Public Opinion And The UN

The United Nations is often referred to as a world public in common metaphorical language: forum (of the world as a market and as a place of negotiations and bargaining), arena (of arguments or struggle for power), platform/ speakers stand, (worlds) stage, as well as theatre, drama . The UN system is indeed an essential partof the global political public, but at the same time in terms of political coverageand public opinion it is an object of publicity itself, and of the mechanisms to establish and to influence the public perception. Most UN topics suffer from abstraction and cognitive distance from the daily political world of the national public. The national public in the industrialized countries is normally cognitively as well as emotionally far away from the peoples in the South afflicted more directly and more strongly by global problems. Keywords: political coverage; public opinion; United Nations