The Role of Media in Public Opinion Engineering in Crises

Public opinion engineering plays an essential role through media for effective dealing with crisis and crisis management. Inspiring public opinion through attitudes that a section of the general public deeply adheres to and reacts, often lead to promises and partnership that manage organizations, groups, governments, and the public to perform effective and extensive actions. The media affects public opinion in three ways: 1. Providing information about issues by propagating news 2. Communicating a wide range of messages from government officials and politicians to the public 3. Presenting discussion on issues. The main tendency of the media to manage public opinion emerges when society is in the condition of crisis. Effective media is supposed to have special features to play its role in crisis management by providing quick and timely information and messages. The public opinion engineering media model, according to the types of crisis and the psychological and sociological characteristics of the audience and their involvement in the crisis, requires different media tools and methods to employ in specific programs for each crisis. This research is aimed at identifying the role of media in public opinion engineering based on theories of individual and social psychology, and paying attention to both internal wills and inclinations of individuals and social factors and the planning factor in public opinion engineering consistent with religious and national beliefs of the people.