1. Chapter 8
Mass Media & Public Opinion

2. The Formation of Public Opinion
Section 1

3. Introduction
 What is public opinion, and what
factors help to shape it?
 Public opinion consists of the attitudes held
by a significant number of people about
public affairs—matters of government and
politics.
 It is shaped by a wide variety of factors,
such as family, school, race, occupation,
gender, mass media, peer groups, opinion
leaders, and historic events.

4. Different Publics
 Public opinion in the United States is typically
divided.
 Any given public issue is likely to have
separate groups with their own points of view.
 In addition, people disagree about which
public issues are important.
 Few issues capture the attention of all
Americans.
 Most issues are of little interest to the majority.

5. Public Affairs
 Public affairs include events and issues
involving politics, public issues, and the
making of public policies.
 Examples include political parties,
candidates, taxes, unemployment,
national defense, foreign policy, and so
forth.
 Technically, public opinion includes only
those views that relate to public affairs.

6. Public Opinion
 Public opinion
consists of those
attitudes publicly
expressed by a large
number of people
about matters of
government and
politics.
 How might the
responses shown on
this 2008 chart about
the most important
public issues change
in 2012?

7. Political Socialization
 Public opinion is shaped by many
different factors throughout our lives.
 The process by which a person gains
his or her political views is called
political socialization.
 This process begins in early childhood
and involves the influence of many
experiences and relationships. Two of
these are family and school.

8. Family Influences
 Parents have a strong influence on the basic
beliefs that will shape the political views of
their children.
 Children tend to favor
the political parties
supported in the
households in
which they
were raised.

9. School Influences
 Schools try to prepare students to become
good citizens by educating them about our
political system.
 Schools also give
students an informal
education
about
decision-
making,
influence, and
compromise.

10. Other Factors
 In general, occupation and racial
background are usually more significant
than factors such as gender or place of
residence.
 However, the nature of the issue can
change what factors influence people’s
views on it.
 Four other key factors that influence
public opinion are the mass media,
peer groups, opinion leaders, and
historic events.

11. Mass Media
 The mass media
includes radio,
television, magazines,
and newspapers.
 More than 98 percent
of the 115 million U.S.
households have a
television, and most
are turned on for eight
or more hours a day.

12. Peer Groups
 Belonging to a peer group tends to
reinforce what a person has already
come to believe.
 This happens in part because peer
group members share many socializing
experiences and tend to be reluctant to
disagree openly with others in their peer
group.

13. Opinion Leaders
 Some people listen to
and draw ideas from
opinion leaders.
 Many opinion leaders
hold public office,
while others are
journalists or
prominent members
of society.
 What is the cartoonist
implying about the
media?

14. The Great Depression
 Historic events can
shape public opinion
and policy.
 In the 1930s, the Great
Depression wrecked the
U.S. economy, shifting
popular support to
Democrats and
persuading many
Americans to support
an increased role for the
national government in
U.S. economic and

15. 1960s and 1970s
 In the 1960s, the nation was shaken and
divided by the civil rights movement, the
Vietnam War, and the assassinations of
President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
 The 1970s saw the Watergate scandal and
the resignation of President Nixon.
 The events of these two decades caused
many American to lose respect and trust of
their government.

16. Measuring Public Opinion
Section 2

17. Introduction
 How is public opinion measured and
used?
 Public opinion is measured by election
results, personal contacts, media reporting,
and especially by polls.
 The most common polls are straw polls,
while the most accurate measures of public
opinion are scientific polls.
 Officials use public opinion to guide their
public policy decisions.

18. Measuring Public Opinion
 Election results reflect public opinion to
some degree, but often express voters’
views only on a few broad issues.
 The people also express their opinions in
e-mails, letters, phone calls, or public
meetings.
 The media both mirrors and helps shape
public opinion.
 Interest groups share the views of their
members in hopes of influencing policy.

19. Measuring Public Opinion
 Public officials get
feedback on public
opinion from their
many contacts with
the public, in the form
of mail, phone calls,
public meetings, and
personal visits with
constituents.

20. Public Opinion Poll
 Public opinion is best
measured by polls
that ask people
questions, but
scientific polling
techniques are
needed to get
accurate results.
 What do you think the
cartoonist is saying
about pollsters here?

21. Straw Polls
 Straw polls try to measure public opinion by
asking many people the same questions,
often by phone, email, or mail.
 This method is very unreliable, as there is no
guarantee that the people who respond
represent an accurate cross-section of the
population.
 For example, a straw poll during the Great
Depression picked the wrong presidential
winner because it overlooked the large
number of poor people who voted.

22. Scientific Polls
 Scientific polls are more accurate.
 There are hundreds of polling
organizations in the U.S. today. Gallup
and Pew are two of the best known.
 Scientific polls have five basic steps:
 Define the universe to be surveyed
 Construct a sample
 Prepare valid questions
 Select and control how the poll is taken
 Analyze and report the results

23. Universe and Sample
 The universe is the group whose opinions
the poll tries to discover.
 For large groups, pollsters create a
sample, or representative slice.
 A random sample is made of randomly
selected people. Most national polls use
random samples of 1,500 people to
represent the U.S. population.
 The law of probability says that a proper
random sample can be quite accurate.

24. Samples
 A typical margin of error in a scientific poll is
plus or minus 3 percent.
 A quota sample is less complicated but less
accurate.
 Pollsters try to create a quota sample so that
it reflects the major characteristics of a given
universe, such as race or gender.
 People often belong to more than one
category, making it hard to create an accurate
sample.

25. Interviewing and Analyzing
 How pollsters interact
with people can
affect poll accuracy.
 Most polls today are
telephone surveys.
 Pollsters use
computers to analyze
and publish polling
data.

26. Evaluating Polls
 When evaluating the intent of a poll, ask
yourself the following questions:
 Who is responsible for the poll? Polls
sponsored by political campaigns may try
to mislead voters.
 Why is the poll being conducted? Polls
meant to boost a candidate’s approval
ratings are not reliable.

27. Evaluating Polls
 When evaluating a poll’s methods, ask
yourself the following questions:
 What is the poll’s universe? Ask if the sample
is truly representative.
 How was the sample chosen? Samples
should be selected randomly.
 How were questions written and asked?
Leading questions can alter results.
 When was the data collected? Opinions
change quickly during elections.

28. Evaluating Polls
 Scientific polls are fairly accurate, but
have difficulty measuring the intensity,
stability, and relevance of opinions.
Intensity: how strongly someone holds
an opinion.
Stability: how likely an opinion is to
change.
Relevance: how important an opinion
is to the person who holds it.

29. Limits on Polls
 Democracy is more than measuring
public opinion, and polls are not
substitutes for elections.
 Minority interests must be protected
against the excesses of majority views
and actions.
 Polls are best at focusing attention on
public questions and stimulating
discussion of them.

30. The Mass Media
Section 3

31. Introduction
 How has the development of different
media helped inform the public about
politics?
 People can now get political information
from a wide range of media, including
television, radio, newspapers, magazines,
and the Internet.
 Accessibility to political news has thus
increased, though in-depth coverage of
news events may not have improved.

32. The Role of Mass Media
 The mass media includes methods of
communication that reach large audiences
simultaneously.
 The five major types of mass media that
influence American politics today are
television, Internet, radio, newspapers,
and magazines.
 Mass media in the United States are
independent of government control.
 At the same time, most people gain their
knowledge of government and politics from
the mass media.

33. The Role of Mass Media
 How has the
percentage of
Americans who
get their
campaign news
from network
news and the
Internet
changed since
2000?

34. Television
 Television news began to boom in
the 1950s.
 TV replaced newspapers as the
main source of political information
in the 1960s and is the
main source
of news
for 80% of
Americans
today.

35. Television
 Three major national networks—ABC, CBS,
and NBC—dominated early television news.
 The major networks
have been challenged
in recent years by
independent
broadcasting groups,
cable broadcasters
such as CNN, and
the Public
Broadcasting
System (PBS).

36. Newspapers
 Newspapers were the
main news source in the
colonies and early
nation.
 Newspapers were so
influential in the late
1800s that so-called
yellow journalists were
able to use sensational
editorials and headlines
to help push America into
war with Spain.

37. Newspapers
 Today more than 10,000 newspapers are
published in the United States.
 About 45% of the nation’s adult population
read a newspaper daily.
 But the number of daily newspapers has
been declining as people turn to radio, TV,
and the Internet for news.
 A few major newspapers still have national
influence, in part because they cover
stories in greater depth.

38. Radio
 In the 1920 and
1930s radio became
a major source of
political news.
 Radio remains
influential today due
to its convenience,
the popularity of talk
radio, and radio’s
ability to focus on
specific groups of
listeners.

39. Magazines
 The first political magazines appeared in
the mid-1800s.
 In the decades before radio and TV,
magazines were the major national news
medium.
 Some 12,000 magazines are published
today. Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News &
World Report are key sources of political
news and commentary.
 Other magazines with smaller circulations
also focus on public affairs.

40. The Internet
 The Internet is fast
becoming a leading
source of political
news and
information, behind
TV but now ahead of
radio, newspapers,
and magazines.
 Nearly 2/3 of
Americans say they
go online on a
regular basis.

41. The Internet
 Most newspapers, magazines, and
television stations maintain Web sites,
usually with free content.
 The same is true of government agencies,
interest groups, political parties, public
officials and candidates.
 Today there are also many weblogs and
podcasts devoted to topics involving
government and politics.

42. Media and Public Opinion
 The media plays a large role in shaping the
public agenda, the social problems that
leaders and the public focus upon.
 People rely on the media for most of the
information they receive on public issues.
 The media plays a key role in determining
what policy issues the public thinks and
talks about, by emphasizing some issues
and stories while ignoring or downplaying
others.

43. Media and Public Opinion
 The media may not
tell people what to
think, but in a way,
it does tell them
what to think
about.
 What is this
cartoonist saying
about media
influence on the
public?

44. Media and Politics
 Politicians are also
strongly influenced by
major news
organizations,
including the major
TV and cable
networks, news
magazines, and
newspapers.
 What is this
cartoonist saying
about media

45. Media and Electoral Politics
 Candidates for public office use the media to
appeal directly to the people without having to
rely as much on their political parties.
 They also control their media image and
manipulate media coverage, using staged events
and sound bites to present themselves in a
positive way and get maximum exposure.

46. Limits on Media Influence
 Most radio and TV programs do not cover
public affairs, and their news coverage is not
typically in-depth.
 Few people follow media coverage of political
events very closely.
 People tend to follow political news that
agrees with their own views.
 Being an informed citizen thus takes the effort
to seek out in-depth news coverage of public
affairs.