Chapter 3 - Public Opinion

1. Definition of Public Opinion

  Public opinion consists of two components: public and opinion.

  Public: a group of people who share common interest in a specific subject.

  Opinion: is the expression of an attitude on a particular topic. Attitudes become strong enough to build opinions, which become strong enough

to create action.

  Public opinion is the aggregate of many individual opinions on a particular issue that affects a group of people.

  a. What are attitudes?

     Attitudes are based on a number of characteristics: religion, culture, race, social class, education, family and personal.

     Attitudes can be:

        . Positive/for

        . Negative/against

        . Neutral/nonexistent

     Most of the time, people do not care much an issue. A small percentage supports it (proponents), another small percentage opposes it (opponents), and the vast majority stays passive, neutral and indifferent (uncommitted).

  b. How are attitudes influenced?

     Leon Festinger developed the Cognitive Dissonance concept. It argues that individuals tend to avoid dissonant information and seek consonant information.

     -> PR professionals attempt to avoid/remove dissonance to reach communicative goals.

2. Power of Persuasion

  Persuasion: getting another person to do something through advice, reasoning or just force.

  Persuasion is the most essential element in influencing public opinion and the goal of most PR programs.

  For instance, persuasion is the basic process of the political campaigns in countries where people's votes can make a change.

3. Focusing on Beliefs and Actions

  Unconvinced audience members neither believe nor act. 

  To push the unconvinced audience to act in the favor of your clients, you need as a PR practitioner to convince/persuade them to believe your claims by producing enough evidence.

  The kind of evidence that can be used to convince people is:

     . Facts: empirical data.

     . Emotions: appealing to emotions.

     . Personal: appealing to personal experiences.

      . Appealing to "you": repeating the word people never get tired of 

"you", involving the targeted individual.

4. Influencing Public Opinion

  Public opinion is easier to measure than to influence

     1. Public opinion must be understood.

     2. Targets must be clear.

     3. PR professionals must have in sharp the laws that govern public opinion.

5. Laws of Public Opinion

  Developed by the social psychologist Hadley Cantril

  1. Opinion is highly sensitive to important events.

  2. Opinion is generally determined more by events than by words, unless those words are themselves interpreted as an event.

  3. At critical times, people become more sensitive to the adequacy of leadership.

    . If they have confidence in it, they are willing to assign more tha usual responsibility to it.

     . If they lack confidence in it, they are less tolerant than usual.

  4. Once self-interest is involved, opinions are easily changed.

  5. People have more opinions and are able to form opinions more easily on goals than on methods to reach those goals.

  6. If people in a democracy are provided with educational opportunities and ready access to information, public opinion reveals a hardheaded common sense.

6. Polishing the Corporate Image

      Positive corporate image is essential for continued long-term success. Corporate image is a fragile commodity, and it takes a great deal of time to build it favorably, but only one slip to create a negative public impression.

      In the wake corporate scandals, smart companies realized they simply could not hide any longer from public scrutiny.

7. Beware the Trap of Public Opinion

      The difficult task in PR is to maintain a favorable public opinion rather than to win it.