The Vietnam War certainly left a stain on the lives of many people who were affected by the war; researchers are increasingly interested in the interaction between war and public opinion. Much scholarly work has been published on the Vietnam War, but the question that will be analyzed here is how public opinion changed the course of the war. The first article by Scott Gartner and Gary Segura is titled “Race, Casualty, and Opinion in the Vietnam War.” It examines how the diverse races in America, combined with the atrocities committed during the war, led to the formation of similar opinions. in one race but different in another race. The second article by Paul Burstein and William Freudenburg titled "The Impact of Public Opinion, Anti-War Protests, and War Costs on Senate Voting on Vietnam War Motions" takes a closer look at how, as the war became a protracted affair, representatives of both the Senate and House were further influenced by their constituents' angst regarding the war. The third article by Sidney Verba and Richard Brody is entitled "Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam", which takes a similar approach to the first article but asks how the informed differ from the less well informed on their attitudes toward the war from Vietnam? If the protests are credited with bringing about these changes, it could arguably be argued that the protests converted public opinion, which encouraged the administration to change its Vietnam policy. This is the subject of EM Schreiber's fourth and final article entitled “Anti-war demonstrations and American public opinion on the war in Vietnam”. At the heart of all of these articles is how individuals view victims when developing an assessment of a war and their feelings about it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essay Gartner and Segura's study examined whether race moderates the influence of victims on opinion. Before arriving at a conclusion, they divide the issues of war, race, ethnicity, and opinion into three sections. First, they offer a theory explaining why race and ethnicity play a role in opinion formation. Next, they test the hypothesis that approval of the handling of the Vietnam War is the dependent variable; and then the conclusion is formed. The finding found that blacks were more likely to be opposed to the war initially due to the disproportionate number of casualties for that race than whites. Ultimately, whites, blacks, and Latinos were equally opposed to the war in later stages. These anti-war movements influenced legislative change, and this was Burstein and Freudenburg's goal. They argued that if the anti-war protests had actually worked, they should have resulted in reduced costs of war and anti-war legislative measures. According to their study, public opinion and the costs of the war were closely linked, which would mean that the protests could be the result. Gartner and Segura would probably disagree since Latinos and blacks opposed the war from the start, but their voices were underrepresented in the democratic realm and in reality, the opinion of the White American mattered more. It is important to consider how these opinion polls were conducted in the first place and the study by Verba and Brody found.