Public Opinion is Beyond Right or Wrong

Public opin­ion is bey­ond right or wrong.

“It’s unfair!”

In my role as a PR adviser, I hear those words often.

Many cli­ents argue that they’re not ask­ing for mir­acles. They only want the atten­tion their organ­isa­tion right­fully deserves.

I wish it were that simple. But pub­lic opin­ion isn’t fair.

Here goes:

Public Opinion and PR

“Public opin­ion is a com­pound of folly, weak­ness, pre­ju­dice, wrong feel­ing, right feel­ing, obstin­acy, and news­pa­per para­graphs.”
— Robert Peel

As a PR adviser, I encounter people who argue about fair­ness. However, when it comes to pub­lic opin­ion, right or wrong is a sec­ond­ary consideration.

How can this be?

Strictly speak­ing, right or wrong is determ­ined in the court of law; PR is determ­ined in the court of pub­lic opin­ion. The court­house may hold the keys to our leg­al stand­ings, but the court of pub­lic sen­ti­ment rules supreme over our reputations.

And it could nev­er be any different: 

But if every­one, through the works of magic, got the pub­lic opin­ion they think they deserve; there wouldn’t be enough men­tal band­width to go around.

The Scarcity of Attention

“Public opin­ion is a per­meat­ing influ­ence, and it exacts obed­i­ence to itself; it requires us to drink oth­er men’s thoughts, to speak oth­er men’s words, to fol­low oth­er men’s habits.”
— Walter Bagehot

You could be doing PR for a lousy product or ser­vice, and the lous­i­ness would be a sig­ni­fic­ant concern. 

But you could also be doing PR for an excep­tion­al product or ser­vice but facing PR strategies great­er than yours.

Public opin­ion is an emo­tion­al eco­nomy driv­en by the scarcity of atten­tion. Beyond the con­fines of right and wrong, the pub­lic’s gaze exerts its power, elev­at­ing or anni­hil­at­ing with unwaver­ing force.

Believing you’re mor­ally or intel­lec­tu­ally super­i­or isn’t neces­sar­ily a PR strength: a closed sys­tems loop might obfus­cate com­pet­it­ive devel­op­ment. Also, the pub­lic might inter­pret overt dis­plays of right­eous­ness as enti­tle­ment, nar­ciss­ism, or megalomania.

The realm of pub­lic opin­ion is a jungle with laws to match the context.

The gen­er­al pub­lic can be mis­taken.
Consumers can make poor decisions.
Voters can elect the wrong politicians.

Right or wrong, the out­come is the out­come.
And the out­come is without mercy.

Perceptions Are Approximations

“It is not at all clear how much the media influ­ences pub­lic opin­ion and how much pub­lic opin­ion influ­ences the media.”
— Bruce Jackson

Absolute truths are dif­fi­cult start­ing points:

If you scratch the sur­face, you’ll find that almost everything is con­test­able. A glass could be half empty (refill needed!) or still half full (no refill, please!).

Who’s per­cep­tion should reign?

Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management

No one is basing their atti­tudes and beha­viours on real­ity; we’re basing them on our per­cep­tions of real­ity.

Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974) pro­posed that our per­cep­tions of real­ity dif­fer from the actu­al real­ity. The real­ity is too vast and too com­plex for any­one to pro­cess. ¹Lippmann, Walter. 1960. Public Opinion (1922). New York: Macmillan.

• One who effect­ively man­ages the per­cep­tions of pub­lics acts as a mor­al legis­lat­or, cap­able of shap­ing atti­tudes and beha­viours accord­ing to the cat­egor­ic­al imperative.

The research on per­cep­tion man­age­ment is focused on how organ­isa­tions can cre­ate a desired repu­ta­tion:

“The OPM [Organizational Perception Management] field focuses on the range of activ­it­ies that help organ­isa­tions estab­lish and/​or main­tain a desired repu­ta­tion (Staw et al., 1983). More spe­cific­ally, OPM research has primar­ily focused on two inter­re­lated factors: (1) the tim­ing and goals of per­cep­tion man­age­ment activ­it­ies and (2) spe­cif­ic per­cep­tion man­age­ment tac­tics (Elsbach, 2006).”
Source: Organization Development Journal ²Hargis, M. & Watt, John. (2010). Organizational per­cep­tion man­age­ment: A frame­work to over­come crisis events. Organization Development Journal. 28. 73 – 87. … Continue read­ing

Today, our per­cep­tions are heav­ily influ­enced by news media and influ­en­cers, algorithms, and social graphs. Therefore, per­cep­tion man­age­ment is more crit­ic­al than ever before.

“We are all cap­tives of the pic­ture in our head — our belief that the world we have exper­i­enced is the world that really exists.”
— Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974)

Learn more: Walter Lippmann: Public Opinion and Perception Management

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The abso­lute seems to exist in the nat­ur­al world, obey­ing the laws of phys­ics, but the world of per­cep­tions is flut­ter­ing shad­ows, dan­cing in the light of the fire against the cave wall.

Public opin­ion is not about right or wrong. It’s about who gets to decide how we see the world. And that’s why pub­lic rela­tions is essen­tial in build­ing a society.

PR Resource: Amplification Hypothesis