Do Politicians’ References to ‘Public Opinion’ Help to Persuade the Public?

The next ECREA 2018 session starts with Christina Peter, who begins by noting the reference to (supposed) popular opinion as a common rhetorical strategy of populist politicians as well as of journalists; this is classified as an explicit public opinion cue. By contrast, implicit public opinion cues simply represent public opinion for instance in the form of vox-pops.

Such explicit cues are very prominent in the media, while implicit cues are somewhat less prominent; what effects do they have on the formation of popular opinion, however? Does this convince actual citizens that the general public truly hold these views? Christina’s study tested this by creating a number of fictitious radio interviews with local politicians that included varying numbers of references to what ‘the people’ think, and assessed the reactions of some 279 student participants to these interviews.

The study found that people’s perception was affected especially by the radio texts that used a substantial number of references to public opinion; the more references to public opinion the ‘politician’ used, the more people thought he reflected then public’s view, and this did not generate negative views about the politician as a populist. This is even though the politician did not refer to actual evidence (e.g. in the form of opinion polls), and only referenced vague perceptions of public opinion.

This needs to be tested further by using real cases in order to incorporate the effect of pre-existing views on real issues, and on the politicians themselves, however; the participants’ own political stance should also be brought into the analysis.