Blog Post #8

 

Introduction:

The Spiral of silence is a very powerful phenomenon. We are seeing it on a massive scale in today's society. I know for a fact it is affecting me personally and I have seen it affect all of my classmates in this class. The spiral of silence is when a person or group of people are too afraid to speak their opinion. This is problematic because it eliminates the opportunity for dissent. Dissent is important because you need to be able to go against the status quo and what is popular in order for real change in society.

Background:

The theory for the spiral was created in 1965 by Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann. It was theorized during the German Federal Election. Neumann and her staff at the Allensbach Institute for for Public Opinion research launched several surveys with the purpose of tracking what the general publics opinion was on the 2 major parties, the Christian democratic union and the Social Democratic Party of Germany. The surveys said that it was dead close between the 2 parties at almost 50% each. However, towards the end of the campaign the survey's started to swing towards the Christian Democratic Union for no reason. At the end of the election the Christian Democratic Union won with 48% of the votes and 39% to the Social Democratic Party. It was believed that a visit from Queen Elizabeth before the end of the election caused the Social Democratic Party caused the Social Democratic Party to be afraid of deviating from her popularity. 

Personal Experience:

In today's society, especially in public discussion settings like classrooms, whenever a teacher asks for the class's input on a political topic, I would notice firsthand that nobody would want to speak up. This is because everyone is terrified of saying what they believed for fear of being judged by their classmates. I know that I always keep quiet whenever it is brought up. I am terrified of what people will think of me. I believe that the spiral only gets magnified with things like cancel culture and social media. Why would I want thousands of people who I do not know forming an opinion on me based on things that I believe. That is terrifying when I am a college kid trying to farm a job. It is way safer for me to just not say anything. I noticed that the people who do have money and power are way more ok with saying their opinions than the people dependent on them.

Conclusion:

This is a really scary to think about phenomenon. Being afraid to speak out because of what is popular is really terrifying. This form of political "blasé" is really bad for the good of our society. If Martin Luther King Jr. had been affected by the spiral we would not have the Civil Rights movement. If Susan B. Anthony was being affected by it we would not have had the Seneca Falls convention.

Links Used:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/spiral-of-silence

I used this link to find the historical background of the spiral. A lot of the conclusions I came to are real life experiences that I live through.