Manipulating public opinion polls, or the principle of the “spiral of silence,” is the selection of comments that are intended to convince citizens that the majority of society supports a particular point of view or position.
The German political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann proposed the definition of the “spiral of silence” to explain how people prefer to remain silent when they feel that their views are in the minority, unpopular, or simply a dissenting opinion, in order to avoid social and psychological isolation.
Example:
Protests in russia against the war with Ukraine were silenced by the russian media and presented as discrediting the russian army, although irreversible losses in manpower could no longer be concealed.
Propaganda banned the printing of obituaries and gave this “right” to small regional media outlets so as not to question the “quiet” mobilization.
However, with the emergence of social networks and online media, the theory of the spiral of silence is easy enough to track, so the truth cannot be hidden.
