Collective Behavior and Public Jaap van Ginneken

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.The supporters repeated that the campaigns broke down artificial barriers, that most mass media were commercial anyway, and that there was no a priori reason why the huge budgets and space reserved for advertising could not be used to make people think about social problems.But they acknowledged that within 6 years, its strategy of thriving on controversy had propelled Benetton into one of the best-known brands in the world.The Benetton case is particularly interesting and relevant, because it illustrates a number of complex processes that we elaborate on in the course of this book.Even though it was not so much an example of one singular, rapid, radical, and massive shift, but rather of a succession of smaller ones, which ultimately led to the creation of a new and compelling brand image.This thorough mutation was fed and sustained by ever-new debates.There were feedback loops and media hypes, there was synergy formation, and an emerging pattern.In a way it was a twin pattern, a split image, a dual public—of proponents and opponents—with few people remaining indifferent.The campaigns were both clear-cut and ambivalent; they resonated with the deepest hopes and fears of each individual, and also with feelings of admiration and loathing.They had their social effect in a very specific set of circumstances.There have been many attempts to repeat the feat, but these attempts had much less impact.There was no guarantee at the outset that this approach would work, and there is no guarantee that it will continue to work.There is something profoundly immeasurable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable about public opinion.Rather than a stable aggregate, it should be seen as a dynamic configuration; or even a complex adaptive system.Let us take a closer look at what this implies.8CHAPTER 1THE PHENOMENON OF PUBLIC OPINIONWithin a few years time, Benetton had succeeded in turning an unknown and bland fashion brand into one of the best-known and most forceful brands in the world.It succeeded, because photographer Oliviero Toscani intuitively exploited the laws of opinion formation.He provoked recurrent controversies and thereby created “issues” that stirred the media and the public over and over again to take sides.In order to understand this, we must take a closer look at the functioning of public opinion.Public opinion is not the static sum of individual opinions, but a dynamic process, which continually evolves new and shifting patterns.This section sketches some basic principles, which will be further refined in the course of the book.Of course the first question must be what public opinion really is.By the time the notion had become broadly used, a handbook identified more than 50 different definitions (Childs, 1965).Let us therefore start from the words themselves.First of all, public opinion is about opinions, not about statements of fact.It is an opinion or value judgment about which people are divided.Secondly, public opinion is “public.” It does not refer to private opinions, which people may hold but keep to themselves.Public opinion is about opinions that people make public and express.Or, as Noelle-Neumann (1994) put it, it is “a social psychological process lending cohesion to human communities.a process in which agreement about the values of the community and the acts derived therefrom is continuously reestablished”(p.98).According to this definition, public opinion is a key process in the formation, reformation (and dissolution) of groups.What is it that people want to identify with, belong to? And what is it that they do not?Public Opinion and Opinion PollsThe notion of public opinion has a long and varied history.It was always related to some kind of public debate, in which a number of free citizens spoke out, to reach some kind of common understanding about public questions.During Greek and Roman antiquity, and in southern Europe, this was often related to outdoor meeting places such as markets and squares—the forum.During the Enlightenment, and in northern Europe, it was often related to new indoor meeting places such as the coffee houses in larger English cities, the salons in France, and the Tischgesellschaften in the German language area.Within these relatively open environments, new groups, new aspirations, and new ideas came to the fore; for instance, regarding further restrictions on the powers of the absolute monarch, and extensions of the powers of people’s representatives in deliberative PUBLIC OPINION AS A COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEM9assemblies or parliaments, claiming to represent popular sovereignty and the general will (Lippmann, 1947).Yet this public opinion of the late 18th and early 19th centuries remained an “elite opinion.” Only a limited upper class was supposed to be well informed, capable of reasoned judgment, and therefore entitled to vote.A true “mass opinion” only came about toward the end of the 19th century.The rise of the popular press enrolled an ever larger share of the general public to participate in the ongoing debates.Workers and women claimed voting rights.It was only during these decades, then, that public opinion acquired its modern nature; that current opinions and public moods were discovered in their new form; in France, for instance, with the Dreyfus affair (see van Ginneken, 1992a).It was also this wider context that triggered a sudden interest in the di-agnosis and prognosis of public opinion (e.g., through the improved study of electoral geography), and in methods to continue to understand and improve on this geography beyond the elections themselves.Some early techniques evolved within the framework of social surveys.These were extensive investigations into the health and living conditions of the poor and the common man [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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