Living in a Media World

German media scholar Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, with her spiral of silence, has raised the question of why people become unwilling to express what they perceive to be a minority opinion. Central to Noelle-Neumann’s argument is that when people believe they are in the minority with their opinion, they will tend to stay quiet on the topic, thus feeding the sense that a particular opinion is held by a minority. Thus it becomes a death spiral of diversity of ideas, as more and more people come to believe that they hold a minority opinion.

While Noelle-Neumann’s work is fascinating, there are many cases in modern culture where people are more than willing to speak out with what they know to be contrary opinions.  But a recent study from the Pew Research Internet Project found support for the spiral of silence when it comes to discussing controversial issues on social media.  The researchers were attempting to find out whether social media such as Facebook or Twitter might make people more willing to express their opinions on political issues.  The Pew study looked at how willing people were to express an opinion about Edward Snowden’s release of classified documents as discussed in the opening vignette for this chapter.  Not surprisingly, the study showed that Americans were split as to whether Snowden’s leaks were a good idea and whether the surveillance policy was a good idea. But the study went on to show that:

• People were less willing to discuss the Snowden case on social media than they were in person.
• People were more likely to share their opinions about Snowden if they thought their audience agreed with their point of view.  This was true both in person and online.
• People who wouldn’t share their opinion on Snowden in a face-to-face conversation were even less likely to share their opinion on social media.

Overall, the Pew study found a strong spiral of silence effect for controversial issues on social media.  You can read the whole study here.