ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the history of public opinion: the ways that intellectuals, citizens, and leaders have thought about that concept through the ages and the ways that they have communicated and evaluated the popular sentiment. It begins with the intellectual history of the concept of public opinion and then move to social history. The chapter focuses on the ways that public opinion has been discussed, expressed, and assessed in the West—primarily in the United States, the United Kingdom, and European nations. It owes much to Habermas, a German scholar whose work has been enormously influential in almost all academic disciplines, among them political science, communications, sociology, philosophy, literature, anthropology, and history. The chapter discusses the creative rituals of eighteenth-century Europeans and how those rituals expressed public sentiment about certain institutions. It also discusses some of the major techniques, those that scholars of public opinion have focused on most closely.
