Manipulation with the
public opinion
L7
Ing. Jiří Šnajdar
2014
Politicians and special interests have attempted to
capture and manipulate citizens for as long as
recorded history.
The question is not whether elites attempt to
manipulate citizens but whether and to what degree
they succeed.
Is public opinion relatively autonomous from the
willful strategies of politicians and private interests to
manipulate it in specific directions?
Are citizens willfully manipulated into engaging in a
form of mass karaoke in which they mouth "opinions
that they would not hold if aware of the best
available information" (Zaller 1992)?
The relative autonomy of public opinion is
an age-old question that cuts to the core of debates
over the scope, nature, and feasibility of democratic
government --government based on responsiveness
to the mass public.
Joseph Schumpeter (1950), one of the most influential
democratic theorists of the twentieth century, argued
for government by technocrats precisely because of
his deep skepticism about citizens, a skepticism that
has been shared by a string of political observers
from Plato to Walter Lippmann.
Schumpeter declared that the "popular will" had
"little, if any, independent basis" and was captured
by the organizationally and financially advantaged.
Mass public opinion was simply the manufactured
"product" of "salesmen"--self-seeking politicians and
special interests with an "axe to grind" who skillfully
used the techniques of mass advertising to produce
the public attitudes that they desired.
Workable democratic government, Schumpeter
argued , required narrowly restricting the role of
citizens to selecting "the men who are able to do the
deciding" based on their instrumental and technical
knowledge that uniquely equipped them to fashion
wise and beneficial policy.
For many political observers, the political history of
the twentieth century seemed to illustrate the
potential for elites to mold public opinion in ways
that were both horrendous (such as the German
Nazis' use of mass rallies) as well as narrowly
opportunistic within the confines of representative
government, such as the Health Insurance
Association of America's use of "Harry and Louise"
advertisements to turn public opinion against
President Clinton's health care plan.
The potential of special interests and demagogues
to capture public opinion as well as more general
doubts about the competence of Americans has led
most contemporary policy makers -- upwards of twothirds of legislative and executive branch officials -to agree with Schumpeter's dismal appraisal of the
mass public's potential to serve as a reliable partner
in government decision making (Jacobs and Shapiro 2000;
Pew 1998).
Determining whether mass public opinion can be
captured and turned into a manufactured product
through the advertising of an interest group like the
Health Insurance Association of American (HIAA) or
a powerful government official is a decisive issue in
assessing the potential for democratic government
and the appropriate role for public opinion in
decisions on health policy.
The Conditionality of Public Opinion Manipulation
(Cross compliance)
Writing just after War World II and its period of
extraordinary but ultimately false fears that German
propaganda would seize the minds of civilians, two
social science pioneers, Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert
Merton, argued that manipulation of public opinion
was unlikely and highly circumscribed; it required a
set of specific and rare conditions related to elite
behavior and information content (1948).
In particular, they suggested that successful
manipulation required unified elites that would
transmit uniform information.
For the public to be manipulated, it needed to be
instructed -- in harmony, if not by one voice -- on a
clear direction to follow. The normal state, though, of
American public life and that of other representative
democracies is elite division and divergent/ different
messages.
Indeed, the reality of American policy debates in our
own time is intense partisan disagreement.
The press also plays a critical role: its reporting
tends to mirror the intensity, content, and relative
degree of dissensus/ disagreement in ongoing
debates among authoritative government officials
(Jacobs and Shapiro 2000).
The result is that the press tends to convey the
genuine divisions among prominent sets of policy
makers.
“Why does the dog wag its tail?
The movie itself is science fictional but the main
message comes through:
How does media influences us in every day life and
situation and how politics influence media.
Wag the Dog is a 1997 black comedy film produced
and directed by Barry Levinson. The screenplay by
Hilary Henkin and David Mamet was loosely
adapted from Larry Beinhart's novel American Hero.
The film stars Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro,
with Anne Heche, Denis Leary, and William H. Macy
in supporting roles.
Just days before a presidential election, a
Washington, D.C. spin doctor (De Niro) distracts the
electorate from a sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood
film producer (Hoffman) to construct a fake war with
Albania.
The film was released one month before the
outbreak of the Lewinsky scandal.
Reality has become not what we see for real but
what is shown to us by media, manipulated or
shown from a point of view to make us believe, what
they want us to believe. The film emphasizes those
things and makes a clear statement about the
influence on the main population.
It is though a little exaggerated thus it seems as if
the general population would be too stupid to realize
all the dramatical shifts of media distraction taking
place in the movie.
Media’s influence in reality also has a big impact on
how we build up our opinion.
Politic influences media, in a good or a bad way,
telling the truth or lying or saying something than
can be misinterpreted. This is clearly influencing us
in our opinion, if we want it or not.
“The Iraq war and its aftermath have raised
compelling questions about the capacity of the
executive branch to elicit public consent for the use
of military force and about the role the media plays
in this process.”
The government under Bush let people know,
through media, that Iraq is producing mass
destruction weapons and so supports the Al Qaida.
In order to prevent possible terrorist attacks, the
government took this as justification to begin the war
against Iraq.
It is interesting to observe how the majority thought
to know that there were Mass Destruction Weapons
in Iraq, even without any proof.
It was fear of getting attacked and being vulnerable,
which made them believe easily what media said,
and also made them interpret words and images
differently and more dramatically then they were
meant.
As this came out, to make it more dramatic and
prove the war, it was presented differently to the
public and again people believed it even though
proof of it not being entirely true existed.
It again shows us how people do believe in things
they see in Television, Newspapers and
Photographs rather than things proven to be true.
The answer is Media: we see rebels, terrorists, arab
countries in flames, etc. and an explanation is given
us and naturally we do believe it.
What else should we do? There is not much of a
choice left to believe something else, because for us
things happening so far from our country seem to be
the total truth when it is shown to us. Most of the
population has never been there, taking part
actively, in political measurements to know what is
the complete truth.
Politics nowadays are all surrounded by fast
spreading news and media.
We interpret and understand things unconsciously, if
we see a symbol or a signifier, things which are
said, images, situations and relate them with things
we have experienced. This is used by the
government to make convictions about a specific
action.
These manipulations and speculations have existed
since politics itself.
What has changed nowadays is the speed
information spreads and that we have the possibility
of different media sources, who also have a political
conviction and thus according to which media
source, channel, newspaper we are referring to,
different outcomes on our opinion are reached, as
they display information differently.
The movie in his radical and critical analysis of
media and how politics can influence them and so
the nation, makes us aware of it’s impact on us.
Interestingly it is also showing how media adjusts
itself to the population’s belief and so makes them
feel secure and aware and give them the feeling of
being informed.
The important thing is to know what power lyes
behind images and words and the way they are
displayed to us and thus we should not immediately
believe what we see and especially not word by
word, but think critically of what is shown to us, if it
is or is not the truth.
Some examples…
The ‘real war’ and ‘propaganda war’ fought over
Northern Ireland for thirty years polarised party and
public opinion.
The key dilemma faced by politicians during the
recent peace process has been how to wind down
the ‘war’ and win sufficient party and public support
for an accommodation between unionists and
nationalists which falls so far short of previous
expectations.
Some examples…
Northern Ireland
Scripts telling contrasting stories have been
prepared to convince rival republican and unionist
audiences to support the peace process.
In addition, the pro-Agreement parties have
attempted to shift opinion towards accommodation
through a range of political skills and choreography.
Key competing parties and governments have
sometimes co-operated back stage while front stage
they have on occasion ‘play acted’ conflict between
each other.
Some examples…
Northern Ireland
The political skills, or lying and manipulation, by
which the peace process has been driven forward
have been uncovered creating public distrust in the
political process.
Realists see such political deception as an
inevitable part of politics and permissible on the
grounds that the ends justify the means.
Absolutists attack the ‘spin, lying and manipulation’
of the peace process as an assault on democracy.
Some examples…
Northern Ireland
A third democratic realist position argues that
sometimes moral leadership requires doing wrong
to do right but the gap between ‘truth’ and ‘spin’
should be narrowed.
A more open and honest politics would not only be
more accountable and democratic but also effective
in advancing the peace process.
‘Manipulation’ is one of the crucial notions of Critical
Discourse Analysis that require further theoretical
analysis.
We need to look a triangulated approach to
manipulation as a form of social power abuse,
cognitive mind control and discursive interaction.
Socially, manipulation is defined as illegitimate
domination confirming social inequality.
Cognitively, manipulation as mind control involves
the interference with processes of understanding,
the formation of biased mental models and social
representations such as knowledge and ideologies.
Discursively, manipulation generally involves the
usual forms and formats of ideological discourse,
such as emphasizing Our good things, and
emphasizing Their bad things.
At all these levels of analysis it is shown how
manipulation is different from legitimate mind
control, such as in persuasion and providing
information, for instance by stipulating that
manipulation is in the best interest of the dominated
group and against the best interests of dominated
groups.
This theory is illustrated by a partial analysis of a
speech by Tony Blair in the House of Commons
legitimating the participation of the UK in the US-led
war against Iraq in 2003.
Political campaigns are increasingly making use of
new media tools to both broadcast messages to and
communicate with potential voters.
Such use of a range of new and traditional media
channels synergistically has been theorised to offer
specific advantages to campaigns, leading some
media scholars to attach the term ‘hypermedia’ to the
practice.
Features of hypermedia campaigning include flexible
organisational structure, synergistic feedback of
messages across multiple online and offline media
channels, and the identification and targeting of key
groups of undecided voters with wedge issues.
Some examples…
Recently, the 2010 labour leadership contest
afforded the opportunity to evaluate the use and
effectiveness of these strategies in a live campaign.
The authors analysed traffic and visitor behaviour
on the Ed Balls labour leadership campaign website
for 100 days leading up to the election.
The hypermedia strategy was deemed partially
successful: while the candidate's website
successfully attracted a large number of visitors,
data suggest that the wedge issue strategy.
Some examples…
Edward Michael "Ed" Balls (born 25 February 1967) is a
British Labour Party and Co-operative Party
politician, who has been the Member of Parliament
(MP) for Morley and Outwood since 2010, and is
the current Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The campaign's focus on social media platforms
rather than search engines meant that the majority
of visitors to the campaign website were already
familiar with, or supportive of Ed Balls political
platform.
Some examples…
A key concept in research on the media coverage
of politics is the game or strategy frame.
Contrasted with coverage of politics as issues, the
framing of politics as a strategic game is marked by
features such as winning and losing as the central
concern and a focus on how candidates or parties
are doing in opinion polls.
One key concept in research on how the media
influence political processes is mediatization, which
denotes a long-term process through which the
media have become increasingly independent from
politics and through which political actors and
institutions have become increasingly dependent on
the media.
While it is often claimed that politics has become
increasingly mediatized, the process of
mediatization has not yet been properly addressed
in the literature.
Some examples…
American public opinion about foreign policy is
neither volatile nor capricious/ moody.
Contrary to much conventional wisdom, collective
opinion has tended to be rather stable. When it has
changed, it has done so by responding in rational
ways to international and domestic events that have
been reported and interpreted by the mass media
and by policymakers and other elites.
Some examples…
The public has not always successfully judged the
best interests of the United States or that of people
elsewhere, nor have elites and the media always
reported truthfully and interpreted correctly.
Nevertheless, we maintain that Americans, as a
collective body, have done well with whatever
information has been provided, and that they have
formed and changed their policy preferences in a
reasonable manner.
Thank you for your attention.