According to Britannica, the Spiral of Silence is “the theory that people’s willingness to express their opinions on controversial public issues is affected by their largely unconscious perception of those opinions as being either popular or unpopular.” The theory essentially exists to describe a person’s hesitation to express their opinion if they deem it as unpopular to the group they are expressing it too in order “to avoid the danger of isolation”. It was created by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, a german survey and communication researcher in the 1960s and 70s after she was found some interesting results while gathering polling statistics for the 1965 German federal election, the two main parties conflicting for power were the Christian Democratic Union - Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) vs and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP), for a long time the two parties were locked in a roughly even 45% split both ways, but when Queen Elizabeth II made a trip to Germany to support the CDU-CSU, that party took a 10% lead, which they held onto until they won the election. Noelle-Neumann believes that this drastic change in the population was because the CDU-CSU incorrectly claimed to be the more popular party because of the Queen’s support, which increased reluctance among people to support the SDP because everyone wants to vote for the party that is going to win. From these interesting election results, she got her idea for the Spiral of Silence.
However, this election is not a simple example of the Spiral of Silence. Some easier to understand examples would be when you change what shirt you wear because you think people will think that shirt is weird or unflattering, or when you see a movie that you did not like, but you don’t say anything because the friends you saw it with all loved it. Any situation where you feel that you hold a minority opinion and then decide not to express that opinion because it is a minority opinion is a situation where you are falling victim to the Spiral of Silence. However, the Spiral of Silence asserts that the inverse is also true. People who view their beliefs as popular are more likely to voice them, and loudly too.
It is important to keep in mind that the Spiral of Silence applies to many different kinds of situations in groups. In any group large or small where a person feels their opinion could be perceived and judged, the Spiral of Silence exists. This is why it can affect an event as casual as going to a movie with your friends or something as important as an election. There just needs to exist a majority opinion that is perceived as a social norm. Some sociologists call this the “climate of opinion” (Glynn et al., 1995). Current sociologists are even researching how the Spiral of Silence affects online interactions. One such researcher is Tio Gabunia who is finding that comment sections are a clear way that people can find what the majority opinion is on each and every post. He finds that people are less likely to comment on a post where they hold an opinion that is uncommon among the comment section of the post and more likely to comment when their opinion is in agreement with the other comments. By only interacting with posts that agree with their opinions, the algorithms on these social media platforms only recommend posts that agree with the user in order to boost post interaction. This is what traps people online in an echo chamber of opinions that reinforce only their own beliefs. Due to this, the Spiral of Silence has become an important idea to be aware of now more than ever.
Below are my sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/spiral-of-silence
https://nlwbkq.medium.com/spiral-of-silence-mean-girls-a724ae6b964d
https://study.com/academy/lesson/spiral-silence-theory-overview-examples-facts.html
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