Hostile Media Perception and the Spiral of Silence

The next speaker in this ECREA 2022 session is Marius Gerads, whose focus is on integrating hostile media perception into Spiral of Silence theory. People with such perception see the media tenor as dissonant with their own opinion; this leads them to perceive themselves as being in the minority, and Spiral of Silence theory thus suggests that these people would fall silent. But this isn’t what we can now observe; rather, many people with such perceptions are highly vocal in their media critiques.

Spiral of Silence theory focusses on the climate of opinion, and Noelle-Neumann originally suggested that this can be perceived via a “social skin”, whatever that term might mean. But the opinion climate can be surveyed via assessing the opinion distribution in society; but are these concepts thus equivalent? Marius suggests that they are not: asking people about their perceptions of public opinion about a certain topic, and asking them about what public voices they hear expressing themselves in society about that topic, often produces some very different results.

This distinction might explain people’s willingness to not silence themselves: hostile media perception, in particular, means that people will have a different perception of the opinion climate and the opinion distribution in society: if fringe groups believe that there is public support for their opinions in society, but that this is not reflected in the voices that are widely heard in society, then this might embolden them to express their own opinions. If they believe that opinion climate and opinion distribution align, they may be less willing to do so.

Further, there will be a difference between opinion climate perception in society as such, and opinion climate perception in one’s immediate social group – and this again is likely to affect the pressure perceived from Spiral of Silence processes.