Public opinion
[5] Later, William Shakespeare called public opinion the "mistress of success" and Blaise Pascal thought it was "the queen of the world".
In his 1672 essay On the Original and Nature of Government, William Temple gave an early formulation of the importance of public opinion.
He observed that "when vast numbers of men submit their lives and fortunes absolutely to the will of one, it must be force of custom, or opinion which subjects power to authority".
[6] The prerequisites for the emergence of a public sphere were increasing levels of literacy which was spurred on by the Reformation, which encouraged individuals to read the Bible in the vernacular, and the rapidly expanding printing presses.
Although Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them.
For several decades following the Restoration, the Wits gathered round John Dryden at Will's Coffee House in Russell Street, Covent Garden.
More generally, coffee houses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and The London Gazette (government announcements) read.
Each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center.
Joseph Addison wanted to have it said of him that he had "brought philosophy out of closets and libraries to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses".
These social changes, in which a closed and largely illiterate public became an open and politicized one, was to become of tremendous political importance in the 19th century as the mass media was circulated ever more widely and literacy was steadily improved.
The German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies, by using the conceptional tools of his theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, argued (Kritik der öffentlichen Meinung, 1922), that 'public opinion' has the equivalent social function in societies (Gesellschaften) which religion has in communities (Gemeinschaften).
These have registered the distribution of opinions on a wide variety of issues, have explored the impact of special interest groups on election outcomes and have contributed to our knowledge about the effects of government propaganda and policy.
Gunn Enli identifies the Internet's effect on public opinion as being “characterised by an intensified personalisation of political advocacy and increased anti-elitism, popularisation and populism”.
The most pervasive issue dividing theories of the opinion-policy relation bears a striking resemblance to the problem of monism-pluralism in the history of philosophy.
The controversy deals with the question of whether the structure of socio-political action should be viewed as a more or less centralized process of acts and decisions by a class of key leaders, representing integrated hierarchies of influence in society or whether it is more accurately envisaged as several sets of relatively autonomous opinion and influence groups, interacting with representative decision makers in an official structure of differentiated governmental authority.
The former assumption interprets individual, group and official action as part of a single system and reduces politics and governmental policies to a derivative of three basic analytical terms: society, culture and personality.
[25][26] Furthermore, social policy constitutes the largest share of state spending budgets, making it an active and contentious political area.
[28][29][30] Using increasingly sophisticated methods, scholars are beginning to grasp and identify the feedback of opinion and policy and use this phenomenon to explain the path dependency of institutions.
Its conclusions states that social constructions help to understand the motive and decision making behind public officials who do implement certain policies towards target populations.
[38] More recent studies have rebuked the Almond-Lippmann Consensus, showing how people's opinions are generally stable, and that while individuals may not be entirely informed about every issue, they still act efficiently and rationally.
[40] Another key theory about how people form their opinions on foreign policy issues is Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley's hierarchical attitudes model.
Other variables to look at when analyzing the opinion-policy effect are the size of the majority public, election cycle time, degree of electoral competition, and the type of issue.
Since they are not an institution (like Congress), they can also "shift the standards by which the public evaluates their performance in office – away from policy concerns and towards more symbolic activities, image, and personality".
On the other hand, government institutions and elites believe the general populations' understanding of certain issued is limited, therefore they exercise autonomy when making these decisions.
[44][43] Baum and Kernell have stated that a challenge that modern presidents face when trying to persuade public opinion is that there is so many different types of media, that getting people's attention is hard.
[45] New media alternatives has also caused on effect on presidential leadership as they now use them to be able to communicate younger generations, but targeting small groups of people.
"[46] Cognitive psychologists such as Lewandowsky et al. have defined misinformation as "any piece of information that is initially processed as valid but is subsequently retracted or corrected.
Karen Kornbluh, senior fellow and director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund, Social Media has led to misinformation through radicalization to extremism.
According to the National Library of Medicine, "Misinformation can have negative effects in the real world, such as amplifying controversy about vaccines and propagating unproven cancer treatments.
[55] According to the National Library of Medicine, misinformation has led people to take household disinfectants, such as hydroxychloroquine, as they thought it would help to treat COVID-19.
