Yleinen mielipide yhteiskuntatieteellisenä käsitteenä

Authors

• Pertti Suhonen

Abstract

Public opinion is a concept which is frequently used in everyday social debate. However, Finnish social scientists have been avoiding its use. In the European as well as in the American scholarly debate public opinion (öffentliche Meinung, opinion publique) has been a visible but, at the same time, a controversial concept. This article and the debate it examines, which spans over a century, is dominated by two basic dimensions which divide ideas on the public opinion. The dimension which has been stronger in the struggle over definitions divides theories according to whether it is thought that the public opinion consists of individual opinions or whether public opinion is thought to be the collective opinion of the public or the community. In the other dimension the trains of thought differ according to whether their starting point is a normative theory of democracy or a non-normative view of the society and the state it is in.