 2016 - 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 1031-3862-01 | Public Opinion, Polls and Politics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
The pro-seminar examines public opinion, polls and politics. We will focus on public opinion and its role in democratic politics, on polls as the major tool to measure public opinion, and on the use of public opinion polls by policy makers. We will discuss the validity of this measurement tool, on its advantages and disadvantages, and its success and failure in election prediction, We will study the factors that mold public opinion, public opinion change, and the mutual relationships between public opinion, media and politics.
As part of the course the students will plan an empirical study of public opinion. The study will be presented and discussed in class. The final paper due at the end of the semester will be a research proposal based on this work.