Washington Redskin Case Study

Why the controversy over the Washington NLF team name reached its peak in 2013? The name of the National Football League team “Washington Redskin” has gained a lot of attention in US since 2013. Namely, this refers to the feelings and opinions of the native American population in regard to the nature of the word “Redskin”. It is important to note that the team has been carried the name for over 80 years and the controversy over it began relatively recently. The case is significant due to many reasons. It is not only a public relations disaster which happened in the sports field but also it gained a lot of political attention with Congress and other important organizations. The owner of the team Dan Snyder has faced numerous pressures to
Spiral of Silence
One of the major pioneering works on the concept of the spiral of silence in public relations refers to the work by Noelle-Neumann's “The theory of public opinion: the concept of the spiral silence”. According to Taylor: “The spiral of silence begins with the premise that the individual assesses the distribution of opinions in the social environment by evaluating the strength, commitment, urgency, and the chances of success of certain proposals and viewpoints” (Taylor, p.314). Or in the words of one of the pioneers as Noelle-Neumann:
If the individual discovers he agrees with the prevailing view it boosts his self-confidence and enables self-expression without the danger of social isolation. If he finds his views are losing ground he will become more uncertain and therefore less inclined to express his opinion to others. These different patterns of behavior influence others' quasi-statistical pictures of opinion. The tendency of one to speak up and the other to remain silent starts off a spiraling process which increasingly establishes one opinion as the prevailing