word of mouth was almost the only carrier of public opinion. It was only a step from friendly group discussions to the oration or the sermon, in which one person more skilled at thought and expression than the rest organized and stated the prevailing opinion on a particular issue or problem for the group.
The press.
Speeches, books, and pamphlets were the principal means of expressing opinion until the 1800’s. Then newspapers appeared in large numbers and soon developed wide circulations. The newspaper became more powerful than any other agency as a carrier of public opinion. Each newspaper usually builds its own group of readers who depend on it for news and opinion about public affairs. Its power within the public is great, but this power is limited by rival newspapers with other points of view. Magazines are also powerful in forming public opinion.
Eventually, newspapers and magazines became more visual. Visual images can have a powerful effect on expressing and molding public opinion. For example, a political cartoon can caricature prominent people and ideas, and thus can often express a point of view more bluntly and much more vigorously than it could be expressed in writing.
The motion picture
is another important agency of public opinion. It has the advantage of giving people a vivid and concrete presentation of people and events that otherwise could be known only through oral or printed reports. Audiences are introduced intimately to manners, customs, ideas, and ways of life that may be much different from their own. Many screenplays also express a point of view toward issues. Newsreels, travel pictures, documentary films, and other special kinds of motion pictures have been used to spread news and propaganda. The visual approach often affects the emotions of the audience and generates a strong response.
Radio and television
emerged in the 1900’s as the main sources of public information. These media carry the voices and words of newscasters and commentators—and of newsworthy people themselves—directly into millions of homes. They also bring into the home pictures of events as they occur. Radio and television have supplemented rather than replaced the newspaper and the motion picture as carriers of news and opinion. Print media have time to give a more studied, fuller version of events than can the immediate reporting to which radio and television are best adapted.
The internet
became the primary source of information for most people in developed countries by the end of the 1900’s, as newspapers experienced dramatic declines in readership and even television news was no longer the dominant source of information. Many media companies have established an internet presence, but the internet has also given rise to new media outlets and new media companies. Social networking has further destabilized the media universe, as many citizens, especially young people, turn primarily to social networks to follow news and public affairs.
Educational agencies.
Schools and other educational institutions have great importance among the agencies of opinion. Their importance lies partly in their ability to develop basic attitudes and points of view that have a great bearing on the opinions people will form about the issues that arise from day to day. Educational institutions provide knowledge about social, economic, political, and other aspects of life. They also equip people with the skills necessary to interpret information about current developments.
Other agencies.
The making of public opinion by special propaganda groups has by no means disappeared from modern society. The most important of these groups are those with political, economic, or religious interests. There are also less powerful groups that create ethical, nationalistic, racial, literary, artistic, and other types of public opinion.
Political opinion is formed for the most part by or for political parties, political candidates, elected officials, and other political organizations. Every large political party has an elaborate propaganda machine. Other political organizations that may or may not be affiliated with a major party or candidate can create their own advertisements, run their own polls, and attempt to influence public opinion. Even the government in power, whether local or national, may at times believe it is necessary to create a public opinion favorable to itself so that its program may be carried out.
The formation of public opinion by economic groups is also important in modern society. Businesses, labor groups, and other economic and corporate institutions constantly seek to create and maintain public opinion favorable to their interests. Businesses are especially active in the endeavor to sell more goods and services. In doing so, they use advertising, sales promotions, and public relations to create favorable public opinion toward their products and business itself. Labor groups, farmer groups, and even consumers themselves are often organized for the purpose of developing public opinion powerful enough to have substantial influence.
Public opinion and government
In order for people to live together in society, they must set up certain rules, regulations, and controls to give that society some permanent form. In this way, the society can carry on its life with little conflict or disorder. In a dictatorship or autocracy, the controls set up are forced on the citizenry by a small group that controls the instruments of power. The people have little or no voice in deciding what kinds of controls are to be used. In a democracy, the controls rest on the voluntary consent of at least a majority of the members of society.
In many early societies, and in some countries today, leaders have used force or violence to make the people accept the rules. In some cases, the mere threat of violence is enough. Some leaders have used fraud to deceive the people. To protect their people from fraud, governments have extended laws against this abuse to include unethical practices in medicine, advertising, sales, and other fields.
Propaganda and censorship are the most widespread governmental controls over public opinion. With propaganda, the government seeks to make people accept its program and policies by convincing them that only such a program will keep them out of danger, or win a war, or handle some other emergency. Propaganda is actually a means of creating public opinion, rather than simply controlling it. Censorship, which seeks to eliminate ideas and attitudes, is a systematic effort to control public opinion. It is often coupled with counterpropaganda, which is designed to meet the threat of a particular idea with one more favorable to the government.
In a democracy, an informed and intelligent public opinion is regarded as the best means of securing orderly conduct and cooperation among people. Public opinion and elections are the two primary controllers of social goals, laws, and ways of life. Democracy as an ideal is government by an enlightened public opinion. Ideally, every citizen in a democratic society recognizes that everyone must live up to certain rules in society so that each person can live in peace and freedom. An individual with this point of view is likely to resist any individual or group that seems to be trying to gain an excessive share of control over the whole society. The spread of education and the development of the newspaper, radio, television, and the Internet have made it possible for more people to learn more about issues and events in their society. People can then react effectively to these conditions and developments.
Controlling public opinion
There is little doubt that public opinion has the potential to be a powerful means of molding social behavior in the modern world. Every group ambitious to rule or to exploit the masses of the people attempts to capture and control public opinion.
Democracy, in principle, relies on the voluntary consent of the people, expressed through elections. But in practice, democracy depends on a balance of power among different groups, rather than upon the power held by one or a few groups. The basic controls of democracy are therefore designed to secure for its citizens freedom to know the facts about public matters, to secure full and free public discussion, and to make public decisions effective.
A number of such controls exist in all democracies. In the United States, for example, the president, Congress, and Supreme Court exist in a system of shared but separate powers where each has the ability to balance the other. Many responsibilities are left to individual states, outside of federal control. In addition, the Anti-Federalists, a group of the framers of the Constitution who were suspicious of a strong federal government, demanded further safeguards to protect the individual against any single group that might seize power. The first 10 amendments, known together as the Bill of Rights, were added to the Constitution as a further protection of the opinions, privileges, and opportunities of citizens, and to assure that states retained some autonomy.
One of these amendments assures freedom of speech, the press, and assembly. This freedom has been carefully guarded throughout the history of the United States. Congressional hearings, other public agencies, and private organizations also work to provide individuals and groups with the opportunity to present their views.
An effective and progressive democracy depends on an enlightened public opinion. The surest and most constructive development of public opinion is education, both in the schools and in other agencies of public opinion. The freedoms and liberties that a democratic society provides also impose a number of responsibilities on the citizens of a democracy. Citizens must understand the relationships among their own individual welfare, the proposals of the government, the interests of special groups, and the goals of the nation as a whole.
Extensive and accurate information is democracy’s greatest ally, just as it is the greatest enemy of antidemocratic forms of government. Such information helps people make sound, informed judgments. Then they will also find it easier to see through the aims and schemes of those who attempt to manipulate public opinion for selfish interests rather than the public good.
