Public Opinion Is the Most Significant Agency Influence Public Opinion

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Public opinion can be defined as sum of individuals opinions on an issue affecting those individuals but the opinion should be rational to the issue. According to Leornard W. Doob," public opinion also refers to people's attitudes on an issues when they are members of same social group." Besides that, David Truman also stated out that "public opinion consist of the opinions of aggregate of individuals making up the public under discussion. it does not include all the opinion held by such a set of individuals but only these relevant to the issues or situation that define them as a public." So, public opinion is the complex of beliefs expressed by a significant number of persons on an issue of general importance.(Persuasion In The Media Age. McGrawHill, 2002) Public opinion offer we to knew what is the public thinking, and how the public perceive an issues. that is a lot of agency that can spread the opinion of the public, it can be separates into 2 group which is non-media and media.(Persuasion: reception and responsibility by Charles U.Larson, 10th edition) Compared with others agency, mass media is the most significant to shaped Malaysian public opinion because its have many effective factors. Mass media can be define as the medium that can influenced the large group of people on a short time, for examples like internet, newspaper, television, and radio. That is a lot of factors that why mass media can shaped the public opinion such as wide coverage, credibility, meet our needs and social influences.

The first factors is wide coverage, according to mass communication theory, which is the spiral of silence theory created by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann is individuals who think their opinion conflicts with the opinions of most other people tend to remain silent on an issue, (Cutlip & Center’s Effective Public Relations, Tenth Edition. GLEN M. BROOM) so they are fear of voice out or isolate from the majority. This shows that by having wide coverage, the public will...
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