Reporting Public Opinion

Erik Gahner Larsen is Senior Scientific Adviser at the Conflict Analysis Research Centre, University of Kent, UK. He has conducted multiple research projects on the coverage of opinion polls in the media, and his research has been published in journals such as the British Journal of Political Science and The International Journal of Press/Politics.Zoltán Fazekas is Associate Professor of Business and Politics, with focus on quantitative methods in the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research is at the intersection of electoral behavior, psychology, and communication; it has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Communication, and the Journal of Communication, among others.

• 1. Bringing public opinion to the public: from polls to media coverage.- 2. The four steps of poll coverage: creating, selecting, reporting, and responding.- 3. Explaining how media outlets select opinion polls: the role of change.- 4. Characteristics of opinion poll reporting: creating the change narrative.- 5. Reactions and implications: how do the elite and the public respond to polls?.- 6. Alternatives to opinion polls: no polls, vox pop, poll aggregators and social media.- 7. Conclusion: How the media could report opinion polls.