Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (19 December 1916 – 25 March 2010) was a German political scientist. Her most famous contribution is the model of the spiral of silence, detailed in The Spiral of Silence: Public Opinion – Our Social Skin. The model is an explanation of how perceived public opinion can influence individual opinions or actions.
Biography
Elisabeth Noelle was born to Ernst and Eve Noelle in 1916 in the Villa Noelle in Grunewald, a suburb of Berlin. First Elisabeth went to several schools in Berlin and then switched to the prestigious Salem Castle School, which she also left one year later. She earned her Abitur in 1935 in Göttingen and then studied philosophy, history, journalism, and American studies at the Friedrich Wilhelm University, and the Königsberg Albertina University. When she visited Obersalzberg on 13 June 1937 with 23 other students, she by chance had an encounter with Adolf Hitler, which she later called "one of the most intensive and strangest experiences in her life". As can be read in a newspaper article in the National Socialist student newspaper "Die Bewegung", a group of ANSt students travelled to the Obersalzberg to see Hitler and felt lucky when they were actually received and even invited for coffee. The doctoral student Petra Umlauf also came to this conclusion in her dissertation “Die Studentinnen der Universität München 1926 to 1945”. The group photo shows an enthusiastic and friendly-looking Elisabeth Noelle directly behind Adolf Hitler. She stayed in the US from 1937 to 1938 and studied at the University of Missouri. There she was registered as a "special student". Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann claimed countless times that she studied journalism for one year. But "special students" were not admitted to the Schools of Journalism, Law, or Medicine.
In 1940 she received her Ph.D. in Berlin/Germany, concentrating on public opinion research in the USA.
In 1940 she briefly worked for the Nazi newspaper Das Reich. On 8 June 1941 Das Reich published Noelle-Neumann's article entitled "Who Informs America?" in which she propagated the idea that a Jewish syndicate ran the American media. She wrote, "Jews write in the papers, own them, have virtually monopolize the advertising agencies and can therefore open and shut the gates of advertising income as they wish." She was fired when she exchanged unfavourable photos of Franklin D. Roosevelt for better looking ones. She then worked for the Frankfurter Zeitung until it was banned in 1943.
In 1947 she and her first husband Erich Peter Neumann founded a public opinion research organization—the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach, which today is one of the best known and most prestigious polling organizations in Germany. She, along with her husband, created the first German opinion-polling body.
From 1964 to 1983 she held a professorate at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz.
Noelle-Neumann was the president of the World Association for Public Opinion Research from 1978 to 1980 and worked as a guest professor at the University of Chicago from 1978 to 1991.
Important work
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann coined the term spiral of silence.This theory explains how people's opinions change or go unspoken in order to fit in with popular ideologies and avoid being singled out for holding opposing Ideologies. Due to the lack of human agency and rationality, which the theory does not account for, this theory has received mixed reviews. The top of the spiral is those who express their opinions and thoughts, which is explained by the spiral of silence. In other words, exercise your right to free speech. Those who are unwilling to speak out for fear of being isolated or ostracised are at the bottom of the spiral.
Allegations of anti-Semitism
In 1991, Leo Bogart criticized Noelle-Neumann, accusing her of anti-Semitic passages in her dissertation and articles she wrote for Nazi newspapers. As a young woman, she had "superb credentials as an activist and leader" of Nazi youth and students' organizations, he wrote. In fact, when she published her 1940 dissertation in Germany, entitled "Opinion and mass research in the USA", having spent a year at the University of Missouri researching George Gallup's methodology, Joseph Goebbels called the 24-year-old woman as an adjutant and intended her to build up, for the ministry of propaganda, Germany's first public opinion research organization. She declined, having fallen ill, which angered Goebbels; she later became a newspaper journalist with Nazi publications where she wrote some articles on Jewish influence over U.S. news and elite opinion.