Proiectul de cercetare sociologica este planul unei cercetari sociologice. Foarte pe scurt, un proiect raspunde la urmatoarele intrebari: CE [fapt/fenomen social vreti sa] cercetati? CUM planuiti sa realizati cercetarea? DE CE este importanta cercetarea pe care o propuneti (la ce/cui foloseste?)
Proiectul de cercetare va contine urmatoarele sectiuni:
I. Introducere/Enuntarea temei/ a intrebarii de cercetare. Rolul acestei sectiuni este de a trezi interesul sau curiozitatea cititorului. Acesta trebuie sa inteleaga:
§ Care este intrebarea de cercetare pe care o propuneti? (ex.: care sunt caracteristicile fenomenului A? care sunt factorii care determina aparitia fenomenului A? cum este influentat fenomenul A de fenomenul B? etc.)
§ Ce se cunoaste si ce nu se cunoaste in legatura cu tema pe care o propuneti?
§ De ce este importantă tema pe care o propuneti? Ce aduce nou sau ce clarifica?
§ Care este obiectivul cercetarii pe care o propuneti: exploratoriu? descriptiv? explicativ?
II. Prezentarea cadrului teoretic. Presupune trecerea in revista a bibliografiei consultate si a teoriilor legate de tema aleasa.
§ Identificarea bibliografiei relevante (in biblioteci, pe Internet, in baza de date electronice) si consultarea ei constituie o parte importanta a elaborarii unui proiect.
§ Treceti in revista si rezumati teoriile relevante pentru tema aleasa & cercetarile realizate de alti cercetarori pe aceeasi tema sau pe teme similare.
§ Dintre teoriile rezumate, alegeti pe aceea care va constitui baza teoritica de la care pleaca cercetarea propusa & justificati de ce ati ales-o..
III. Enuntarea ipotezei/ ipotezelor cercetarii
§ Enuntati ipoteza/ ipotezele cercetarii. Care sunt variabilele dependente si independente ale ipotezei?
IV. Definirea si operationalizarea conceptelor
§ Definiti nominal conceptele din intrebarea de cercetare/ din ipoteza (ex.: daca folositi conceptul “relatii sociale” explicati ce se intelege prin acest concept si la ce tip de relatii sociale va referiti in proiectul vostru).
§ Operationalizati conceptele utilizate. Stabiliti: care sunt indicatorii conceptelor definite? indicatorii alesi reflecta conceptul? sunt ei in acord cu definitia nominala a conceptului?
V. Stabilirea metodologiei de cercetare
a. Timpul/durata cercetarii.
Cercetarea pe care o proiectati este longitudinala (ex.: cercetare panel) sau transversala (ex.: ancheta pe baza de interviu in perioada mai – iunie 2006)?
b. Metoda/instrumentul de cercetare.
Ce metoda/ e, instrument/ e si tehnica/tehnici veti utiliza in aceasta cercetare? De ce?
Care credeti ca sunt avantajele/dezavantajele utilizarii acestora in cercetarea pe care o proiectati? (incercati sa identificati/anticipati avantaje/dezavantaje care pot fi strans legate de studiul temei alese, nu va referiti la avantajele/dezavantajele generale ale metodelor/ instrumentelor/ tehnicilor alese).
c. Esantion.
Stabiliti daca cercetarea se va face pe un esantion sau pe intreaga populatie de elemente vizate (“elementele” pot fi persoane, articole de presa, spoturi audiovideo etc.).
Daca ati ales un esantion: ce metoda de esantionare ati folosit? este esantionul reprezentativ pentru populatia din care a fost extras? rezultatele pe care le veti obtine pe esantionul ales pot fi valabile si pentru alte populatii?
d. Analiza si interpretarea datelor.
Ce fel de date veti colecta in urma cercetarii ? Cum se pot analiza ele ? (cu ce instrumente? folosind ce metode? cu ce resurse ?) Cum credeti ca ar putea fi interpretate ?
VI. Concluzii
§ Incercati sa anticipati rezultatele cercetarii voastre : Ce va asteptati sa descoperiti ? Cum/ in ce scop credeti ca vor putea fi utilizate rezultatele acestei cercetari? etc.
VII. Bibliografie
Aceasta sectiune trebuie sa contina bibliografia consultata si bibliografia temei (carti, articole pe care le-ati identificat ca fiind legate de tema aleasa, dar pe care nu le-ati consultat pana la data redactarii proiectului).
VIII. Anexe
Instrumentele de cercetare (ex: fisa de observatie, schema experimentala, chestionarul) vor fi incluse in sectiunea Anexe. Tot in anexe veti include si eventuale grafice, tabele sau alte ilustratii (daca sunt necesare).
Proiectul va fi redactat conform urmatoarelor specificatii:
Lungime: 10 – 15 pagini. Folositi diacritice (desi documentul de fata este scris fara J)
Font: Times New Roman 12; Paragraf: 1,5 randuri; Margini: 1" (inch) sus/ jos si 1.25" (inchi) stanga/ dreapta
Paginile vor fi numerotate (mai putin coperta); coperta trebuie sa contina : numele autorului/ autorilor proiectului ; anul, seria, grupa ; titlul proiectului de cercetare.
TERMEN LIMITA de predare a proiectului: vineri, 18 mai 2007
SUSTINEREA PROIECTULUI: va avea loc in cadru seminarului din saptamana 21 – 25 mai 2007
sâmbătă, 5 aprilie 2008
Public Opinion: Construction and Persuasion
Anne-Marie Gingras (Universite Laval), Jean-Pierre Carrier (Universite Laval)
Abstract: This paper reports on a study of journalists' conceptions of public opinion. It is based on interviews conducted with 26 journalists working in Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa. Public opinion is fraught with ambiguity in daily life as well as scholarly debate. The very same ambiguity was reflected in the journalists' responses. Some of them gave simultaneously contradictory definitions of public opinion, which can be explained by the concept of ``doublethink.'' For the most part, public opinion is not conceived of as the aggregate of individual opinions on a public interest issue. Rather, it is thought of as a social construction and political persuasion plays a major role in its definition.
Résumé: Cet article rend compte d'une recherche sur l'opinion publique menée auprès de vingt-six journalistes de Montréal, Québec et Ottawa. L'opinion publique est un concept profondément marqué par l'ambiguïté à la fois dans l'acception courante et dans les débats savants. Les journalistes n'échappent pas à cette ambiguïté et certains ont donné simultanément des définitions contradictoires de cette notion, ce qui peut s'expliquer par le concept de la "doublepensée". L'opinion publique n'est pas majoritairement perçue comme l'agrégation des opinions individuelles sur un sujet d'intérêt public. Ce qui ressort des entrevues concerne plutôt l'aspect construit de l'opinion publique de même que son rôle dans le phénomène de persuasion politique.
Five months prior to the 1993 federal election, Kim Campbell seemed to be heading towards an easy victory. Public opinion was clearly favourable to her, as polls and political analysts indicated. It seemed that for the very first time Canadians were on the verge of electing a woman to the highest office in Canada. But as soon as the campaign started, public opinion began reacting negatively to some of her declarations and gestures, which were described as political blunders. The mass media clearly had a major role in turning around public opinion.
Public opinion has been associated with mass communications since the late nineteenth century. Today, despite the quantitative orientation of the last 20 years linking polls to public opinion, the latter is still related to the press in many ways. Public opinion is captured partly or mainly through the press, moulded by it, influenced by it, or plainly created by it. Although the nature of the link between public opinion and the press remains ambiguous, the very existence of this link is incontestable. Because of this association, we decided to conduct a series of interviews with a sample of journalists in order to examine their conception of public opinion.
Public opinion: Ambiguity and symbolism
Although the expression ``public opinion'' is often used by journalists, politicians, and spokespersons for groups, the concept remains fuzzy. Not only is it ambiguous in everyday usage, its meaning is also the subject of scholarly debate. Public opinion may be seen as superficial and fluctuating, or it may be conceived of as deep-seated and slow to change. It may relate to public mood and irrational feelings, or to a more structured or reasoned collective opinion. It can be captured by polls but also manipulated by them. It can be viewed simply as an artifact of polls, having no reality outside of polling data.
The notion of public opinion has been the subject of debate among social scientists for decades. The more than 50 definitions compiled by Childs in 1965 attested to the complexity of the concept. Although public opinion's association with polls gave it a very convenient scientificity from the 1970s onwards, the dispute surrounding its meaning has carried on, as the conflict between French sociologists Bourdieu and Champagne and political scientists from the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques shows.
It is no wonder that this dispute is endless, since public opinion is a notion that symbolizes the gap between different ideological stances and intellectual traditions. The common-sense idea of public opinion concerns a contested belief at the very heart of our democratic system, that is, that the people can govern themselves through rational thinking. The democratic aspiration for ``government by consent'' is necessarily premised on the existence of informed public opinion; in this sense, popular wisdom is synonymous with rational thinking.
The expression public opinion appeals to ``the most cherished common political hope'' that the will of the people will prevail (Edelman, 1977, p. 43) and because it concerns the role of the people within the political system, it symbolizes the gap between different schools of thought. The first one is the liberal positivist school for which public opinion is the aggregate of individual opinions, that is, the dominant opinion on an issue of public interest or a social problem (Yeric & Todd, 1989). This definition is premised on a belief in the implicit capacity of all groups in society to transcend their interests for the benefit of the public good, as if harmony could prevail over divisions. Public opinion as the aggregate of individual opinions refers to consensus or to the majority. It is the idea that every group can govern itself through a collective will, which is the foundation of our system of liberal democracy. For positivist researchers, public opinion may be grasped by polls and other quantitative techniques.
The second definition of public opinion is found in critical theory. It is an imaginary, ideal, and utopian referent that serves essentially as a legitimizing principle for political discourses and actions (Champagne, 1990, authors' translation). More concretely, it is ``the fragmentary result of the public diffusion of speeches made by the political class and the media'' (Échaudemaison, 1989, p. 210, authors' translation). Public opinion, though thought to be so, is not the sum of individual opinions but is constructed by social actors interested in linking their plans to the people's will in order to increase their legitimacy. This perspective rests on a profound intellectual disagreement with the liberal pluralist positivist perspective. Bourdieu's well-known article ``L'opinion publique n'existe pas'' (Bourdieu, 1973) is the main reference point for this dispute, which is based on the belief that polls cannot reflect the mind of the people. A number of reasons make him believe that aggregating individual opinions cannot result in a reasonable measure of an ``average'' opinion. For Bourdieu, polls impose certain questions as the main political issues which really reflect the concerns of the political class. They impose restricted answers that limit what can be thought to be possible. Pollsters refuse to consider the meaning of refusals to answer. And in poll results, the same answer is always interpreted in the same way, although it may be given for different reasons: class ethos, political analysis, fondness for the subject of the interview, and so forth.
Methodology
Twenty-six journalists covering politics in Quebec City, Montreal, and Ottawa were interviewed in 1994. Although our intention was to interview journalists from all mainstream newspapers, we were not able to do so because Quebecor journalists were unavailable when interviews were held. Because we wanted to include journalists from all newspapers in which politics is considered important (Le Devoir [Montreal], Le Soleil [Quebec City], Le Droit [Ottawa], La Presse [Montreal], The Gazette [Montreal], and The Globe and Mail), journalists from the press are more numerous than those from radio and television (16 out of 26). However, this is probably a more or less reliable representation of the overall distribution of political journalists between the press and radio and television. Among our interviewees are editorial writers and columnists (5), press reporters (11, including parliamentary reporters from the Quebec Assemblée nationale [6] and the House of Commons [4], and a local political reporter [1]), television and radio hosts (6), public affairs television reporters (3), and 1 journalist who does both radio shows and editorial writing. Although the interviews were conducted in French, they nonetheless include four journalists (among them two columnists/editorial writers) from the English-language press (The Gazette [Montreal] and The Globe and Mail).
Seven journalists have less than 10 years of experience, 10 have between 10 and 20 years of experience, and 9 have more than 20 years (one has 35). Eleven women and 15 men participated in the study. The interviews were carried out between January 19 and March 11, 1994. Most of them lasted 70 to 90 minutes. They were recorded and transcribed.
Finally, while such a qualitative research approach does not claim to be representative, it does shed light on how public opinion is viewed by a group of people who must consider it on a regular basis in their work.
Journalists' views of public opinion
Given the ambiguity of the common-sense notion of public opinion and the intellectual debate about the concept, we decided to give our interviewees the two main definitions and ask that they react to them. The question asked was: ``In social sciences, there are two main definitions of public opinion. The first one is what is measured by polls and the second one is that public opinion is something created by a series of social actors like pollsters, social movements, lobbies, and experts. What do you think about this?'' We then had a series of questions designed to have them give us more details.
We thought it was important to go beyond the vagueness of the idea as early as possible. Thus, the research was designed to identify where the journalists are situated in relation to constructivist versus positivist perspectives on media and politics.
Since the late 1970s, considerable research in the sociology of journalism has presented media practice as a construction (Fishman, 1980; Gans, 1979; Hackett, 1991; Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978; Tuchman, 1980), be it the result of organizational routines, journalists' ideology, or power relations in society. This idea has pervaded the journalistic culture and we thought it could have some bearing on journalists' ideas of public opinion. They could then view public opinion as a construction.
For all journalists, public opinion is a vague idea and our desire to go beyond this vagueness by giving them the two definitions right at the beginning of the interview did not turn out as expected. Faced with two precise definitions, 15 refused to choose. For 13, both of the definitions apply. Two interviewees vigorously cross-examined the interviewer. The different groups of journalists (press, radio, television, or editorial writers, parliamentary reporters, etc.) show no difference whatsoever in their responses. The work setting (Quebec Assemblée nationale, House of Commons, etc.) did not have any influence on the way journalists perceive public opinion.
For a majority of journalists, public opinion is not merely an aggregate of individual opinions. Only five of them referred to public opinion as such. For all other journalists, public opinion is a much more complex notion, and they gave multiple responses to explain it.
First and foremost, public opinion is thought of by a majority as a permanent link between the media and the people and its description borrows from chemistry or physics. It is described as a ``direct current'' between what people think and what is found in the media, a ``fusion,'' a ``chain reaction,'' and a potential ``chemical reaction.'' Public opinion seemed very elusive to some, who described it as ``what comes out of all media praxis, mediatization, of life in society, as if it were a totality, a cake, a magma, a movement, something difficult to define.''
Indecision concerning public opinion has resulted in both a debate over its very existence and in the multiplicity of meanings that have been given to it. Four journalists openly questioned the actual existence of public opinion. They displayed scepticism and distrust, albeit with humour. A radio host said: ``This notion is a trap. It is used for very basic political and electoral reasons. Does public opinion exist? I am not sure, I don't know if it has any usefulness.... When we hear `public opinion' we should turn off the television.'' A parliamentary reporter said: ``Public opinion is like an animal, like the monster under my son's bed.''
Multiplicity of meanings by each interviewee was more frequent. Seventeen journalists gave multiple definitions of public opinion that were not always coherent. This ambiguity is not so surprising since public opinion is a political expression that symbolizes the role of the people vis-à-vis the government and there are at least two competing visions of this role. The liberal version of public opinion refers to the fundamental role played by the people within a democracy and a strong belief in our system of representative democracy, while the critical version refers to the construction of a public discourse by social actors who are defending their interests, a discourse that may be far removed from the will of the people. This ambiguity reflects the nature of political language, designed to express power relations and to play a part in their construction (Bourdieu, 1987; Corcoran, 1990; Edelman, 1971; Shapiro, 1981).
The constructivist perspective of media practice has indeed pervaded journalistic culture. Eighteen out of the 26 interviewees view public opinion as being partly constructed by social actors (they have no common characteristics nor do the eight others). Their perceptions of public opinion are based on two main ideas. The first is that the construction of public opinion by social actors refers to their manipulation of individual opinions. From this perspective, people obtain information from some social actors who are able to control the public debate and present public policy in a way that favours their interests. According to one public affairs television journalist:
Public opinion is clearly manipulated because people are only partially informed... we divide information and it is then easier to manipulate people's opinion on all small aspects.... People never get the big picture. Take the Gulf War, which is probably the best example of how public opinion could be influenced. You give just a bit of information, there is only one discourse, creation of images, and then there is a poll that says: ``yes, the people agree with Canada's intervention in the war.''
The second idea refers to the similarity between public opinion and public debate. The public position of social actors who have access to the public space is mistaken for the people's opinion on an issue. A parliamentary reporter explained that public opinion is what opinion leaders say publicly, that is, political men and women, polling institutes, media, social movements, lobbies, experts, and editorial writers. According to him and to a good number of interviewees, there are approximately 50 people in Quebec whose opinion is regularly sought when decisions are made. Their opinions fill the newspapers and are taken to be the opinion of the people.
There are basic differences between these two representations of public opinion, each founded on different reasoning, but some journalists defended both conceptions. The first one refers to manipulation, that is, the mind of the people is influenced by social actors' discourse. The second one does not have any link with the people's mind and is simply the public discourse of the social actors. (No one ever said that the public discourse could be the people's mind. Such a ``perfect representation'' would be highly doubtful.) To say that public opinion is both would be contradictory since it means that public opinion is and is not simultaneously the mind of the people.
Contradiction and doublethink
The contradictory assertions of some journalists should be considered. Using semi-structured interviews allowed us to examine the line of argument of each journalist by studying both his/her formal definitions of public opinion (usually fuzzy) and examples of the building of public opinion.
The ambiguities of some journalists were not only noted by the interviewer and the researcher; some interviewees were conscious of having contradictory beliefs. These are not faults in reasoning due to an inability to articulate their thinking. On the contrary, ambiguities were often expressed by people who elaborate complex ideas and understand the political stakes in the situations they describe.
Those ambiguities can be compared to George Orwell's ``doublethink,'' that is, holding two contradictory opinions simultaneously, being aware of it, and believing in both.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing to be contradictory and believing in both of them... to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.... (Orwell, 1950, p. 186)
This quotation from Orwell leads us to believe that people often hold consciously contradictory views. But political beliefs and adhesion, far from being rational and simple, are the result of both rational thinking and emotions. Political cognitive processes are partly unconscious. Doublethink is thus a conscious or unconscious adhesion to inconsistent beliefs. According to Green (1987), doublethink is a mental process that exists in free societies like the United States. We believe it to be a very frequent process in politics.
Doublethink should be distinguished from doubletalk, the first being the cognitive process and the second referring to ambiguities and contradictions of political language. While doublethink is conscious or unconscious and does not include intent, doubletalk is usually purposeful and deceitful.
Some authors have reflected on doubletalk with different expressions. Jamieson's (1992) doublemessage, Kertzer's ``joining together of opposites'' (1988, pp. 69-70), and Edelman's (1988) inversions of the value hierarchies all focus on the use of ambiguities in political language and the many concurrent meanings of words.
While doublethink is up to a certain degree a frequent psychological process, doubletalk fosters it greatly. Ideological incoherence is made a normal feature of political life. The availability of two patterns of explanations based on different reasoning permits social adjustment (Edelman, 1977) because it is not necessary to choose between conflicting views. Ideological incoherence is seen in the ambiguity of political language that serves very specific aims. ``Masters of persuasion use dual codes either to mystify one audience while seducing another or to convey meanings that for varying reasons could not be made explicit'' (Jamieson, 1992, p. 84).
Moreover, politicians' ideological incoherence allows the existence of large gaps between their action and discourse. According to Kertzer, this is ``one of the most powerful tools politicians have for placing otherwise unpopular political action under a symbolic rubric around which people can rally'' (Kertzer, 1988, pp. 69-70). Murray Edelman also relates the hiatus between discourse and action to the pursuit of consent: ``Political language can win or maintain public support or acquiescence in the face of other actions that violate moral qualms and typically does so by denying the premises on which such actions are based while retaining traces of the premises'' (Edelman, 1988, pp. 115-116).
Doublethink and doubletalk are not widely known in political sociology, since they run counter to the dominant rational perspective in the social sciences. They demonstrate the role of political language in the functioning of the political system, since political struggles are largely struggles involving the meaning of words. The common understanding of public opinion refers to the representation of the role of the population within our democracy. Because the people are the supreme legitimate authority, public opinion is an ``essential belief in the symbolic universe of liberal societies'' (Padioleau, 1980, p. 27, authors' translation). Thus, political language creates political realities or beliefs. To evoke public opinion is to have the sovereign people come to light before the political system. For critical researchers, the common meaning of public opinion is merely the public discourse of social actors disguised as the popular will or general interest.
How can public opinion be conceived of as doublethink? It is the idea of public opinion as both the mind of the people and a social actor's construction. For example, a press reporter explained that ``public opinion is the aggregate of individual opinions influenced by those who have interests to defend.'' Moreover, he believes that it is constructed by social actors and might not be related to the mind of the people. In reference to the federal sovereigntist party in Ottawa, he said: ``The Bloc Quebecois says: `Quebec thinks such and such.' Quebec doesn't think as such! Groups work for unanimity on an issue or a cause, and then it becomes `Quebec.' [Public opinion] is the result of the targeted action of groups that have interests to defend and use all available means to do it.''
Doublethink is particularly well expressed in an editorial writer's description of public opinion on the proposed move of the university-affiliated Hôtel-Dieu hospital from downtown Montreal to a suburb, Rivière-des-Prairies. She explained at length and with a flurry of details the work of lobby groups and their success in imposing their views during the public debate. The opponents had created a strategy to prevent the move. An interest group claimed they represented Montreal, succeeded in building a coalition, obtained data, and attacked the Health Minister. The debate focused on the number of beds needed in each region, each side having its own experts and armed with statistics. ``Public opinion took side with the opponents.... Public opinion is difficult to grasp. Some people are spokespersons for public opinion, they are leaders representing the Chamber of Commerce, the medical community, and academics. Public opinion was clear, against the move.''
The interviewer then restated the first interview question, using different words: ``Is public opinion what people think or is it created by social actors?''
It is the second one... if lobbies and the media had not been interested in this issue in the first place, nobody would have known anything. At one point, a social actor realizes something is going on, he alerts the media, then there is a coalition of groups that react against a politician's gesture, and concerned people get into the conflict.
The interviewer then asked the editorial writer if there had been a social construction of public opinion in this case. She believed so, and added: ``Individually, people didn't even know that the hospital was supposed to be moved. People didn't know that, and they didn't care!'' The social construction of public opinion was clear to this journalist. Nonetheless, she also said: ``I felt public opinion around me, in the letter-to-the-editor pages, in the people's calls to radio shows....''
To believe that public opinion is both a construction by social actors and the mind of the people, without any idea that there has been manipulation or any thought about the perfect representation of the people by groups, is indeed doublethink.
Other issues were described in a similar fashion with doublethink. The most striking example concerns the very existence of public opinion. A radio host said that public opinion was ``fluid'' and echoed Pierre Bourdieu's questioning of the existence of public opinion: ``When I use the expression `public opinion,' it is usually to say to a minister: `according to public opinion, you...' I believe he is going to step in. I do not think it is a real notion. I would never say such a thing to [Claude] Ryan because he has been a journalist for a long enough time to know that it does not exist.''
About five minutes later, he added: ``In spite of what I just said, if you listen to people's calls to radio shows and read letters to the editor, you still get a certain idea of public opinion.'' For this radio host, public opinion simultaneously does not exist and could be apprehended.
Opinions and persuasion
The constructivist perspective on public opinion shared by most journalists has an impact on their understanding of political persuasion. This issue was a dominant theme of the interviews as influences on public opinion or its construction were discussed.
According to 21 journalists, public opinion is not at all or not merely the sum of individual opinions of an issue. Thus, persuasion must be understood using sociological or political concepts and not psychological ones. Public opinion was referred to in terms of social cohesion, and therefore expressions like ``ideology'' and ``ideological hegemony'' were used by some interviewees.
The association of public opinion with ideology, that is, a set of values, interests, and action orientations (Lecomte & Denni, 1992), gives the former a form of stability or slow evolution. Journalists for whom public opinion is conceived of as an ideology use such expressions as: stable opinion current, slow opinion trends, extraordinary weight of the memory, common heritage, and ways of thinking.
Public opinion is even associated with ideological hegemony, an expression coined by Antonio Gramsci meaning ``the supremacy a given social group obtained by virtue of its ability to be both `dominant' and `leading' '' (Golding, 1992, p. 106). Hegemony implies that persuasion plays a major role in the governance of a society, founded on the consent of groups that are subjectively constituted. Thus the importance of the discursive terrain, ``a terrain that entailed a variety of effective power relations, limits, and possibilities'' (Golding, 1992, p. 108).
A parliamentary reporter used the word hegemony to explain that dominant social actors try to create public opinion that is favourable to their economic interests, thus associating domination with a leadership of ideas. These social actors use very specific strategies: they promote their special interests by presenting them as public interest and as the ideal way to solve public policy problems. He referred to the example of deficit reduction, which became desperately urgent at the very moment social program budgets were being called into question. According to him, the sudden growth in importance of deficit reduction was generated by the elites' desire to cut social programs and was intentionally targeted as the main reason for the lack of control over public funds. To change public opinion, conceived of as ideology, this parliamentary reporter stated that dominant social actors can create panic over a public issue and then propose a solution that corresponds to their interests. From this perspective, it can be said that the solution exists prior to the problem, although construction of the problem and solution are not absolute. Thus, the presumed extent of the problem varies according to the urgency of reaching the objectives that were artificially attached to it. The creation of public opinion on deficit reduction is thus perceived as the pursuit of consent, a prerequisite for peaceful and legitimate domination.
The expression ``hegemony'' was not widely known by the interviewees but its reality has been expressed by two thirds of our interviewees. Public opinion has been described as a tool for manufacturing consent, attracting support, justifying, and legitimizing. Social actors pepper their texts and speeches with references to public opinion because popular legitimacy is crucial for the spreading of ideas. Thus, public opinion ``refers to a method of influencing popular demands, not necessarily of reflecting them'' (Edelman, 1977, p. 55). A radio host echoed this idea: ``It is in the interest of all social actors to use public opinion, to evoke unanimity concerning their plans in order to increase their legitimacy. It is a political notion that is neither scientific nor sociological, it is an active notion, a voluntarist one. People who use it 2 need the public to legitimize their action.''
Evoking public opinion influences individual opinions. Belief that the people support a political project can mobilize additional support, as research on the ``bandwagon effect'' has demonstrated (Cloutier, Nadeau, & Guay, 1989).
In addition to hegemony, the concepts of ``ideological state apparatus'' and ``primary definers,'' which address our journalists' concerns about political persuasion, can be explained. Critical theorists use the notion of ideological state apparatus or ideological apparatus for describing the role of private or public organizations that disseminate the dominant ideology, an expression coined by French philosopher Louis Althusser. This idea was expressed by eight journalists (among them three television hosts and one television reporter) who were conscious of their difficulty in transmitting ideas that are outside the mainstream. The expression ``ideological state apparatus'' was not used, but its meaning was clearly referred to. A television host said: ``there is a natural and standard way of conducting interviews'' that prevents us from understanding marginal values and underground ways of living. The actual experiences of welfare recipients, of marginal artists, or of people living on food banks are difficult to grasp. She continued: ``some marginal artists feel annihilated by us. Their thought is so different that when we try to transmit their ideas, we betray them.''
Another television host explained that shows on welfare or poor people are being made as if these people were living very far away ``like the Afrikaners or the Bosnians. We look at them from the outside, without understanding the intimate and intrinsic phenomenon. And we analyze, we look at epiphenomena instead of studying real causes. We analyze the epiphenomenon of the food bank that now needs 300 baskets and needed only 30 a while ago.''
A young press reporter described his media as an ideological apparatus:
I am aware of working in an institution--the media--that helps create and transmit some groups' opinions. This institution works in concert with others. I am critical of this institution and of others that claim to transmit public opinion, that claim to talk in the name of the people....[I]t is a logic of power, of money.... I do not wish to relay the ideas of pressure groups daily. The media should stop functioning ideologically and stupidly while pretending to be the watchdog of democracy.
Hegemony implies the existence of a dominant scheme of interpretation for events. Stuart Hall has coined the expression ``primary definers'' for people or social actors who define events in the first place and impose their views during the public debate. Those are usually the people who govern, do business, and are part of elite circles (Hall et al., 1978, p. 59). Our interviewees expressed a similar idea when describing the building of public opinion on some issues. The pursuit of consent in the issue of the most recent pharmaceutical patent law is worth describing.
One editorial writer explained that the pharmaceutical lobby succeeded in having a lawpassed by the House of Commons. First of all, they gained access to some ministers. But they also tried to create favourable public opinion on this issue:
[Someone I know] works for [a public affairs show] and she did a report on pharmaceutical patents. She got a strategic document [from the industry] that said: ``this is how we are going to manipulate public opinion.''... It was actually written in black and white ``These are the arguments we are going to use: the price of medicine will not increase.'' Sometimes, we are a bit naive, we do not realize how these people work for their interests.
This primary definition of the impact of the pharmaceutical law--no increase in the price of medicine--was then imposed as the main focus in the public debate.
Opinions and polls
Public opinion is commonly associated with polls. But this link was severely put into question by our interviewees. The only mention of polls by the interviewer was made at the very beginning of the interview. Only two interviewees decided then to express briefly their opinion on polls, and all other discussions on this issue were initiated later by the interviewees.
Overall, 24 out of 26 journalists expressed their views on polls. The reliance on polls was rather limited with only 3 believing they reflected the people's opinion. Nine were ambivalent and 12 were very critical. The lines of argument of the ambivalent and the critical were similar. What distinguishes the former from the latter is a belief that in spite of their flaws, somehow, without being able to explain how or why, polls still reflect to a small extent the people's opinion. For example, a columnist explained in the same breath that ``polls measure quite well what people think'' and that ``they are manipulated,'' providing another example of doublethink.
Criticisms of almost all aspects of polls were expressed, from the formulation of questions to the interpretation of results by the press. The most frequent comment concerned the fallacious character of polls. Many examples were given of deceitful polls, such as the one carried out for the St-Bonaventure provincial by-election in 1994, the ones that predicted financial success for The Montreal Daily News and Le Matin, and the ones made during the Charlottetown discussions.
A parliamentary reporter said politicians seem to forget that people answer nicely and virtuously to pollsters, but act differently in real life. The fact that lies are never dealt with in poll results is a significant flaw. She also said that polls are a ``tautological method,'' meaning questions and answers address issues that support the concerns of the political class rather than being designed to find out what people think about an issue. Giving an example of the combination of these two, she explained:
When politicians read the polls, they inevitably want to find what they are looking for. The Conservatives were convinced last fall [1993] that Canadians really wanted to reduce the deficit, they had polls... they listened to their focus groups. They asked if it was important to take care of the deficit....Of course, I too believe that it is important not to drink too much wine, but if there is a bottle on the table, I am going to drink some....
For five journalists, polls are also deceitful because they oversimplify, limit, level down present everything in two dimensions while reality has three. A radio host exclaimed: ``I can't believe there is someone stupid enough to believe there are polls sophisticated enough to capture public opinion.''
Scepticism towards polls also comes from the fact that they are tools for political action (for six journalists) and serve to manipulate (for three others). Social actors use polls to make believe there is wide public support for their ideas or projects. An editorial writer told us: ``I am sure there are people who are experts at inventing; what polls could we carry out to give us some advantage?'' This idea was expressed in many ways, for example, a radio host said, ``Just tell me the answer you want, I am going to write the question.'' He was proud to say that his view on the matter had been corroborated by prominent Université de Montréal pollsters.
Five journalists contested the idea that everybody is supposed to have an opinion, in opposition to the ``common sense'' that links wit and opinion, as one television host did: ``the people are intelligent so they have an opinion.'' Among these five interviewees, some explained that refusals to answer have a real meaning that is never addressed in poll results. A press reporter said: ``In a poll showing the Liberals and the Péquistes neck and neck, the real news was that a third of respondents were undecided.'' Some are convinced that in certain circumstances, people know nothing about an issue but answer nevertheless. Those concerns echo Pierre Bourdieu's argument that not everyone has an opinion. Polls frequently ask people to say something about issues they have never heard of. Furthermore, analysis of refusals to answer (something pollsters never do) sheds light on how people produce an opinion, that is, according to different methods, whether a political analysis, ethical concern, fondness, and so forth.
Lastly, 16 journalists expressed their view on the impact of polls. Thirteen were convinced that polls have an impact, either on people, on politicians, or on the way the media cover an issue. Polls can be deceitful and manipulated yet nevertheless be compelling in the public debate. Thus, according to a radio host, ``a poll can create a false movement of opinion that has a real impact.''
Conclusion
The interviews with 26 journalists clearly indicate that they have a very vague idea of public opinion and some even have contradictory views. This does not prevent them from using this expression frequently. Precision could not be attained in the description of public opinion by our interviewees, but we nonetheless obtained a panorama of how public opinion takes shape. For most of them, it is being mainly constructed by social actors, including the media. This idea refers to the manipulation of individual opinions, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the social actors' public discourse or simply the public debate. In one case or the other, the media play a compelling role in transmitting social actors' views.
The ambiguity of public opinion and the contradictory definitions that were given can be explained by the notion of doublethink. This phenomenon sheds light on the ideological incoherence existing in political life. When action and discourse do not have to be concordant, the pursuit of consent is not based on actual public policy or on political action, but on a representation of those policies and actions. The concept of public opinion underscores the importance of persuasion in governance.
Hence, although the common-sense notion of public opinion seems to mean ``the people,'' a close examination of the concept reveals a different definition. For 21 journalists, public opinion was described more as an issue than as a political force. It is not the autonomy or strength of public opinion that is put forward but rather its referential aspect. There is no discussion about the will or action of public opinion, but rather the issue is how it is used. Political figures are obsessed with public opinion, fearful that their initiatives might not please what is thought to be public opinion. Social actors use public opinion as an indicator when presenting their ideas, developing their actions, or publicizing their plans. Most journalists were conscious of being in the midst of the construction of public opinion on a daily basis.
Could public opinion survive without mass communication? It certainly needs a public sphere to exist, since it deals with representation. Ideas, images, and words are contemporary tools for the governance of most democratic societies. Mass communication transmits them, thus playing a major role in the polity.
Although this study does not claim to be representative, we can say that our interviewees have shown that their daily work involves transmitting ideas that can have an impact not only on the way we perceive the world but also on political dealings and thus on power relations. This is certainly a big step away from the usual description of journalist as ``witness.'' 1 Jean-Pierre Carrier conducted the interviews and commented on earlier versions of this paper. I also would like to thank Catherine London as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms. Gabriel Tarde linked public opinion to the construction of a public by the press that homogenizes local opinions (previously divided, diverse, and unknown to each other) and to new forms of collective action such as demonstrations (Champagne, 1990). In 1922, Walter Lippmann conceived of the mass media as the source of images that make up our pseudo-environment: ``the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations.... The analyst of public opinion must begin then, by recognizing the triangular relationship between the scene of action, the human picture of that scene, and the human response to that picture working itself out upon the scene of action'' (Lippmann, 1922, pp. 16-17). Patrick Champagne explains that while political scientists claim they analyze public opinion when commenting on polls, they are actually part of the political game. See Champagne, 1990, chap. 2. See the translated article in Mattelart & Siegelaub (1979). It was easier to have parliamentary reporters from the Quebec Assemblée nationale than from the House of Commons participate since the research was conducted from Université Laval, near Quebec City. All quotations were translated by the author. This article reflects only partial results of the research. For more, see Gingras (1996) and Gingras with Carrier (1995). To begin, if the response was ``polls,'' the next question was: ``Is public opinion as reflected in polls dependent upon what is found in the media?'' If the answer was ``something created'' or ``both,'' the next questions were: ``What is the role of the media in the construction of public opinion?'' ``Do you believe public opinion to be the people's opinion?'' Other questions on public opinion (not analyzed in this article) were: ``Who has the largest influence on public opinion: the media, political men and women, polling institutes, experts, lobbies, political parties, others?'' ``What is the role of public opinion in politics or in the decision-making process?'' For the analysis of the responses to these questions, see Gingras with Carrier (1995).
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92). Gram
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Abstract: This paper reports on a study of journalists' conceptions of public opinion. It is based on interviews conducted with 26 journalists working in Montreal, Quebec City, and Ottawa. Public opinion is fraught with ambiguity in daily life as well as scholarly debate. The very same ambiguity was reflected in the journalists' responses. Some of them gave simultaneously contradictory definitions of public opinion, which can be explained by the concept of ``doublethink.'' For the most part, public opinion is not conceived of as the aggregate of individual opinions on a public interest issue. Rather, it is thought of as a social construction and political persuasion plays a major role in its definition.
Résumé: Cet article rend compte d'une recherche sur l'opinion publique menée auprès de vingt-six journalistes de Montréal, Québec et Ottawa. L'opinion publique est un concept profondément marqué par l'ambiguïté à la fois dans l'acception courante et dans les débats savants. Les journalistes n'échappent pas à cette ambiguïté et certains ont donné simultanément des définitions contradictoires de cette notion, ce qui peut s'expliquer par le concept de la "doublepensée". L'opinion publique n'est pas majoritairement perçue comme l'agrégation des opinions individuelles sur un sujet d'intérêt public. Ce qui ressort des entrevues concerne plutôt l'aspect construit de l'opinion publique de même que son rôle dans le phénomène de persuasion politique.
Five months prior to the 1993 federal election, Kim Campbell seemed to be heading towards an easy victory. Public opinion was clearly favourable to her, as polls and political analysts indicated. It seemed that for the very first time Canadians were on the verge of electing a woman to the highest office in Canada. But as soon as the campaign started, public opinion began reacting negatively to some of her declarations and gestures, which were described as political blunders. The mass media clearly had a major role in turning around public opinion.
Public opinion has been associated with mass communications since the late nineteenth century. Today, despite the quantitative orientation of the last 20 years linking polls to public opinion, the latter is still related to the press in many ways. Public opinion is captured partly or mainly through the press, moulded by it, influenced by it, or plainly created by it. Although the nature of the link between public opinion and the press remains ambiguous, the very existence of this link is incontestable. Because of this association, we decided to conduct a series of interviews with a sample of journalists in order to examine their conception of public opinion.
Public opinion: Ambiguity and symbolism
Although the expression ``public opinion'' is often used by journalists, politicians, and spokespersons for groups, the concept remains fuzzy. Not only is it ambiguous in everyday usage, its meaning is also the subject of scholarly debate. Public opinion may be seen as superficial and fluctuating, or it may be conceived of as deep-seated and slow to change. It may relate to public mood and irrational feelings, or to a more structured or reasoned collective opinion. It can be captured by polls but also manipulated by them. It can be viewed simply as an artifact of polls, having no reality outside of polling data.
The notion of public opinion has been the subject of debate among social scientists for decades. The more than 50 definitions compiled by Childs in 1965 attested to the complexity of the concept. Although public opinion's association with polls gave it a very convenient scientificity from the 1970s onwards, the dispute surrounding its meaning has carried on, as the conflict between French sociologists Bourdieu and Champagne and political scientists from the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques shows.
It is no wonder that this dispute is endless, since public opinion is a notion that symbolizes the gap between different ideological stances and intellectual traditions. The common-sense idea of public opinion concerns a contested belief at the very heart of our democratic system, that is, that the people can govern themselves through rational thinking. The democratic aspiration for ``government by consent'' is necessarily premised on the existence of informed public opinion; in this sense, popular wisdom is synonymous with rational thinking.
The expression public opinion appeals to ``the most cherished common political hope'' that the will of the people will prevail (Edelman, 1977, p. 43) and because it concerns the role of the people within the political system, it symbolizes the gap between different schools of thought. The first one is the liberal positivist school for which public opinion is the aggregate of individual opinions, that is, the dominant opinion on an issue of public interest or a social problem (Yeric & Todd, 1989). This definition is premised on a belief in the implicit capacity of all groups in society to transcend their interests for the benefit of the public good, as if harmony could prevail over divisions. Public opinion as the aggregate of individual opinions refers to consensus or to the majority. It is the idea that every group can govern itself through a collective will, which is the foundation of our system of liberal democracy. For positivist researchers, public opinion may be grasped by polls and other quantitative techniques.
The second definition of public opinion is found in critical theory. It is an imaginary, ideal, and utopian referent that serves essentially as a legitimizing principle for political discourses and actions (Champagne, 1990, authors' translation). More concretely, it is ``the fragmentary result of the public diffusion of speeches made by the political class and the media'' (Échaudemaison, 1989, p. 210, authors' translation). Public opinion, though thought to be so, is not the sum of individual opinions but is constructed by social actors interested in linking their plans to the people's will in order to increase their legitimacy. This perspective rests on a profound intellectual disagreement with the liberal pluralist positivist perspective. Bourdieu's well-known article ``L'opinion publique n'existe pas'' (Bourdieu, 1973) is the main reference point for this dispute, which is based on the belief that polls cannot reflect the mind of the people. A number of reasons make him believe that aggregating individual opinions cannot result in a reasonable measure of an ``average'' opinion. For Bourdieu, polls impose certain questions as the main political issues which really reflect the concerns of the political class. They impose restricted answers that limit what can be thought to be possible. Pollsters refuse to consider the meaning of refusals to answer. And in poll results, the same answer is always interpreted in the same way, although it may be given for different reasons: class ethos, political analysis, fondness for the subject of the interview, and so forth.
Methodology
Twenty-six journalists covering politics in Quebec City, Montreal, and Ottawa were interviewed in 1994. Although our intention was to interview journalists from all mainstream newspapers, we were not able to do so because Quebecor journalists were unavailable when interviews were held. Because we wanted to include journalists from all newspapers in which politics is considered important (Le Devoir [Montreal], Le Soleil [Quebec City], Le Droit [Ottawa], La Presse [Montreal], The Gazette [Montreal], and The Globe and Mail), journalists from the press are more numerous than those from radio and television (16 out of 26). However, this is probably a more or less reliable representation of the overall distribution of political journalists between the press and radio and television. Among our interviewees are editorial writers and columnists (5), press reporters (11, including parliamentary reporters from the Quebec Assemblée nationale [6] and the House of Commons [4], and a local political reporter [1]), television and radio hosts (6), public affairs television reporters (3), and 1 journalist who does both radio shows and editorial writing. Although the interviews were conducted in French, they nonetheless include four journalists (among them two columnists/editorial writers) from the English-language press (The Gazette [Montreal] and The Globe and Mail).
Seven journalists have less than 10 years of experience, 10 have between 10 and 20 years of experience, and 9 have more than 20 years (one has 35). Eleven women and 15 men participated in the study. The interviews were carried out between January 19 and March 11, 1994. Most of them lasted 70 to 90 minutes. They were recorded and transcribed.
Finally, while such a qualitative research approach does not claim to be representative, it does shed light on how public opinion is viewed by a group of people who must consider it on a regular basis in their work.
Journalists' views of public opinion
Given the ambiguity of the common-sense notion of public opinion and the intellectual debate about the concept, we decided to give our interviewees the two main definitions and ask that they react to them. The question asked was: ``In social sciences, there are two main definitions of public opinion. The first one is what is measured by polls and the second one is that public opinion is something created by a series of social actors like pollsters, social movements, lobbies, and experts. What do you think about this?'' We then had a series of questions designed to have them give us more details.
We thought it was important to go beyond the vagueness of the idea as early as possible. Thus, the research was designed to identify where the journalists are situated in relation to constructivist versus positivist perspectives on media and politics.
Since the late 1970s, considerable research in the sociology of journalism has presented media practice as a construction (Fishman, 1980; Gans, 1979; Hackett, 1991; Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978; Tuchman, 1980), be it the result of organizational routines, journalists' ideology, or power relations in society. This idea has pervaded the journalistic culture and we thought it could have some bearing on journalists' ideas of public opinion. They could then view public opinion as a construction.
For all journalists, public opinion is a vague idea and our desire to go beyond this vagueness by giving them the two definitions right at the beginning of the interview did not turn out as expected. Faced with two precise definitions, 15 refused to choose. For 13, both of the definitions apply. Two interviewees vigorously cross-examined the interviewer. The different groups of journalists (press, radio, television, or editorial writers, parliamentary reporters, etc.) show no difference whatsoever in their responses. The work setting (Quebec Assemblée nationale, House of Commons, etc.) did not have any influence on the way journalists perceive public opinion.
For a majority of journalists, public opinion is not merely an aggregate of individual opinions. Only five of them referred to public opinion as such. For all other journalists, public opinion is a much more complex notion, and they gave multiple responses to explain it.
First and foremost, public opinion is thought of by a majority as a permanent link between the media and the people and its description borrows from chemistry or physics. It is described as a ``direct current'' between what people think and what is found in the media, a ``fusion,'' a ``chain reaction,'' and a potential ``chemical reaction.'' Public opinion seemed very elusive to some, who described it as ``what comes out of all media praxis, mediatization, of life in society, as if it were a totality, a cake, a magma, a movement, something difficult to define.''
Indecision concerning public opinion has resulted in both a debate over its very existence and in the multiplicity of meanings that have been given to it. Four journalists openly questioned the actual existence of public opinion. They displayed scepticism and distrust, albeit with humour. A radio host said: ``This notion is a trap. It is used for very basic political and electoral reasons. Does public opinion exist? I am not sure, I don't know if it has any usefulness.... When we hear `public opinion' we should turn off the television.'' A parliamentary reporter said: ``Public opinion is like an animal, like the monster under my son's bed.''
Multiplicity of meanings by each interviewee was more frequent. Seventeen journalists gave multiple definitions of public opinion that were not always coherent. This ambiguity is not so surprising since public opinion is a political expression that symbolizes the role of the people vis-à-vis the government and there are at least two competing visions of this role. The liberal version of public opinion refers to the fundamental role played by the people within a democracy and a strong belief in our system of representative democracy, while the critical version refers to the construction of a public discourse by social actors who are defending their interests, a discourse that may be far removed from the will of the people. This ambiguity reflects the nature of political language, designed to express power relations and to play a part in their construction (Bourdieu, 1987; Corcoran, 1990; Edelman, 1971; Shapiro, 1981).
The constructivist perspective of media practice has indeed pervaded journalistic culture. Eighteen out of the 26 interviewees view public opinion as being partly constructed by social actors (they have no common characteristics nor do the eight others). Their perceptions of public opinion are based on two main ideas. The first is that the construction of public opinion by social actors refers to their manipulation of individual opinions. From this perspective, people obtain information from some social actors who are able to control the public debate and present public policy in a way that favours their interests. According to one public affairs television journalist:
Public opinion is clearly manipulated because people are only partially informed... we divide information and it is then easier to manipulate people's opinion on all small aspects.... People never get the big picture. Take the Gulf War, which is probably the best example of how public opinion could be influenced. You give just a bit of information, there is only one discourse, creation of images, and then there is a poll that says: ``yes, the people agree with Canada's intervention in the war.''
The second idea refers to the similarity between public opinion and public debate. The public position of social actors who have access to the public space is mistaken for the people's opinion on an issue. A parliamentary reporter explained that public opinion is what opinion leaders say publicly, that is, political men and women, polling institutes, media, social movements, lobbies, experts, and editorial writers. According to him and to a good number of interviewees, there are approximately 50 people in Quebec whose opinion is regularly sought when decisions are made. Their opinions fill the newspapers and are taken to be the opinion of the people.
There are basic differences between these two representations of public opinion, each founded on different reasoning, but some journalists defended both conceptions. The first one refers to manipulation, that is, the mind of the people is influenced by social actors' discourse. The second one does not have any link with the people's mind and is simply the public discourse of the social actors. (No one ever said that the public discourse could be the people's mind. Such a ``perfect representation'' would be highly doubtful.) To say that public opinion is both would be contradictory since it means that public opinion is and is not simultaneously the mind of the people.
Contradiction and doublethink
The contradictory assertions of some journalists should be considered. Using semi-structured interviews allowed us to examine the line of argument of each journalist by studying both his/her formal definitions of public opinion (usually fuzzy) and examples of the building of public opinion.
The ambiguities of some journalists were not only noted by the interviewer and the researcher; some interviewees were conscious of having contradictory beliefs. These are not faults in reasoning due to an inability to articulate their thinking. On the contrary, ambiguities were often expressed by people who elaborate complex ideas and understand the political stakes in the situations they describe.
Those ambiguities can be compared to George Orwell's ``doublethink,'' that is, holding two contradictory opinions simultaneously, being aware of it, and believing in both.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing to be contradictory and believing in both of them... to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.... (Orwell, 1950, p. 186)
This quotation from Orwell leads us to believe that people often hold consciously contradictory views. But political beliefs and adhesion, far from being rational and simple, are the result of both rational thinking and emotions. Political cognitive processes are partly unconscious. Doublethink is thus a conscious or unconscious adhesion to inconsistent beliefs. According to Green (1987), doublethink is a mental process that exists in free societies like the United States. We believe it to be a very frequent process in politics.
Doublethink should be distinguished from doubletalk, the first being the cognitive process and the second referring to ambiguities and contradictions of political language. While doublethink is conscious or unconscious and does not include intent, doubletalk is usually purposeful and deceitful.
Some authors have reflected on doubletalk with different expressions. Jamieson's (1992) doublemessage, Kertzer's ``joining together of opposites'' (1988, pp. 69-70), and Edelman's (1988) inversions of the value hierarchies all focus on the use of ambiguities in political language and the many concurrent meanings of words.
While doublethink is up to a certain degree a frequent psychological process, doubletalk fosters it greatly. Ideological incoherence is made a normal feature of political life. The availability of two patterns of explanations based on different reasoning permits social adjustment (Edelman, 1977) because it is not necessary to choose between conflicting views. Ideological incoherence is seen in the ambiguity of political language that serves very specific aims. ``Masters of persuasion use dual codes either to mystify one audience while seducing another or to convey meanings that for varying reasons could not be made explicit'' (Jamieson, 1992, p. 84).
Moreover, politicians' ideological incoherence allows the existence of large gaps between their action and discourse. According to Kertzer, this is ``one of the most powerful tools politicians have for placing otherwise unpopular political action under a symbolic rubric around which people can rally'' (Kertzer, 1988, pp. 69-70). Murray Edelman also relates the hiatus between discourse and action to the pursuit of consent: ``Political language can win or maintain public support or acquiescence in the face of other actions that violate moral qualms and typically does so by denying the premises on which such actions are based while retaining traces of the premises'' (Edelman, 1988, pp. 115-116).
Doublethink and doubletalk are not widely known in political sociology, since they run counter to the dominant rational perspective in the social sciences. They demonstrate the role of political language in the functioning of the political system, since political struggles are largely struggles involving the meaning of words. The common understanding of public opinion refers to the representation of the role of the population within our democracy. Because the people are the supreme legitimate authority, public opinion is an ``essential belief in the symbolic universe of liberal societies'' (Padioleau, 1980, p. 27, authors' translation). Thus, political language creates political realities or beliefs. To evoke public opinion is to have the sovereign people come to light before the political system. For critical researchers, the common meaning of public opinion is merely the public discourse of social actors disguised as the popular will or general interest.
How can public opinion be conceived of as doublethink? It is the idea of public opinion as both the mind of the people and a social actor's construction. For example, a press reporter explained that ``public opinion is the aggregate of individual opinions influenced by those who have interests to defend.'' Moreover, he believes that it is constructed by social actors and might not be related to the mind of the people. In reference to the federal sovereigntist party in Ottawa, he said: ``The Bloc Quebecois says: `Quebec thinks such and such.' Quebec doesn't think as such! Groups work for unanimity on an issue or a cause, and then it becomes `Quebec.' [Public opinion] is the result of the targeted action of groups that have interests to defend and use all available means to do it.''
Doublethink is particularly well expressed in an editorial writer's description of public opinion on the proposed move of the university-affiliated Hôtel-Dieu hospital from downtown Montreal to a suburb, Rivière-des-Prairies. She explained at length and with a flurry of details the work of lobby groups and their success in imposing their views during the public debate. The opponents had created a strategy to prevent the move. An interest group claimed they represented Montreal, succeeded in building a coalition, obtained data, and attacked the Health Minister. The debate focused on the number of beds needed in each region, each side having its own experts and armed with statistics. ``Public opinion took side with the opponents.... Public opinion is difficult to grasp. Some people are spokespersons for public opinion, they are leaders representing the Chamber of Commerce, the medical community, and academics. Public opinion was clear, against the move.''
The interviewer then restated the first interview question, using different words: ``Is public opinion what people think or is it created by social actors?''
It is the second one... if lobbies and the media had not been interested in this issue in the first place, nobody would have known anything. At one point, a social actor realizes something is going on, he alerts the media, then there is a coalition of groups that react against a politician's gesture, and concerned people get into the conflict.
The interviewer then asked the editorial writer if there had been a social construction of public opinion in this case. She believed so, and added: ``Individually, people didn't even know that the hospital was supposed to be moved. People didn't know that, and they didn't care!'' The social construction of public opinion was clear to this journalist. Nonetheless, she also said: ``I felt public opinion around me, in the letter-to-the-editor pages, in the people's calls to radio shows....''
To believe that public opinion is both a construction by social actors and the mind of the people, without any idea that there has been manipulation or any thought about the perfect representation of the people by groups, is indeed doublethink.
Other issues were described in a similar fashion with doublethink. The most striking example concerns the very existence of public opinion. A radio host said that public opinion was ``fluid'' and echoed Pierre Bourdieu's questioning of the existence of public opinion: ``When I use the expression `public opinion,' it is usually to say to a minister: `according to public opinion, you...' I believe he is going to step in. I do not think it is a real notion. I would never say such a thing to [Claude] Ryan because he has been a journalist for a long enough time to know that it does not exist.''
About five minutes later, he added: ``In spite of what I just said, if you listen to people's calls to radio shows and read letters to the editor, you still get a certain idea of public opinion.'' For this radio host, public opinion simultaneously does not exist and could be apprehended.
Opinions and persuasion
The constructivist perspective on public opinion shared by most journalists has an impact on their understanding of political persuasion. This issue was a dominant theme of the interviews as influences on public opinion or its construction were discussed.
According to 21 journalists, public opinion is not at all or not merely the sum of individual opinions of an issue. Thus, persuasion must be understood using sociological or political concepts and not psychological ones. Public opinion was referred to in terms of social cohesion, and therefore expressions like ``ideology'' and ``ideological hegemony'' were used by some interviewees.
The association of public opinion with ideology, that is, a set of values, interests, and action orientations (Lecomte & Denni, 1992), gives the former a form of stability or slow evolution. Journalists for whom public opinion is conceived of as an ideology use such expressions as: stable opinion current, slow opinion trends, extraordinary weight of the memory, common heritage, and ways of thinking.
Public opinion is even associated with ideological hegemony, an expression coined by Antonio Gramsci meaning ``the supremacy a given social group obtained by virtue of its ability to be both `dominant' and `leading' '' (Golding, 1992, p. 106). Hegemony implies that persuasion plays a major role in the governance of a society, founded on the consent of groups that are subjectively constituted. Thus the importance of the discursive terrain, ``a terrain that entailed a variety of effective power relations, limits, and possibilities'' (Golding, 1992, p. 108).
A parliamentary reporter used the word hegemony to explain that dominant social actors try to create public opinion that is favourable to their economic interests, thus associating domination with a leadership of ideas. These social actors use very specific strategies: they promote their special interests by presenting them as public interest and as the ideal way to solve public policy problems. He referred to the example of deficit reduction, which became desperately urgent at the very moment social program budgets were being called into question. According to him, the sudden growth in importance of deficit reduction was generated by the elites' desire to cut social programs and was intentionally targeted as the main reason for the lack of control over public funds. To change public opinion, conceived of as ideology, this parliamentary reporter stated that dominant social actors can create panic over a public issue and then propose a solution that corresponds to their interests. From this perspective, it can be said that the solution exists prior to the problem, although construction of the problem and solution are not absolute. Thus, the presumed extent of the problem varies according to the urgency of reaching the objectives that were artificially attached to it. The creation of public opinion on deficit reduction is thus perceived as the pursuit of consent, a prerequisite for peaceful and legitimate domination.
The expression ``hegemony'' was not widely known by the interviewees but its reality has been expressed by two thirds of our interviewees. Public opinion has been described as a tool for manufacturing consent, attracting support, justifying, and legitimizing. Social actors pepper their texts and speeches with references to public opinion because popular legitimacy is crucial for the spreading of ideas. Thus, public opinion ``refers to a method of influencing popular demands, not necessarily of reflecting them'' (Edelman, 1977, p. 55). A radio host echoed this idea: ``It is in the interest of all social actors to use public opinion, to evoke unanimity concerning their plans in order to increase their legitimacy. It is a political notion that is neither scientific nor sociological, it is an active notion, a voluntarist one. People who use it 2 need the public to legitimize their action.''
Evoking public opinion influences individual opinions. Belief that the people support a political project can mobilize additional support, as research on the ``bandwagon effect'' has demonstrated (Cloutier, Nadeau, & Guay, 1989).
In addition to hegemony, the concepts of ``ideological state apparatus'' and ``primary definers,'' which address our journalists' concerns about political persuasion, can be explained. Critical theorists use the notion of ideological state apparatus or ideological apparatus for describing the role of private or public organizations that disseminate the dominant ideology, an expression coined by French philosopher Louis Althusser. This idea was expressed by eight journalists (among them three television hosts and one television reporter) who were conscious of their difficulty in transmitting ideas that are outside the mainstream. The expression ``ideological state apparatus'' was not used, but its meaning was clearly referred to. A television host said: ``there is a natural and standard way of conducting interviews'' that prevents us from understanding marginal values and underground ways of living. The actual experiences of welfare recipients, of marginal artists, or of people living on food banks are difficult to grasp. She continued: ``some marginal artists feel annihilated by us. Their thought is so different that when we try to transmit their ideas, we betray them.''
Another television host explained that shows on welfare or poor people are being made as if these people were living very far away ``like the Afrikaners or the Bosnians. We look at them from the outside, without understanding the intimate and intrinsic phenomenon. And we analyze, we look at epiphenomena instead of studying real causes. We analyze the epiphenomenon of the food bank that now needs 300 baskets and needed only 30 a while ago.''
A young press reporter described his media as an ideological apparatus:
I am aware of working in an institution--the media--that helps create and transmit some groups' opinions. This institution works in concert with others. I am critical of this institution and of others that claim to transmit public opinion, that claim to talk in the name of the people....[I]t is a logic of power, of money.... I do not wish to relay the ideas of pressure groups daily. The media should stop functioning ideologically and stupidly while pretending to be the watchdog of democracy.
Hegemony implies the existence of a dominant scheme of interpretation for events. Stuart Hall has coined the expression ``primary definers'' for people or social actors who define events in the first place and impose their views during the public debate. Those are usually the people who govern, do business, and are part of elite circles (Hall et al., 1978, p. 59). Our interviewees expressed a similar idea when describing the building of public opinion on some issues. The pursuit of consent in the issue of the most recent pharmaceutical patent law is worth describing.
One editorial writer explained that the pharmaceutical lobby succeeded in having a lawpassed by the House of Commons. First of all, they gained access to some ministers. But they also tried to create favourable public opinion on this issue:
[Someone I know] works for [a public affairs show] and she did a report on pharmaceutical patents. She got a strategic document [from the industry] that said: ``this is how we are going to manipulate public opinion.''... It was actually written in black and white ``These are the arguments we are going to use: the price of medicine will not increase.'' Sometimes, we are a bit naive, we do not realize how these people work for their interests.
This primary definition of the impact of the pharmaceutical law--no increase in the price of medicine--was then imposed as the main focus in the public debate.
Opinions and polls
Public opinion is commonly associated with polls. But this link was severely put into question by our interviewees. The only mention of polls by the interviewer was made at the very beginning of the interview. Only two interviewees decided then to express briefly their opinion on polls, and all other discussions on this issue were initiated later by the interviewees.
Overall, 24 out of 26 journalists expressed their views on polls. The reliance on polls was rather limited with only 3 believing they reflected the people's opinion. Nine were ambivalent and 12 were very critical. The lines of argument of the ambivalent and the critical were similar. What distinguishes the former from the latter is a belief that in spite of their flaws, somehow, without being able to explain how or why, polls still reflect to a small extent the people's opinion. For example, a columnist explained in the same breath that ``polls measure quite well what people think'' and that ``they are manipulated,'' providing another example of doublethink.
Criticisms of almost all aspects of polls were expressed, from the formulation of questions to the interpretation of results by the press. The most frequent comment concerned the fallacious character of polls. Many examples were given of deceitful polls, such as the one carried out for the St-Bonaventure provincial by-election in 1994, the ones that predicted financial success for The Montreal Daily News and Le Matin, and the ones made during the Charlottetown discussions.
A parliamentary reporter said politicians seem to forget that people answer nicely and virtuously to pollsters, but act differently in real life. The fact that lies are never dealt with in poll results is a significant flaw. She also said that polls are a ``tautological method,'' meaning questions and answers address issues that support the concerns of the political class rather than being designed to find out what people think about an issue. Giving an example of the combination of these two, she explained:
When politicians read the polls, they inevitably want to find what they are looking for. The Conservatives were convinced last fall [1993] that Canadians really wanted to reduce the deficit, they had polls... they listened to their focus groups. They asked if it was important to take care of the deficit....Of course, I too believe that it is important not to drink too much wine, but if there is a bottle on the table, I am going to drink some....
For five journalists, polls are also deceitful because they oversimplify, limit, level down present everything in two dimensions while reality has three. A radio host exclaimed: ``I can't believe there is someone stupid enough to believe there are polls sophisticated enough to capture public opinion.''
Scepticism towards polls also comes from the fact that they are tools for political action (for six journalists) and serve to manipulate (for three others). Social actors use polls to make believe there is wide public support for their ideas or projects. An editorial writer told us: ``I am sure there are people who are experts at inventing; what polls could we carry out to give us some advantage?'' This idea was expressed in many ways, for example, a radio host said, ``Just tell me the answer you want, I am going to write the question.'' He was proud to say that his view on the matter had been corroborated by prominent Université de Montréal pollsters.
Five journalists contested the idea that everybody is supposed to have an opinion, in opposition to the ``common sense'' that links wit and opinion, as one television host did: ``the people are intelligent so they have an opinion.'' Among these five interviewees, some explained that refusals to answer have a real meaning that is never addressed in poll results. A press reporter said: ``In a poll showing the Liberals and the Péquistes neck and neck, the real news was that a third of respondents were undecided.'' Some are convinced that in certain circumstances, people know nothing about an issue but answer nevertheless. Those concerns echo Pierre Bourdieu's argument that not everyone has an opinion. Polls frequently ask people to say something about issues they have never heard of. Furthermore, analysis of refusals to answer (something pollsters never do) sheds light on how people produce an opinion, that is, according to different methods, whether a political analysis, ethical concern, fondness, and so forth.
Lastly, 16 journalists expressed their view on the impact of polls. Thirteen were convinced that polls have an impact, either on people, on politicians, or on the way the media cover an issue. Polls can be deceitful and manipulated yet nevertheless be compelling in the public debate. Thus, according to a radio host, ``a poll can create a false movement of opinion that has a real impact.''
Conclusion
The interviews with 26 journalists clearly indicate that they have a very vague idea of public opinion and some even have contradictory views. This does not prevent them from using this expression frequently. Precision could not be attained in the description of public opinion by our interviewees, but we nonetheless obtained a panorama of how public opinion takes shape. For most of them, it is being mainly constructed by social actors, including the media. This idea refers to the manipulation of individual opinions, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the social actors' public discourse or simply the public debate. In one case or the other, the media play a compelling role in transmitting social actors' views.
The ambiguity of public opinion and the contradictory definitions that were given can be explained by the notion of doublethink. This phenomenon sheds light on the ideological incoherence existing in political life. When action and discourse do not have to be concordant, the pursuit of consent is not based on actual public policy or on political action, but on a representation of those policies and actions. The concept of public opinion underscores the importance of persuasion in governance.
Hence, although the common-sense notion of public opinion seems to mean ``the people,'' a close examination of the concept reveals a different definition. For 21 journalists, public opinion was described more as an issue than as a political force. It is not the autonomy or strength of public opinion that is put forward but rather its referential aspect. There is no discussion about the will or action of public opinion, but rather the issue is how it is used. Political figures are obsessed with public opinion, fearful that their initiatives might not please what is thought to be public opinion. Social actors use public opinion as an indicator when presenting their ideas, developing their actions, or publicizing their plans. Most journalists were conscious of being in the midst of the construction of public opinion on a daily basis.
Could public opinion survive without mass communication? It certainly needs a public sphere to exist, since it deals with representation. Ideas, images, and words are contemporary tools for the governance of most democratic societies. Mass communication transmits them, thus playing a major role in the polity.
Although this study does not claim to be representative, we can say that our interviewees have shown that their daily work involves transmitting ideas that can have an impact not only on the way we perceive the world but also on political dealings and thus on power relations. This is certainly a big step away from the usual description of journalist as ``witness.'' 1 Jean-Pierre Carrier conducted the interviews and commented on earlier versions of this paper. I also would like to thank Catherine London as well as the anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms. Gabriel Tarde linked public opinion to the construction of a public by the press that homogenizes local opinions (previously divided, diverse, and unknown to each other) and to new forms of collective action such as demonstrations (Champagne, 1990). In 1922, Walter Lippmann conceived of the mass media as the source of images that make up our pseudo-environment: ``the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations.... The analyst of public opinion must begin then, by recognizing the triangular relationship between the scene of action, the human picture of that scene, and the human response to that picture working itself out upon the scene of action'' (Lippmann, 1922, pp. 16-17). Patrick Champagne explains that while political scientists claim they analyze public opinion when commenting on polls, they are actually part of the political game. See Champagne, 1990, chap. 2. See the translated article in Mattelart & Siegelaub (1979). It was easier to have parliamentary reporters from the Quebec Assemblée nationale than from the House of Commons participate since the research was conducted from Université Laval, near Quebec City. All quotations were translated by the author. This article reflects only partial results of the research. For more, see Gingras (1996) and Gingras with Carrier (1995). To begin, if the response was ``polls,'' the next question was: ``Is public opinion as reflected in polls dependent upon what is found in the media?'' If the answer was ``something created'' or ``both,'' the next questions were: ``What is the role of the media in the construction of public opinion?'' ``Do you believe public opinion to be the people's opinion?'' Other questions on public opinion (not analyzed in this article) were: ``Who has the largest influence on public opinion: the media, political men and women, polling institutes, experts, lobbies, political parties, others?'' ``What is the role of public opinion in politics or in the decision-making process?'' For the analysis of the responses to these questions, see Gingras with Carrier (1995).
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O recenzie pentru opinie publica
“O ANALIZǍ A RATEI DE RǍSPUNS ÎN ANCHETELE DE OPINIE NAŢIONALE”
Un articol de MIRCEA COMŞA
- RECENZIE-
Materialul prezentat este un articol apărut în “Revista de Sociologie Românească”numarul 3-4,2002,p.1-32(editată de Asociaţia Română de Sociologie,Universitatea Bucureşti,Facultatea de Sociologie şi Asistenţa Socială şi Institutul Social Român)cu titlul “O analiză a ratei de răspuns în anchetele de opinie naţionale”semnat de Mircea Comşa.Autorul face o scurată prezentare a problemei pe care o tratează şi anume faptul că articolul are la bază analiza datelor în ceea ce priveşte rata de raspuns la nivelul unor anchete de opinie din România şi factoriI care o determină.Încă din primele rânduri sunt identificaţi termenii şi datele folosite în acest articol şi anume cele patru categorii de factori identificaţI de autor”caracteristicile subiecţilor,ale operatorilor de interviu,ale cerecetării şi contextul/mediul”(p.1),iar pentru analiză au fost folosite date culese în cadrul mai multor anchete de opinie realizate în perioada 2000-2002 de institutul Metro Media Transilvania.
Mircea Comşa este conferenţiar doctor la Facultatea de Sociologie şi Asistentă Scială a Universităţii Babeş Bolyai din Cluj Napoca,director de cercetare la Metro Media Transilvania,doctor în socilogie,autor şi coautor de studii,articole şi lucrări de specialitate bine cunoscute şi apreciate în domeniu,dintre care menţionam:Sondajele de opinie,Mod de utilizare(2001),Alegeri generale 2004,O perspectivă sociologică(2005) şi Viaţa socială în România urbană(2006).
În partea de introducere a articolului este enunţată tema dezbaterii şi anume explorarea stării actuale a ratei de răspuns la nivelul anchetelor de opinie din România(sintagmă care dă şi titlul articolului)
Materialul este structurat în 15 părti în care se dezbate subiectul ales,o secţiune cu anexe în care autorul prezintă toate datele privind caracteristicile operatorului de interviu,caracteristicile subiectului,raportul metodologic şi chestionarul aplicat operatorilor de interviu,în final bibliografia..
Abordând acest subiect în acest articol autorul se adresează în mod special cunoscătorilor în domeniu,sutenţilor la sociologie,la stiinţe ale comunicării,jurnalism dar şi omului obişnuit care are ocazia să îl citească.Având în vedere publicaţia în care apare acest articol îl face să fie mai greu accesibil unui om obisnuit dar la îndemâna studenţilor şi oamenilor de stiinţa.
Prima parte tratează “problema de cerectare”şi anume o propunere a cadrului de analiză a răspunsurilor şi non-răspunsurilor subiecţilor în anchetele de opinie.De fapt problema se înscie într-o tema mai largă cea a erorilor de anchetă date de mecanismul de influenţă a răspunsurilor.Termenii folosiţi în dezbatere problemei sunt explicaţi în notele de subsol pentru a nu se întelege eronat subiectul dezbatut.
Cea de-a doau parte denumită “designul cercetării”prezintă o analiză pe dimensiunile de chestionar ,temă şi organizare a cercetării realizate.Pentru situaţia de interviu este prezentată o reprezentare a autorilor “Ghiglione şi Matalor,198:14-146,apud Mircea Comşa,p.2”,,despre distorsionarea eşantionului apelează la autorii Couper şi Groves(1995)erorile datorate operatorilor de interviu sunt puse în vedere de părerea autorilor români Rotariu şi Iluţ(1997:112-114) ,nici din acest fragment nu lipsesc notele de subsol care vin în sprijinul cititorului.
“Selecţia subiecţilor în cadrul anchetelor de opinie din România” evidenţiază modul de eşantionare a subiecţilor.Subiecţii sunt aleşi din listele electorale,prezentate într-un tabl(p.7),la pagina şase este realizată o figură ce reprezintă o schiţa a mecanismelor posibile de influenţă a răspunsurilor subiecţilor în anchetele de opinie.Tot sub formă de table sunt prezentate şi locul de unde au fost găsite listele electorale,actualizarea acestora(p.7)dificultatea obţinerii listelor electorale(p.8).Ca o concluzie a acestui paragraf autorul sugerează înfiinţarea unui “birou electoral permanent”(p.8)
Următorul subcapitol “rata de răspuns în anchetele naţionale” porneşte cu o întrebare la care autorul aduce argumente pentru a afla un răspuns concret şi anume se varbeşte de “rata de înlocuire sau de rata de răspuns?”
“Sursa datelor” evidenţiază detele cu care se operează în cadrul acestui articol.Şi anume ele provin din şapte cercetări realizate de catre Metro Media Transilvania în perioada 2000-2002,mai exacat trei cercetări realizate în toamna anului 2000 cu ocazia alegerilor electorale generale,barometrele de opinie publică din mai 2000,şi mai 2001,şi octombrie 2002,barometrul relaţiilor etnice din octombrie 2002..
“Rata de răspuns-satrea actuală”sunt menţionate date din cadrul programului NES(Natonal Election Studies)ce cuprind cerceătri politice din SUA..
“Factorii care influenţează rata de răspuns”cuprinde o prezentare succintă a acestora,şi anume faptul că factorii care influenţaează rata de răspuns tin de caractersticile operatorilor,de cele ale subicţilor,de context şi de specificul cercetării.
Următoarele doua paragrafe tratează aparte problema caracteristicilor de interviu şi a cercetării.
“Mediul şi caracteristicile respondenţilor” are ca o scurtă concluzionare,faptul că selecţia orientată a operatorilor este justificată ,diferenţa dintre ratele de răpuns dupa gen din urban mare fiind mai mare decât aceeaşi diferenţă dar în rural.
“Influenţa tipurilor de factori asupra ratei de răspuns”se consideră ca cea mai mare influenţă asupra ratei de răspuns o au variabilele legate de cadrul de eşantionare şi de circumstanţele subiectului.În general listele de eşntionare neactualizate şi mobilitatea ridicată a subiecţilor duc la rate de răspuns scazute,dupa cum relateză autorul(p.19).
O altă problemă o constituie şi “motivele nerealizării interviurilor”aici autorul punctează câteva dintre cauze printre care enumerăm:absenţa subiectului după trei vizite,refuzul acestuia,decedat,mutat,plecat din localitate,o adresă greşită.Şi la această problemă există o interpretare a datelor sub forma unui tabel prezentat la pagina 20.
“Evoluţia ratei de răspuns” reprezintă unul dintre aspectele importante în contextul cercetării selective.
Utimul subiect discutat este “influenţa înlocuirilor asupra datelor de anchetă”în urma dezbaterii acestui subiect se ajunge la concluzia că diferenţele care exista între tipurile de intervievat nu sunt mari,iar diferenţa care există într-o proporţie relativ ridicată arată faptul că înlocuirile afectează o parte a datelor din anchetă.
În cele din urmă ajunge la ultima parte a articolului şi anume concluzionarea datelor şi ideiilor prezentate.În acest articol a fost expusă starea actuală a ratei de răspuns la niveul unor anchete de opinie din România dar şi fatorii care o determină.Conceptul de “răspunsuri ” este alcătuit din mai mlte faţade :ponderea şi variaţia non-răspunsurilor,tipul de non-răspunsuri,răspunsuuri pe teme specifice,uniformitatea răspunsurilor,răspunsurile subiecţilor.Materialul constituie o analiză şi o elaborare a unui model teoretic de influeţă complexă a “răspunsurilor subiecţilor”.Autorul punctează faptul că dezbaterea acestei teme nu se oprşte aici,urmând ca şi celelelte forme de răspunsuri să fie tratate separat întrun articol viitor.Limitele sunt trasate de lipsa încadrării dimensiunii întro teorie sociologică.
După lecturarea articolului vom deduce concluziile principale ale anlizelor realizate şi anume mărimea ratei de răspuns,factori care influenţează rata de răspuns,evoluţia acesteia în ultimii trei ani,motivaţia şi efectul înlocuirilor asupra datelor de anchetă.
Datele numerice sunt oferite sub formă de procente încadrate în tebele,care au la bază o cercetare concretă,înşiruirea volorilor este urmată de explicarea acestora,pentru a nu oferi un articol inaccesibil şi greu de descifrat,Acest lucru îl recomandă spre lectură dar şi studiu tuturor, categoriilor de cititori
Bibliografie
Comşa,Mircea,Revista de Sociologie Romaneasca, O analiza a ratei de raspuns in anchetele de opinie nationale,3-4/2002,p.1-32
Un articol de MIRCEA COMŞA
- RECENZIE-
Materialul prezentat este un articol apărut în “Revista de Sociologie Românească”numarul 3-4,2002,p.1-32(editată de Asociaţia Română de Sociologie,Universitatea Bucureşti,Facultatea de Sociologie şi Asistenţa Socială şi Institutul Social Român)cu titlul “O analiză a ratei de răspuns în anchetele de opinie naţionale”semnat de Mircea Comşa.Autorul face o scurată prezentare a problemei pe care o tratează şi anume faptul că articolul are la bază analiza datelor în ceea ce priveşte rata de raspuns la nivelul unor anchete de opinie din România şi factoriI care o determină.Încă din primele rânduri sunt identificaţi termenii şi datele folosite în acest articol şi anume cele patru categorii de factori identificaţI de autor”caracteristicile subiecţilor,ale operatorilor de interviu,ale cerecetării şi contextul/mediul”(p.1),iar pentru analiză au fost folosite date culese în cadrul mai multor anchete de opinie realizate în perioada 2000-2002 de institutul Metro Media Transilvania.
Mircea Comşa este conferenţiar doctor la Facultatea de Sociologie şi Asistentă Scială a Universităţii Babeş Bolyai din Cluj Napoca,director de cercetare la Metro Media Transilvania,doctor în socilogie,autor şi coautor de studii,articole şi lucrări de specialitate bine cunoscute şi apreciate în domeniu,dintre care menţionam:Sondajele de opinie,Mod de utilizare(2001),Alegeri generale 2004,O perspectivă sociologică(2005) şi Viaţa socială în România urbană(2006).
În partea de introducere a articolului este enunţată tema dezbaterii şi anume explorarea stării actuale a ratei de răspuns la nivelul anchetelor de opinie din România(sintagmă care dă şi titlul articolului)
Materialul este structurat în 15 părti în care se dezbate subiectul ales,o secţiune cu anexe în care autorul prezintă toate datele privind caracteristicile operatorului de interviu,caracteristicile subiectului,raportul metodologic şi chestionarul aplicat operatorilor de interviu,în final bibliografia..
Abordând acest subiect în acest articol autorul se adresează în mod special cunoscătorilor în domeniu,sutenţilor la sociologie,la stiinţe ale comunicării,jurnalism dar şi omului obişnuit care are ocazia să îl citească.Având în vedere publicaţia în care apare acest articol îl face să fie mai greu accesibil unui om obisnuit dar la îndemâna studenţilor şi oamenilor de stiinţa.
Prima parte tratează “problema de cerectare”şi anume o propunere a cadrului de analiză a răspunsurilor şi non-răspunsurilor subiecţilor în anchetele de opinie.De fapt problema se înscie într-o tema mai largă cea a erorilor de anchetă date de mecanismul de influenţă a răspunsurilor.Termenii folosiţi în dezbatere problemei sunt explicaţi în notele de subsol pentru a nu se întelege eronat subiectul dezbatut.
Cea de-a doau parte denumită “designul cercetării”prezintă o analiză pe dimensiunile de chestionar ,temă şi organizare a cercetării realizate.Pentru situaţia de interviu este prezentată o reprezentare a autorilor “Ghiglione şi Matalor,198:14-146,apud Mircea Comşa,p.2”,,despre distorsionarea eşantionului apelează la autorii Couper şi Groves(1995)erorile datorate operatorilor de interviu sunt puse în vedere de părerea autorilor români Rotariu şi Iluţ(1997:112-114) ,nici din acest fragment nu lipsesc notele de subsol care vin în sprijinul cititorului.
“Selecţia subiecţilor în cadrul anchetelor de opinie din România” evidenţiază modul de eşantionare a subiecţilor.Subiecţii sunt aleşi din listele electorale,prezentate într-un tabl(p.7),la pagina şase este realizată o figură ce reprezintă o schiţa a mecanismelor posibile de influenţă a răspunsurilor subiecţilor în anchetele de opinie.Tot sub formă de table sunt prezentate şi locul de unde au fost găsite listele electorale,actualizarea acestora(p.7)dificultatea obţinerii listelor electorale(p.8).Ca o concluzie a acestui paragraf autorul sugerează înfiinţarea unui “birou electoral permanent”(p.8)
Următorul subcapitol “rata de răspuns în anchetele naţionale” porneşte cu o întrebare la care autorul aduce argumente pentru a afla un răspuns concret şi anume se varbeşte de “rata de înlocuire sau de rata de răspuns?”
“Sursa datelor” evidenţiază detele cu care se operează în cadrul acestui articol.Şi anume ele provin din şapte cercetări realizate de catre Metro Media Transilvania în perioada 2000-2002,mai exacat trei cercetări realizate în toamna anului 2000 cu ocazia alegerilor electorale generale,barometrele de opinie publică din mai 2000,şi mai 2001,şi octombrie 2002,barometrul relaţiilor etnice din octombrie 2002..
“Rata de răspuns-satrea actuală”sunt menţionate date din cadrul programului NES(Natonal Election Studies)ce cuprind cerceătri politice din SUA..
“Factorii care influenţează rata de răspuns”cuprinde o prezentare succintă a acestora,şi anume faptul că factorii care influenţaează rata de răspuns tin de caractersticile operatorilor,de cele ale subicţilor,de context şi de specificul cercetării.
Următoarele doua paragrafe tratează aparte problema caracteristicilor de interviu şi a cercetării.
“Mediul şi caracteristicile respondenţilor” are ca o scurtă concluzionare,faptul că selecţia orientată a operatorilor este justificată ,diferenţa dintre ratele de răpuns dupa gen din urban mare fiind mai mare decât aceeaşi diferenţă dar în rural.
“Influenţa tipurilor de factori asupra ratei de răspuns”se consideră ca cea mai mare influenţă asupra ratei de răspuns o au variabilele legate de cadrul de eşantionare şi de circumstanţele subiectului.În general listele de eşntionare neactualizate şi mobilitatea ridicată a subiecţilor duc la rate de răspuns scazute,dupa cum relateză autorul(p.19).
O altă problemă o constituie şi “motivele nerealizării interviurilor”aici autorul punctează câteva dintre cauze printre care enumerăm:absenţa subiectului după trei vizite,refuzul acestuia,decedat,mutat,plecat din localitate,o adresă greşită.Şi la această problemă există o interpretare a datelor sub forma unui tabel prezentat la pagina 20.
“Evoluţia ratei de răspuns” reprezintă unul dintre aspectele importante în contextul cercetării selective.
Utimul subiect discutat este “influenţa înlocuirilor asupra datelor de anchetă”în urma dezbaterii acestui subiect se ajunge la concluzia că diferenţele care exista între tipurile de intervievat nu sunt mari,iar diferenţa care există într-o proporţie relativ ridicată arată faptul că înlocuirile afectează o parte a datelor din anchetă.
În cele din urmă ajunge la ultima parte a articolului şi anume concluzionarea datelor şi ideiilor prezentate.În acest articol a fost expusă starea actuală a ratei de răspuns la niveul unor anchete de opinie din România dar şi fatorii care o determină.Conceptul de “răspunsuri ” este alcătuit din mai mlte faţade :ponderea şi variaţia non-răspunsurilor,tipul de non-răspunsuri,răspunsuuri pe teme specifice,uniformitatea răspunsurilor,răspunsurile subiecţilor.Materialul constituie o analiză şi o elaborare a unui model teoretic de influeţă complexă a “răspunsurilor subiecţilor”.Autorul punctează faptul că dezbaterea acestei teme nu se oprşte aici,urmând ca şi celelelte forme de răspunsuri să fie tratate separat întrun articol viitor.Limitele sunt trasate de lipsa încadrării dimensiunii întro teorie sociologică.
După lecturarea articolului vom deduce concluziile principale ale anlizelor realizate şi anume mărimea ratei de răspuns,factori care influenţează rata de răspuns,evoluţia acesteia în ultimii trei ani,motivaţia şi efectul înlocuirilor asupra datelor de anchetă.
Datele numerice sunt oferite sub formă de procente încadrate în tebele,care au la bază o cercetare concretă,înşiruirea volorilor este urmată de explicarea acestora,pentru a nu oferi un articol inaccesibil şi greu de descifrat,Acest lucru îl recomandă spre lectură dar şi studiu tuturor, categoriilor de cititori
Bibliografie
Comşa,Mircea,Revista de Sociologie Romaneasca, O analiza a ratei de raspuns in anchetele de opinie nationale,3-4/2002,p.1-32
miercuri, 2 aprilie 2008
Sa nu uitam de facultate....
Si aici cateva materiale de folos......
“ÎN CE MĂSURĂ INFLUENŢEAZĂ DESENELE ANIMATE VIOLENTE DEZVOLTAREA PSIHOLOGICĂ A COPIILOR”
Tema cercetării
Copiii sunt oglinda părinţilor, aşa cum sunt crescuţi aşa se comportă, ei imită comportamentul părinţilor până la o anumită vârstă. Dar ce se poate întâmpla când părinţii nu au timp suficient pe care să îl petreacă alături de copii? Pe cine imită aceştia?Dar ce se întâmplă dacă micuţii sunt uitaţi în faţa micilor ecrane? Prin analogie, ei ar trebui să imite ceea ce văd la televizor. De la acestă idee porneşte şi tema proiectului de cercetare şi anume “În ce măsură influenţează desenele animate violente dezvoltarea psihologică a copiilor?”
Lucrarea de faţă doreşte să sublinieze transformarile de ordin psihologic pe care le suferă copiii, precum şi schimbarea comportamentului în cadrul relaţiilor cu societatea şi gradul de interiorizare al copiilor, cauzate de desenele animate violente. Privitor la această temă s-au mai realizat cercetări atât în România cât şi pe plan internaţional, care au demonstrat faptul că copiii petrec mai mult de 4 ore pe zi în faţa televizorului şi îşi adaptează alimentaţia în funcţie de ceea ce văd în reclamele de la televizor, lucru care a condus la o generaţie de copii cu grave probleme de greutate.
Obiectivul cercetării este de a diminua fenomenul “copiilor crescuţi de televizor“. Ulterior interpretării rezultatelor cercetării în cazul în care concluziile nu sunt satisfăcătoare pot fi determinate unele strategii de combatere a acestui fenomen, iniţierea unor programe şi acţiuni şcolare (grădiniţe). Această lucrare de cercetare îşi propune să descopere care este cauza comportamentului violent al copiilor din ce în ce mai întâlnite atât în grădiniţe cât şi în locurile de joacă şi ce ar trebui să facă părinţii şi societatea pentru a combate acest fenomen
Cadrul teoretic
Poveştile, basmele pe care copiii le ascultau altădată de la părinţi şi bunici au prins treptat viaţa nu numai la teatru dar şi din ce în ce mai des în desenele animate, începând cu “Omuleţul Gopo”, ”Scufiţa Roşie” până la “Pokemon” şi “X-Men”. Evoluţia desenelor animate a devenit din ce în ce mai îngrijorătoare deoarece s-a trecut brusc de la desenele inocente la desene violente. Dacă acum câţiva ani copiii învăţau din desenele animate cum să se comporte civilizat, să iubească natura şi animalele, acum învăţă să se comporte violent şi să mânânce nesănătos.
Cercetarea vine în completarea articolelor si reportajelor prezente în mass-media, şi pe internet. Referitor la această temă, nu au fost scrise foarte multe cărţi identificându-se doar scurte pasaje în câteva cărţi care au ca temă influenţa mass-media. S-au făcut numeroase cercetări pe această temă, un studiu recent realizat de o echipă de la Centrul de Sociologie Urbană şi Regională CURS(2006) a arătat că personajele preferate ale copiilor sunt Tom şi Jerry, serial care potrivit psihologilor este una dintre cele mai violente producţii tv: la fiecare 20 de secunde un personaj este lovit, cade sau suferă un accident (în această categorie sunt incluse şi desene precum “Ciocănitoarea Woody”, ”Looney Tunes”).
În revista Mami este publicat un articol de Oana Maria Popescu, în care se discută despre “hipnoza din desenele animate”.Articolul încearcă să scoată in evidenţă valoarea hipnotică pe care o au desenele animate asupra copiilor, indusă de focalizarea atenţiei.
Un alt studiu realizat de membrii CAN în colaborare cu Centrul de Studii Media a urmărit “Evaluarea reprezentării violenţei în programele de televiziune”. Studiul prezintă rezultatele monitorizării a 11 canale de televiziune si incearca sa traga un semnal de alarmă în ceea ce priveşte conţinutul programelor difuzate de canalele de desene animate Jetix şi Cartoon Network. Concluzia este că programele de desene animate sunt de 7 ori mai violente decât programele de tip ficţional transmise de programele generaliste.
Un articol publicat pe site-ul Bucuria are ca titlu “Televizorul, al treilea părinte”. Articolul face referire la faptul că televizorul face parte din viaţa copiilor încă de la vârsta de 2 ani, influenţându-le atitudinea, limbajul şi comportamentul. Incearcă să atragă atenţiă părinţilor care îşi uită copiii în faţa televizorului şi nu îşi fac timp să explice copiilor ce este bine şi ce nu din ce văd ei la televizor.
În ziarul Cotidianul, într-un scurt articol semnat de Alice Năstase, se discută despre abandonul copiilor în faţa micilor ecrane, pironiţi cu ochii la Cartoon Network sau Jetix. Părinţii găsesc in televizor o dădacă, neluand in seamă efectele negative care unele programe le au asupra celor mici.
În Jurnalul National, în articolul cu titlul “Televizorul - un părinte agresiv” se discută despre generaţia de copii crescută în faţa blocului, cu cheia de gât, care a pierdut teren în faţa generaţiei crescute cu ochii în televizor.
Psihologul Mirela Zivari, din ziarul Libertatea, susţine că desenele animate îi afectează pe micuţi la nivel subliminal, prin accentuarea tendinţelor agresive şi îi sfătuieşte pe părinţi să nu le interzică vizionarea acestor programe, ci dimpotrivă, să îşi facă timp să vizioneze alături de copii aceste programe şi să le explice ceea ce văd.
Ipoteze
O primă ipoteză porneşte de la ideea că desenele animate violente transformă joaca inocentă a copiilor intr-o joaca violenta,este transformatǎ joaca copiilor într-una violentǎ,dacǎ aceştia urmǎresc în mod constant programele de desene animate cu o mare încǎrcǎturǎ de violentǎ.Ei nu se mai joacă cu păpuşi, maşinuţe ci imită personaje din desene animate, care se lovesc, îşi vorbesc urât si zgomotos sau chiar se elimina unul pe celălalt. Cea de-a doua ipoteză îşi propune sa verifice dacă părinţii poartă o vină in schimbarea comportamentului copiilor, dacă ei sunt vinovati când îşi îndeamnă copiii să se uite la desene şi îi cheamă de fiecare dată când începe un nou serial din desenele preferate si dacă ei sunt in măsură să le interzică vizionarea acestor programe.
Operationalizarea conceptelor
Cele mai des folosite concepte atât in definirea temei cercetării cât şi în exprimarea ipotezelor sunt “desene animate” şi “violenţă”. Vom incepe cu definirea acestor concepte după cum urmează: conceptul de “violenţă” are în DEX mai multe înţelesuri-violenta este un act de constrângere, de silire, de forţare; este văzuta ca o însuşire lipsită de stăpânire în vorbe sau fapte, vehementă, furie, întrebuinţarea forţei brutale, agresivitate, duritate şi nestăpânire.
Având în vedere că tema acestei cercetări este “violenţa desenelor animate” ne vom referi la toate explicaţiile acestui termen, deoarece această cercetare îşi propune să urmărească toate formele de violenţă prezente in desenele animate şi întâlnite in comportamentul copiilor. Cel de-al doilea concept “desene animate” este definit ca o înşiruire de desene care reprezintă fazele unei mişcări şi care sunt redate succesiv pe ecran,dând impresia unor fiinţe vii. Cele doua concepe sunt strâns legate pe parcursul acestei cercetări deoarece nu ne vom referi în general la desene animate ci doar la o categorie aparte şi anume desenele animate violente.
Un alt concept care completează paleta cercetării este “dezvoltarea”care este influenţată de cele doua concepte definite mai sus.”Dezvoltarea”este definită in DEX printr-o înşiruire de termeni: acţiunea de a (se) dezvolta şi rezultatul ei; creştere, evoluare; amplificare,care evolueaza sub presiunea factorilor cu care ia contact.
Timpul cercetării şi alegerea metodei
Cercetarea este una calitativă, de tip transversală, ancheta în perioada martie-aprilie 2007 şi se va desfăşura in două grădiniţe şi în două locuri de joacă pentru copii din Bucureşti. Metoda de cercetare aleasă este ancheta sociologică, iar instrumentele cu care se va lucra sunt chestionarul, interviul,focus grupul şi observaţia nedistorsionată. Chestionarul, definit in “Dicţionarul de sociologie” (Zamfir şi Vlăsceanu, 1993, 95), ca reprezentând “o tehnică şi un instrument de investigare constând dintr-un ansamblu de întrebări scrise si eventual imagini, grafice, ordonate logic şi psihologic, care prin administrarea de către operatorii de anchetă sau prin autoadministrare, determină din partea persoanelor anchetate răspunsuri ce urmează a fi înregistrate in scris”.
Focus grupul îmbină caracteristicile interviurilor focalizate cu cele ale interviurilor de grup. David L. Morgan (1996,130) defineşte focus grupurile ca o “tehnică de colectare a datelor prin interacţiune dintre membrii grupului, referitoare la o problema stabilită de către cercetător”. Ultima tehnică de cercetare este observaţia, definită ca fiind o ” percepere sistematică a atitudinilor, comportamentelor şi interacţiunilor actorilor sociali, în momentul manifestării lor, conform unui plan dinainte elaborat şi cu ajutorul unor tehnici specifice de înregistrare” (Dictionar de sociologie, online). ”Observaţia nedistorsionantă(observaţia nestructurată sau externă-după Septimiu Chelcea)constă în utilizarea de aparate tehnice pentru înregistrarea fenomenelor sociale în desfăşurarea lor naturală. Aparatele tehnice sunt ascunse, observatorul este eliminat din scenele sociale şi astfel sunt evitate şi efectele reactive sistematice sau de conformare a subiecţilor la normele dezirabilităţii sociale. Se aplică nu numai pe situaţii sociale naturale, ci şi de laborator (mai ales în jocurile de simulare)(Vlǎsceanu şi Zamfir,Dicţionar de sociologie online). Înregistrarea este precedată de o eşantionare a situaţiilor sociale şi a perioadelor de timp şi este urmată de codificare prin aplicarea tehnicii analizei conţinutului”.
Au fost alese aceste metode de cercetare deoarece subiecţii principali ai cercetării sunt copii cu vârste cuprinse între 3-10 ani. Observaţia şi focus grupul se adresează copiilor, iar chestionarul este destinat părinţilor şi educatorilor din grădiniţe. Astfel lucrul cu copii este uşurat de interviul tip focus grup, discuţia fiind deschisă, interpretată de copii ca o joacă şi răsplătită cu câteva dulciuri pentru a-i stimula pe cei observaţi să răspundă la întrebări. De asemenea, observaţia este relevantă în această cercetare deoarece pe copii nu ii deranjează să îşi schimbe comportamentul sau să se simtă urmăriţi. Se comporta natural in mediul lor obişnuit. Unitatea de analiză a cercetării o va constitui “copilul”, iar sursa datelor cercetării va fi realizată prin centralizarea datelor obţinute în urma interviului tip focus grup şi al observaţiei. Centralizarea datelor în urma completării chestionarului vor fi utile pentru clarificarea celei de-a doua ipoteze.
Eşantionarea
Având in vedere tema cercetării, eşantionul ales îl reprezintă copiii cu vârsta cuprinsă ître 3-10 ani. Pentru realizarea focus grupului a fost nevoie de un număr de 32 de copii, pentru observaţie s-au urmărit un număr variabil de subiecţi în funcţie de zona de observaţie, minim opt persoane (părinţi şi copii) şi maxim cincisprezece persoane. Pentru realizarea chestionarului eşantionul ales îl reprezintă părinţii şi cadrele de învăţământ indiferent de vârsta şi sex într-un număr de maxim 30 de persoane. Au fost alese aceste vârste deoarece reprezintă perioada în care copii interacţionează direct cu societatea, integrându-se in formele preşcolare de învăţământ (grădiniţe) şi a claselor primare (1-4). La vârsta de 3 ani copilul începe să perceapă ce vede la televizor, mai ales in desenele animate. Este o vârsta la care el imită ceea ce vede, nefăcând diferenţa între ce este bine şi ce este rău. Până la vârsta de 10 ani el trece prin mai multe etape ale dezvoltării atât fizice cât si psihice, când rolul cel mai important în educaţie îl au părinţii, apoi educatorii şi învătătorii.
Anchetele şi sondajele de opinie se bazează pe aplicarea modelelor de esantionare probabilistă. Prin urmare metoda de eşantionare folosită este cea probabilistă, dată fiind mărimea prea mică a eşantionului se va folosi metoda de eşantionare probabilistă sistematică(aplicabilă atunci cînd: elementele se succed în mod natural în spaţiul sau timpul social, dispunem de o listare prealabilă a populaţiei şi am formulat decizia privind dimensiunea eşantionului.)
Analiza si interpretarea datelor
În cercetare se vor folosi atât metode de cercetare bazate pe date subiective cât şi pe date obiective .Datele subiective vor fi furnizate prin intermediul interviului de tip focus grup şi parţial de observaţie, având ca scop evaluarea modului in care copii îşi adaptează comportamentul în funcţie de locul de joacă, de persoanele prezente. Se urmăreşte comportamentul lor natural indiferent de situaţie. Pe de alt parte datele obiective vor fi incluse de precizarea vârstei, sexului, descrierii mediului de viaţă. Prima etapa în cercetare va fi aplicarea interviului de tip focus grup in două grădiniţe cu program normal, cu două grupe de copii, cu vârsta cuprinsa intre 3 şi 6 ani. Pentru cealaltă categorie de vârsta, cercetarea va avea loc în două şcoli generale,respectiv pentru subiecţtii cu vârsta cunprinsă între 6 şi 10 ani. În ambele cazuri interviul se va realiza doar sub supravegherea moderatorului, fără alte cadre didactice, pentru a spori gradul de sinceritate in răspunsurile date de subiecţi.
Dupa aceasta se va trece la aplicarea metodei de observaţie care se va desfăşura in două locaţii şi anume două parcuri de joacă pentru copii. Tema de observaţie va fi: “Imit[ copiii personaje din desene animate atunci când se joacă împreună?”. Notiţele se vor lua pe o fişă de observaţie. Pentru o mai bună interpretare a datelor se va folosi şi o camera de luat vederi, pentru a surprinde comportamentul observaţilor. Ultimul va fi aplicat chestionarul care este adresat părinţilor şi cadrelor didactice. În urma centralizării datelor se va realiza un scurt raport al cercetării în care se vor trece sistematic toate datele obţinute. Ultima etapă a cercetării, raportul de cercetare, va conţine explicarea modalităţii de aplicare a cercetării şi concluziile la care a ajuns cercetătorul . In această parte se va arăta dacă ipotezele de la care am pornit au fost verificate, care au şi care nu au nici o valoare de adevăr. Aparent inofensive şi distractive desenele animate difuzate cel mai des pe posturile de televiziune Jetix şi Cartoon Network au o concentrare foarte mare de violenşă care poate avea influenţe negative in dezvoltarea normală a copiilor.
S-a ajuns la concluzia că micuţii petrec in medie 3 ore si jumatate pe zi în faţa televizorului urmărind posturile de desene animate. Copii au început să uite vechile jocuri, imitând personaje si folosind expresii din desenele animate.p Personajele preferate ale copiilor sunt Omul Păianjen, Regele Saman, cei din X-Man, Spioanele şi Maieştrii Pokemon, Dexter,etc. Violenţ de la la televizor nu îl face neapărat violent pe copil, dar îi poate lăsa impresia că violenţa este un fenomen omniprezent. Părinţii sunt cei în măsură să hotărască la ce se pot uita si la ce nu. Însă faptul că ei nu le interzic copiilor vizionarea acestor posturi , ba din potrivă le cumpără jucării asemănătoare cu cele din desene, îi duc cla fast food-uri, înlocuiesc sucurile naturale cu Coca Cola şi le aduc dulciurile pe care acesţia le vad in reclamele TV. Nemâncând sanatos copiii sunt afectaţi fizic, suferind de obezitate care îşi lasă amprenta adânc in sănătatea şi stilul de viaţă al oricărui om, indiferent de vârstă.
Este important ca şi în raportul de cercetare să se indice acele ipoteze care nu s-au putut verifica. În acest fel, alţi cercetători află că anumite ipoteze nu s-au putut verfica prin intermediul unor metode. Acest lucru îi va ajuta şi le va economisi din timpul pe care l-ar fi alocat unei alte cercetări
BIBLIOGRAFIE
1. LAZĂR VLĂSCEANU & CĂTĂLIN ZAMFIR,Dictionar de sociologie, http://www.dictsociologie.netfirms.com/
2 .RUSTI,DOINA , Mesajul subliminal , Categorii: Jurnalism-Mass Media, Ed. Tritonic,Bucureşti,2005
3. M. COZĂRESCU CORINA CACE, LAURA ŞTEFAN, Porţile subconştientului, Ed. ASE, 2003
4. WWW.CURS.RO
5. WWW.CNA.RO
6. WWW.BUCURIA.RO
7. Revista Mami,Articol “Hipnoza pentru copii:desenele animate”,pag. 12,15 Februarie
2007
8. Ziarul Libertatea, Articol “Violenţa din desene îi afectează pe micuţi”,pag. 13, 29 Aprilie 2007
ANEXE
Numele meu este Ivănescu Cătălina şi sunt aici pentru a vă pune câteva intrebări legate de programele de desene animate.O să vă rog să raspundeţi pe rând la fiecare întrebare.Fiecare întrbare va fi rasplătită cu câte o bomboană.
FOCUS GRUP
Focus grupul se va realiza cu patru grupe,împărţite în două categorii: două grupe cu copii cu vârsta cuprinsă între 3 şi 6 ani şi două grupe cu vârsta cuprinsă între 6 şi 10 ani. Fiecare grup este compus dintr-un nr de 8 copii.
Locatia:două grădiniţe cu program normal (interviul se va desfăşura într-una din sălile de joacă ale copiilor), si doua scoli generale.
Durata:între 30 şi 40 de minunte
Tema:”Ce ne place la desenele animate?”
ÎNTREBǍRI
1)Câţi ani aveţi?
2)Ce faceţi când ajungeţi acasă de la grădiniţă?
3)Când deschid televizorul mă uit la….
4)Pe ce programe de televiziune vă uitaţi la desene animate?
5)La ce desene animate vă uitaţi în fiecare zi?
6)Desenele mele preferate sunt….
7)Dintre toţi eroii din desenele animate mie imi place cel mai mult de…
8)Dacă aş fi un personaj din desene mi-ar plăcea să fiu…
9)În joacă, imitaţi personaje din desenele animate la care vă uitati?
10)Aveţi costume şi jucării ca ale celor din desenele preferate? 11)Vă lasă părinţii să vă uitaţi cât timp doriti la desene?
12)Îi rugaţi pe părinţi să vă cumpere ce vedeţi în reclamele de la televizor? *Întrebarile se pot adapta în funcţie de participanţii la focus grup (vârstă ş răbdarea acestora)
FIŞǍ DE OBSERVAŢIE
Data:30-31 MARTIE 2007
Ora:13 p.m.
Durata observării: 1h
Locaţia:Parcul de joacă zona Eroilor şi un parc din curtea interioară a unui bloc din zona 13 Septembrie, oraş Bbucureşti
Tema observării:”Imită copii personajele din desene animate atnci când se joacă împreună?”
Subiecţii: copii cu vârsta cuprinsă între 3-10 şi însoţitorii lor.
Notiţele se vor lua pe o fisă şi se vor realiza şi mici filmuleţe cu o camera de filmat
Condiţiile de notare
1)Numărul copiilor din locul de joaca.
2)De cine sunt însoţiţi copii.
3)Ce vârste au copii(cu aproximaţie)
4)Cu cine se joacă
5)Ce jocuri se joacă.
6)Ce nume de personaje din desene rostesc
7)Cum se desfăşoară jocul lor(gesturi,atitudini,limbaj,comportament)
8)Care este atitudinea însoţitorilor faţă de gesturile copiilor
9)Comportamente instantanee,semnificative pentru cercetare
CHESTIONAR
(Pentru părinţi)
Pentru fiecare întrebare alegeţi varianta de răspuns pe care o cosideraţi adevărată din punctual de vedere al opţiunii dumneavoastră:
1. În ce categoria de vârsta se încadrează copiii dumneavoastră?
a)3-4 ani
b)4-6 ani
c)6-8 ani
d)8-10 ani
2) Câte ore petrece in faţa televizorului pe zi?
a)sub 1 oră
b)1-2 ore
c)2-3 ore
d)peste 3 ore
3) Ce posturi de televiziune urmăreşte?
a)desene animate
b)divertisment
c)documentare
d)despre animale
4) Care este postul de desene animate preferat de copilul dumneavoastră?
a) Jetix
b)Cartoon Network
c)Minimax
d)Nici unul
5) Vă cere să îi cumpăraţi ce vede în reclamele de la televizor şi în desene?
a)Da
b)Nu
6)Manifestă un comportament agresiv când i se refuză un lucru?
a)Da
b)Nu
c)Depinde de ce a cerut
7)Aţi remarcat în limbajul copilului dumneavoastră replici preluate din desenele animate?
a)Da
b)Nu
c)Nu sunt sigur
8)Mergeţi împreună cu copilul dumneavoastră la teatru?
a)Da
b)Nu
9)Înainte de culcare îi mai citiţi basme şi povestioare?
a)Da
b)Nu
10)Consideraţi că programele pentru copii prezintă o concentraţie mare de violenţă?
a)Da
b)Nu
c)Doar unele(care anume)
CHESTIONAR
(Pentru cadre didactice)
Pentru fiecare întrebare alegeti varianta de răspuns pe care o cosideraţi adevărată din punctual de vedere al opţiunii dumneavoastră:
1) La ce categorie de pregătire scolară predaţi?
a)Preşcolari
b)Clasele primare
2)Care este comportamentul copiilor în timpul pauzelor?
a)Prezintă comportamente agresive
b)Se comportă normal
3)Ce jocuri se joacă?
a)Ce le indicăm noi
b)Imită personaje din desenele animate
c)Jocuri inventate de ei
4)Au existat cazuri în care copii să aibă un comportament violent exagerat?
a)Da
b)Nu
5)Cum se manifestă când sunt pedepsiţi?
a)Nu ripostează şi se supun pedepselor
b)Manifestă un comportament de nemulţumire
6)Ce limbaj folosesc?
a)Vulgar
b)Adecvat vârstei
c)Amestecă cuvinte din limba română cu cele din limba engleză
7)Ce au de mâncare în pacheţelele pregătite de părinţi?
a)Sendvişuri
b)Dulciuri
c)Mâncare de la fast-food
8)Aveţi restricţii în ceea ce priveşte ce trebuie să conţina pacheţelul copiilor?
a)Da
b)Nu
8)Le spuneţi părinţilor cum se comportă copii lor în timpul orelor de curs?
a)Da
b)Nu
“ÎN CE MĂSURĂ INFLUENŢEAZĂ DESENELE ANIMATE VIOLENTE DEZVOLTAREA PSIHOLOGICĂ A COPIILOR”
Tema cercetării
Copiii sunt oglinda părinţilor, aşa cum sunt crescuţi aşa se comportă, ei imită comportamentul părinţilor până la o anumită vârstă. Dar ce se poate întâmpla când părinţii nu au timp suficient pe care să îl petreacă alături de copii? Pe cine imită aceştia?Dar ce se întâmplă dacă micuţii sunt uitaţi în faţa micilor ecrane? Prin analogie, ei ar trebui să imite ceea ce văd la televizor. De la acestă idee porneşte şi tema proiectului de cercetare şi anume “În ce măsură influenţează desenele animate violente dezvoltarea psihologică a copiilor?”
Lucrarea de faţă doreşte să sublinieze transformarile de ordin psihologic pe care le suferă copiii, precum şi schimbarea comportamentului în cadrul relaţiilor cu societatea şi gradul de interiorizare al copiilor, cauzate de desenele animate violente. Privitor la această temă s-au mai realizat cercetări atât în România cât şi pe plan internaţional, care au demonstrat faptul că copiii petrec mai mult de 4 ore pe zi în faţa televizorului şi îşi adaptează alimentaţia în funcţie de ceea ce văd în reclamele de la televizor, lucru care a condus la o generaţie de copii cu grave probleme de greutate.
Obiectivul cercetării este de a diminua fenomenul “copiilor crescuţi de televizor“. Ulterior interpretării rezultatelor cercetării în cazul în care concluziile nu sunt satisfăcătoare pot fi determinate unele strategii de combatere a acestui fenomen, iniţierea unor programe şi acţiuni şcolare (grădiniţe). Această lucrare de cercetare îşi propune să descopere care este cauza comportamentului violent al copiilor din ce în ce mai întâlnite atât în grădiniţe cât şi în locurile de joacă şi ce ar trebui să facă părinţii şi societatea pentru a combate acest fenomen
Cadrul teoretic
Poveştile, basmele pe care copiii le ascultau altădată de la părinţi şi bunici au prins treptat viaţa nu numai la teatru dar şi din ce în ce mai des în desenele animate, începând cu “Omuleţul Gopo”, ”Scufiţa Roşie” până la “Pokemon” şi “X-Men”. Evoluţia desenelor animate a devenit din ce în ce mai îngrijorătoare deoarece s-a trecut brusc de la desenele inocente la desene violente. Dacă acum câţiva ani copiii învăţau din desenele animate cum să se comporte civilizat, să iubească natura şi animalele, acum învăţă să se comporte violent şi să mânânce nesănătos.
Cercetarea vine în completarea articolelor si reportajelor prezente în mass-media, şi pe internet. Referitor la această temă, nu au fost scrise foarte multe cărţi identificându-se doar scurte pasaje în câteva cărţi care au ca temă influenţa mass-media. S-au făcut numeroase cercetări pe această temă, un studiu recent realizat de o echipă de la Centrul de Sociologie Urbană şi Regională CURS(2006) a arătat că personajele preferate ale copiilor sunt Tom şi Jerry, serial care potrivit psihologilor este una dintre cele mai violente producţii tv: la fiecare 20 de secunde un personaj este lovit, cade sau suferă un accident (în această categorie sunt incluse şi desene precum “Ciocănitoarea Woody”, ”Looney Tunes”).
În revista Mami este publicat un articol de Oana Maria Popescu, în care se discută despre “hipnoza din desenele animate”.Articolul încearcă să scoată in evidenţă valoarea hipnotică pe care o au desenele animate asupra copiilor, indusă de focalizarea atenţiei.
Un alt studiu realizat de membrii CAN în colaborare cu Centrul de Studii Media a urmărit “Evaluarea reprezentării violenţei în programele de televiziune”. Studiul prezintă rezultatele monitorizării a 11 canale de televiziune si incearca sa traga un semnal de alarmă în ceea ce priveşte conţinutul programelor difuzate de canalele de desene animate Jetix şi Cartoon Network. Concluzia este că programele de desene animate sunt de 7 ori mai violente decât programele de tip ficţional transmise de programele generaliste.
Un articol publicat pe site-ul Bucuria are ca titlu “Televizorul, al treilea părinte”. Articolul face referire la faptul că televizorul face parte din viaţa copiilor încă de la vârsta de 2 ani, influenţându-le atitudinea, limbajul şi comportamentul. Incearcă să atragă atenţiă părinţilor care îşi uită copiii în faţa televizorului şi nu îşi fac timp să explice copiilor ce este bine şi ce nu din ce văd ei la televizor.
În ziarul Cotidianul, într-un scurt articol semnat de Alice Năstase, se discută despre abandonul copiilor în faţa micilor ecrane, pironiţi cu ochii la Cartoon Network sau Jetix. Părinţii găsesc in televizor o dădacă, neluand in seamă efectele negative care unele programe le au asupra celor mici.
În Jurnalul National, în articolul cu titlul “Televizorul - un părinte agresiv” se discută despre generaţia de copii crescută în faţa blocului, cu cheia de gât, care a pierdut teren în faţa generaţiei crescute cu ochii în televizor.
Psihologul Mirela Zivari, din ziarul Libertatea, susţine că desenele animate îi afectează pe micuţi la nivel subliminal, prin accentuarea tendinţelor agresive şi îi sfătuieşte pe părinţi să nu le interzică vizionarea acestor programe, ci dimpotrivă, să îşi facă timp să vizioneze alături de copii aceste programe şi să le explice ceea ce văd.
Ipoteze
O primă ipoteză porneşte de la ideea că desenele animate violente transformă joaca inocentă a copiilor intr-o joaca violenta,este transformatǎ joaca copiilor într-una violentǎ,dacǎ aceştia urmǎresc în mod constant programele de desene animate cu o mare încǎrcǎturǎ de violentǎ.Ei nu se mai joacă cu păpuşi, maşinuţe ci imită personaje din desene animate, care se lovesc, îşi vorbesc urât si zgomotos sau chiar se elimina unul pe celălalt. Cea de-a doua ipoteză îşi propune sa verifice dacă părinţii poartă o vină in schimbarea comportamentului copiilor, dacă ei sunt vinovati când îşi îndeamnă copiii să se uite la desene şi îi cheamă de fiecare dată când începe un nou serial din desenele preferate si dacă ei sunt in măsură să le interzică vizionarea acestor programe.
Operationalizarea conceptelor
Cele mai des folosite concepte atât in definirea temei cercetării cât şi în exprimarea ipotezelor sunt “desene animate” şi “violenţă”. Vom incepe cu definirea acestor concepte după cum urmează: conceptul de “violenţă” are în DEX mai multe înţelesuri-violenta este un act de constrângere, de silire, de forţare; este văzuta ca o însuşire lipsită de stăpânire în vorbe sau fapte, vehementă, furie, întrebuinţarea forţei brutale, agresivitate, duritate şi nestăpânire.
Având în vedere că tema acestei cercetări este “violenţa desenelor animate” ne vom referi la toate explicaţiile acestui termen, deoarece această cercetare îşi propune să urmărească toate formele de violenţă prezente in desenele animate şi întâlnite in comportamentul copiilor. Cel de-al doilea concept “desene animate” este definit ca o înşiruire de desene care reprezintă fazele unei mişcări şi care sunt redate succesiv pe ecran,dând impresia unor fiinţe vii. Cele doua concepe sunt strâns legate pe parcursul acestei cercetări deoarece nu ne vom referi în general la desene animate ci doar la o categorie aparte şi anume desenele animate violente.
Un alt concept care completează paleta cercetării este “dezvoltarea”care este influenţată de cele doua concepte definite mai sus.”Dezvoltarea”este definită in DEX printr-o înşiruire de termeni: acţiunea de a (se) dezvolta şi rezultatul ei; creştere, evoluare; amplificare,care evolueaza sub presiunea factorilor cu care ia contact.
Timpul cercetării şi alegerea metodei
Cercetarea este una calitativă, de tip transversală, ancheta în perioada martie-aprilie 2007 şi se va desfăşura in două grădiniţe şi în două locuri de joacă pentru copii din Bucureşti. Metoda de cercetare aleasă este ancheta sociologică, iar instrumentele cu care se va lucra sunt chestionarul, interviul,focus grupul şi observaţia nedistorsionată. Chestionarul, definit in “Dicţionarul de sociologie” (Zamfir şi Vlăsceanu, 1993, 95), ca reprezentând “o tehnică şi un instrument de investigare constând dintr-un ansamblu de întrebări scrise si eventual imagini, grafice, ordonate logic şi psihologic, care prin administrarea de către operatorii de anchetă sau prin autoadministrare, determină din partea persoanelor anchetate răspunsuri ce urmează a fi înregistrate in scris”.
Focus grupul îmbină caracteristicile interviurilor focalizate cu cele ale interviurilor de grup. David L. Morgan (1996,130) defineşte focus grupurile ca o “tehnică de colectare a datelor prin interacţiune dintre membrii grupului, referitoare la o problema stabilită de către cercetător”. Ultima tehnică de cercetare este observaţia, definită ca fiind o ” percepere sistematică a atitudinilor, comportamentelor şi interacţiunilor actorilor sociali, în momentul manifestării lor, conform unui plan dinainte elaborat şi cu ajutorul unor tehnici specifice de înregistrare” (Dictionar de sociologie, online). ”Observaţia nedistorsionantă(observaţia nestructurată sau externă-după Septimiu Chelcea)constă în utilizarea de aparate tehnice pentru înregistrarea fenomenelor sociale în desfăşurarea lor naturală. Aparatele tehnice sunt ascunse, observatorul este eliminat din scenele sociale şi astfel sunt evitate şi efectele reactive sistematice sau de conformare a subiecţilor la normele dezirabilităţii sociale. Se aplică nu numai pe situaţii sociale naturale, ci şi de laborator (mai ales în jocurile de simulare)(Vlǎsceanu şi Zamfir,Dicţionar de sociologie online). Înregistrarea este precedată de o eşantionare a situaţiilor sociale şi a perioadelor de timp şi este urmată de codificare prin aplicarea tehnicii analizei conţinutului”.
Au fost alese aceste metode de cercetare deoarece subiecţii principali ai cercetării sunt copii cu vârste cuprinse între 3-10 ani. Observaţia şi focus grupul se adresează copiilor, iar chestionarul este destinat părinţilor şi educatorilor din grădiniţe. Astfel lucrul cu copii este uşurat de interviul tip focus grup, discuţia fiind deschisă, interpretată de copii ca o joacă şi răsplătită cu câteva dulciuri pentru a-i stimula pe cei observaţi să răspundă la întrebări. De asemenea, observaţia este relevantă în această cercetare deoarece pe copii nu ii deranjează să îşi schimbe comportamentul sau să se simtă urmăriţi. Se comporta natural in mediul lor obişnuit. Unitatea de analiză a cercetării o va constitui “copilul”, iar sursa datelor cercetării va fi realizată prin centralizarea datelor obţinute în urma interviului tip focus grup şi al observaţiei. Centralizarea datelor în urma completării chestionarului vor fi utile pentru clarificarea celei de-a doua ipoteze.
Eşantionarea
Având in vedere tema cercetării, eşantionul ales îl reprezintă copiii cu vârsta cuprinsă ître 3-10 ani. Pentru realizarea focus grupului a fost nevoie de un număr de 32 de copii, pentru observaţie s-au urmărit un număr variabil de subiecţi în funcţie de zona de observaţie, minim opt persoane (părinţi şi copii) şi maxim cincisprezece persoane. Pentru realizarea chestionarului eşantionul ales îl reprezintă părinţii şi cadrele de învăţământ indiferent de vârsta şi sex într-un număr de maxim 30 de persoane. Au fost alese aceste vârste deoarece reprezintă perioada în care copii interacţionează direct cu societatea, integrându-se in formele preşcolare de învăţământ (grădiniţe) şi a claselor primare (1-4). La vârsta de 3 ani copilul începe să perceapă ce vede la televizor, mai ales in desenele animate. Este o vârsta la care el imită ceea ce vede, nefăcând diferenţa între ce este bine şi ce este rău. Până la vârsta de 10 ani el trece prin mai multe etape ale dezvoltării atât fizice cât si psihice, când rolul cel mai important în educaţie îl au părinţii, apoi educatorii şi învătătorii.
Anchetele şi sondajele de opinie se bazează pe aplicarea modelelor de esantionare probabilistă. Prin urmare metoda de eşantionare folosită este cea probabilistă, dată fiind mărimea prea mică a eşantionului se va folosi metoda de eşantionare probabilistă sistematică(aplicabilă atunci cînd: elementele se succed în mod natural în spaţiul sau timpul social, dispunem de o listare prealabilă a populaţiei şi am formulat decizia privind dimensiunea eşantionului.)
Analiza si interpretarea datelor
În cercetare se vor folosi atât metode de cercetare bazate pe date subiective cât şi pe date obiective .Datele subiective vor fi furnizate prin intermediul interviului de tip focus grup şi parţial de observaţie, având ca scop evaluarea modului in care copii îşi adaptează comportamentul în funcţie de locul de joacă, de persoanele prezente. Se urmăreşte comportamentul lor natural indiferent de situaţie. Pe de alt parte datele obiective vor fi incluse de precizarea vârstei, sexului, descrierii mediului de viaţă. Prima etapa în cercetare va fi aplicarea interviului de tip focus grup in două grădiniţe cu program normal, cu două grupe de copii, cu vârsta cuprinsa intre 3 şi 6 ani. Pentru cealaltă categorie de vârsta, cercetarea va avea loc în două şcoli generale,respectiv pentru subiecţtii cu vârsta cunprinsă între 6 şi 10 ani. În ambele cazuri interviul se va realiza doar sub supravegherea moderatorului, fără alte cadre didactice, pentru a spori gradul de sinceritate in răspunsurile date de subiecţi.
Dupa aceasta se va trece la aplicarea metodei de observaţie care se va desfăşura in două locaţii şi anume două parcuri de joacă pentru copii. Tema de observaţie va fi: “Imit[ copiii personaje din desene animate atunci când se joacă împreună?”. Notiţele se vor lua pe o fişă de observaţie. Pentru o mai bună interpretare a datelor se va folosi şi o camera de luat vederi, pentru a surprinde comportamentul observaţilor. Ultimul va fi aplicat chestionarul care este adresat părinţilor şi cadrelor didactice. În urma centralizării datelor se va realiza un scurt raport al cercetării în care se vor trece sistematic toate datele obţinute. Ultima etapă a cercetării, raportul de cercetare, va conţine explicarea modalităţii de aplicare a cercetării şi concluziile la care a ajuns cercetătorul . In această parte se va arăta dacă ipotezele de la care am pornit au fost verificate, care au şi care nu au nici o valoare de adevăr. Aparent inofensive şi distractive desenele animate difuzate cel mai des pe posturile de televiziune Jetix şi Cartoon Network au o concentrare foarte mare de violenşă care poate avea influenţe negative in dezvoltarea normală a copiilor.
S-a ajuns la concluzia că micuţii petrec in medie 3 ore si jumatate pe zi în faţa televizorului urmărind posturile de desene animate. Copii au început să uite vechile jocuri, imitând personaje si folosind expresii din desenele animate.p Personajele preferate ale copiilor sunt Omul Păianjen, Regele Saman, cei din X-Man, Spioanele şi Maieştrii Pokemon, Dexter,etc. Violenţ de la la televizor nu îl face neapărat violent pe copil, dar îi poate lăsa impresia că violenţa este un fenomen omniprezent. Părinţii sunt cei în măsură să hotărască la ce se pot uita si la ce nu. Însă faptul că ei nu le interzic copiilor vizionarea acestor posturi , ba din potrivă le cumpără jucării asemănătoare cu cele din desene, îi duc cla fast food-uri, înlocuiesc sucurile naturale cu Coca Cola şi le aduc dulciurile pe care acesţia le vad in reclamele TV. Nemâncând sanatos copiii sunt afectaţi fizic, suferind de obezitate care îşi lasă amprenta adânc in sănătatea şi stilul de viaţă al oricărui om, indiferent de vârstă.
Este important ca şi în raportul de cercetare să se indice acele ipoteze care nu s-au putut verifica. În acest fel, alţi cercetători află că anumite ipoteze nu s-au putut verfica prin intermediul unor metode. Acest lucru îi va ajuta şi le va economisi din timpul pe care l-ar fi alocat unei alte cercetări
BIBLIOGRAFIE
1. LAZĂR VLĂSCEANU & CĂTĂLIN ZAMFIR,Dictionar de sociologie, http://www.dictsociologie.netfirms.com/
2 .RUSTI,DOINA , Mesajul subliminal , Categorii: Jurnalism-Mass Media, Ed. Tritonic,Bucureşti,2005
3. M. COZĂRESCU CORINA CACE, LAURA ŞTEFAN, Porţile subconştientului, Ed. ASE, 2003
4. WWW.CURS.RO
5. WWW.CNA.RO
6. WWW.BUCURIA.RO
7. Revista Mami,Articol “Hipnoza pentru copii:desenele animate”,pag. 12,15 Februarie
2007
8. Ziarul Libertatea, Articol “Violenţa din desene îi afectează pe micuţi”,pag. 13, 29 Aprilie 2007
ANEXE
Numele meu este Ivănescu Cătălina şi sunt aici pentru a vă pune câteva intrebări legate de programele de desene animate.O să vă rog să raspundeţi pe rând la fiecare întrebare.Fiecare întrbare va fi rasplătită cu câte o bomboană.
FOCUS GRUP
Focus grupul se va realiza cu patru grupe,împărţite în două categorii: două grupe cu copii cu vârsta cuprinsă între 3 şi 6 ani şi două grupe cu vârsta cuprinsă între 6 şi 10 ani. Fiecare grup este compus dintr-un nr de 8 copii.
Locatia:două grădiniţe cu program normal (interviul se va desfăşura într-una din sălile de joacă ale copiilor), si doua scoli generale.
Durata:între 30 şi 40 de minunte
Tema:”Ce ne place la desenele animate?”
ÎNTREBǍRI
1)Câţi ani aveţi?
2)Ce faceţi când ajungeţi acasă de la grădiniţă?
3)Când deschid televizorul mă uit la….
4)Pe ce programe de televiziune vă uitaţi la desene animate?
5)La ce desene animate vă uitaţi în fiecare zi?
6)Desenele mele preferate sunt….
7)Dintre toţi eroii din desenele animate mie imi place cel mai mult de…
8)Dacă aş fi un personaj din desene mi-ar plăcea să fiu…
9)În joacă, imitaţi personaje din desenele animate la care vă uitati?
10)Aveţi costume şi jucării ca ale celor din desenele preferate? 11)Vă lasă părinţii să vă uitaţi cât timp doriti la desene?
12)Îi rugaţi pe părinţi să vă cumpere ce vedeţi în reclamele de la televizor? *Întrebarile se pot adapta în funcţie de participanţii la focus grup (vârstă ş răbdarea acestora)
FIŞǍ DE OBSERVAŢIE
Data:30-31 MARTIE 2007
Ora:13 p.m.
Durata observării: 1h
Locaţia:Parcul de joacă zona Eroilor şi un parc din curtea interioară a unui bloc din zona 13 Septembrie, oraş Bbucureşti
Tema observării:”Imită copii personajele din desene animate atnci când se joacă împreună?”
Subiecţii: copii cu vârsta cuprinsă între 3-10 şi însoţitorii lor.
Notiţele se vor lua pe o fisă şi se vor realiza şi mici filmuleţe cu o camera de filmat
Condiţiile de notare
1)Numărul copiilor din locul de joaca.
2)De cine sunt însoţiţi copii.
3)Ce vârste au copii(cu aproximaţie)
4)Cu cine se joacă
5)Ce jocuri se joacă.
6)Ce nume de personaje din desene rostesc
7)Cum se desfăşoară jocul lor(gesturi,atitudini,limbaj,comportament)
8)Care este atitudinea însoţitorilor faţă de gesturile copiilor
9)Comportamente instantanee,semnificative pentru cercetare
CHESTIONAR
(Pentru părinţi)
Pentru fiecare întrebare alegeţi varianta de răspuns pe care o cosideraţi adevărată din punctual de vedere al opţiunii dumneavoastră:
1. În ce categoria de vârsta se încadrează copiii dumneavoastră?
a)3-4 ani
b)4-6 ani
c)6-8 ani
d)8-10 ani
2) Câte ore petrece in faţa televizorului pe zi?
a)sub 1 oră
b)1-2 ore
c)2-3 ore
d)peste 3 ore
3) Ce posturi de televiziune urmăreşte?
a)desene animate
b)divertisment
c)documentare
d)despre animale
4) Care este postul de desene animate preferat de copilul dumneavoastră?
a) Jetix
b)Cartoon Network
c)Minimax
d)Nici unul
5) Vă cere să îi cumpăraţi ce vede în reclamele de la televizor şi în desene?
a)Da
b)Nu
6)Manifestă un comportament agresiv când i se refuză un lucru?
a)Da
b)Nu
c)Depinde de ce a cerut
7)Aţi remarcat în limbajul copilului dumneavoastră replici preluate din desenele animate?
a)Da
b)Nu
c)Nu sunt sigur
8)Mergeţi împreună cu copilul dumneavoastră la teatru?
a)Da
b)Nu
9)Înainte de culcare îi mai citiţi basme şi povestioare?
a)Da
b)Nu
10)Consideraţi că programele pentru copii prezintă o concentraţie mare de violenţă?
a)Da
b)Nu
c)Doar unele(care anume)
CHESTIONAR
(Pentru cadre didactice)
Pentru fiecare întrebare alegeti varianta de răspuns pe care o cosideraţi adevărată din punctual de vedere al opţiunii dumneavoastră:
1) La ce categorie de pregătire scolară predaţi?
a)Preşcolari
b)Clasele primare
2)Care este comportamentul copiilor în timpul pauzelor?
a)Prezintă comportamente agresive
b)Se comportă normal
3)Ce jocuri se joacă?
a)Ce le indicăm noi
b)Imită personaje din desenele animate
c)Jocuri inventate de ei
4)Au existat cazuri în care copii să aibă un comportament violent exagerat?
a)Da
b)Nu
5)Cum se manifestă când sunt pedepsiţi?
a)Nu ripostează şi se supun pedepselor
b)Manifestă un comportament de nemulţumire
6)Ce limbaj folosesc?
a)Vulgar
b)Adecvat vârstei
c)Amestecă cuvinte din limba română cu cele din limba engleză
7)Ce au de mâncare în pacheţelele pregătite de părinţi?
a)Sendvişuri
b)Dulciuri
c)Mâncare de la fast-food
8)Aveţi restricţii în ceea ce priveşte ce trebuie să conţina pacheţelul copiilor?
a)Da
b)Nu
8)Le spuneţi părinţilor cum se comportă copii lor în timpul orelor de curs?
a)Da
b)Nu
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