With the increase of the number of online media, the interest for winning over the audience also increases. The polls are one of the tools that influence the traffic of a web-page. Especially when they include questions that heat the public attention.
These polls may measure the disposition of the public, but cannot be used as a relevant tool for measuring the attitudes of the public, due to several reasons.
One of the main factors is the representative sample which is used to measure attitudes. Namely, in an online poll, one can never be sure whether the poll is representative (according to ethnicity, gender, age etc.). On the contrary, it is accepted that these polls never reflect the demography of the country and because of that they can be only considered as fun, but not as a relevant public opinion survey.
The second factor is the danger of hacking the poll or voting by bots. This factor is also crucial because there is always the danger – instead of real measurement of the human factor – the poll to be rigged in order to create false results. Very often we witness even relevant portals that tried to conduct similar polls becoming target of hackers, after which they denounce the polls and declare them to be invalid. This is especially the case with political polls, because in that way an attempt is made to influence the voters, and besides that, the political parties have persons with skills for hacking these polls at their disposal.
These polls are often used by media in their news and analyses, and by that they become a tool for disinformation. Therefore, it becomes clear that some of these polls are conducted in order to create false results, which through certain portals are disseminated as “news”, and all that in order to influence the voters.
Following are link to on-line polls conducted during the campaign, after the first and second TV debates of the Presidential candidates.
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This project was funded in part through a U.S. Embassy grant. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the implementers/authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Government.
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