The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , your favorite newspaper when writing articles or giving exclusive Friday published his obituary on the front page . Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann , a sociologist at Berlin's famous among students of the media for their theory of spiral of silence , died on Thursday, March 25, 2010, at 93 years in the spa town of Allensbach , home of the famous Institut für Demoskopie he founded in 1947 with her first husband, the politician and journalist Enrich Neumann.
reference Adviser Christian Democrat foreign ministers - from Konrad Adenauer to own Angela Merkel, to which was his close friend, Helmut Kohl - Noelle-Neumann came to be nicknamed "the Sybil of Lake Constance" or "the lady in the polls." His opinion poll institute currently employs nearly a hundred workers, which add about two thousand part-time interviewers. For years, Noelle-Neumann has hit precisely the results of the German elections, and to explore more wisdom in the views German society, traumatized by the legacy of Nazism and the loss of your other half to the communist side during the Cold War.
As has happened with other illustrious German political scientist Carl Schmitt and the filmmaker Leni Niefenstahl, the brilliance of Noelle-Neumann has been tainted by its Nazi past. Particularly devastating to its image were the revelations of American University professor Christopher Simpson , which in 1996 published an article Journal of Communication (something like the journal Nature for communicologists) that was related theory of the spiral of silence with the philo-Nazi youth The author, who came to work under the orders of Goebbels in Das Reich newspaper from 1940 to 1942.
The theory of spiral of silence maintains that individuals tend to obscure our view if we think that most people holds a contrary view to ours. From the standpoint of propaganda, the key is to control the vocal minority (the media and elites). His greatest social projection will make their thoughts seem the most, the politically correct, repressed and popular opinion, unconscious of his true character majority, retract or even turn to feel that it is sensed as the winner.
Although the Nazi past of Noelle-Neumann had transpired in 1991 in an article in Commentary signed by Leo Bogart , another great scholar of public opinion, the impact Simpson's article was even higher . Noelle-Neumann and Simpson are engaged in intense debate face to face during the annual conference of the International Communication Association May 1997, held in Montreal, Canada. Simpson hung on the network, a page still active, several documents on the Nazi past of the author .
In his defense, Noelle-Neumann denied the totalitarian character of his theory. The one I was able to inspire in the environment in which he lived, said lead author, does not mean that the theory is wrong. Noelle-Neumann said he never falling within the Nazi Party, which opposed the National Socialists from the inside, and threw it Goebells himself after writing a newspaper article that the Nazi leader considered too favorable to U.S. President Roosevelt.
Professor Emeritus at the University of Mainz, whose prestigious Institut für Publizistik founded in 1966, Noelle-Neumann received his doctorate in 1940 under the command of historical journalism teacher Emil Dovifat with a thesis on public opinion research in the United States. Noelle-Neumann was in fact the person who did most to bring Americans to Europe in progress Demoscopia. Central to his career would be staying at the University of Missouri in 1937, during which he met Noelle-Neumann George Gallup, who a year earlier had achieved fame with amazing accuracy in predicting the outcome of U.S. presidential election.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, who since the death of her second husband in 2000 preferred to use her maiden name, Noelle, period, said he did not care too much to be misunderstood. Scientists stated, are as artists: the better if they remain eternal 'outsiders'.
# # #
