Search results for "public opinion."
showing 10 items of 115 documents
The formation of aggregate expectations: wisdom of the crowds or media influence?
2017
ABSTRACTThe general elections of 2015 in Spain were elections of change. Two new parties for which voters had no previous historical reference points burst onto the parliamentary scene. Two (partially) opposed theories vie to offer an explanation as to how voters build their aggregate electoral expectations. In this paper, we investigate which mechanism has the greatest influence on the formation of expectations: published opinion or social interactions. Likewise, we also study if there is an ideological bias in the voters’ perception of the future results of the electoral battle. Based on analysis of microdata from a survey (sample size = 14,262) conducted in Spain on the occasion of the g…
Sull'influenza della teoria
2015
Importante articolo della HPZ sull'importanza delle idee come fattori storici nelle vicende storiche più rilevanti della contemporaneità. In this important article Ranke focuses on the relevance of ideas as historical factors in the most relevant historical events of modern age.
The use of blogs as social media tools of political communication: citizen journalism and public opinion 2.0.
2019
In recent years, the political arena has been transformed into a space of public debate, a phenomenon which is both evident, yet hitherto unparalleled. A new range of digital social communication tools framed within the Web 2.0 era, with the blog often proving the tool of choice, has displaced the traditional dominance of the communication scenario previously enjoyed by the mass media, thanks to a series of more interactive, diverse and credible dynamics which place the user at the very heart of the political discussion process and facilitates processes of social mobilization and collective civic action. This study takes the above situation as its point of departure and guiding principle to…
Stylistic analysis of headlines in science journalism: A case study ofNew Scientist
2016
This article explores science journalism in the context of the media competition for readers’ attention. It offers a qualitative stylistic perspective on how popular journalism colonizes science communication. It examines a sample of 400 headlines collected over the period of 15 months from the ranking of five ‘most-read’ articles on the website of the international magazine New Scientist. Dominant lexical properties of the sample are first identified through frequency and keyness survey and then analysed qualitatively from the perspective of the stylistic projection of newsworthiness. The analysis illustrates various degrees of stylistic ‘hybridity’ in online popularization of scientific r…
What Makes for Fair Schooling?
2007
Slogans calling for “une ecole juste” (fair schooling) are often as vague as they are effective in mobilising public opinion: though there is apparent agreement on the desirability of greater fairness in education, the matter of defining fair schooling parameters is extremely complex and riddled with ambiguity.
Auf den Spuren öffentlicher Meinung im mittelhochdeutschen Minnesang
2011
The scope of this study is to analyse if and how traces of public opinion, in the sociopsychological sense of social control, may be found in the German medieval love lyrics. With the aid of a hermeneutic text analysis some selected Middle High German minnesongs are exemplarily examined. The analysis shows that awareness of public opinion as social control did exist in the Middle Ages. On the one hand, there are minnesongs that raise the topics ere (honour) and spot (mockery). In these songs public mockery represents a threat of isolation against individuals who do not conform to public opinion. Because mockery may lead to loss of honour and to social isolation, mockery pressures individual…
The Spiral of Silence a Theory of Public Opinion
1974
Returning to classical statements on the concept of public opinion, I have tried to substantiate empirically the process o f public opinion formation through the individual’s observation of his or her social environment. Of all the pertinent statements by Tocqueville (S), Tiinnies (9), Bryce (4), and Allport (l), I can mention here only Allport’s example of a process of public opinion: the pressure brought to bear on householders in a neighborhood to shovel the snow from their sidewalks. This example illustrates that social conventions, customs, and norms are included, along with political questions, among the “situations” and “proposals of significance” with which a large number of people …
Quantitative Analysis of Gender Stereotypes and Information Aggregation in a National Election
2013
By analyzing a database of a questionnaire answered by a large majority of candidates and elected in a parliamentary election, we quantitatively verify that (i) female candidates on average present political profiles which are more compassionate and more concerned with social welfare issues than male candidates and (ii) the voting procedure acts as a process of information aggregation. Our results show that information aggregation proceeds with at least two distinct paths. In the first case candidates characterize themselves with a political profile aiming to describe the profile of the majority of voters. This is typically the case of candidates of political parties which are competing for…
European public perceptions of homelessness: A knowledge, attitudes and practices survey
2019
peer-reviewed Background Addressing Citizen’s perspectives on homelessness is crucial for the design of effective and durable policy responses, and available research in Europe is not yet substantive. We aim to explore citizens’ opinions about homelessness and to explain the differences in attitudes within the general population of eight European countries: France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Methods A nationally representative telephone survey of European citizens was conducted in 2017. Three domains were investigated: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices about homelessness. Based on a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), a generalized linear mod…
Words, images and gender
2019
Financial support from the European CSA on biological standardization BIOROBOOST (EU grant number 820699, http://standardsinsynbio.eu) is acknowledged. EMM is funded with a Formacion de Profesorado Universitario (FPU) grant from the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades), with reference FPU17/04184. ALP is a recipient of a Doctorado Industrial fellowship from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades (Spain), with reference DI‐17‐09613.