Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: The fragmented state of opinion research
- 2 Information, predispositions, and opinion
- 3 How citizens acquire information and convert it into public opinion
- 4 Coming to terms with response instability
- 5 Making it up as you go along
- 6 The mainstream and polarization effects
- 7 Basic processes of “attitude change”
- 8 Tests of the one-message model
- 9 Two-sided information flows
- 10 Information flow and electoral choice
- 11 Evaluating the model and looking toward future research
- 12 Epilogue: The question of elite domination of public opinion
- Measures appendix
- References
- Index
3 - How citizens acquire information and convert it into public opinion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: The fragmented state of opinion research
- 2 Information, predispositions, and opinion
- 3 How citizens acquire information and convert it into public opinion
- 4 Coming to terms with response instability
- 5 Making it up as you go along
- 6 The mainstream and polarization effects
- 7 Basic processes of “attitude change”
- 8 Tests of the one-message model
- 9 Two-sided information flows
- 10 Information flow and electoral choice
- 11 Evaluating the model and looking toward future research
- 12 Epilogue: The question of elite domination of public opinion
- Measures appendix
- References
- Index
Summary
The comprehensive analysis of public opinion requires attention to two phenomena: how citizens learn about matters that are for the most part beyond their immediate experience, and how they convert the information they acquire into opinions.
This chapter proposes a model of both phenomena. The model does not provide a fully accurate account of how people process information and form attitude statements. No model that is both parsimonious and testable on typical mass opinion data – the two most important constraints on my enterprise – could possibly do so. But the proposed model, as I hope to persuade the reader, does a plausible job of approximating what must actually occur, and a quite excellent job of accounting for the available survey evidence across a wide range of phenomena.
Having stated a model of the opinionation process in this chapter, I proceed in the rest of the book to test a series of propositions derived from the model. Some additional ideas will be needed to accomplish this, but they are few and incidental. All of the important features of my analysis derive from the model that is presented here.
SOME DEFINITIONS
I begin the statement of the model with definitions of primitive terms. The first is consideration, which is defined as any reason that might induce an individual to decide a political issue one way or the other.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion , pp. 40 - 52Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992
- 2
- Cited by