Public Opinion and Political Socialization

Chapter 6

Public Opinion• Attitudes or beliefs shared by some portion

of the population

• How do people express their opinion?

• Power of Public Opinion

- Bush / LBJ / Nixon

• What PO tells us?

• PO plays a major role in Elections / image

Public Opinion

• Consensus v Divisive (p 128)

• When political leaders adopt a position it is usually based on public opinion

Political Socialization• Process by which people acquire political

beliefs & attitudes

• How do people form public opinion?

Agents of Political Socialization

1) Family

2) Media (tv / internet) - opinion leaders

3) Friends / co-workers

- peer groups

Political Socialization (continue)

*Today, many contend that the media’s influence on public opinion is equal to that of the families

Political Socialization (continue)

• 4) Education

• The more education a person receives the more likely to participate in politics

• 5) Personal experience, beliefs or opinion

- Great Depression / Watergate

Political Socialization (continue)

• 6) Income

• Other factors: race, religion, gender, geographic region

Public Opinion Polls

• How do they work?

- questioning a small sample of people who are representative of the population

- most important principle in sampling is “randomness”

- random sample- every person has an equal chance of being selected

Public Opinion Polls (continue)

• Do they work?

• Do they error?

The Media & Politics

• Media- channels of mass communication

• Traditional way: Print Media & Radio

- fire side chats

• New media: Television & internet

- 24 hr news

The Media & Politics (continue)

1) reporting the news

2) identifying public problems

3) Socialization of new generation

4) Provides public participation

5) Making Profits

discussion

• Why is media important?

• Does public opinion strongly influence what government does?

• How might a public opinion poll affect the President’s next move?

• At Issue- Internet Campaigns? (p 148)

• Bias media? (p 152)