Public Opinion according to PR Perspective

Dalam diskusi tentang tema humas, setiap pembelajar perlu memahami mengenai topik opini publik. Tujuannya adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana opini masyarakat sangat mempengaruhi kebijakan perusahaan dalam menentukan langkah strategi perusahaannya.

1. Public Opinion External Communication By. Theresia diyah wulandari

2. Introduction Communication is a reciprocal process of exchanging signals to inform, persuade, or instruct, based on shared meanings and conditioned by the communicators’ relationship and the social context . Public relations communications compete in this crowded message environment. To get the attention of target publics. To stimulate interest in message content. To build a desire and intention to act on the message. To direct the action of those who behave consistent with the message. Unfortunately, the communication process is not as simple as many apparently believe. As public relations practitioners know, however, communication with target publics is much more complicated than this set of questions suggests  Wilbur Schramm: communication is complicated by people Communication affects and affected by the social setting. Thus, communication occurs as a structured process within evolving systems of related components and activities. Social systems include families, groups, organizations, and all kinds of collectivities that are at the same time both producers and products of communication.

3. Definition Public opinion , an  aggregate  of the individual views, attitudes, and beliefs about a particular topic, expressed by a significant proportion of a  community . Some scholars treat the aggregate as a synthesis of the views of all or a certain segment of society; others regard it as a collection of many differing or opposing views. Writing in 1918, the American sociologist  Charles Horton Cooley  emphasized public opinion as a process of interaction and mutual influence rather than a state of broad agreement. The American political scientist  V.O. Key  defined public opinion in 1961 as “opinions held by private persons which governments find it prudent to heed.” Public opinion is found among publics, or groups of communicating people who have some common interest. People collectively hold a view of an issue, why it is a cause for concern, and what can or should be done in the situation

4. 4 keys of Public Opinion In short, public opinion is the social process of forming, expressing, and adjusting ideas that affect collective behavior in situations . The process is, unquestionably, ongoing. Nearly all scholars of public opinion, regardless of the way they may define it, agree that, in order for a phenomenon to count as public opinion, at least four conditions must be satisfied: (1) there must be an issue, (2) there must be a significant number of individuals who express opinions on the issue, (3) at least some of these opinions must reflect some kind of a  consensus , and (4) this consensus must directly or indirectly exert influence.

5. Dimension of Public Opinion An opinion is the judgment expressed about an object in a particular situation or given a specific set of circumstances. Opinions tend to reflect an individual’s related attitudes but also take into account aspects of the current situation. In practice, however, both researchers and public relations practitioners take “snapshots” of public opinion, essentially freezing the process at one point in time so as to describe it and compare it with opinion at other times. Their surveys too often measure only direction and intensity, ignoring three other important dimensions Direction Intensity Stability Informational Support Social Support

6. Direction Direction of opinion indicates the evaluative quality of a predisposition, telling us the “positive-negative-neutral,” “for-against-undecided,” or “pro-con-it-depends” evaluation of publics. In its simplest form, direction is a yes–no answer to a survey question. Media frequently report public opinion survey results as simply the percentages for or against some issue, proposition, or candidate. For example, stories reporting poll results, popularity, margin, and other indicators of the direction of public opinion about the candidates tend to dominate coverage in U.S. presidential campaigns, comprising 38 percent of all stories.42 (Character stories are second at 18 percent.) Direction clearly represents the most basic and most frequently used measure of public opinion.

7. Intensity intensity measures show how strongly people feel about their opinions, whatever the direction. For example, pollsters ask registered voters to indicate “on a scale of 1 to 10” how strongly they felt about a wide range of issues related to the election. Likewise, surveys often ask respondents to indicate whether they “strongly disagree/ disagree/ neutral/ agree/ strongly agree” with a statement. This question format is a common means of measuring both direction and intensity of feelings. Intensity measures provide an initial estimate of the relative strength of predisposition. Intensity and direction are often reported to indicate not only how people feel about issues, but also how deeply they hold the feelings. For instance, the issue of abortion commonly polarizes publics based on the intensity of their beliefs.

8. Stability stability refers to how long respondents have held or will hold the same direction and intensity of feelings. Measures of stability require observations taken at two or more points in time. Think of this dimension as something like the charts that track stock prices or temperature patterns over time. In effect, the stability measure provides evidence of how reactive public opinion is to events or other information.

9. Informational Support informational support refers to how much knowledge people hold about the object of their opinion. For example, voters who have little information about candidates tend to focus on who they see as being involved or associated with a candidate and how they think the candidate would affect them personally. Better-informed voters, in contrast, “are more likely to ignore consideration of the specific groups involved in favor of a more general interpretation of the issue Other researchers studying a mayoral election found that those more informed about issues hold stronger opinions about the issues, but the direction of the opinions is not easily predicted. Furthermore, those with more knowledge and strong opinions are more likely to vote and to contact local officials

10. Social Support social support measures provide evidence of the extent to which people think their opinions are shared by others in their social milieu. The persuasion model indicates the power of perceptions of social approval or disapproval. Pollsters probing this dimension of public opinion ask respondents to report their impressions of what significant others think about an issue or to estimate the distribution of public opinion on the issue under study. In effect, measures of social support show how people define the nature of the consensus on issues. The social context of opinion may be simply the tendency to think that other people are more influenced by media or events than ourselves. Researchers have found “third person effects” whereby people tend to underestimate media impact on themselves and overestimate impact on others. Such effects could have consequences in how public policy is determined (protecting those perceived to be vulnerable others), or how political campaigns are conducted (influencing easily persuaded voters)

11. Let’s Practice! Please practice by gathering public opinion related to issues of an organization / company / community that you think are relevant to your classmates. Determine the questions you think are needed to gather as much and as necessary information to find public opinion about the organization, company/ community that is the subject of your observation Conduct interviews and gather as much information as possible regarding your respondents' opinions. Write it down on a piece of paper and collect it.