“Public opinion is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God” - Mark Twain
What do people of a country think about their country’s foreign policy? What do people think on the unrest in the Middle East? What’s the public opinion on climate change? What’s the public opinion on the political leaders of a country?
We always wonder what people surrounding us think about the questions we have. We always wonder what the public opinion is on the questions we have -be it trivial everyday questions we as individuals have or pressing/burning questions we as a society have. We are never sure whether media is focusing on the right topic and asking the right questions, and whether the public opinion portrayed by media (including the news sites owned by them on internet) is the actual one.
Mass-media today is the main channel for knowing the public opinion on a certain topic. Most of the content that we come in contact with comes from newspapers, TV shows or even internet websites. Now, most of the times that’s not a bad thing, but when people are in charge of what almost everybody thinks that can quickly lead to problems.
This is not a new concept — even in the 1940s, when the world was less globalized than it is today — the concept of influencing large groups of people was well known. Edward Bernays published an essay
called “The Engineering of Consent”, in which he explains how decisions we believe are our own are actually pre-made by marketing specialists and sociologists. In more recent years another book -Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky — made headlines as it explored the propaganda carried out by U.S. mass media. The piece introduced the propaganda model of the media, and inspired a film under the same title. Actually, the film can be seen on YouTube, and as the years passed I think the film has only grown more and more relevant.
However, the internet — our internet — has done a lot to eliminate the influence that certain groups have on all of us. By having contact with real people and being able to verify their identities as real people with real opinions we can have a truer view on the world around us. Even though we won’t attain the undeniable truth, we will come much closer to it than being fed information from one-way environments.
This has been the theme of my app +ask. The aim is to put people in direct contact with other people and get access to direct, uncensored thoughts. The app tries to identify the right questions (questions worth asking others to get public opinion) and provide unadulterated public opinion for those questions. It is small step towards elimination of manufacturing of consent, and towards bringing public opinion into the hands of public.
