SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Fear of isolation, Assessing public opinion, Micro-level

<< FRAMING & SPIRAL OF SILENCE:Spiral of Silence, Assessing public opinion

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Theories of Communication MCM 511

LESSON 35

SPIRAL OF SILENCE

A somewhat more controversial theory of media and public opinion is the concept of spiral of silence.

This can be regarded as a form of agenda-setting but one that is focused on Macro-level rather than

micro-level consequences.

In the words of its originator Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann:

"observations made in one context the mass media spread to another and encouraged people either to

proclaim their views or to swallow them and keep quite until , in a spiraling process, the one view

dominated the public scene and the other disappeared from public awareness as its adherents became

mute , this is the process that can be called a spiral of silence'.

In other words, because of people's fear of isolation or separation from those around them, they end to

keep their attitudes to themselves when they think they are in the minority. The media, because of a

variety of factors, tend to present one (or at most two ) sides of an issue to the exclusion of others,

which further encourages those people to keep quiet and makes it even tougher for the media to uncover

and register that opposing viewpoint.

So Noelle-Neumann's focus is not on micro-level conceptualizations of how average people come to

perceive the public agenda; rather she is concerned with the macro-level, long-term consequences of

such perceptions.

If various viewpoints about agenda items are ignored, marginalized, or trivialized by media reports, then

people will be reluctant to talk about them. As time passes, those viewpoints will cease to hear in public

and therefore cannot affect political decision-making. She argued that her perspective involves a return

to the concept of powerful mass media. During the summer and fall of 1965, Elisabeth Noelle-Neuman,

the head of a prominent public opinion research institute in Germany, observed an interesting

phenomenon. They observed the two major parties election in German election.

The phenomenon in which predictions about the outcome seemed to sway the attitudes and behaviors of

voters, led Noelle-Neumann to formulate the theory that has come to be known as the spiral of silence

theory.

The theory was first formulated and tested to explain puzzling findings in German politics where

opinion poll findings were inconsistent with other data concerning expectations of who would win an

election and signally failed to predict the result.

The explanation offered was that the media were offering a misleading view of the opinion consensus.

They were said to be leaning in a leftist direction, against the underlying opinion of the silent majority.

The concept of the spiral of silence from a larger body of theory of public opinion which was developed

and tested by Noelle-Neumann over a number of years. The relevant theory concerns the interplay

between four elements:

Mass media

Interpersonal communication and social relations

Individual expressions of opinion

And the perceptions which individuals have of surrounding climate of opinion in their own

social environment.

Fear of isolation

So the main assumptions of the theory are as follows:-

Society threatens deviant individuals with isolation. Individuals experience fear of isolation

continuously .This fear of isolation causes individuals to try to assess the climate of opinion at all times.

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The results of this estimate affect their behavior in public, especially their willingness or not to express

opinions openly.

Noelle-Neumann begins by proposing that individual have a strong need to connected to a social

collective and that cohesiveness within that collective must be constantly ensured. She bases some of

this reasoning on the experiments done in social psychology which demonstrates that individuals will

not express opinions and behavior in ways that they know are wrong in order to avoid social censure

(disapproval) and criticism and to remain part of the crowd. She notes that this force is one driven by

fear of ostracism (exclusion) and fear of isolation, not by desire to be part of the winning team or on the

bandwagon.

Assessing public opinion

Given this fear of isolation it is important for individuals to be able to gauge public opinion, for in order

to fit in on a particular issue, you need to know what others think about that issue; ideas relevant to an

individual's assessment of public opinion.

She develops several ideas relevant to an individual's assessment of public opinion. First she proposed

that individuals have an natural ability to judge the climate of public opinion. She calls this the quasi-

statistical sense and finds evidence for this ability in both the willingness of individuals to make

prediction about public opinions and the uncanny accuracy of many of those predictions. However she

acknowledges that assessments of opinions are not always accurate. She blames much of this pluralistic

ignorance on the mass media.

She argues that media presentations influence individual assessments of public opinions because the

media are ubiquitous and continuous (i.e. they are everywhere in terms of both time and space and

cannot be avoided by the individual), and positions presented by media are consonant (i.e. various

media sources present essentially the same image of a given topic).

Three characteristics of the news media that produce this scarcity of perspective

She identified three characteristics of the news media that produce this scarcity of perspective:

1. Ubiquity: the media are virtually everywhere as sources of information.

2. Cumulation: the various news media tend to repeat stories and perspectives across their different

individual programs or edition, across the different media themselves and across time.

3. Consonance: the congruence or similarity of values held by news people influences the content they

produce.

She identified six parts of working journalist' everyday lives as factors that produce this consonance:

1. The concurring assumptions and experiences held by all journalists at all levels and in all fields about

the public's criteria for acceptance of their work in terms of both style and content.

2. Journalist' common tendency to confirm their own opinions, to demonstrate that theirs is the proper

interpretation, and to confirm that predictions have indeed been correct.

3. Their dependence on common sources, such as the relatively few wire and news video services.

4. Their "reciprocal influence in building up frames of reference;" newspaper people watch what's on

the television news, television news programs monitor on one another, and broadcast news people scour

(search) the newspapers for consensus and information.

5. Their striving for acceptance from colleagues and superiors.

6. journalists relative uniformity of views as a result of demographic and attitudinal attributes shared by

the news profession's practitioners.

This view of media effects suggests that two different social processes, one macro-level and one micro-

level, are operating simultaneously to produce effects.

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Macro-level

Audience members, because of their desire to be accepted may choose to remain silent when confronted

with what they perceive to be prevailing counter opinion.

Micro-level

News people, because of the dynamics of their newsgathering function and their need to be accepted,

present a restricted selection of news, further forcing into silence those in the audience who wish to

avoid isolation. These media images also influence an individual's sense of prevailing public opinion

and sometimes lead to an inaccurate reading of the public climate.

Combining the first two factors Fear of isolation and the assessment of public opinion Leads to the key

prediction spiral of silence theory. Noelle-Neumann argues that because individuals fear isolation, when

they believe prevailing opinion is opposed to their opinion or is moving in a direction away from their

opinion, those individuals will not be wiling to speak out.

Noelle-Neumann argues that because individuals fear isolation, when they believe prevailing opinion is

opposed to their opinion or is moving in a direction away from their opinion, those individuals will not

be wiling to speak out.

Noelle-Neumann sees the spiral of silence as a dynamic process. She believes that the unwillingness to

speak out on a particular issue will further enhance media portrayals and personal assessments that

prevailing opinion is against a certain opinion. As these portrayals and assessments become even more

codified, some individuals will defect to the opinion that seems to be prevailing or will at least fail to

recruit new people to the less-dominant position. As a result, actual opinion will follow predictions of

opinions and spiral down.

In brief, the theory proposes that in order to avoid isolation on important public issues support, many

people are guided by what they think to be the dominant or declining opinions in their environment.

People tend to conceal their views if they feel they are in a minority and are more willing to express

them if they think they are dominant. The result is that those views which are perceived to be dominant

gain even more ground and alternatives retreat still further. This is the spiraling effect referred to.

Contingency Factors

Noelle-Neumann does not propose that the spiral is a universal process. She points to three caveats that

limit the applicability of the theory to specific issues and people.

1. First, the theory will operate only when the issue at hand is a moral issue of good and bad, not a

factual issue that can be argued and settled through rational and logical interaction. That is, the spiral of

silence should occur with regard to public opinion about capital punishment or abortion but not with

regard to public opinion abut inflation rates.

2. Second, she notes that the unwillingness to speak out will be less pronounce in highly educated and

more affluent portions of the population.

3. She contends that for any topic, hardcore of proponents will always be willing to speak out on an

issue regardless of perceptions that prevailing opinion is in the opposite direction.

Extensions of spiral of silence theory

Extensions of spiral of silence theory have been developed in two major areas.

First, some scholars have developed theoretical predictions regarding the group that people consider

when assessing prevailing opinion. Specifically it has been suggested that individuals do not look so

much to overall societal opinions as to the opinions as to the opinions of relevant reference groups.

Researchers have found out that perceived reference group opinions had a larger effect on opinion

expression than perceived societal opinions.

In contrast to this some scholars have found out that individuals were more comfortable expressing

dissenting opinions within a valued reference group.

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Second area of development from the theory has involved further explication of the characteristics of

those who are silenced and those who still speak out- in the face of contrary public and reference group

opinion.

Recall Neumann originally posited that the spiral of silence effect would not be as strong for highly

educated and affluent portions of the population and that a hard core of individuals would always be

willing to speak.

Researchers have identified many other additional variables which affect the willingness to speak out in

the face of contrary public sentiment. These include Strength and certainty of opinion, political interest

and extremity. The obtrusiveness of the issue and an individual's level of self-efficacy.

Summary of spiral of silence according to Elihu Katz in 1983

1. Individuals have opinions.

2. Fearing isolation, individuals will not express their opinions if they perceive themselves unsupported

by others.

3. A "quasi-statistical sense" is employed by individuals to scan the environment for signs of support.

4. Mass media constitute the major source of reference for information about the distribution of opinion

and thus the climate of support/nonsupport.

5. So do other reference groups...

6. The media tend to speak in one voice, almost monopolistically.

7. The media tend to distort the distribution of opinion in society, biased as they are by the ...views of

journalists.

8. Perceiving themselves unsupported, groups of individuals-who may, at times, even constitute a

majority-will lose confidence and withdraw from public debate, thus speeding the demise of their

position through the self-fulfilling spiral of silence. They may not change their own minds, but they stop

recruitment of others and abandon the fight.

9. Society is manipulated and impoverished thereby.

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