International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Like many concepts in the social sciences, the “climate of opinion” is a metaphor borrowed from the physical world to describe a phenomenon that is not only important to the general public and policymakers but also to major mass communication theories. The climate of opinion refers to the “perceived popularity” of opinions ( Sutherland & Galloway 1981 ). Political communication scholars often differentiate between →  public opinion and popular opinion, between organized community on the one hand and mass or crowd on the other, between opinions based on consensus and unifying tradition and aggregated views of the moment. Policymakers generally respond to the former referents in each of these pairs, to public opinion, rather than to the latter, popular opinions, expressed in polls reported by the media (→  Polls and the Media ; Public Opinion Polling ; Survey ). Scholars have examined how the climate of opinion affects →  political discourse and the perceived freedom to talk ( Wyatt et al. 2000 ). The importance of the media lies in their ability to not only affect public opinion but also report popular opinion, and it is the latter that often is the content of messages conveyed to the general public as they consider what represents the climate of opinion at any given moment. When the topic or issue is clear, as in the case of elections – Who do voters support? Do people ... log in or subscribe to read full text