Analysisis of "This is PR'' (part 8) - The Saga Continues

Getting a Handle on Public Opinion

Public relations practitioners function in a climate of public opinion that often conditions their own perceptions and responses. Climates of public opinion can be as broad as that of the international community with regard to a nation's presumed leadership in an arms race or as narrow as that of securities analysts when a company's bonds are re-rated downward.

Public opinion is what most people in a particular public think; in other words it is a collective opinion of, for instance, what voters or teenagers or senior citizens or politicians think about a specific issue. Bernard Hennessy said, "Public opinion is the complex of preferences expressed by a significant number of persons on an issue of general importance." Hennessy, who does not distinguish between opinion and attitude says that public opinion has five basic elements. First, public opinion must be focused on an issue which Hennessy defines as "a contemporary situation with a likelihood of disagreement." Second, the public must consist of "a recognizable group of persons concerned with the issue." A third element in the definition, the phrase "complex of preferences," Hennessy says, "means more than mere direction and intensity; it means all the imagined or measured individual opinions held by the relevent public on all the proposals about the issue over which that public has come into existence." The fourth factor, the expression of opinion, may involve any form of expression - printed or spoken words, symbols (such as a clenched fist or stiff-armed salute) or even the gasp of a crowd. The fifth factor is the number of persons involved. The number of people in a public can be large or small as long as the impact of their opinion has a measurable effect. The effect may be as much determined by the intensity of opinion and the organization of effort as by the size of the public. Hennessy's definition of public opinion does not deal with what could be called latent public opinion. He would reserve that term for "describing a situation in which a considerable number of individuals hold attitudes or general predispositions that may eventually crystallize into opinions around a given issue." In any case, public opinion has to be expressed in order to be measured.

Public opinion expresses beliefs based not necessarily on facts but on perceptions or evaluations of events, persons, institutions or products. In the USA, many people assume that "public oipinion is always right." Perhaps this view should be expected in a democracy in which elected officials must be concerned with public opinion. Long before the pollsters were on the scene, 19th century essayist Charles Dudley Warner said, "Public opinion is stronger than the legislature and nearly as strong as the Ten Commandments."

Obviously, public opinion can be misused or manipulated  as Adolph Hitler's master propagandist Joseph Goebbels, demonstrated. And it can be based on a lack of accurate information - as in the period before World War II when many Americans applauded Mussolini's efforts at "straightening out the Italians and 'making the trains run on time," while many Italians were beginning to live in fear of the black-shirted fascist militia.

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