Title (tentative)
Perceptions of public opinion polls and their influence on willingness to share polling news: Developing and validating a measure of polling distrust and exploring its role
Overview of the Project
In an era of intensifying political polarization, grasping the opinions of others is crucial for navigating everyday social interactions. Polling serves a vital role in this context by assessing and conveying public opinion. Such a critical role of polling has established it as "a fundamental component of political communication," leading to its development into an independent genre of journalism. However, at the same time, polling faces significant skepticism, with recent reports indicating a decline in public trust. Concerns that pollsters might deliberately sway opinions have intensified skepticism, prompting over 70 countries to implement regulations, such as poll embargoes, to control the release of polling data.
Given the increasing skepticism toward the polling industry, an in-depth investigation of how pervasive skepticism toward the polling industry influences how citizens engage with polling bears timely importance. As a part of scholarly efforts to address this query, my dissertation research is designed to deepen an understanding of public perceptions of polling, as a social institution, and their influence on willingness to engage with polling news. Specifically, this project develops and validates a new measure for assessing subjective evaluations of distrust in public opinion polls, referred to as "polling distrust." This proposed measure is examined through three key dimensions: distrust in polling methods, distrust in the believability of polls, and distrust in benevolence (i.e., intentions of pollsters).
This project can be seen as part of a broader scholarly effort to answer a key question many media scholars are exploring: How do individuals with skeptical views about the trustworthiness of news media engage with news in a high-choice, politically polarized media environment? Given that polling has developed into not only an independent but also ubiquitous genre of journalism (e.g., horse race journalism), further illuminating the nature of citizens’ skepticism toward polling may provide insights into what aspects of contemporary journalism practice contribute to cultivating distrust in news media.