Iritzi publikoa, iritzi publikatua eta publikoaren iritzia: hedabideen eragina euskal politikagintzan

Abstract

What is “public opinion”? Being a very useful term in politics, it is not clear that it has a unique meaning. Public opinion seems to represent individual opinions. At the same time, when we talk about public opinion we are often repeating opinions published by mass media. But do media reflect the real opinion of people, or only their own opinion? Or even opinions expressed in public by different social actors? In order to answer these questions we have based our research on an exhaustive content analysis of TV and newspapers in South Basque Country and on a large opinion-survey, about two items that often seem to be conditioned by “public opinion”: the political negotiation between ETA and the Spanish Government, and language policy on the Basque Language.