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These differences stem in part from the varying perspectives with which scholars have approached the study of public opinion and in part from the fact that the phenomenon is still not completely understood. Political scientists and some historians have tended to emphasize public opinion's role in the governmental process, paying particular attention to its influence on government policy. Some political scientists have regarded public opinion as equivalent to the national will. In this sense, there can be only one public opinion on an issue at any one time.
Sociologists usually give more emphasis to public opinion as a product of social interaction and communication. According to the sociological view, there can be no public opinion without communication among members of the public who are interested in a given issue. A large number of persons may hold quite similar views, but these will not coalesce into public opinion as long as each person remains ignorant of the opinions of the others. Communication may take place by means of the mass media of the press, radio, and television or through face-to-face discussions. Either way, people learn how others think about a given issue and may take the opinions of others into account in making up their own minds.
Sociologists suggest that there may be many different public opinions existing on a given issue at the same time. One body of opinion may be dominant or may be reflected in governmental policy, but this does not mean that other organized bodies of opinion do not exist. The sociological approach also sees the public-opinion phenomenon as extending to areas that are of little or no concern to government. Thus, fads and fashions are appropriate subject matter for students of public opinion, as are public attitudes toward movie stars or corporations.
It is often the case that opinions expressed in public may differ from those expressed in private and that only the former contribute to public opinion. Similarly, some attitudes--even though widely shared--may not be expressed at all. Thus, in a totalitarian state, a great many people may be opposed to the government but may fear to express their attitudes even to their families and friends. In such cases, an antigovernment public opinion fails to develop.
Private opinions, if expressed in public, may become a basis for public opinions. Until the 1930s, for example, there was an unwritten prohibition in the United States against discussions of venereal disease, although many individuals had private opinions about it. Then, when the subject began to be treated in the mass media and public opinion researchers began to ask questions about it, opinions that had formerly been private were expressed in public, and sentiment in favour of government action to stamp out venereal disease developed.
Some public-opinion survey specialists have preferred a definition that links public opinion directly to their polling procedures. Public opinion is therefore defined as being identical to what people's responses to a survey questionnaire would be. Other similar definitions have been to the effect that public opinion is whatever is discovered by public-opinion polls. This definition, while widely used in practice, has the disadvantage of implying that public opinion does not exist in places and times in which there are no opinion polls. A more generally applicable approach that embodies much the same reasoning is that public opinion on any matter may be conceived as the hypothetical result of some imaginary survey or vote.
Those who are primarily engaged in the manipulation of public opinion, notably professional politicians and public relations men, rarely stop to define it. The American journalist and political scientist Walter Lippmann has observed that there has been a tendency in democracies to make a mystery out of public opinion but that "there have been skilled organizers of opinion who understood the mystery well enough to create majorities on election day." (Public Opinion, 1922.) Public relations practitioners have concerned themselves less with public opinion in general than with the opinions of specified "publics" that may affect the fortunes of a client: employees, stockholders, government officials, suppliers, and potential buyers, for example. Both politicians and public relations men are interested in influencing behaviour and thus in determining any attitudes and opinions that may affect that behaviour, whatever they may be called.
Nearly all scholars and manipulators of public opinion, regardless of the way they may define it, agree that at least four factors are involved in public opinion: there must be an issue; there must be a significant number of individuals who express opinions on the issue; there must be some kind of a consensus among at least some of these opinions; and this consensus must directly or indirectly exert influence.
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