Construct · 4 names · 5 citations
Different names. Different fields. One construct. One map.
● jangle · one silence, several names Nearest construct by meaningspiralcompare the meaningsEvery construct on the map is compared with every other by the meaning of its definitions, and the closest one is surfaced here. The nearest construct to spiral of silence is spiral.
Hold this as a prompt, not a verdict. Two constructs sitting close in meaning is a reason to read them side by side and decide for yourself whether they are one idea under two names. It is not proof that they are. Compare the meanings in the Collider.
Spokes are the names and the models that coined them; dashed arcs are borrowings. Tap a field for its definition, unit, and measures.
Drag to watch the word get claimed. Each name appears at the publication date of the earliest source cited for it. Tap a year to see which.
The tendency for people who believe their opinion is losing ground to fall silent in public, which makes the dominant view look stronger than it is and drives the minority further into silence over time. Noelle-Neumann set this out in her 1974 paper The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion and developed it at book length in 1984, arguing that a fear of social isolation leads people to monitor the climate of opinion with what she called a quasi-statistical sense and to hold back when they feel outnumbered. The theory treats public opinion as a form of social control rather than as a simple sum of private views. This is the origin of the term and the referent the other entries here are measured against. What is distinctive is the feedback loop, in which silence feeds a perception of dominance, which feeds more silence.[1][2]
The individual-level engine the spiral is built on, namely the well-documented tendency to bring one's expressed view into line with a perceived majority. Asch's 1956 studies showed that many people would agree with an obviously wrong group judgement about the length of a line rather than stand alone, and that the pull came partly from a wish not to be the deviant. Noelle-Neumann drew on this fear-of-isolation motive directly, so at the level of the person the spiral of silence and social-psychological conformity describe much the same behaviour under different names. The two are not identical, since conformity can change a private belief while the spiral concerns public expression, and conformity was studied in small face-to-face groups rather than against a national climate of opinion. Even so, a critic can reasonably ask what the communication theory adds to the conformity research that came before it.[3]
The same silencing effect studied in networked settings, where the majority a person reads is an online audience rather than a room or a nation. Stoycheff's 2016 experiment found that people who were reminded of government surveillance were less willing to voice a minority opinion about a policy issue on Facebook, which she read as a spiral-of-silence effect in a digital public. The move online changes what the climate of opinion is made of, because visible likes, shares, and comment counts can stand in for the felt majority. Whether the offline theory transfers cleanly is contested, since online spaces also let minorities find one another and speak more freely than they might in person. This field carries the original name into a setting Noelle-Neumann did not study, which is where much of the recent work lives.[4]
The spiral reduced to its testable core, which is the relationship between perceiving support for one's view and being willing to state it. Glynn, Hayes, and Shanahan's 1997 meta-analysis pooled survey studies that measured this link and found the association positive but small, far weaker than the theory's strong claims would predict. Their result is the main reason the spiral of silence is treated with caution rather than as settled fact, and it is the empirical anchor for the fault lines below. Measuring the construct this way also narrows it, because a weak survey correlation between perceived support and willingness to speak is not the same as observing the dynamic spiral unfold over time. The gap between the sweeping theory and the modest measured effect is itself a construct-clarity problem.[5]
Next
See how spiral of silence sits against neighbouring constructs in the Collider, or export every reference on this page in one click.
Open in ColliderExport BibTeXReport this collisionCited on this page?
If your work is cited behind one of these entries, you know better than we do whether we captured the meaning right. Confirm it, suggest an edit, or dispute it, and your name goes on the entry as an author who has checked it, linked to your ORCID.
Claim your construct