THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEPTIONS OF MEDIA INFLUENCE: THIRD PERSON EFFECTS AND THE PUBLIC EXPRESSION OF OPINIONS.

This paper explores the role of perceptions of the opinions of others as they relate to the formation of public opinion. Two recent ideas, the third person effect and the spiral of silence, have underscored the importance of these perceptions independent of the actual state of public opinion surrounding an issue. This study explores these interrelated ideas in the context of opinions toward divestment of financial interests in South Africa. This study examines both third person effects and the spiral of silence in the context of public opinion toward a single issue, looking first at the tendency to attribute greater media influence to others than to oneself, then at communication behaviors in relation to perceptions of the distribution of opinion. This paper also has a broader purpose, and that is to consider an enduring dilemma in the study of public opinion. It is a traditional tenet of public opinion theory that the whole of public opinion is more than a collection of isolated individual opinions, more than a mere statistical aggregate. And although considerable progress has been made in the ability to measure and describe public opinion, for all practical purposes it remains an individual-level concept. In academic as well as everyday parlance, public opinion is simply the sum of any individual opinions that can be collected, and thus it is said to exist on practically any issue.