1. The Spiral of Silence is a theory of political science and mass communication proposed by the German scholar Elisabeth Noel-Neumann in The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion-Our Social Skin. The spiral theory of silence states that if a person feels that his opinion is in the minority, he will tend not to express it.
The term "spiral of silence" first appeared in a 1974 paper published by Elizabeth Noel-Neumann in the Journal of Communication, which describes the phenomenon that when people express their ideas and opinions, if they see views that they agree with and are widely welcomed, then people will subconsciously "firmly believe" that their views are "popular" and "self-determined" that they are "correct and reasonable"; conversely, if people do not see the views they agree with, Or even if they see it but do not have the support of many people, and even suffer from the criticism and debate of many people, then people will choose to remain silent and not express their views. The silent spiral effect is bidirectional and is opposed to the anti-silent spiral theory. It is a very important social psychology in contemporary media studies.
Spiral of silence
2. The theory of six degrees of separation
Six Degrees of Separation: "You cannot be separated from any stranger by more than five, that is, by a maximum of five people you will be able to know any stranger." "According to this theory, there are only five people between you and any one person in the world, no matter what country the other person is in, what kind of race they belong to, what kind of skin color they are.
The theory of six degrees of separation
3. Agenda setting
In 1968, Donald Shaw and Maxwell McCombs surveyed the presidential election to see how much the media agenda had an impact on the public agenda. The agenda-setting theory was introduced in 1972, which held that mass communication often does not determine a specific perception of an event or opinion, but can effectively influence what facts and opinions people pay attention to and the order in which they are talked about by providing information and arranging relevant topics. Mass communication may not determine what people think, but it can influence what people think
Agenda setting