Popular will exploit and marginalize

 Popular will exploit and marginalize

Dr Yasir Mahgoub Elhussien 

The term “Popular will” is used in many different contexts and can be defined by many definitions and terms, but it does not go beyond representing the collective mind of a society or a people. It is the opinion of the people, the public opinion, the voice of the people, and the spirit of the people. The most common and resonant term in the Arab world is the Arab audience or literally the Arab street. Popular will is of great importance in politics, where it is relied upon in making decisions at the level of state administration in the case of good governance, not authoritarian dictatorship. Popular will leads to the emergence of a national project and perhaps an Arab or Islamic regional project. The more the will of the peoples increases in cohesion and vitality, the more it reflects prosperity, development, and the direct or indirect decline of foreign intervention through a local agent. The more the popular will collapses, disappears, and is oppressed, the more foreign intervention flourishes, steals the wealth of the peoples, and makes them sects that taste each other with cruelty. When the popular will is absent, the need for social reform becomes urgent, through education and education tools, media institutions, and education.

Public opinion may represent the popular will in its first and basic stage, as public opinion needs executive dynamics to become a popular will that actually happens and changes. Public opinion can be considered a set of pressures and judgments issued by the masses on the work of something, and it is a current that moves through the masses, then energy is formed from it that has effectiveness in social change operations. Elections may be a dynamic important to embody the popular will by choosing representatives of the people in parliament or choosing the head of state. Although public opinion seems like a gelatinous object before the stage of popular will, it is highly influential, especially if this object is armed with awareness and the ability to distinguish, and it differs from the ranks of illiteracy, indifference, and blind adherence to slogans or tasteful sayings. Public opinion can be considered an image of collective behavior that has emerged from a debate among multiple individuals who are concerned with the issue or discussion and are directed towards achieving a common goal or purpose. Public opinion is a powerful force that has a great impact on people’s daily lives; it supports public service bodies and sponsors social traditions and ethical principles or disguises them, and inflates them

“The relationship between political, intellectual, and social power and the media is a controversial one. It is governed by mutual interests between these parties and the media in democratic countries, while in non-democratic countries that relationship is governed by political, intellectual, and social orientations that still directly or indirectly control the media. Data from one of the media theories suggests that the more the media adopts a consistent and coherent approach to one of the issues for some time, the more the public opinion moves in the direction of the media itself. Public opinion is based primarily on what mass communication disseminates. It is difficult to imagine such an opinion in a society where these means are not clearly present. Mass communication, whether in liberal countries, those based on state ownership, or in so-called developing countries, is closely related, albeit to varying degrees, to the state institution. With the spread and development of media technology, especially through social media, problems of deliberate or unintentional false materials emerge, as well as attempts by political systems to occupy the minds of the masses and harness them to serve the interests of the ruling regimes, not the interests of the masses through the media, to reach a truth once, which is the forgery of popular will. A pressing question is whether public opinion in the democratic system is really the one that decides, or whether the media decides what this public opinion should decide, while giving it the illusion that it is the initiator and has absolute freedom in its decision? Yes, unless the media works without bad intentions or becomes an obedient tool for the ruling elites by working to achieve the greatest degree of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral influence. This increases when these means perform information transfer functions with sincerity and in a distinctive and intensive manner.”