The Vietnam War certainly left a mark of disgust on the lives of many who were affected by the war; scholars have become increasingly interested in the interaction between war and public opinion. Many academic works have 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, Casualties, and Opinion in the Vietnam War,” examined how different races within America combined with the atrocities of the war led to the formation of similar opinions. in one race but were different in another race. The second article by Paul Burstein and William Freudenburg entitled “The Impact of Public Opinion, Antiwar Demonstrations, and the Costs of War on the Senate Vote on Vietnam War Motions” takes a closer look at how, when the war became a prolonged affair, representatives of both countries The Senate and the House were most influenced by their constituents' anguish about 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 do the informed differ from the less informed in their attitudes toward Vietnam War? If the demonstrations were credited with leading to these changes, one could presumably argue that the demonstrations converted public opinion, which in turn encouraged the administration to change its policies on Vietnam. This is the focus of EM Schreiber's fourth and final article entitled “Anti-war Demonstrations and American Public Opinion on the Vietnam War.” At the heart of all these articles is how individuals view casualties when developing an evaluation of a war and their feelings about it. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Gartner and Segura study examined whether race moderates victims' influence on public opinion. Before reaching a conclusion, they divide the issue of war, race, ethnicity, and opinion into three sections. First, they offer a theory about why race and ethnicity play a role in opinion formation. Next, they test the hypothesis in which approval of the handling of the Vietnam War is the dependent variable; and then the conclusion is formed. The conclusion found that blacks were more likely to be against the war in the early stages due to the disproportionate number of casualties for that race compared to whites. Ultimately, whites, blacks, and Latinos were equally opposed to the war in the later stages. These anti-war movements influenced legislative change, and this was the focus of Burstein and Freudenburg. They argued that if anti-war demonstrations were really going to work, they should involve reducing the costs of war and anti-war legislative measures. According to their study, public opinion and the costs of the war were highly correlated with each other and this would mean that the demonstrations could have been a product of this. Gartner and Segura would probably disagree since both Latinos and blacks opposed the war from the beginning, but their voices were underrepresented in the democratic realm and in reality the opinion of white Americans mattered more. It is important to consider how these opinion polls were conducted in the first place and the study conducted by Verba and Brody found.