The Anatomy of Public Opinion By Jacob Shamir and Michal Shamir. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. 320p. $52.50.

Extract

What is public opinion? In this aptly named book, authors Jacob Shamir and Michal Shamir attempt to address their perceived deficiencies in public opinion research by posing a new theoretical framework for the study of this important subject. Though hundreds of books, articles, and monographs have addressed public opinion, the authors contend that current theories of public opinion are too deterministic and that they fall short of explaining the full range of public opinion possibilities. Existing studies attempt to interpret public opinion on the basis of the observed outcomes—i.e., Why was a particular opinion expressed? What does it mean in the context of the instrument constructed to measure that opinion? The authors believe that to understand public opinion, one must come to understand the role of the information environment in which that opinion is located. In other words, Shamir and Shamir are not interested simply in the static outcomes of public opinion but in the environment in which that opinion is constructed. To this end, they propose a new theoretical construct by which to interpret it.