The Power of Silence? Opinion Contagion and the Surprise of the Polish 2005 Parliamentary and Presidential Elections

• Authors: Eszter Bartha , Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper investigates opinion contagion in collective behaviour using threshold model (Granovetter (1978)). The theoretical background is the spiral of silence concept developed by Noelle-Neumann (1974), arguing that people only assert their opinions if they perceive a minimal support from a relevant proportion of others. We apply the model to explain the dispersion between pre-elections preferences and the final results of the Polish parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005. It is shown that the minority opinions were more widely-held than was declared in opinion polls as a consequence of different distributions of the threshold values of opinion assertion.

Keywords

EN

spiral of silence; threshold model; opinion assertion

• Publisher: Polskie Towarzystwo Socjologiczne
• Journal: Polish Sociological Review
• Year: 2009
• Volume: 165
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 123-138

Dates

published

2009-03-30

Contributors

author

Eszter Bartha

• Eötvös Loránd University

author

Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz

• Gdańsk University of Technology