Measuring the spiral of silence in contexts of political violence: The Basque case

Abstract

For decades, the Basque Country has experienced the direct phenomenon of terrorist violence, the effects of which include the development of what is known as the «spiral of silence» (Noelle-Neumann, 1974) and the consequent feeling of lack of freedom to talk about politics. This article aims to compare the results of the measurement of fear to talk about politics (direct measurement) with the results of a previous research, where the dependent variable also referred to fear but from an indirect point of view (perception of this feeling in the environment). For that purpose, the methodology already applied in the report by the Centro Memorial de Víctimas del Terrorismo (Llera and Leonisio, 2017) has been replicated, making use of data from the biannual studies of the Euskobarometro team.