The explosive development of digital technology, the internet and social networks are profoundly changing all aspects of social life, including the environment for formation, spread and impact of public opinion. If previously, public opinion was mainly formed through direct communication channels, traditional journalism or socio-political organizations, today, cyberspace has become an important environment for generating, interacting, spreading and amplifying public opinion.
In that context, public opinion work is facing both new opportunities and challenges. Innovating public opinion work is not only an objective requirement of the national digital transformation process, but also an important political task to consolidate social trust, strengthen social consensus, build a solid "people's heart battleground", contributing to the successful implementation of the Resolution of the 14th Party Congress.
Major changes in public opinion in the digital age
The most prominent point of public opinion today is the speed of information formation and spread taking place on a very large scale, with very high intensity. Just one event, one statement, a short video or an unverified information can quickly attract millions of accesses, comments, shares and create a strong wave of public opinion in society.
The cyberspace has fundamentally changed the structure of social media. From the public mainly receiving one-way information, today each citizen is both the receiver and the producer, commentator, spreader and influencer of information. This makes public opinion more multi-dimensional, more democratic, but also more complex, more difficult to predict.
A noteworthy feature is that the boundary between official information and unofficial information is becoming increasingly fragile. Besides the positive values that the digital environment brings, the situation of fake news, untrue information, harmful information, distortion, and incitement is still complicated. Many social cases show that if official information is provided slowly or lacks persuasiveness, it is very easy to create information gaps, arouse skepticism, cause public disorder and negatively impact social trust.
Reality also shows that hostile forces and political opportunists are thoroughly taking advantage of cyberspace to distort the Party's guidelines and policies, and the State's laws; inciting dissatisfaction and division of the great national unity bloc; affecting the awareness and ideology of cadres, party members and the People.
These changes pose the requirement to strongly innovate public opinion work in a modern, proactive, professional direction, based on digital platforms and closely following the people's lives.
Current situation of public opinion work
In recent years, public opinion work has had many positive changes. The organizational system and network of collaborators from the Central to grassroots levels have continued to be consolidated; the grasp, synthesis, and reflection of the thoughts and aspirations of all classes of people are increasingly concerned. Many pressing and prominent issues have been detected early, contributing to helping Party committees and authorities promptly lead and direct handling.
Sociological survey and public opinion survey activities have been gradually expanded. Some agencies and localities have initially applied information technology in monitoring and analyzing information in newspapers and social networks. Public opinion work is increasingly clearly showing its role as an important advisory channel in ideological work, mass mobilization, policy communication and protection of the Party's ideological foundation.
However, looking at the overall picture, public opinion work still has notable limitations. In many places, this work is still mainly limited to reflecting the situation, not paying due attention to in-depth analysis, trend forecasting and policy advice. Many reports are still heavily focused on describing phenomena, lacking assessment of the nature, causes and impact forecasting.
The application of digital technology, artificial intelligence, and big data in public opinion work is still slow and lacks synchronization. Many localities still mainly use manual methods, while public opinion in cyberspace fluctuates every hour, every minute.
The coordination mechanism between public opinion work and policy communication, mass mobilization work, supervision and social criticism activities in some places is still not tight. Many information reflected from the grassroots level has not been processed and responded to in a timely manner, reducing the effectiveness of creating social consensus.
In addition, the quality of the team of officials working in public opinion work is not uniform; data analysis skills, digital information exploitation, identification and handling of problems arising in cyberspace are still limited. This is a bottleneck that needs to be overcome soon if we want to improve the quality of public opinion work in the digital age.
Core solutions to focus on implementing
In the context of deep and widespread digital transformation, public opinion work needs to be comprehensively innovated in terms of thinking, methods, technology and implementation organization. This is not only a professional requirement of propaganda and mass mobilization work, but also an important political requirement to improve the leadership capacity of the Party, the management efficiency of the State, promote the role of the Vietnam Fatherland Front and socio-political organizations in grasping thoughts and aspirations, consolidating trust and creating consensus among the people. To meet new requirements, it is necessary to focus on synchronously implementing the following 5 core solutions:
First, strongly innovate thinking about public opinion work.
This is a fundamental solution. It is necessary to shift from the thinking of "grasping and reflecting public opinion" to the thinking of "managing public opinion in the digital environment". This transformation does not mean bureaucratizing or imposing on public opinion, but rather improving the capacity to listen, analyze, forecast, orient and advise on handling social issues proactively, scientifically, and persuasively.
In the digital age, public opinion work is not only aimed at knowing what the People are interested in, but more importantly, it is necessary to identify why that issue is being concerned, which social groups are being affected, the extent of spread, the trend of development, the risk of being exploited, and what solutions need to be advised to handle it early and remotely. If only stopping at reflecting phenomena, public opinion work will always lag behind reality; if there is a capacity to analyze and forecast, this work will become an important tool to help Party committees and authorities be proactive in leadership and direction.
Therefore, it is necessary to consider public opinion as an important source of data in the process of planning, organizing implementation and evaluating public policies. Each major policy, especially policies that directly impact people's lives, needs to be viewed from the perspective of public opinion: How well the people understand, how much consensus, what they are concerned about, problems at which stage, how to adjust. This is the basis for policies to go into life, limiting the gap between correct policies and effective implementation organizations.
Public opinion work must therefore become an organic part of modern leadership and management methods: leadership must rely on the people, listen to the people, understand the people, persuade the people and organize for the People to participate in building, supervising, and perfecting policies.
Second, promote digital transformation in public opinion work.
This is a breakthrough solution that determines the adaptability of public opinion work in the new context. When public opinion is formed and spread mainly in the digital environment, if the work of grasping public opinion is still mainly based on manual, dispersed, and slow-updating methods, it will be difficult to keep up with the pace of change in reality.
It is necessary to urgently build a database and specialized data system on public opinion in a unified, interconnected direction, capable of updating, analyzing and effectively exploiting it. On that basis, gradually form centers or departments to analyze and forecast public opinion on digital platforms, capable of monitoring, summarizing, classifying, and evaluating major information flows in newspapers, social networks and digital media platforms.
Along with that, it is necessary to promote the application of artificial intelligence, big data, emotion analysis technology, information trend analysis, hot topic identification, and detection of abnormalities in information flow. These tools help detect emerging issues early, warn of the risk of hot spots, identify misinformation, distortion, and incitement, thereby supporting functional agencies to advise on leadership, direction, communication and appropriate policy handling solutions.
However, digital transformation in public opinion work is not just about investing in software, equipment or establishing additional technical systems. More importantly, it is necessary to innovate working processes, coordination mechanisms, analysis methods and data utilization capacity. Data is only valuable when analyzed correctly, placed in a specific socio-political context and transformed into policy recommendations that are feasible.
The ultimate goal is to shift from "following reflection" to "before forecasting"; from passive handling to proactively identifying and preventing social risks; from reporting on the situation to creating solutions, contributing to improving national governance capacity in the digital environment.
Third, closely link public opinion work with policy communication and social feedback mechanisms.
Reality shows that many difficulties in the process of organizing policy implementation do not always stem from the policy itself, but sometimes originate from insufficient information, timeless communication, lack of dialogue, lack of explanation or slow response to people's legitimate concerns. In the digital environment, information gaps are very easily filled by speculation, fake news, misinformation or distorted arguments.
Therefore, public opinion work must be closely linked to policy communication right from the stage of building, issuing to organizing implementation and policy evaluation. Before issuing major policies that have a wide impact on people's lives, it is necessary to attach importance to surveying and assessing the impact of public opinion, identifying groups of subjects affected, forecasting issues that may arise, thereby having communication plans, explanations and creating appropriate consensus.
In the process of policy implementation, it is necessary to regularly listen to feedback from the people, especially different opinions, concerns, and obstacles from the grassroots level. Information reflected from public opinion must be received, classified, processed and responded to promptly; avoid the situation of only collecting information for reporting without being associated with responsibility for resolution.
Policy communication in the digital age must ensure three requirements: fast, accurate and persuasive. Quick so as not to create information gaps; accurate to ensure accuracy and authenticity; persuasive so that people understand, share and agree. Good policies are not only accurate in terms of objectives and legality, but must also be properly propagated, understood correctly by the people, agreed upon and actively participated in implementation.
Fourth, promote the role of the Vietnam Fatherland Front and socio-political organizations in grasping, orienting and creating social consensus.
In public opinion work, the Vietnam Fatherland Front and socio-political organizations play a particularly important role. With the function of representing and protecting the legitimate and lawful rights and interests of the People; gathering and mobilizing people from all walks of life; participating in Party building and State building; implementing social supervision and criticism, the Front has the conditions and responsibility to become an important channel to grasp, reflect and advise on handling public opinion issues.
The Front and socio-political organizations need to proactively innovate methods of grasping public opinion in the direction of being close to the grassroots level, close to the people, listening to the people's voice in essence. It is necessary to combine grasping through the organizational system, through the grassroots cadre team, through voter contact, supervision, social criticism, with exploiting information channels in the digital environment. Thereby, truthfully, objectively, and promptly reflect the thoughts, aspirations, and legitimate recommendations of all classes of people to the Party and State.
Through supervision and social criticism, the Front needs to contribute to early detection of inadequacies in mechanisms and policies, new issues arising from practice, bottlenecks in implementation at the grassroots level. This is an important basis for proposing amendments, supplements, and improvements to policies, not allowing small grievances to accumulate into major conflicts, and not allowing people's livelihood issues to become social hotspots.
In the digital age, the Front and socio-political organizations also need to promote the role of orienting and spreading positive information, consolidating social consensus in cyberspace. Each Front official, union, union member, and association member needs to become an active subject in propaganda, policy explanation, reflecting voices from the grassroots level, fighting against false and distorted information, contributing to protecting the ideological foundation of the Party and consolidating the great national unity bloc.
Fifth, build a team of professional and modern public opinion officials, meeting the requirements of the digital age.
Technology, no matter how modern, cannot replace the role of humans. The quality of public opinion work first and foremost depends on the quality of the staff. In the new context, officials working in public opinion work must have firm political bravery, sharp analytical thinking, good forecasting ability, understanding of social reality and the ability to use digital technology.
It is necessary to train and foster this team in the direction of integrating three groups of competencies: political competence, sociological competence and digital competence. Political competence to correctly identify the nature of the problem, distinguish between the legitimate grievances of the People and acts of exploitation, incitement, and sabotage. Sociological competence to survey, analyze, and evaluate social moods scientifically. Digital competence to exploit data, use communication analysis tools, monitor information trends and advise in the digital environment.
Along with the specialized team, it is necessary to consolidate, expand and improve the quality of the network of public opinion collaborators. This network must be diverse and in-depth, including grassroots officials, intellectuals, experts, scientists, journalists, artists, religious dignitaries, reputable people, entrepreneurs, workers, farmers, youth and core forces in cyberspace. This is an important force to help public opinion work closely follow life, reflect many aspects of reality, especially issues that are forming from the grassroots level.
In summary, the above 5 solutions need to be implemented synchronously, substantively, with focus and key points. In which, thinking innovation is a prerequisite; digital transformation is a breakthrough; policy communication and feedback mechanisms are conditions to ensure effectiveness; promoting the role of the Front and socio-political organizations as a foundation to closely follow the People; building a contingent of cadres is a key factor determining the quality of public opinion work in the digital age.
Building a solid "people's heart formation" in the digital age
In the digital age, public opinion work is not only a tool to grasp social moods but also an important method to consolidate trust, strengthen social consensus and build a solid "people's heart formation".
Where Party committees and authorities know how to listen to the People, dialogue with the People, and promptly resolve issues of concern to the People, social trust is strengthened. Conversely, if they are far from the people, lack information, are slow to respond or avoid pressing issues, it is very easy to create space for bad and toxic information to creep in and negatively impact society.
In the new development stage of the country, innovating public opinion work towards modernity, professionalism, digitization and putting the People at the center is not only a professional requirement but also an urgent political requirement to contribute to the successful implementation of the Resolution of the 14th Party Congress, promoting the strength of great national unity, and bringing the country firmly into a new era of development. /.
