Matters of Opinion
Talking About Public Issues

This book offers an interesting insight into 'public opinion' as reported in the media.

Greg Myers (Author)

9780521075794, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 August 2008

280 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.42 kg

Matters of Opinion offers an interesting insight into 'public opinion' as reported in the media, asking where these opinions actually come from, and how they have their effects. Drawing on the analysis of conversations from focus groups, phone-ins and broadcast interviews with members of the public, Greg Myers argues that we must go back to these encounters, asking questions such as what members of the public thought they were being asked, who they were talking as, and whom they were talking to. He reveals that people don't carry a store of opinions, ready to tell strangers; they use opinions in order to get along with other people, and how they say things is as important as what they say. Engaging and informative, this book illuminates debates on research methods, the public sphere and deliberative democracy, on broadcast talk, and on what it means to participate in public life.

Acknowledgements
Transcription conventions
Focus-group data
1. Paradoxes of opinion
2. A tool kit for analysing group discussions
3. Forums for opinion: 'what is it that's going on here?'
4. Institutions of opinion: voice of the people?
5. Topics in interaction: 'why that now?'
6. Agreeing and disagreeing: maintaining sociable argument
7. Representing speech: other voices, other places
8. Questioning expertise: who says?
9. Radio phone-ins: mediated sociable arguments
10. Vox pop television interviews: constructing the public
11. Opinions as talk
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], Gender studies, gender groups [JFSJ], Linguistics [CF]