Vox populi

A vox pop interview

American television personality Steve Allen as the host of The Tonight Show further developed the "man on the street" interviews and audience-participation comedy breaks that have become commonplace on late-night TV. Usually the interviewees are shown in public places, and supposed to be giving spontaneous opinions in a chance encounter – unrehearsed persons, not selected in any way. As such, journalists almost always refer to them as the abbreviated vox pop.[4] In U.S. broadcast journalism it is often referred to as a man on the street interview or MOTS.[5]

The results of such an interview are unpredictable at best, and therefore vox pop material is usually edited down very tightly. This presents difficulties of balance, in that the selection used ought to be, from the point of view of journalistic standards, a fair cross-section of opinions.

Although the two can be quite often confused, a vox pop is not a form of a survey. Each person is asked the same question; the aim is to get a variety of answers and opinions on any given subject. Journalists are usually instructed to approach a wide range of people to get varied answers from different points of view. The interviewees should be of various ages, sexes, classes and communities so that the diverse views and reactions of the general people will be known.

Generally, the vox pop question will be asked of different persons in different parts of streets or public places. But as an exception, in any specific topic or situation which is not concerned to general people, the question can be asked only in a specific group to know what the perception/reaction is of that group to the specific topic or issue; e.g., a question can be asked to a group of students about the quality of their education.

With increasing public familiarity with the term, several radio and television programs have been named "vox pop" in allusion to this practice.

The Latin phrase Vox populi, vox Dei (/ˌvɒks ˈpɒpjuːli ˌvɒks ˈdeɪi/), 'The voice of the people [is] the voice of God', is an old proverb.

An early reference to the expression is in a letter from Alcuin to Charlemagne in 798.[6] The full quotation from Alcuin reads[7][8]:

This passage indicates that already by the end of the eighth century the phrase had become an aphorism of political common wisdom. Writing in the early 12th century, William of Malmesbury refers to the saying as a "proverb".[9]

Of those who promoted the phrase and the idea, Archbishop of Canterbury Walter Reynolds brought charges against King Edward II in 1327 in a sermon "Vox populi, vox Dei".[10][11]

• "Vox Populi" is a paper by Sir Francis Galton, first published in the 7 March 1907 issue of Nature, that demonstrates the "wisdom of the crowd" by a statistical analysis of the guesses from a weight-judging contest.[12]
• A variant was used in the 1920 United States presidential election, in which the main candidates were Warren G. Harding and James M. Cox: "Cox or Harding, Harding or Cox? / You tell us, populi, you got the vox."[13]
• A 1989 chapter in the graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore is entitled Vox Populi.
• The Vox Populi is the name of a rebel group fighting against the Founders of the city of Columbia in the 2013 video game BioShock Infinite.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Vox populi

• The dictionary definition of vox populi at Wiktionary
• List of Latin phrases
• Greg Packer, a frequently-quoted "man on the street"