Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views. Since the 1950s, television has been the main medium for molding public opinion.
Read more about Public Opinion: Concepts of Public Opinion, Formation of Public Opinion, Private Opinion and Public Policy, The Use of Public Opinion Studies
Famous quotes containing the words public opinion, public and/or opinion:
“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper-weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
“If an opinion can eventually go to the determination of a practical belief, it, in so far, becomes itself a practical belief; and every proposition that is not pure metaphysical jargon and chatter must have some possible bearing upon practice.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)