What is the spiral of silence

1, the concept

"Spiral of Silence" focuses on the formation of public opinion and its role in the problem, specifically explaining such a process: ① people express their views, opinions, will be estimated in advance of the distribution of social or group opinion

② if their own opinions and the majority of people If one's opinion agrees with the majority of the people, one will boldly express it; if not, one will choose to remain silent

③This phenomenon keeps on cycling itself, and eventually, the dominant opinion will be clearly dominant, and the other opinions will completely disappear from the public **** picture, and remain silent.

2. Three propositions of the constitutive theory

①The indication of individual opinion is a psychosocial process. In order to prevent social punishment for isolation, the individual to indicate their own views on the occasion of the first observation of the surrounding opinion environment, when they find themselves belonging to the "majority" and "dominant" opinion, tend to boldly indicate their own views, and vice versa, due to the pressure of the environment to turn to The other way around, they are forced by the environment to be silent or agree with them.

②The spread of opinion and "silence" is a spiral process of social communication. One side of the "silence" caused by the other side of the opinion of the increase in momentum, so that the "dominant" opinion is more powerful, which in turn forced more dissenters to turn to "silence". This cycle creates a "spiral process in which one side becomes more and more vocal and the other side becomes more and more silent". This is the mechanism behind the formation of any "majority opinion", public opinion, fad or fashion.

③Mass communication influences and constrains public opinion by creating an "opinion environment". The formation of public opinion is not the result of "rational discussion" among the public, but the pressure of "opinion climate" acting on people's fear of isolation.

3. Criticisms of the theory

①Reference group: the role of interpersonal networks is ignored

2. Fear of mainstream public opinion Is the fear of mainstream public opinion really that strong? Other variables (age, self-efficacy, etc.) can influence.

③ Cultural differences

Fewer empirical supports in the US, for example. In Germany, studies in Asia, e.g., Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, etc., are supported by a large amount of data.

4 Ignoring the role of "minorities"