Importance of Public Opinion

It is known both by specialists and by the common people that public opinion is one of the most important and transcendental events of the end of the millennium, influential in the political and social reality of a country in every sense and also changing with the trends and fashions.

In order to understand the importance of public opinion we must begin by describing the phenomenon. We understand by public opinion the position that the majority of a society or community may have on a certain event or situation. Public opinion has certain characteristics that differentiate it from the mere personal opinion that an individual may have since being massive obviously has a greater influence on the development of social and political facts and therefore is more taken into account by rulers or powerful sectors when making decisions about something.

It is clear that public opinion existed as long as there was a human society or community. However, the concept applies especially to the phenomenon that increased significantly in the last decades of the 20th century when the

media allowed to massify the news and world events allowing the populations to take more awareness about the situation and reality both in their own country and abroad. At the same time, we can say that public opinion was further developed with the rise of the social networks because they tend to generate a contagion effect that makes events, facts or forms of opinions spread quickly and are taken by many people even without too much commitment political.

There is not a single way to express public opinion but many. Of course, at present, although the development of actions such as marches and protests against or in favor of this or that decision or measure, reality shows us that the majority of the population expresses its opinion, the one that contributes to forming public opinion, on a day-to-day basis, in the domestic sphere, in the workplace, in spaces of sociability informal. To this must also be added the fact that it is a small percentage of the population that goes out to the street when public opinion can be easily formed in spaces such as the aforementioned networks social.

The importance of public opinion is essential from a political point of view since it is she who can mark the path of a government, even decide its beginning and its end without the need to resort to a coup.