I observed that the questions on /r/AskHistorians I am most interested in are the one about the history, propagation and popularity of ideas ("Were there slavery abolitionists in ancient Rome?" "When did the idea of borders arise?" "Was torture widely accepted in middle-age europe?", etc...)

"History of ideas" provides a time-line of intellectual discoveries and theorizations but it mostly focuses on the intellectual elite and may talk about an idea as widespread while it may be a minority in the popular opinion. For instance one would say that in 1871 the idea of a French Republic was pretty popular within the intellectual circles but elections showed that most French people did not accept it yet.

I understand that it is much harder for historians to study the popularity of ideas in a general population rather than in the set of people who would actually spend a lot of time writing about their opinions but I wonder if such an effort as ever been attempted and if there is a good resource I could find to learn what we know about the spread of ideas.

EDIT: Can someone explain to me why this question is apparently inappropriate?