Public Opinion, Political Action, the Mass Media, and the Political Agenda
Public opinion is the distribution of the population’s beliefs about politics and public policy. The study of American public opinion aims to understand the distribution of beliefs. There are many different ways to measure public opinion. In the United States political parties have different views on politics, and therefore people representation each party show their public opinion by voting and setting up campaigns. Polls are very important ways to show public opinion because they help the candidates understand what the American people want and therefore change policies depending on what the people think. In recent years, polls have established that Americans are much uninformed about politics, so they have many uses, even if there isn’t much political participation
2. public opinion can weaken democracy
Public opinion has a tendency to weaken our American democracy because it tends to listen to the people too much. The point of having a democracy is to choose candidates that represent us, and make their own choices and what they think is necessary and should be done in government. Public opinion can tend to make the candidates bigger followers and listen to public opinion just to get votes. When polls show a majority of people agreeing with one thing, while the candidate agrees with the other thing, the candidates will most likely sacrifice his own opinion and follow the people. When public opinion has too big of an effect on democracy, it makes government follow the people, while the point of democracy is for the government to lead and the people to follow.
3. Literary Digest Poll 1936
The 1936 election was between republican Alf Landon and democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Literary Digest tried to do a poll of who they thought would win the presidential election, so they sent out about 10 million ballots to subscribers, and other records that they had. In the end, the poll has thought that Alf Landon would win, but they came out very wrong. 2.3 million Ballots were returned and they had established that only 43% of the votes would go to Roosevelt while 62% would go to Landon. The election proved to be wrong when Roosevelt ended up winning the election by a landslide, by why? The reason that the poll was so inaccurate is because the sample was not representative of the target population. Basically, their sample over-represented wealthier Americans who tended to be Republicans. That is why the Literary Digest Poll of 1936 failed.
4. Reagan White House and media
Ronald Reagan devoted much effort and energy to the media. Often, it has been said that Reagan played to the media like he plated to the cameras in Hollywood. According to Mark Hertgaard, news management in the Reagan White House operated on seven principles: (1) plan ahead, (2) stay on the offensive, (3) control the flow of information, (4) limit reporters access to the president, (5) talk about the issues you want to talk about, (6) speak in one voice, and (7) repeat the same message many times. To Reagan, his presidency was often a performance and his workers helped his public appearances. Reagan often tried to ignore the media altogether so he wouldn’t be caught talking to them unprepared. Some things he would do would be putting him at a distance from the media and rev the helicopter engines so that that he could not hear the reporter’s questions. All these tactics helped Reagan control the information that the media knew about him
5. Television news as entertainment
Since the media in America is owned privately there is a bigger challenge to keep the networks up because the profit is what will keep the network running. Journalists now try to have news that is more entertaining or less irrelevant to world issues. This keeps the viewers watching which brings much profit from the advertising that is put on the networks. The news is sometimes said to be a form of entertainment because it has in some ways stopped being news altogether. World News has decreased at an all-time rate because it took to much money away from the media. This shows that the first priority of the networks is to make very big profits, and the only way to do this is by establishing news as a form of entertainment by making it extraneous to any topics that are important to the world or America.
6. Reagan’s presidency and the media
Ronald Reagan devoted much effort and energy to the media. Often, it has been said that Reagan played to the media like he plated to the cameras in Hollywood. According to Mark Hertgaard, news management in the Reagan White House operated on seven principles: (1) plan ahead, (2) stay on the offensive, (3) control the flow of information, (4) limit reporters access to the president, (5) talk about the issues you want to talk about, (6) speak in one voice, and (7) repeat the same message many times. To Reagan, his presidency was often a performance and his workers helped his public appearances. Reagan often tried to ignore the media altogether so he wouldn’t be caught talking to them unprepared. Some things he would do would be putting him at a distance from the media and rev the helicopter engines so that that he could not hear the reporter’s questions. All these tactics helped Reagan control the information that the media knew about him
7. Random Sampling
Random sampling is they key technique employed by sophisticated survey researchers, which operates on the principle that everyone should have an equal probability of being selected for the sample. When taking a sample for a poll, there has to be a special way of picking the people for the sample. The biggest reason that the Literary Digest poll of 1936 had failed was because they did not employ the technique of random sampling. A sample must represent every single person in the United States, so by picking all white for a poll, it will have very wrong results. When only picking 1500 people for a sample it is necessary to make sure the sample is correctly taken so that the sampling error is not too great. If the technique of sampling is instituted properly in any type of poll, then chances are that there will be proper results.
8. political agreement between generations
As children approach adult statues, some degree of adolescent rebellion against their parents and their beliefs often take place. During the 1960s and 1970s, people who saw this trend happening, believed that there would be a generation gap and that all the opinions of the youth would conflict with the opinions of the adults. Though this type of generation hap did exist in a few families, the overall evidence of this was very small. 8 years after Jennings and Niemi first interviewed a sample of high school students and their parents in the middle 1960s, they still found much more agreement than disagreement across the generational divide. However, after the students moved into adulthood, they became more conservative, even though they did hold those values taught to them by their parents through political socialization.
9. Importance of census
The census is a valuable tool for understanding demographic changes. The Constitution requires that the government conduct an “actual enumeration” of the population every 10 years. The census is extremely important because it shows how much of the population has moved to any particular areas, it shows the increase in population, or it can show the death rate. The most important reason that it is held is because it shows the amount of immigration or emigration every 10 years and it shows which minority has become most prominent or which minority has become least prominent in comparison to demography. The most recent census has shown that Hispanics have finally outnumbered African Americans. The census can tell the immigration services how many people can come in to not have an overpopulated country. Also the census is important for representation in the house. Reapportionment is the process of reallocating seats in the House of Representatives every 10 years on the basis of the results of the census. All these thing and more are done because of the census.
10. policy agenda
The policy agenda in the United States are the issues that attract serious attention of public officials and other people actively involved in politics at the time. Interest groups, political parties, individual politicians, public relations firms, bureaucratic agencies, the president and congress all push for their priorities to take precedence over others. Health care, education, unemployment, welfare reform, and many other issues compete for attention from the government. The policy agenda is important in getting ones point across, and making it a bill or law someday. The agenda includes everything that politicians strive for in politics. Every idea, opinion, or statement is included as long as it deals with politics. By having an opinion, anyone can get their point across by going through linkage institutions. Linkage intuitions branch off and if goes far enough, even a local citizen can affect the policy agenda. In our democracy, the people really do lead the nation.
