Page 127 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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PUBLIC
have
to
the communication process. It is not necessarily false, but it does not OPINION
be true.
Propaganda is loosely tied to advertising and public relations techniques.
Communicators who use propaganda do so mostly through formal methods of
communicating, generally through the mass media. (See also Creel Commission;
Elmer Davis.)
SOURCE: Erik Barnouw, ed., International Encyclopedia of Communications, 1989.
Jacqueline Nash Gifford

PUBLIC OPINION is one of the most studied concepts, yet there is much
disagreement over what it is. Pollsters often are content to define it as the dis-
tribution of individual opinions on a public issue, as determined by a scientific
poll. In this view, the "public" is a collection of individuals, each of whom
has an opinion of equal weight. The study of public opinion therefore involves
descriptions of the direction, intensity, and stability of public opinion, as well
as changes over time. Public opinion is akin to the "general will" of the people
(V. O. Key), the "pictures inside the heads of human beings, the picture of
themselves" (Walter Lippmann), the "climate of opinion" (Elizabeth Noelle-
Neumann), or the "mood of the populace" (Gabriel Almond). Others, however,
have suggested that such focus on the end product distracts study from the more
important aspects of public opinion, the social processes that form it. Rather
than treating public opinion as the "opinion of the public," some regard public
opinion as those "opinions that are public." In this view, "public" is an ad-
jective, not a noun. As Vincent Price and Donald F. Roberts put it, public
opinion is "a dynamic process of social organization via discursive communi-
cation." The emphasis is upon communication and social action, rather than on
a summary of the most popular cognitions held by a group. By viewing public
opinion as a process of social organization through public communication, pro-
ponents of this view emphasize the importance of understanding the processes
through which public opinion is formed, rather than the results of these pro-
cesses. While this view of public opinion is gaining wider acceptance, it is not
a new idea (see Cooley). Its development, however, was hampered by midcen-
tury advancements in scientific polling, which encourage the view of public
opinion as the opinions of the public, with its subsequent focus on describing
the results of surveys. (See also Opinion Leaders; Polls.)
SOURCES: Charles Horton Cooley, Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind,
1909; Vincent Price and Donald F. Roberts, "Public Opinion Processes," in Charles R.
Berger and Steven H. Chaffee, eds., Handbook of Communication Science, 1987.
Dominic L. Lasorsa

PUBLIC RELATIONS is a term used to define the informational activities
used by corporations, governments, or groups to create attitudes or beliefs that
place that entity in a favorable light in the public's eye. Public relations activities