The Climate of Opinion Pt. II

After reviewing my notes and looking back through some chapters I had highlighted from "Public Opinion - Our Social Skin," there were some aspects of this extremely useful text that I'd overlooked.
While all of my ideas have certainly changed course a number of times already throughout this research, things have recently started traveling along a consistent path. The plan is to develop an in-depth understanding of public opinion, and it's roll in journalism, politics and cyberculture which now are all intertwined and highly influential upon eachother within the Internet and the communities it seems to naturally create.

Social trends and status seem to be a constant throughout Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's writitng and research on public opinion and are two influential aspects of the "skin" we create along with this public status. Public discourse within small local communities or on the web act as a swinging gate, going from one end to the other raking up everybody in it's path and in a sense saying, "You're either coming with me or I'm dragging you in the dirt until you join me." It's a form of hierarchy really that is not tied to the public laws we all abide by, but if we wish to be part of certain communities this "swinging gate" acts as a form of governance. The reality of all of this is the governance is nothing more than the people working things out within this discourse.

Neumann pg. 24, The Advantage of Having Talking People on Your Side.

"..the agreement between your own convictions and your assessment of the trend of the times, the spirit of the age, the mood of those who seem to be more modern, more reasonable, or simply the feeling that the “better” people are on your side.

Noelle-Neumann
"Observations made in one context spread to another and encouraged people to either proclaim their views or to swallow them and keep quite until, in a spiraling process, the one view dominated the public scene and the other disappeared from public awareness and it's adherents became mute."

People are less inclined to speak or inject on a topic they are in favor of. Real social change and action comes when ones back is against the wall and there is nothing to lose.
There are some conflicting aspects in this book in regards to those who choose to speak and don't. Lurking through this public opinion has to play some kind of roll in things like politics and voting. I plan to look more into Wikileaks and read more of W. Phillip Davison's "The Third Person Effect in Communication" to make sense of some of these unawnswered questions.