In the traditional rural European societies of the Middle Ages, most people’s activities and attitudes were dictated by their social stations. Phenomena much like public opinion, however, could still be observed among the religious, intellectual, and political elite. Religious disputations, the struggles between popes and the Holy Roman Empire, and the dynastic ambitions of princes all involved efforts to persuade, to create a following, and to line up the opinions of those who counted. In 1191 the English statesman William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, was attacked by his political opponents for hiring troubadours to extol his merits in public places, so that “people spoke of him as though his equal did not exist on earth.” The propaganda battles between emperors and popes were waged largely through sermons, but handwritten literature also played a part.

From the end of the 13th century, the ranks of those who could be drawn into controversy regarding current affairs grew steadily. The general level of education of the lay population gradually increased. The rise of humanism in Italy led to the emergence of a group of writers whose services were eagerly sought by princes striving to consolidate their domains. Some of these writers served as advisers and diplomats; others were employed as publicists because of their rhetorical skills. The 16th-century Italian writer Pietro Aretino—of whom it was said that he knew how to defame, to threaten, and to flatter better than all others—was sought by both Charles V of Spain and Francis I of France. The Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, a contemporary of Aretino, wrote that princes should not ignore popular opinion, particularly in regard to such matters as the distribution of offices.

The invention of printing from movable type in the 15th century and the Protestant Reformation in the 16th further increased the numbers of people able to hold and express informed opinions on contemporary issues. The German priest and scholar Martin Luther broke with the humanists by abandoning the use of Classical Latin, which was intelligible only to the educated, and turned directly to the masses. “I will gladly leave to others the honour of doing great things,” he wrote, “and will not be ashamed of preaching and writing in German for the unschooled layman.” Although Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, which were distributed throughout Europe despite being printed against his will, were of a theological nature, he also wrote on such subjects as the war against the Turks, the Peasants’ Revolt, and the evils of usury. His vituperative style and the criticism he received from his many opponents, both lay and clerical, contributed to the formation of larger and larger groups holding opinions on important matters of the day.

During the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), extensive attempts were made to create and influence public opinion, including the use of tracts illustrated with woodcuts. Opinions were also swayed by means of speeches, sermons, and face-to-face discussions. Not surprisingly, some civil and religious authorities attempted to control the dissemination of unwelcome ideas through increasingly strict censorship. The first Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“Index of Forbidden Books”) was published during the reign of Pope Paul IV in 1559. Charles IX of France decreed in 1563 that nothing could be printed without the special permission of the king. The origin of the word propaganda is linked to the Roman Catholic Church’s missionary organization Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith), which was founded in 1622.

More quietly but more significantly, other means of distributing information were becoming a common part of life. Regular postal services, started in France in 1464 and in the Austrian Empire in 1490, facilitated the spread of information enormously. Rudimentary private news services had been maintained by political authorities and wealthy merchants since Classical times, but they were not available to the general public. Regularly printed newspapers first appeared about 1600 and multiplied rapidly thereafter, though they were frequently bedeviled by censorship regulations.

The great European news centres began to develop during the 17th century, especially in cities that were establishing sophisticated financial exchanges, such as Antwerp, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London, and Lyons. With the introduction of a paid civil service and the employment of paid soldiers in the place of vassals, princes found it necessary to borrow money. The bankers, in turn, had to know a great deal about the credit of the princes, the state of their political fortunes, and their reputations with their subjects. All kinds of political and economic information flowed to the money-lending centres, and this information gave rise to generally held opinions in the banking community; the ditta di borsa (“opinion on the bourse”) is often referred to in documents of the period.

The 18th century to the present

Significantly, it was another financial official who first popularized the term public opinion in modern times. Jacques Necker, the finance minister for Louis XVI on the eve of the French Revolution, noted repeatedly in his writings that public credit depended upon the opinions of holders and buyers of government securities about the viability of the royal administration. He too was vitally concerned with the ditta di borsa. But he also remarked on the power of public opinion in other areas. “This public opinion,” Necker wrote, “strengthens or weakens all human institutions.” As he saw it, public opinion should be taken into account in all political undertakings. Necker was not, however, concerned with the opinions of each and every Frenchman. For him, the people who collectively shaped public opinion were those who could read and write, who lived in cities, who kept up with the day’s news, and who had money to buy government securities.

The final years of the 18th century showed how enormously the power of public opinion had grown. Revolutionary public opinion had transformed 13 North American British colonies into the United States of America. In France, public opinion had inspired both the middle classes and the urban masses and had ultimately taken shape as the French Revolution. Observers of the Revolution were mystified—and often terrified—by this new spectre, which seemed able to sweep aside one of the most-entrenched institutions of the time—the monarchy.

In keeping with theories of social class developed in the 19th century, some scholars of the era viewed public opinion as the domain of the upper classes. Thus, the English author William A. Mackinnon defined it as “that sentiment on any given subject which is entertained by the best informed, most intelligent, and most moral persons in the community.” Mackinnon, who was one of the first authors to focus on the subject, drew a further distinction between public opinion and “popular clamour,” which he described as

that sort of feeling arising from the passions of a multitude acting without consideration; or an excitement created amongst the uneducated; or amongst those who do not reflect, or do not exercise their judgment on the point in question.

There is no doubt that public opinion was on the minds of the great thinkers and writers of the era. The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel described public opinion as containing both truth and falsehood and added that it was the task of the great man to distinguish between the two. The English jurist and historian James Bryce, writing in the late 19th and the early 20th century, maintained that a government based on popular consent would give a nation great stability and strength but did not believe that public opinion could or should determine the details of policy, since in his view most people do not have the leisure or inclination to arrive at a position on every question. Rather, the masses would set the general tone for policy, their sentiments leading them to take a stand on the side of justice, honour, and peace.

Various theories of public opinion have been developed since the early 20th century, though none has been recognized as predominant. According to a framework suggested by the Canadian communications theorist Sherry Devereux Ferguson, most of them fall into one or the other of three general categories. Some theories proposed in the first half of the 20th century treat public opinion as a welling up from the bottom levels of society to the top, ensuring a two-way flow of communication between representatives and the represented. This “populist” approach acknowledges the tendency of public opinion to shift as individuals interact with each other or respond to media influences. It has been opposed by theories of the “elitist” or social constructionist category, which emphasize the manipulative aspects of communication and recognize the multiplicity of perspectives that tend to form around any issue. Reflecting a more pessimistic outlook, theories belonging to a third category, known as critical or radical-functionalist, hold that the general public—including minority groups—has negligible influence on public opinion, which is largely controlled by those in power.