Bea Pamela Miraflor 201468216

The Spiral of Silence theory by Noelle-Neumann suggests that people who believe in the

minority viewpoint will resort to dwell in the background while the people who hold the belief of the

majority viewpoint will be vociferous and will speak out their opinions. This commonly happens in the

field of media since it is strongly believed that the media is a catalyst for the peoples opinions. One

media issue that reflects this theory is the case of the Amalayer viral video last November 13, 2012.

Paula Jamie Salvosa went viral when she confronted a lady guard at the LRT with her famous line,

So youre telling me amalayer? (Im a liar). Since the video emphasized her raising her voice at the

lady guard, majority of the netizens criticized her for being being rude to the lady guard. In this issue,

the majority viewpoint is the rudeness of Paula while the minority viewpoint is the mistake of the lady

guard. Many netizens bashed Paula and threw negative opinions on her. On the other side, there are

only rare social media posts giving sympathy to Ms. Salvosa. Most of the peoples opinions came from

what they see in the media, therefore, in this case, since the video is angled on how Ms. Salvosa

treated the lady guard, the public opinion is centered to the insolent woman.

The public is also given a limited view of reality since media is designed to do so. It cannot cover

the whole news or story therefore it only covers the salient ones. This is according to Agenda Setting

Theory. This angling affects the views of the people. Since the media framed the Amalayer news as

Ms. Salvosa as the perpetrator of the scandal, it resulted to the rude image of Ms. Salvosa as the

majority viewpoint and the lady guards mistake as the minority viewpoint.

To appraise public opinion, people develop a quasi-statistical sense. It is the personal estimation

of the strength of opposing sides on a public issue. In this issue, the evidence against Ms. Salvosa is so

strong which made the majority believe that she was so disrespectful towards the lady guard.

Personally, when this Amalayer issue came, I first knew about it from my friends. When they told

me about the issue, all of them told negative opinions about her, and no one ever mentioned about

the lady guards mistake. To confirm what Ive heard, I searched her video in the internet and I found

out that my friends somehow have a point. I actually want to side with Ms. Salvosa but the media and

my friends indirectly influenced me to side with the lady guard. I also attained the fear of isolation
since I initially want to side with Ms. Salvosa but I ended up siding with the lady guard since the

evidence is clearly portraying how disrespectful Ms. Salvosa was. This phenomenon made me realize

how strong the effect of Spiral of Silence is especially when it comes to the media. Since the media is

ubiquitous and it is the catharsis for peoples public opinion, the Spiral of Silence will most probably

take effect especially to the netizens.

Hard Cores or groups at the end of the spiral who still speak out at any cost also exist in this

issue. For instance, the family of Ms. Salvosa strongly believes that the lady guards mistake actuated

the anger of Paula. In addition, some fan pages were also created in Facebook which show sympathy

to Ms. Salvosa. However, they are only a few of them but they still believe in the statements of Ms.

Salvosa no matter what.

Since the media is believed to be an indirect public form of communication where people feel

helpless to respond, the willingness to speak out still depends on the media. If there are no strong

foundations for the opposing side, the people would remain constant with what the media feeds

them. Noelle-Neumann actually adds that the media aids in providing words and phrases for the

public opinion. For instance, simple words such as Junk STS!.

With the advent of the Internet, the public opinion is now strongly influenced. Since people can

see everyones opinion about a certain issue, tendency is they will either follow the majority

viewpoint, or the minority viewpoint, depending on their quasi-statistical sense. As for the case of

Amalayer, the public opinion was affected rapidly since media transfers information at a fast rate.