Publicity and Pluralistic Ignorance: Notes on ‘The Spiral of Silence’

Abstract

It is strange, but true, that public opinion research, mass communications research and public opinion theory have become disconnected. It is difficult even to explain how any one of these can exist without the others, and yet the fact is that each has wandered off on its own. It is to the great credit of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann that she has taken the lead in trying to bring them together again.1 Beginning with her call for a “return to a theory of powerful mass media”, Noelle-Neumann has been trying to show how the dynamics of media production and the dynamics of opinion formation interact, and how the process of this interaction can be described empirically by means of creative polling techniques.2 There may be room for debate over her inferences from the data, but nobody can underestimate the importance of her attempt to put the whole together.