Vox Pops = Pretty Frightening

Last week I posted some thoughts about the function and purpose of vox pops in the contemporary mediascape. I voiced scepticism at the common belief that these TV mainstays were an accurate indicator of public opinion.

On Thursday last week I had a crack at conducting some vox pops of my own and here’s hoping the famous saying that “practice makes perfect” applies.

Don’t get me wrong, the “voxies” I conducted with my Television Journalism classmates Annie and Soren were not bad, just nerve-wracking to obtain.

Having recorded radio vox pops on a number of occasions, I went into the exercise with some idea of what to expect. But bring out a camera and people seem less likely to want to chat. Myself included.

Intimidating aren’t they?

It’s not that I dislike being on camera, I love it. But many others don’t. It was almost as if their reluctance was transferring onto me – I didn’t want to ask somebody to do something they didn’t want to do.

But the fact is that some people are more than happy to have their opinions captured on video. You just have to be willing to suffer a few rejections in order to find them.

Bite the bullet, son, bite the bullet.

Next week we are required to edit the footage using Final Cut Pro. I’ll post a few videos up here, I’m interested to hear the thoughts of others.

Week 3: Vox Pops – Representative of Public Opinion?

The short excerpt that Matt handed out in tutes last week contained some interesting food for thought. Written by Gordon Finlayson, it examined some of German sociologist and philosopher Jurgen Habermas’ ideas about the “public sphere” and its supposed decline.

Finlayson supplies an adequate definition for “public sphere”: “…a space where subjects participate as equals in rational discussion in pursuit of truth and the common good”. It sounds pretty good when you put it like that.

Too good to be true? Habermas thinks so, describing this notion of the public sphere as both an idea and an ideology – a democratic ideal so deeply rooted in society that its existence has become a Utopian assumption.

Finlayson asserts that in the 19th and 20th centuries, the cracks started to appear – “…public opinion could be stage-managed and manipulated” by the mass-media, which (perhaps arguably) only represented the interests of a privileged minority.

Sitting in a Television Journalism lecture this morning, I noticed the connection between vox pops and Habermas’ theory.

My lecturer, acclaimed Australian journalist Jill Singer, channelled Habermas in stating that vox pops – that old favourite gauge of public opinion – are in fact anything but representative of wider public opinion.

This is despite the common mode of presenting them as unmediated and all-inclusive input from, for example, the “everyday Australian”.

The program conducting the vox pops will, more often than not, enter the process with an agenda or at least an idea of the material they would like to come away with.

Finlayson’s use of the term “stage-managed” to describe the modern approach to depicting public opinion seems most appropriate.

The BBC, Jill noted, sees vox pops as nothing more than expressions of one side of an argument and not an indication of the weight of opinion on either side of an issue.

When it comes time to record my own “news” vox pops this semester, I’ll get a hands on, practitioner’s perspective on obtaining vox populi – “the voice of the people”.