The ideological identities of these stories are just as diverse as the way they are expressed.
In today's partisan media environment, consumers are exposed to a wide variety of different media stories. In particular, when the theory is closely studied, it reveals that public opinion is neither transitory nor random (Glynn & McLeod, 1984, p. Regardless of whether the theory is applied to traditional or digital media, communication scholars can agree that the theory makes important contributions towards explaining individual behavior and attitudes arising from media consumption (Scheufele & Moy, 2000, p. The internet, particularly social media, has opened new research avenues for scholars who want to conduct efficient and cost-effective studies involving multiple countries. Although scholars remain divided as to whether the theory's "spiraling" effect is applicable to today's digital media environment, the theory nonetheless remains influential because it has been studied today more so than in previous years.
Since today's media environment is undergoing continual refinement at rapid speeds, researchers are able to find new ways to apply the theory. However, with the exponential growth of digital media, the theory has recently been applied to digital interactions as well (Ho, Chen, & Sim, 2013, p. When initially proposed by Noelle-Neumann, the theory helped to explain face-to-face interactions in the media that helped to form public opinion (Gearhart & Zhang, 2014, p. Over time, a "spiraling" effect will occur, in which a dominant opinion becomes more visible over one or more minority opinions. The Spiral of Silence attempts to explain how media consumption, interaction among key groups, and opinion expression all interact to form opinions in society. Since its introduction by German-born Political Scientist Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann in 1974, the Spiral of Silence theory has become one of the most-researched communication theories that explains public opinion formation in a media environment (McDonald, Glynn, Kim, & Ostman, 2001, p.
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