Public opinion and SETI: a mathematical approach?

Since the goals of SETI concern eventually all humanity, public opinion about SETI is crucially important. Formation of public opinion can be modeled with the aid of stochastic equations. This method, developed by specialists in statistical physics and poorly known by sociologists and the SETI community, gives new insight into the old problem of how to influence public opinion. A popular introduction to this method and some suggestions of how to apply it to SETI will be given.