ABSTRACT
From a top-down perspective, leaders could take advantage of the summits to send political messages about their opinions. Summits served to shape both national opinions and the Western transnational opinion as a whole, raising public awareness about the purposes and political choices linked to global matters. From a bottom-up perspective, the G7 summits were also an international answer to social and political concerns expressed through public opinion at the national level but actually related to international issues. Private actors too wanted to be associated with the G7 summits. The growing interpenetration between the summit activities and their media coverage was encouraged by the success of US practices. Public opinion was not only perceived as something that governments could shape with a media strategy, but also as a source of internal pressure that they had to reconcile within the constraints of international policy.
