TRANSITION OF THE POLITICAL SYSTEM AND POLITICAL ATTITUDES IN PORTUGAL

The period of Portuguese authoritarian government, followingupon the heels of economic and social decline which the countrylived through after the installation of the republic in 1910,was bolstered politically, culturally, and economically by theexperience of the country during these 64 years. Economic andcultural changes after 1945, including development of the media,worker migrations, tourism, and the decolonialization movements,gave rise to attitudes and behavior of increasingly wide groupswho rejected authoritarianism and the monolithic political system.Various factors paved the way for the downfall of this regime,among them Oliveira Salazar's physical incapacity and his replacementby the more liberal but less prestigious Marcelo Caetano, theunease in public opinion caused by the sending of troops tothe colonies in Africa, and international and political andcultural pressures. Public opinion was in favor of the new politicalsystem, and, gradually consolidated its hold with the supportof the Western international community, and, in particular,the countries of the EEC. The political parties contributedto the development of the political attitudes of the Portuguesepopulation and ensured that the regime maintained itself withina liberal democratic framework.     

THE ACCESSIBILITY BIAS IN POLITICS: TELEVISION NEWS AND PUBLIC OPINION

The influence of television news over public opinion is tracedto the ‘accessibility bias’ in processing information.In general, the argument stipulates that information that canbe more easily retrieved from memory tends to dominate judgments,opinions and decisions. In the area of public affairs, moreaccessible information is information that is more frequentlyof more recently conveyed by the media. Four different manifestationsor the accessibility bias in public opinion are described includingthe effects of news coverage on issue salience, evaluationsof presidential perfomance, attributions of issue responsibility,and voting choices.     

IN THE NEXT ISSUE

No abstract available for this article.     

OPINION LEADERSHIP AND POLITICAL EXTREMISM

An analysis of a survey material with 14,000 respondents fromNorway 1984–5 shows a U-shaped relationship between positionon a political left–right scale and activity to influenceothers through personal communication, with the exception ofa sharp drop at the extreme left. Various hypotheses attemptingto explain this pattern of a left dip are tested and refuted:1) it does not seem to be the result of sampling or measurementerror, 2) it is only to a limited extent explained by the socialcomposition of the extreme left, 3) it is not due to the partycomposition of the extreme left, but exists within all partiesof the left, 4) it is not a symptom of a general withdrawalfrom political activity, the extreme left does not lag behindin membership in parties or local elected councils, 5) it isnot part of a general withdrawal from personal communication,there is no left dip in the proportion of opinion leaders invarious non-political areas. Trend data show a changing patternfor the relationship between opinion leadership and politicalextremism from 1973 to 1989, which corresponds to changes inelectoral support for parties of the left and right in Norway.     

MASS MEDIA AND POLITICAL OUTSPOKENNESS IN HONG KONG: LINKING THE THIRD-PERSON EFFECT AND THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE

This study analyzes the impact of perceptions of the opinionsof others on political outspokenness in Hong Kong. Two relatedtheories, the third-person effect and the spiral of silence,are tested in the context of public opinion regarding the Sino-Britishdispute over Hong Kong's political future. To estimate the potentialinfluence of perceived public opinion on political outspokennessduring this political crisis, a representative telephone surveyof 660 respondents in Hong Kong was conducted in November 1993. As hypothesized by the third-person effect, perceptions of theinfluence of media reports about the Sino-British dispute onothers were found to be consistently greater than perceptionsof influence on self. Similar to previous findings, respondentswith a higher level of education were more likely to believethat the mass media influence others more than themselves. Thestudy also found empirical support for the spiral of silencehypothesis. Politically unconcerned respondents were less willingto voice their political opinions publicly when they perceivedthe majority opinion not to be on their side. Findings alsoindicate that the third-person effect indirectly influencesthe spiral of silence process through its impact on perceptionsof public opinion.     

THE RENAISSANCE OF A RUBRIC: POLITICAL CULTURE AS CONCEPT AND THEORY

In recent years, several prominent scholars have attempted toreinvigorate political-culture theory and defend it from thechallenge that rational-choice theory poses. Yet the primarythreat to the ‘renaissance’ of political-culturetheory comes not from rational-choice theory but from politicalculture's continued weakness as concept and theory. Even afterthe theoretical and empirical defenses provided in recent years,political culture remains poorly explicated along seven distinctdimensions: (1) how to define the concept; (2) how to disentanglesubcultures (for example an élite political culture)from a society's overall political culture; (3) how to integratethe many individual-level orientations of which the conceptis composed; (4) how to create a societal-level variable fromindividual-level components; (5) if the foregoing have beenresolved, how to measure the concept; (6) how to derive hypothesesabout individual political behavior from the subjective orientationsunder study; and (7) how political culture interacts with institutionsand other attributes of a polity to produce a propensity forcertain types of political outcomes. With these tasks left uncompleted,political culture remains no more than a rubric under whichdifferent authors focus on different individual orientations,employ different measures and different methods of aggregatingthe orientations, then test different propositions about thelinks between those individual orientations and politics.     

BEGINNING IN THE NEXT ISSUE

No abstract available for this article.     

POLITICAL VIEWS OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE

The emerging political consciousness of the Russian people isanalyzed against a background of severe constraints in the Sovietera on public opinion formation. Problems in the transitionto democracy and representative government are reflected inheightened interest in politics, volatile levels of confidencein key political institutions, and deep uncertainty about thefuture in both economic and political terms.     

KILLER AND VICTIM ISSUES: ISSUE COMPETITION IN THE AGENDA-SETTING PROCESS OF GERMAN TELEVISION

The capacity of the mass media to cover issues as well as thecapacity of recipients to be concerned about issues is limited.The coverage on and the concern about new issues will consequentlyremove old issues from the agenda of both the mass media andthe general public. The present study investigates two modelsof this process of issue competition. The equal-displacementmodel assumes that a rise of one issue in the media by a givennumber of stories is matched by an equal fall in all other issuessumming up to a similar number of issues. The restructuringmodel assumes that unexpected, surprising or otherwise newsworthyevents create killer issues that move several other issues completelyoff the agenda and leave others untouched. A content analysisof all news shows of the two major TV stations in Germany and53 weekly surveys regarding 16 different issues covering thewhole year 1986 shows that—within the media agenda—therewere no killer issues affecting the coverage of the TV stations.In the public agenda, however, some killer issues could be identified.Coverage of these issues increased public concern about themand decreased concerns about other issues. Consequences of theseresults for agenda-setting theory and for politics are discussed.     

A TIME-SERIES ANALYSIS OF THE DRUG ISSUE, 1985-1990: THE PRESS, THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLIC OPINIO

This study examines the triangular relationship of the press,the president and public opinion about the drug issue in theUnited States from 1985 to 1990. Agenda-setting theory servesas the theoretical foundation for the ARIMA time-series analysis,which attempts to address who is driving the public opinionformation process about drugs: the press, the president, orthe public. The study employs a unique method in that ‘mostimportant problem’ survey results from nine organizationsare quilted into a time-series of 70 monthly points to measurethe public agenda. The press agenda is based on a computerizedcontent analysis of the frequency of coverage of the drug issue,and the presidential agenda is based on a similar analysis ofthe presidents’ public relations agendas. The three univariatetime-series are identified, estimated, and diagnosed. Then thewhite-noise component of each is used in a cross-correlationanalysis to address the research question. The results indicatethat public opinion mirrors or immediately follows the press,though public opinion also drives the press agenda. Second,the study suggests that the president is following the publicagenda, though the president also has strong immediate influenceon public opinion. And, finally it suggests the president mirrorsand follows the media, in addition to following public opinion.The trend of opinion, when viewed in relation to the historyof events surrounding the issue, suggests that the public opinionformation process, as measured through the lens of public opinionpolls, may be a matter of public perceptions of the realityof the issue and of the pseudo-realities of information campaignsand presidential and press attention, which may have their originsback in the heart of the public concern.