Public Opinion and Violence

Abstract

“Public opinion”is usually equated with results from representative surveys (Childs, 1965). This also applies to perceptions of the frequency of violence, anxieties about acts of violence, and opinions about their prevention. There are several arguments, however, that speak against equating findings from representative surveys with public opinion. First, respondents do not express their views publicly, but in a dialogue conducted face-to-face or by telephone. Whether they would repeat these views in public, for instance in an openplan office or at a school party, is a moot question. Second, the opinion of the majority of the population has to be distinguished from the publicly predominant public opinion (NoelleNeumann, 1989). One indicator of this is the population’s perception of the majority opinion. Another is the presence of opinions in day-to-day mass media reporting. For these reasons, the results of representative surveys constitute aggregated private opinions whose public relevance is not known. It thus normally remains unclear whether respondents would, for example, admit to their fear of violent crime in public, whether they would publicly demand preventive measures because of their fear, and whether they would be prepared to bring pressure to bear in this way on political decision makers. This applies to the opponents of stricter gun control in the United States, for example, who tend to be more vociferous in public than those in favor (Adams, 1996), an aspect that may have contributed significantly to their political success.