The Spiral of Silence

The Spiral of Silence

Have you ever wondered why people who support anti-war have their voices silenced? Have you ever wondered why most people seem to want to stay in the cultural norms and always do what others do? The Theory of Spiral of Silence might give you a better explanation on why these things happen in our society.

Proposed by German Scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann in 1974, the Spiral of Silence is a theory that states that a social group of society might isolate or exclude members due to the members’ opinions. 

In simpler terms, when people are more comfortable in a situation, they are going to feel more willing to voice their opinions and speak their minds.

This holds true on the opposite side as well. The less people are comfortable in a situation, the less they would be willing to share their opinions.

Think back to when you had a class vote when you were in middle or high school. Sometimes so many people raise their hands for one vote that the entire class ends up raising their hands. You may have not wanted to have that option, but since everybody voted for it, you decided to join the norm and raise your hand along with the class.

It may seem silly to think about a class vote when we were all little kids, but this theory plays major roles in our society today. 

A controversial subject that is happening right now is the government using surveillance programs. Most people have an opinion on whether or not using surveillance is a good or bad thing, but how comfortable would you be sharing your opinion in certain settings?

Pew Research conducted a study about this topic and asked people whether or not they would be comfortable sharing their opinion in five different social settings. 

As you can see in the graph, the more comfortable people are in a setting, the more likely they are willing to voice their opinions. A lot of people were willing to voice their opinion at a family dinner or a restaurant with friends, while a lot of people did not feel as comfortable voicing this opinion on Facebook or Twitter.

This seems normal as I would feel much more comfortable talking about a controversial topic with my family, rather than fighting with a random person on social media.

The problem is the opinions of people can not be silenced, as hard and as uncomfortable as it may be. We need to make sure that everybody's voices are heard. If we can all listen to each other and understand all of the sides, then coming up with solutions to problems could become much easier.

Mainstream media networks have been using the Spiral of Silence since the beginning of the newspaper. Media networks are so big now that they can silence any opinion that they want by simply ignoring it or shunning it so much that people feel that it is not okay to support that opinion.

Due to this power that the media holds over the people, the chances of propaganda are much higher.

Mainstream media networks can push any narrative that they want so that they can either get viewers or make people support a certain cause. Examples of this can be found throughout all of time.

The Persian Gulf War was a very controversial war. Most people did not want the United States to participate in it. There were many protests all throughout the country. The media, who was pushing towards the side that wanted to participate in the war, decided not to show people or talk about the protests that were going on in the country.

This is very bad for the public. News stations having the power to silence the public's opinion reduced the chance of opposing Americans meeting more people like them.

If Americans saw that other people agreed with their opinions, then they would be more likely to partake in these protests which would make the message to the government even stronger.

It is important that we fight to end the mainstream media from using the Spiral of Silence to stop their opposing opinions.

The United States may not be in a war right now, but the last 20 years of my life we have been partaking in at least one war. If the United States someday does enter another war, we can not let the Spiral of Silence stop anti-war voices from being heard.

Everybody's voices should always be heard. If we can work on making everyone feel comfortable doing that then we can go a long way.

Cancel Culture does not help with the Spiral of Silence either. People are so afraid of voicing their opinions online in the fear of being “cancelled” and never talked about again. We need to end not being able to hear all sides of an argument. 

Maybe if our politicians lead by example, we would respect each other's opinions.