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The press, radio, and television are usually less important than the immediate social
environment when it comes to the formation of attitudes, but they are still significant. They focus the
attention on certain personalities and issues, and many people subsequently form opinions about these
issues. Government officials have noted that their mail from the public tends to "follow the headlines";
whatever is featured in the press at a particular moment is likely to be the subject that most people
write about. The mass media can also activate and reinforce latent attitudes. Political attitudes, for
example, are likely to be activated and reinforced just before an election. Voters who may have
only a mild preference for one party or candidate before the election campaign starts are often worked
up by the mass media to a point where they not only take the trouble to vote but may contribute
money or help a party organization in some other way.
The mass media play another extremely important role in letting individuals know what other people
think and in giving leaders large audiences. In this way they make it possible for public opinion to
include a large number of individuals and to spread over wider geographic areas. It appears in fact that
in some European countries the growth of broadcasting, and especially television, has affected the
operation of the parliamentary system. Before television, national elections were seen largely as
contests between a number of candidates or parties for parliamentary seats. More recently, elections
in such countries as Germany and Great Britain have appeared more as a personal struggle between
the leaders of the principal parties concerned, since these leaders were featured on television and
came to personify their parties. Television in France and the United States has been regarded as a
powerful force strengthening the presidential system, since the president can easily appeal to a national
audience over the heads of elected legislative representatives.
Even when the mass media are thinly spread, as in developing countries or in nations where the
media are strictly controlled, word of mouth can sometimes perform the same functions as the press
and broadcasting, although on a more limited scale. In developing countries, it is common for those
who are literate to read from newspapers to those who are not, or for large numbers of persons to
gather around the one village radio. Word of mouth in the marketplace or neighbourhood then carries
the information farther. In countries where important news is suppressed by the government, a great
deal of information is transmitted by rumour. Word of mouth thus helps public opinion to form in
developing countries and encourages "underground" opinion in totalitarian countries, even though these
processes are slower and usually involve fewer people than in countries where the media network is
dense and uncontrolled.
