How is Public Opinion on the PDAF Scam Formed?

(I wrote this as a conclusion in a group research we did for our Political Science 160: Society, Politics, and Government class. The research is concerned with public opinion formation on the PDAF scam. For the full content of the research, please visit two-mato.weebly.com. Yes, it is an awesome site name.)

Public Opinion: A Game of Power

The data suggests mainly two important things. First, public opinion on specific issues such as the PDAF scam is not essentially freely formulated and materialised; it is subject to a multiplicity of factors, not the least important is the interaction between the state and civil society. Public opinion takes information shortcuts, unlikely to spend time gathering large amounts of comprehensive information (Sniderman, 1993). It takes its cues from and is largely shaped according to the actors dominating in the issue discourse. Through this, actors or elites obtain the power to set the agenda, direction and to a certain extent, content of public opinion. This noticeably materialises in the case when Miriam Santiago came out criticising certain lawmakers, coupled with subsequent expositions of Napoles’ property and lifestyle, formed a generally strong, coherent and negative public opinion. More interestingly, when PNoy rejected the calls to abolish PDAF and provided justifications, public opinion began to be more or less fragmented, with many coming out and taking a similar position with the president. In another case, it is noticeable that when elites, both in state and civil society, shifts focus from lawmakers to Napoles; public opinion follows. Now conscious of its passive tendency, the public must go beyond information shortcuts if only to emancipate its opinion, consciousness and action from the control and agenda-setting powers of elites.

Second, it is impossible to miss that civil society produces the highest issue attention or the loudest voice across media sources; as it is shown in the dominance of red spikes in the graphs. What this empirically proves is that civil society is the leader in the formation of public opinion (Weakliem, 2005), not the state. This emphasizes the power of civil society in public awareness, opinion formation and action. The power of civil society is substantial—it is crucial for any nation that calls itself democratic that such power is maximised to counterbalance the power of the state.

In the final analysis, public opinion is a game of power; and information is the key resource to win. The public either allows itself to be subjected by the agenda-setting power of elites; or take charge in formulating their own opinion. It is of the utmost urgency and importance that we, the public and the sovereign, realise the immense power at our disposal, and utilise it for the transformation of Philippine politics.