Report about the Psychology and Public Opinion Section of the IAMCR about the meetings at the Taipeh Conference

Friedrich Krotz/Hillel Nossek

• with the general topic of the conference, in as far as they fit into the Section,
• Any additional papers following the presentations and discussions of the PPO-Section sessions in Porto Allegre, Brazil, at the annual conference a year before.
• with the changing media and families or households living together and
• with the connection between public sphere, public opinion and media.

In consequence and after the selection by the heads of section, three thematic sessions and a business meeting were held by the section. The “Learning from Goffman” issue was not again a topic of the meeting. Instead, the “Changing media and families”-issue found remarkable interest in the community; topics have been the “neoliberal” entertainment forms or the upcoming interactive media. Different and interesting topics have been presenting the session on Media, conflict and disaster, which was concerned with the role of media in case of war, earthquakes and other. In the session on media and public sphere topics like “the Iraqi threat and the Israeli News Agenda and research about Public opinion in South Korea have been discussed.

The business session started with an interesting evaluation of the participants about the sessions of the PPO. We further collected ideas about the coming sessions in Cairo in 2006. Here, it is planned to make a call again for three topics: Conference-oriented papers which belong into the PPO-Section as a first group. Second, after the success of the theory oriented discussion in Porto Allegre about Erving Goffman and the Media, we think about a session on Alfred Schutz and the phenomenological approach applied to communication and media studies, perhaps in cooperation with the Audience and Reception session. Third, the topic on changing media and the forms of living together in a media society could be a further main topic.