Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, 8th edition

Public opinion

A B C D E F G H I

JK

L M N O P R S T U V

XYZ

W

and occupation of Iraq in 2003 by American

and British forces; alluding in particular to the

‘evidence’ put forward to the public of weapons

of mass destruction that posed a threat to the

invading nations – weapons which were never

found.

In the digital age, such propagandist activity

is increasingly diffi cult to sustain in face of the

internet’s capacity to expose previously secret

data and to broadcast that data instantly and

globally. See wikileaks.

Public Aff airs See lobbying.

Public cues See barnlund’s transactional

models of communication, 1970.

Public Interest Disclosure Act (UK), 1999 See

whistle blowing.

Public Occurrences Both Foreign and

Domestic Title of the fi rst American newspa-

per, founded in Boston on 25 September 1690

by Benjamin Harris. The paper survived one

issue only, being immediately suppressed by

the Governor and Council of the-then British

colony.

Public opinion Th e Greek agora is tradition-

ally seen as the birthplace and location of public

opinion. It was an open space where free citizens

gathered to discuss and ideally shape the aff airs

of state. By its nature, public opinion lacks the

structure of, for example, elite opinion and

there are diffi culties both of defi nition and iden-

tifi cation. Th e modern-day opinion poll tests

samples of the whole public; market and audi-

ence research have pursued increasingly sophis-

ticated, technology-aided modes of opinion

measurement. For such research, measurement

is of tastes, expectations, needs, values and

behaviour as well as opinions. For the student of

media, the public is examined from the point of

view of how the media represent public opinion,

purport to speak for it, indeed, to defi ne it; and

to shape it especially in the light of perhaps the

most important and specifi c expression of public

opinion – voting.

Susan Herbst and James R. Beniger in ‘The

changing infrastructure of public opinion’

published in Audiencemaking: How the Media

Create the Audience (Sage, 1994), edited by

James S. Ettema and D. Charles Whitney, explore

the connections between the concept of public

opinion and the means by which public opinion

is measured, the one being infl uenced by the

other; thus what public opinion is in any situa-

tion is to a degree defi ned by how it is defi ned

and measured. Th e authors say that ‘both poll-

ing and voting embrace a conception of public

opinion as the aggregation of individual opinions

Postman calls the ‘decontextualization of fact’
by the non-print media, particularly TV, is to
amuse. All knowledge, having been fragmented,
is reduced to a trivial pursuit. See effects of
the mass media.
PSI Para-social identifi cation; that is, members of
an audience associate with fi ctitious characters
as portrayed in the media, or with well-known
personalities whom they regularly ‘meet’
through the mediation of radio, TV, etc. See
parasocial interaction.
Psychographic analysis See demographic
analysis.
Psycholinguistics The study of the interplay
between language acquisition, development and
use and other aspects of the human mind.
Psychology Th is discipline seeks to explore the
way in which individual behaviours are linked
together to form a ‘personality’. Its focus is upon
the experience and behaviour of the individual,
upon the individual’s reaction to certain physi-
ological and/or social conditions. Some areas
of social psychology are concerned with the
behaviour of individuals in small groups or
crowds; here there is some overlap between this
discipline and that of sociology.
▶Valerie Walkerdine and Lisa Blackman, Psychology
and the Media (Macmillan, 1999); Nigel Benson,
Introducing Psychology (Icon Books, 2007); Richard
Cross, Psychology (Hodder Education – Hodder
Arnold, 6th edition 2010); Pamela Regan, Close Rela-
tionships (Routledge Academic, 2011).
Psychological Reactance theory See Cogni-
tive Consistency theories.
Psyops US shorthand for ‘psychological opera-
tions’; the equivalent UK term, ‘information
support’; an arm of propaganda. Psyops
work in a number of ways to promote ‘fact’
and ‘truth’ in support of state action, especially
times of confl ict and war. David Miller in ‘Th e
propaganda machine’, a chapter in the book he
edited entitled Tell Me Lies: Propaganda and
Media Distortion in the Attack on Iraq (Pluto,
2004), writes that such operations are ‘entirely
outside of democratic control’. Th ey appear ‘not
to be constrained by adhering to any standard
of truthfulness’, operating ‘on the basis that
anything goes so long as it is calculated that it
can be got away with’.
Th e author is of the view that the use of psyops
shows contempt for the process of democracy,
‘since the lies are constructed to misinform and
persuade – in part – the electorate of the US
and UK as well as world opinion’. He is referring
in particular to the techniques and processes
of persuasion which supported the invasion