Public Opinion about Public Opinion

That great philosopher, Lucifer, once said:

   Public opinion is nothing more than this,
   what people think that other people think.

Okay, Victorian playwright Alfred Austin actually put these words in the mouth of his title character, Prince Lucifer, in his 1891 play.

(yes I've mentioned this before, back in 2008)

What I'm discussing here is part of a larger work I'm fiddling with, the idea that we don't spend enough time studying people's opinions about public opinion -- or, for lack of a better word, meta-opinion.  There are theoretical traditions where this is more common (Spiral of Silence comes immediately to mind).  These traditions tend to view public opinion from a social control perspective.  Two factors come into play here: (1) we're always sensing the climate of opinion around us, and (2) a fear of isolation leads us to go with the majority, or at least not express our minority viewpoints as readily as we might.

Psychology has examined this in detail at the micro, individual level, or small-group level (my favorite, false consensus, but see also pluralistic ignorance for a more macro and contradictory approach). 

My point is related to, but separate from, what people think about public opinion polls.  In a sense, people view such polls negatively when the results disagree with their own positions, an example of the hostile media effect.  It's vital we tease out the difference between how people respond to a poll -- and who published it -- and how they think about public opinion in a broader sense.  In the latter, I'm talking about their acceptance (or rejection) of the idea of public opinion, their acceptance that other opinions have merit, their acceptance of whether such opinions should guide policy.  How do people define public opinion?  And has this definition changed in a world that has moved from mainstream few-to-many media to social media in which we have an almost instantaneous access to, as our friend Lucifer said above, "what other people think?"  I'm guessing social media, From Facebook to Twitter, have changed our ideas of what truly is public opinion.  And I'm guessing it's become something more narrow, more in tune with our "friends" and "followers."

And it's entirely possible I'm completely wrong.

This is me thinking aloud as I work on a longer, more thorough examination of the topic, hopefully with actual data gathered (or found elsewhere) to fully explore whether people think of public opinion today in a very different way than they used to -- and what that means for public policy, for elections, and ultimately for a healthy democracy.

The Borg and Social Networking

I've mentioned it before but there's this great definition of public opinion:

Public opinion is no more than this,
what people think other people think.

It's a line I use in my grad class on public opinion, on a research paper I published a coupla years ago, and probably too often in casual conversation. I've always been fascinated in people's perception of opinion and how they tend to project their own opinions on the public at large. In other words, if I think this way, most people think this way (false consensus).

Yeah yea, but so what? Well, I was in a doctoral meeting the other day and we were talking about social networking (Twitter, Facebook, et al.) and it struck me that we now have, thanks to technology, access to a "group mind" of sorts -- we know what other people think. This kinda changes the dynamics of spiral of silence, of pluralistic ignorance, of false consensus, and all those other great theories that rest on the notion of people and their perception of opinion.

Someone needs to study this stuff.

It's kinda borg like, if you remember Star Trek Next Generation. The borg operated on a linked group mind and warned our heroes: "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated." Tweets and Facebook posts and all the rest, are they a potential groupmind, a creator of consensus, or are they merely shouting into the dark to people who really aren't reading the posts in the first place?

My own hunch is we're going to see some influence on people's perception of public opinion if they happen to use these social networking tools -- but not in the way you might think. Selective exposure to similar others, hanging out with people like yourself, is one reason we tend to project our own opinion (or of a handful of others) on the public at large. If our various social networking links resemble our real world interpersonal relationships (people a lot like us) then this actually increases our likelihood to project our own opinions on the world at large. If our social digital networks are broader (I hope so, but not sure, again to be studied) then perhaps this will mediate this tendency in people.

Sunday morning thoughts after too much coffee, I admit, so enough of the theoretical, unless of course later today something about this comes to mind and I have to shout it out to the darkness.

Oh, on a historical note, that great quote is from a book entitled Prince Lucifer by Alfred Austin. Lucifer is one who says it, which is kinda neat. Came across it in graduate school and have used it, off and on, many times since.