Call for Papers of the Psychology and Public Opinion Section for the Sessions at the IAMCR Conference in Porto Allegre, 25.-30. of July, 2004.

The Psychology and Public Opinion Section plans three types of sessions at the Porto-Allegre-Conference of IAMCR in July 2004. The following text describes them shortly:

• First, there is planned a series of thematically open sessions devoted to papers which refer in general to the research area of the section, “psychology and public opinion”, and which are occupied with the central conference theme “Communication and Democracy: Perspectives for a New World”. Here, a lot of topics will have a place, and we hope to get a variety of interesting papers.
• Second, the section will organize some sessions about “Erving Goffman and the Media”.
  Erving Goffmann today is seen as one of the modern classics of Sociology and Interaction theory. He created a microsociological view on interaction and communication, which is far from “transport of information”. Instead, an understanding of interaction as a process, the definition of the situation, constructed by all participants as a frame for communication, the balance of identity between the own idea and the view from outside and topics like this have been his central concern.
  Goffmans perspective on interaction and communication was fruitful, not only for interpersonal, but also for media related communication. E.g. Joshual Meyrowitz referred to him to understand “situation” as an information system and to show empirically, how situations are changing if media become part of it. Other researchers referred to the frame concept to analyze the developing forms of communication in the socalled Cyberspace. Again others used his methodological example and his microsociological ideas to describe the changing character of public places by media. Others used Goffmans ideas to discuss advertisement, the changing stereotypes of gender roles, the role of institutions for communicative behaviour and so on.
  But Goffmans work contains much more what could be of interest for communication research. His methods are not finally understood, his interaction theory is only in part adapted to describe media communication and a lot of further questions are open.
  Because of this, the Section plans some sessions to discuss his work in relation to media communication and thus calls for papers on this topic.
• Third, the Section intends to make a session about the effect of public opinion polls in political issues on public opinion and on governments policy by the publication of results in the media: Recent examples show that asking specific questions, offering only specific possible answers and presenting the results in the media may be an instrument to influence government policy and public opinion. The Section expect research papers on that.