Public Relations Notes

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Public Relations Notes

• Instructor
• Dr. Ilias Hristodoulakis, Ph.D
• Athens, Greece

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What is Public Relations

• What is this thing called public relations?
• The term public relations is often confusing
  because it is frequently used inaccurately.
• According to many self-called PR practitioners as
  well as to managers publicity, like public
  relations and corporate advertising, consists of
  promotional program elements that may be of great
  benefit to the marketing. Continuing, they
  recommend that the use of public relations in the
  promotion mix is a very good idea taking into
  consideration that
• public relation is a cheap mean of communication,
  because mostly is coming free through publicity,
  and
• it is perceived by consumers as a more credible
  source than other media of promotion such as
  advertising.

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What is Public Relations

• As a result public relations is related to the
  promotional activities, and is one technical
  activity used by marketing to promote the image
  of corporations and products.
• Public relations is a unique management function
  which helps organizations to establish and
  maintain mutual lines of communications,
  understanding, acceptance, and cooperation with
  their public(s). It involves the management of
  problems or issues helps management to keep
  informed on and responsive to public opinion
  defines and emphasizes the responsibility of the
  management to serve not only the organization but
  most important the public(s) interest(s) helps
  management to stay familiar with environmental
  changes serving as a warning system to help
  predict trends and uses research and
  symmetrical communication techniques as its
  principal tools.

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What is Public Relations

• 1) Public relations is a unique management
  function
• Public relations practitioners need to be part of
  the total organization, in surveying the
  environment and in helping to define the mission,
  goals, and objectives of the organization.
• participation of the head of the public relation
  department in the dominant coalition, for
  defining the mission and planning the present and
  future strategy of the organization.
• The boundary role they function as a liaison
  between the organization and its external and
  internal publics. To put it in different words,
  public relation managers have one foot inside the
  organization and the other outside.
• Public relations departments help organizations
  maintaining mutual lines of communications,
  understanding, acceptance, and cooperation with
  their public(s)

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What is Public Relations

• The first step of strategic management of public
  relations is to - make a list of the people who
  are linked to or have a stake in the organization
  
• after thoroughly researching their public(s)
  ranking them according their impact on the
  organization or the extent to which the
  organization believes it should moderate its
  consequences on them
• plan ongoing communication programs with the most
  important public(s). The communication activities
  between organization and public(s), need to be
  based on the principle of symmetrical
  communication.
• As a result communications, understanding,
  acceptance, and cooperation with their public(s).

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What is Public Relations

• Public relations departments help organizations
  to manage problems or issues
• Organizations in which the public relations
  department is part of their decision management
  level, will have resolved most of the problems
  with publics before they become issues.
• Excellent public relations departments make sure
  that they scan the environment around the
  organization and balance their organization
  mission with external and internal demands
• On the one hand, they must interpreter the
  philosophies, policies, programs, and practices
  of their management to the public(s) and on the
  other hand, they must translate the attitudes and
  reactions of the public(s) to their management.
• Even when they are not represented in the
  dominant coalition, as environmental scanners,
  public relations practitioners are sensitive to
  changes taking place in the larger environment
  surrounding the organization that may influence
  the public opinion.

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What is Public Relations

• Public relations serves not only the organization
  but most important the public(s) interest(s)
• Public relations practitioners must constantly
  communicate with many different publics, each
  having each own special needs and requiring
  different types of communications.
• Public relations practitioners role is to
  identify with critical publics with whom the
  organization must communicate on a frequent and
  direct basis.
• Under the quittance of public relations,
  organizations learn of how to get more sensitive
  to the self interests, desires, and concerns of
  each public.
• They understand that self interest groups today
  are themselves more complex and with more power
  than ever before.
• They harmonizing actions necessary to win and
  maintain support among each groups.
• Emphasizing and achieving a win- win arrangement.

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What is Public Relations

• Excellent public relations departments must use
  research techniques as its principal tools for
  developing decisions
• If communicators and public relations
  practitioners are decision makers, then
  operations research can contribute to public
  relations management by helping to provide
  decisions that produce efficient and/or effective
  courses of action in a rigorous and demonstrable
  manner. Operations research can be used to help
  develop well formulated objectives, that is,
• assist in goal setting
• discover states of nature (situation analysis)
• identify possible strategies,
• competitive strategies
• handle excessive numbers of strategies and states
  of nature
• determine outcome
• evaluate outcomes, that is quantifying the
  outcome's desirability and
• select a specific strategy that is the best or
  the most efficient or both.

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What is Public Relations

• The three primary forms of public relations
  research, as they have been suggested are
  methods, mostly indirect, of observing human
  behavior
• surveys to reveal attitudes and opinions,
• communication audits to evaluate how an
  organization is doing with respect to particular
  public(s), and
• unobtrusive measures such as fact finding,
  content analysis, and readability studies.
• As a result helps management to stay familiar
  with environmental changes to predict trends

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What is Public Relations

• Organizations with good public relations
  departments are always using two ways symmetrical
  systems of communication Under an asymmetrical
  communication system, organizations are striving
  to convince their practitioners that the
  organization knows best and that publics benefit
  from cooperating with the organizations
  decisions. Thus, the role of the practitioners to
  persuade publics to follow decisions made by the
  organization.

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What is Public Relations

• On the other hand, organizations that basing
  their communication systems on symmetrical models
  recognize that they cannot isolate themselves
  from their environment. Acknowledging that
  publics and other organizations operating in the
  same external and/or internal environment
  interrelated with the organization, and freely
  exchanging information with those organizations
  and publics, establishing an equilibrium state
  that constantly move as the environment changes.
  Symmetrical models of communication are conflict
  resolution oriented rather than persuasion.
  Conflicts are resolved through negotiation,
  communication, and compromise and not through
  force, manipulation, coercion, or violence.

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What Is Public Relations The four Models of PR

• Press Agentry/Publicity
• For Propaganda purpose , one way communication
  complete truth is not essential, Source
  Receiver as com. model, the initiative is always
  strongly in the hands of the source/sender. The
  means are usually strait forward advertising or
  other promotional activities
• Public Information
• For dissemination of information purpose, one
  way communication but truth is important, source
  receiver as communication model, it is one way
  communication w/out usually the purpose of
  persuasion. little research usually readability
  and readership, is used for Government- nonprofit
  associations, businesses

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The four Models of PR

• Two way Asymmetric
• For Scientific persuasion purposes, two way
  imbalanced effects communication, source
  receiver source com. Model, research is
  formative with evaluation of attitudes, typical
  use in competitive business and agencies
• Two Way Symmetric
• For mutual understanding purposes, two way
  balanced effects, symmetrical mod., formative
  with evaluation of understanding, typical used in
  regulated business and agencies

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PR the Communication Management NATURE OF
COMMUNICATION

• Need for a common ground
• Feedback
• The role of the senses
• Source message encoding channel message
  decoding receiver
• Noise and Feedback

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THE GOALS OF COMMUNICATION

• Inform
• Persuade
• Motivate
• Mutual understanding

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A PUBLIC RELATIONS PERSPECTIVE

• Questions to Focus Materials Produced
• - Is it appropriate?
• - Is it meaningful?
• - Is it memorable?
• - Is it understandable?
• - Is it believable?
• Determine objectives
• Based on the Awareness Interest Desire Action
  model
• Informational
• motivational

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The Communication Process From Theory to Practice

• In Communication we are generally concerned with
  persuading people in one way or another, even if
  it's only persuading them that we're quite nice
  people.
• We therefore will often be concerned with
  examining people's needs, in order that we can
  respond to those needs in our communication.
  People's needs motivate them to act if we can
  identify those needs, we have a chance of
  motivating them to do what we want them to do,
  even if only attend to our communication in the
  first place.
• One humanist psychologist who is constantly
  referred to in the study of Communication is
  Abraham Maslow, who developed the 'hierarchy of
  needs' shown in the graphic.

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• Maslow emphasised the human need for
  self-actualisation, the realisation of one's full
  potential as a human being. According to Maslow,
  before one can set about self-actualisation, a
  person has first to solve the problems associated
  with the four lower-level needs of the hierarchy
  
• Physical/survival needs you must satisfy your
  physical wants before you can take the next step
  up the motivational hierarchy
• Safety needs once you have satisfied your basic
  biological needs, you can get on with exploring
  your environment. It is well known, however, that
  a child will not begin to explore unless it feels
  secure. But the drive for safety is in itself a
  motivator for exploration - when you know 'what's
  out there' in the world, your uncertainty is
  reduced, the world s more predictable and 'safe'

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• Social needs these are 'belongingness' needs.
  Maslow claims that we have an innate need to
  affiliate with others in search of affection and
  love. Through empathising with others we learn
  also to see the world from different points of
  view
• Esteem needs the groups we affiliate with help
  us to set our life's goals. They can provide us
  with feedback on how well we are doing in pursuit
  of those goals. The closer we get, the more
  esteem we are likely to receive from others and
  feel for ourselves
• Self-actualization needs when we have acquired
  sufficient self-esteem we are confident enough to
  go on to realise our full potential, expressing
  ourselves in our own unique way.

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• Maslow's hierarchy has the benefit of attempting
  a holistic account of human motivation,
  considering a range of influences on human
  behaviour. It is questionable whether, in the
  light of contemporary notions such as the
  decentred self, humanistic psychology's
  conception of the self is still tenable, though
  it has to be said that many people who have
  experienced Rogerian counselling will testify to
  its efficacy.
• Maslow's hierarchy has also been criticised for
  being based on Maslow's study of successful
  individuals in Western society. To what extent it
  might apply to non-Western societies or to
  non-middle- or upper-class individuals is not
  clear. Nor is it clear why there should be five
  stages rather than sixty-eight and it is
  certainly not clear why he believes that we must
  progress through the stages - one could think of
  artists, for example, who have shown scant regard
  for their survival needs, or even esteem needs,
  appearing to jump straight to working on their
  self-actualisation.

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• Certainly, it is hard to see how any but totally
  isolated people could satisfy their survival
  needs independently of, say, social needs.
  Hunter-gatherers live together, hunt and forage
  together, their survival is entirely dependent on
  society. So is mine of course in the sense that
  my ability to buy things from shops depends on
  certain infrastructures in society, but it's also
  the case that I can't buy things from shops
  without engaging in an at least a rudimentary
  form of social intercourse. To separate out each
  of these needs in the way that Maslow does seems
  highly artificial.

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• Nevertheless, there is some empirical evidence
  from Harlow's experiments with monkeys which
  tends to support Maslow's ideas.
• Whatever criticisms may be made of Maslow, the
  notion that something like these needs seems to
  motivate people has been taken on by marketers.
  Think of the way that house insurance companies
  offer free smoke or burglar alarms as incentives
  (safety needs)
• all those adverts which show the product at the
  centre of groups of happy people (social needs)
• marketing which pushes the high status of the
  product (esteem needs)
• Microsoft's current emphasis on exploration of
  ideas and one's self through modern technology,
  their slogan 'Where do you want to go today?'
  (self-actualisation needs)

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The Communication Process Source

• Communicator Source
• Credibility
• The principal characteristic of the Communicator
  affecting his or her persuasiveness is his or her
  credibility. Credibility itself is made up of a
  variety of factors
• Trustworthiness
• Is this person honest?
• Can I believe what he's telling me? If Bill
  Clinton has had an affair and not told his wife,
  then how do I know he won't lie to me as well?

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• Politicians will also try to undermine their
  opponents' credibility by pointing to
  self-contradictions in their past - if (former
  Labour Party leader) Neil Kinnock was vehemently
  opposed to Britain's membership of the European
  Union and in favour of unilateral nuclear
  disarmament, how can you believe him now that
  he's a fervent supporter of European union and
  opposed to disarmament?
• Advertisers will sometimes use 'trustworthy'
  people to endorse their product the jazz critic
  George Melly to endorse Sony's headphones, former
  Metropolitan Police Commissioner Robert Mark to
  endorse Goodyear tyres and so on

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• In a 1953 experiment conducted by Kelman and
  Hovland subjects were played a message which
  recommended more lenient treatment of juvenile
  offenders. In the one case, the source of the
  message was said to be a judge in a juvenile
  court, in the other case an alleged drug dealer.
  Unsurprisingly, when the subjects were assessed
  immediately after hearing the messages, they
  found the high-credibility source (the judge) to
  be more persuasive). Three weeks later they were
  again assessed. This time, half the subjects were
  reminded who the source was. It turned out that
  where there was a reminder, the subjects
  maintained their original position, but, where
  there was none, there was a significant decrease
  in the persuasion of the high-credibility
  condition. (There was also a very minor, but
  insignificant, increase in the low-credibility
  condition.) Hovland argued that over the course
  of time the connexion between the 'cue' (i.e. the
  communicator's credibility) and the message
  became dissociated. He termed this the sleeper
  effect.

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• Sorokin and Baldyreff played listeners two
  records of a classical music piece, each bearing
  exactly the same performance. Listeners were told
  in advance that one of the performances had been
  judged as significantly better by music critics.
  96 of subjects considered the performances were
  different and 59 agreed with the alleged opinion
  of the experts.
• Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast was
  doubtless also effective in part because of the
  perceived prestige of those allegedly commenting
  on the 'invasion' - the fictitious Prof. Farrell
  of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Prof. Morse of
  McMillan University, General Montgomery Smith,
  commander of the Trenton state militia and others

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• Expertise Does this person know what he's
  talking about? Hence the tendency of politicians
  to spout statistics at the slightest provocation
  and the tendency of computer consultants to use
  computer jargon to people they know don't
  understand it.
• The perceived expertise of the source is likely
  to be more persuasive if the audience have no
  particular commitment to the subject under
  discussion. If people have some knowledge of the
  subject, then they probably have some arguments
  or counterarguments already prepared. If not,
  then they'll probably use some general rule of
  thumb, like 'This bloke's paid to teach
  Communication Studies, so I suppose he knows what
  he's talking about.' (!)

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• Attractiveness We know from our studies of NVC
  that physical attractiveness often works in a
  person's favour. Judges give attractive people
  lighter sentences, college lecturers give them
  better marks and so on. Presidential and Prime
  Ministerial candidates have themselves remodelled
  by image consultants. One presidential hopeful is
  even rumoured to have had plastic surgery.
• Attractiveness is not only a matter of physical
  attractiveness, though. Other factors such as
  similarity and familiarity are important
• 'Is he my sort of person?',
• 'I've never heard of her before.'
• 'Does he look like my sort of person?'
• 'He sounds like a complete idiot' and so on.

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• So, a leader from specific local area might use a
  strong accent when addressing a rally in this
  area, though he uses a regular one when being
  interviewed on TV.
• There are numerous factors which influence
  attractiveness, for example the paralinguistic
  aspects of speech, which led Prime Minister
  Thatcher to take lessons in voice control, so
  that she appeared less strident and developed the
  sound of measured, breathy sincerity which became
  her hallmark. Humour is another factor, which
  explains why we find comedians being used for the
  voice-overs on a variety of commercials.

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• There is an exception to this general rule of
  attractiveness, though. If a liked communicator's
  recommendations are seen as stemming from
  internal factors (e.g. her special interests, her
  bias, her self-interest), but those of a disliked
  communicator are seen as stemming from external
  factors ('that's the way things are'), then the
  disliked communicator can be more persuasive
• If the source of a message was perceived as
  having low credibility, then the message would be
  interpreted as biased and unfair. That effect
  could probably be explained by the need to
  maintain cognitive consistency. High credibility
  sources were shown by Hovland and his colleagues
  to be likely to have a significant effect on the
  positive reception of the message. However, the
  effects of high and low credibility sources were
  demonstrated to disappear after a period of some
  weeks - a potential problem for the propagandist.
  However, Hovland's research does suggest that a
  rational presentation of the arguments for or
  against a particular. position might be less
  important than who presents them. More recent
  investigations into cognitive response theory may
  also shed some light on this.

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• Power Under the heading of 'power' Hovland and
  his colleagues considered the amount of control
  the Communicator has over Receivers. Clearly,
  this will have some persuasive effect. If
  Hitler's Brownshirts are likely to beat you up if
  you don't do what they tell you, then there's a
  good chance they'll do what they tell you.
  Further Education colleges up and down the
  country are introducing major changes to their
  employees' working conditions. Very many
  employees consider these entirely unreasonable,
  but, since the college managers have the power to
  deny them a pay increase ever again unless they
  sign the new contracts, many employees sign up.
• Forcing people to do what you want may bring
  about compliance, but does not guarantee
  internalisation. In other words, people comply
  with your demands, but they retain the values
  they had before and continue to see your
  behaviour as wrong and therefore comply
  grudgingly or attempt to subvert your demands or
  even revolt.

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The Communication Process Message

• Message
• Is it important to argue your case?
• To any rational person, it may seem self-evident
  that the best way to persuade someone of your
  point of view is to present them with a reasoned
  argument. In fact, it seems quite clear that much
  depends on the audience. If people are unable, or
  unwilling, to pay close attention to your message
  and evaluate it, then there is no point in
  developing a thoughtful, reasoned argument in
  such a case its better to try to use, say,
  classical conditioning (see the section on
  conditioned reflex) as a means of persuasion. It
  does seem to help if you give a reason in support
  of your views, but research suggests that it
  doesn't necessarily have to be a particularly
  good reason.
• In an experiment by Hellen Langer (unfortunately,
  I've lost the reference), she arranged with her
  college librarian that all of the photocopiers
  but one would be 'out of order'. This rapidly
  produced long queues in front of the one
  remaining photocopier. Her confederates then
  approached those in the line qith a request to
  jump the queue. Not surprisingly, 'Can I use the
  photocopier?' was a good deal less successful
  than 'Can I use the photocopier? I'm late for my
  class.' Amazingly, though, 'Can I use the
  photocopier? I have to make some copies' was only
  marginally less successful than 'I'm late for my
  class'.

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• Type of Appeal
• Fear
• An appeal to fear is often thought of as being an
  effective persuasive device. Of course, it can be
  if you're actually threatening the Receiver, but
  that's not what is meant here. What is meant here
  is that the message appeals to fear, perhaps
  showing the Receiver what will happen to her if
  she persists in her current behaviour. In
  advertising, direct appeals to fear of this sort
  are strictly limited by the ASA, though they do
  tend to be tolerated more in public information
  advertising, e.g. an AIDS campaign.
• You might expect that an appeal based on fear has
  to be hard-hitting to be effective. However, a
  study conducted by Janis and Feschbach in 1954
  suggests that a minimal appeal is likely to be
  more effective. They used three different
  versions of a lecture on dental hygiene. The
  strong appeal provoked the most tension in the
  audience, but the greatest change in behaviour n
  conformity with the message was produced by the
  minimal appeal to fear.

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• This probably suggests that when people feel they
  can do nothing about the threat then they are not
  likely to change their behaviour. They may well
  repress their anxiety (see defence mechanisms).
  An appeal to fear should probably be
  counterbalanced by the reassurance that it is
  possible to do something about it. It's probably
  worth mentioning also that Leventahl and others
  found in a 1956 study that a high degree of fear
  did indeed lead to higher attitudinal change, in
  contrast to what Janis and Feshbach found. In
  their case, however, they were dealing with
  tetanus rather than oral hygiene, which suggests
  that the question of fear arousal cannot be
  divorced from the subject matter of the message.
• The 1992 drink-driving campaign at Christmas was
  particularly hard-hitting, in fact provoking a
  number of complaints. It showed a close-up of a
  young woman with a ventilator in her mouth, her
  eyes wide open in a glassy stare. The ambulance
  crew could be heard busying themselves around
  her, as the blue lights flashed constantly across
  her face. In the background we could hear an
  anguished motorist asking for reassurance that
  she would be all right and protesting that he
  hadn't intended to do anyone any harm. Great
  things were expected of the campaign, but it
  seems in fact to have been less effective than
  others. A possible explanation is that the motor
  car is seen as an essential part of everyday
  life, just as essential as walking. Cars kill, as
  all motorists know, but there is nothing they can
  do about it. Conceivably, the ad was perceived as
  stating strongly that cars kill people, rather
  than differentiating between the causes of
  accidents.

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• Consequently, drivers would see that they could
  avoid such horrendous accidents only by stopping
  driving, something they of course 'can't' do.
• It's perhaps worth remarking in passing that a
  general atmosphere of fear may also contribute to
  the success of a message. This of course is a
  factor extraneous to the message and thus does
  not properly belong here under 'message', but
  should rather be under a heading such as
  'context'. For example, Orson Welles's War of the
  Worlds broadcast may have owed some of its
  success to the general atmosphere of fear and
  confusion which prevailed in world affairs at the
  time.

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• Vocabulary
• If we are persuaded by an 'expert' communicator,
  then the chances are that some technical jargon
  will increase the apparent expertise. The ability
  to use certain kinds of vocabulary is also
  associated with the 'elaborated code' identified
  by Bernstein and valorised by the education
  system, so that may also contribute to the
  apparent expertise of the communicator.
• Accent
• You'll be aware no doubt of the relationship in
  Britain between accent and social class, an RP
  accent being suggestive of status and a high
  terminal level of education. The use of accent
  has to be balanced against source attractiveness
  (see the section on the Communicator), avoiding ,
  for example, the possibility of being seen by
  certain audiences as a 'toff'.

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• Humour
• It's not at all clear whether it works or not.
  British advertisers achieved an international
  reputation for their humour, but research studies
  show contradictory results.
• Speed
• You might think, as I would, that the
  communicator should decrease speed in order to be
  persuasive, especially if dealing with a complex
  topic. However, the research shows that an
  increase in speed is likely to be more persuasive
  - anything up to 50 faster, in fact! This
  probably connects with the notion of 'expertise'.
  If a communicator can speak fast about a complex
  issue, then they must know what they're talking
  about. It also has the advantage of shutting
  other people out, denying them the opportunity to
  interrupt before you've finished what you have to
  say. It's not necessarily as simple as that,
  though, since a range of variables have to be
  taken into account. I, for example, tend to be
  put off by suits, so someone wearing a suit and
  talking fast might well be dismissed by me as
  merely 'slick' rather than 'expert'. Speaking
  fast can be helpful if you're arguments are weak,
  because it doesn't give your audience time for
  cognitive processing of your arguments. However,
  if you have strong arguments, it can be useful to
  slow down precisely in order to allow cognitive
  processing to take place.

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• Selection
• I would have thought, as with speed above, that
  you would increase your apparent expertise by
  packing in as many arguments as possible. In
  fact, it seems that you're more likely to be
  persuasive if you limit yourself to the most
  important and strongest arguments only.
• From the point of view of cognitive response
  theory, though, this does make sense. If you
  present your weaker arguments, you give the
  receiver the opportunity to formulate negative
  cognitive responses. By giving your audience,
  say, six weak arguments and two strong ones, you
  give them the opportunity to form six negative
  responses and only two positive ones. Remember
  that it is not the arguments themselves which are
  normally later recalled by receivers, but their
  own reactions to those arguments (i.e. their
  cognitive responses), so you would be best
  advised to limit yourself to the two strong
  arguments.
• To an extent, this will depend upon the
  audience's sense of involvement in the issue. As
  we have seen with the question of expertise, they
  will tend to use some general rule of thumb if
  their involvement is not high, saying something
  like, 'she's got a lot of arguments, so I suppose
  she must know what she's talking about. An
  uninvolved audience won't even bother to
  distinguish between weak and strong arguments,
  so, in such a case, your best bet would be to
  produce all your arguments, whether weak or
  strong.

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• Ordering
• If you can't avoid giving the bad news, then,
  according to research, it's best to give the good
  news first.
• This may be connected with the general perception
  that 'first impressions count'. However, it's not
  entirely clear that they do. In an experiment
  conducted by Tomorrow's World on March 25 1995,
  viewers were shown a man being interviewed for an
  ambulance driver's job. In fact, without the
  viewers' knowledge, two different versions of the
  interview were shown in the east and west of the
  country. In the east, the interviewee began by
  giving the 'good news', namely that he had been
  in the army medical corps where he had learnt
  various skills and ended with the bad news,
  namely that, since leaving the army he had never
  held down a job for long. In the west exactly the
  same information was given, but with the 'bad
  news' first. In the east 45 of viewers would
  have given him the job in the west 54 would
  have given him the job. This strongly suggests
  that first impressions do not count for much and
  that it's best to end with the 'good news'.

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• This question of ordering revolves around what is
  known as primacy and recency effects. The adage
  that 'first impressions count' states that the
  primacy effect is likely to dominate, whereas the
  Tomorrow's World experiment suggests that the
  recency effect is dominant.

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• For and against
• Whether or not you should include arguments for
  and against your case depends very much on your
  audience. If you know that they already agree
  with you, a one-sided argument is quite
  acceptable. If they are opposed to your point of
  view, then a one-sided message will actually be
  less effective, being dismissed as biased. Even
  if your audience don't know much about the
  subject, but do know that there are
  counterarguments (even if they don't know what
  they are) will lead them to reject your views as
  biased. Hovland's investigations into mass
  propaganda used to change soldiers' attitudes
  also suggests that the intelligence of the
  receivers is an important factor, a two-sided
  argument tending to be more persuasive with the
  more intelligent audience.
• It is possible to inoculate audiences against
  certain views. If you present them with a
  weakened version of the arguments against your
  case, then they are likely to be resistant to
  stronger versions of those arguments that they
  may come across later. Again, this seems to be
  explained by cognitive response theory, since, by
  giving them a weakened version, you allow them to
  formulate negative cognitive responses.

43

• Conclusion drawing
• Hovland's research results are unclear here.
  Hovland tends to assume that you should draw the
  conclusions for your audience where complex
  issues are involved. He also seems to believe
  that it depends on your assessment of the
  audience's intelligence.
• Timing
• The time delay between your presentation of your
  case and the audience's having to reach a
  decision on it is of some importance.
• The first side has the advantage when the second
  side immediately follows and there is a delay
  before the receivers reach a decision.
• The second side has the advantage if the
  receivers are to reach a decision immediately
  after presentation of the two cases, if there is
  a gap between presentation of the first and
  second sides.

44

• Repetition
• Research (following up Zajon's findings in the
  60s) has shown again and again that repeated
  exposure to a stimulus will increase subjects'
  liking for that stimulus. It doesn't seem to
  matter whether the stimulus is one which would
  normally be judged positively or negatively, nor
  even whether subjects are aware that they are
  more familiar with the stimulus than they are
  with others. The research seems to suggest that
  this is more likely to be the case with complex,
  rather than simple, stimuli.
• So it does seem that, say, a political party with
  plenty of money for the campaign has a better
  chance, simply because it stands more chance of
  using the media to increase exposure to its
  messages and its candidates.
• Repetition, then, will certainly strengthen a
  message, but you can soon reach the point of
  diminishing returns and that, of course, is
  something that advertisers have to bear in mind.
  We all know from seeing the same ad for what
  seems like the thousandth time that too much
  exposure can lower our liking of a message. The
  problem, naturally, is to be able to gauge where
  the point of diminishing returns lies.

45
The Communication Process Channel

• Mass Medium
• There is no very clear evidence as to which
  medium is likely to be the most effective. Lenin
  and Goebbels both considered film to be the most
  powerful propaganda medium. TV today has much the
  same reputation and radio was considered in its
  early days to be particularly powerful.
  Television and radio are perhaps considered so
  effective because they are in our own homes, but
  there's not much evidence to show that that makes
  much difference, even though it's one important
  factor in the BBFC's decisions on how to censor
  videos. TV and film may be considered especially
  powerful because they incorporate both sound and
  vision, but there is some evidence that that may
  in fact reduce effectiveness. TV is often also
  considered especially powerful because it is a
  mass medium, delivering the same message to
  around 20 million people at a time for the major
  soaps. However, that may work to its disadvantage
  when compared with, say, newspapers and
  periodicals which have highly differentiated
  markets, allowing much more precise targeting.

46

• Research tends to show relatively little effect
  of any of the mass media - the so-called 'limited
  effects' paradigm, which emerges quite strongly
  from the empirical research tradition in the USA.
  However, it is possible that that is a deficiency
  of the research rather than of the media. It is
  often argued that since the American researchers
  were looking for clearly measurable effects they
  tended to concentrate on the short-term and thus
  may have missed the longer term and more diffuse
  effects.
• A very important piece of research was conducted
  by Katz and Lazarsfeld into the effects of radio
  propaganda in the 1940s. Their research led them
  to formulate their Two-Step Flow Model of mass
  media communication, which still underlies much
  communication practice today.
• In essence, it emphasises the importance of the
  influence of our social contacts in influencing
  our interpretation of media messages.
  Sophisticated political 'spin doctors' continue
  to recognise today that the best form of
  advertising is word-of-mouth advertising. They
  don't only need to persuade us as individuals of
  the validity of what they have to say. They must
  also persuade the people we come into contact
  with, especially the 'opinion leaders' in our
  lives.

47

• Selective exposure
• The Labour Party spin doctors know that
  Conservative Party voters will switch off when
  the Labour election broadcast is on and
  vice-versa. We will tend actively to seek out
  those messages which support the view we already
  have and avoid those which may challenge it. This
  applies not only to the mass media, but also to
  interpersonal communication. For example, it is
  well known that those with a positive self-image
  will tend to remember positive comments made
  about them, and those with a negative self-image
  will tend to remember the negative ones. (See
  also the sections on Selective Attention and
  Cognitive Consistency).
• Selective attention
• We maybe can't avoid being exposed to messages we
  don't like, but there is plenty of evidence that
  in such a case we won't pay much attention to
  them

48

• Selective interpretation
• Even if we are exposed and do attend to messages
  which conflict with our views, the chances are
  that we will interpret them in such a way that
  they do fit what we already believe. However good
  the Labour Party's arguments might be, the
  chances are that the Conservative voter will
  dismiss them as a load of nonsense.
• An excellent example of this is provided by
  Kendall and Woolf's analysis of reactions to
  anti-racist cartoons. The cartoons featured Mr
  Biggott whose absurdly racist ideas were intended
  to discredit bigotry. In fact 31 failed to
  recognise that Mr Biggott was racially prejudiced
  or that the cartoons were intended to be
  anti-racist (Kendall Wolff (1949) in Curran
  (1990)).

49

• Interpersonal communication
• Visual channel
• Physical attractiveness of the Communicator is
  certainly important and there are other factors
  we can be fairly certain of.
• The following seem to undermine the
  persuasiveness of a message
• narrow pupil dilation
• a closed and symmetrical posture
• self-touching ('self-grooming')
• very high and very low levels of eye contact

50

• In public speaking, we expect rather higher
  levels of eye contact than in ordinary
  interpersonal interaction, where we expect the
  speaker's eye contact to be intermittent and the
  listener's to be high. In public speaking, we
  expect the speaker to keep looking at the
  audience. Our impression of the speaker's
  expertise is increased if we see them able to
  speak without constantly referring to their
  notes. It may also have some impact on their
  apparent sincerity, since we know that many
  public speakers' speeches are written for them.
  Thus, it is not at all uncommon nowadays to see
  public speakers using the 'truth machine', also
  known as the 'idiot box', perhaps because
  President Reagan was the first to use it
  extensively. The speaker has in front of her an
  autocue, whose image is projected on the two
  screens to left and right, thus allowing the
  speaker to read the speech off the screens while
  at the same time appearing to look straight
  through them at the audience.

51

• Auditory channel
• In the auditory channel, a high pitch, lots of
  hesitations, erm's, like's, sort of's and tag
  question like 'won't he?', 'didn't he?' etc. will
  tend to reduce credibility.

52
The Communication Process Receiver

• Intra-personal factors
• By definition, intra-personal factors such as the
  receiver's attitude to the subject matter and the
  extent of her personal involvement may well be
  largely unknown to the communicator. Sherif and
  Hovland attempted to summarize the effect of
  these two factors by saying that the person's
  position on an attitude scale provides her with
  an anchor from which she evaluates other
  positions on the attitude scale and that
  evaluation will be the firmer and more difficult
  to shift the greater the degree of
  ego-involvement. They concluded that if the
  positions of the communicator and of the receiver
  are so far apart that the communicator's position
  falls within the receiver's latitude of
  rejection, then the only way that the
  communicator can have an effect is by adopting a
  step-by-step approach, starting from messages
  which fall within the receiver's latitude of
  acceptance and gradually working outward from
  there.

53

• Age
• Age is an important variable. People reach
  maximum persuasability around the age of nine.
  Hence the Hitler Youth, East Germany's Young
  Pioneers and, for that matter, the Cubs and
  Brownies.
• Sex
• Sex appears to be of some limited significance,
  women apparently being more easily persuadable
  than men. However, this research was conducted a
  long time ago when women saw themselves and their
  rtle differently, so this may well have changed.
• Personality
• Personality variables such as self-esteem,
  anxiety and depression have an influence on
  persuadability. Janis's research suggests that
  people with low self-esteem are likely to be
  relatively easily persuaded - which may partly
  explain the success of Hitler's propaganda and
  the success of right-wing parties today in
  another era of mass unemployment. See especially
  the section on the authoritarian personality.

54

• Group norms
• The norms of a group apparently serve to protect
  members from outside influence. The more
  important group members consider their membership
  of the group to be, the less likely they are to
  be persuaded by messages which undermine the
  group norms.
• Beliefs ('self-schemata')
• The pattern of the receiver's beliefs will in
  part determine whether the message is given
  serious attention in the first place. (For
  further information, see the sections on
  Selective attention, Consistency theory and
  Attitudes.)
• The persuasive impact of a message can be
  increased if it is anchored in the system of
  beliefs and values of the receiver.
• This seems to be evident in the close parallels
  between Nazi symbolism and ceremony on the one
  hand and Christian rituals on the other. The
  swastika replaced the cross on Christmas trees
  and in public squares and on fountains at
  Christmas time just as the Christian cross had
  been before. Hitler was also careful to ensure
  that his rhetoric echoed the values of the 'old
  guard'. In a not dissimilar way, Mrs Thatcher,
  whose programme was entirely revolutionary in its
  impact, was careful to refer back to Churchill,
  the British Empire, Victorian values and family
  values.

55

• Social groups
• Katz and Lazarsfeld's Two-Step Flow Model makes
  it clear that, whether we receive media messages
  in isolation or not, their effect will be
  mediated by the social groups we belong to. The
  pattern of our social relationships will
  determine how we ultimately interpret the
  messages we have received.
• If the Communicator has some way of influencing
  those groups, notably the opinion leaders within
  the, then she will increase her chances of
  success. Education programmes based on the media,
  such as those aimed at farmers in third world
  countries, are often coupled with group meetings.
  In the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, propaganda
  messages were often broadcast into factories or
  public squares where people would gather together
  to listen to them.
• A public commitment before a group to a
  particular belief or point of view is also more
  likely to be durable than a private commitment -
  see for example Alcoholics Anonymous or various
  religious groups.

56

• Active Participation
• Janis and King demonstrated that people who
  participate actively in disseminating a message
  are more likely to be persuaded by it.
• Resistance
• The notion of cognitive responses suggests that
  it should be possible to inoculate people against
  a message. For example, when you give people your
  arguments, you should also give the
  counterarguments to your position and at the same
  time provide refutations of those
  counterarguments. You will thus be providing your
  audience with cognitive responses which can be
  generated when they hear those counterarguments.
  It doesn't matter much whether they remember your
  refutations or not. The important thing is that
  they should remember their reactions, namely 'Oh,
  yes, I remember that that argument's rubbish.'

57

• Psychologist William McGuire tested this idea
  further. He selected a number of generally
  accepted truths such as 'It's a good idea to
  brush your teeth after every meal if possible' -
  the sort of thing which few people would disagree
  with. He demonstrates that attacking such a
  belief with strong arguments did actually weaken
  it - for example quoting evidence form the
  American Dental Association that it was
  misguided. Having confirmed that such beliefs
  could be weakened by strong attacks, he went on
  to see if people could be inoculated. He
  demonstrated that people who were first subjected
  to a mild form of attack and then read or wrote
  an essay refuting it were later able to resist
  the strong attacks better. (in Atkinson et al.,
  (1990)).

58

• Even forewarning an audience that they are about
  to receive a message they will disagree with will
  tend to 'protect' them against it.
• Inoculation has been used in a school programme
  in the USA to help pupils resist peer pressure to
  smoke. High-school students conducted group
  sessions in which they taught younger pupils how
  to construct counter-arguments. For example, if
  they were called 'chicken' for refusing a
  cigarette, they were taught to answer, 'I'd be a
  real chicken if I smoked just to impress you.'
  They were taught to respond to ads suggesting
  that women smokers were liberated with 'She's not
  really liberated if she's hooked on tobacco.' It
  seems simple, but it worked. These schoolchildren
  proved to be half as likely as their peers to
  smoke.

59

• Boomerang effect
• Finally it may be worth mentioning the boomerang
  effect, where, despite the best intentions of the
  communicator the message is rejected. I have
  chosen to list it under 'receiver' since it is
  clearly the receiver who rejects the message,
  though the boomerang effect is not solely due to
  characteristics of the receiver herself. Merton
  (1949) suggested the following as possible causes
  of the effect
• the communicator, in forming the message, makes
  false assumptions about, or has misleading data
  about the audience and therefore misses her
  target
• the communicator faces the dilemma of dealing
  with an audience which is so heterogeneous that
  she cannot form a meaningful message for all of
  them nor possibly formulate enough messages to
  reach all the subsidiary target groups
• to a receiver who is not fully attending various
  parts of the message seem to contradict others
• the examples the communicator uses to illustrate
  her message do not correspond to the receivers'
  experiences

60
THE IMPORTANCE OF TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION

• Feedback obtained in research and evaluation
  phases
• Feedback equates with two-way communication
• Two-way is arguably The key to excellent practice
• Two-way is usually lower in the hierarchy of
  communication channels

61
ACTING ON THE MESSAGE

• Ultimate purpose of any message
• The five-stage adoption process According to
  Adoption of Innovation Model
• Awareness
• Interest
• Evaluation
• Trial
• Adoption

62
FACTORS AFFECTING ADOPTION

• Relative advantage
• Compatibility
• Complexity
• Trialability
• Observability

63
types of adopters

• Types of adopters - Innovators - Early
  adopters - Early majority - Late majority -
  Laggards

64
PUBLIC OPINION

• WHAT IS PUBLIC OPINION?
• Is a collective expression of opinion of many
  individuals bound into a group by common aims,
  aspirations, needs, and ideals
• People who are interested or have a vested self
  interest in an issue
• Self-interest is one of the common denominator,
  the other is
• The Event Opinion is highly sensitive to events
  that have an impact on the public at large or a
  particular segment of the public
• By an large, PO does not anticipate events. It
  only reacts to them
• Unless people are aware of an issue, they are not
  likely to be concerned or have an opinion
• Events of unusual magnitude are likely to swing
  PO temporarily from one extreme to the other.
• WHAT IS AN OPINION LEADER?
• Highly interested in the subject or issue, better
  informed on the issue than the average person,
  avid consumers of mass media, early adopters of
  new ideas, able to get other people to act.
• Formal elected officials
• Informal those having clout with peers because
  some special characteristics

65
THE FLOW OF OPINION

• - Two step flowSource message-channel
  message - receiver
• - Multi-step modelsource message channel
  Opinion Leader message receiver.

66

• The role of mass media - Agenda-setting theory
  people tend to talk about what they see on the
  6.00 oclock news
• - Media dependency theory people are highly
  dependent on the media for information
• - Framing theory (journalist oriented) how
  journalists select certain facts, themes,
  treatments, and even words to frame a story
• - Cultivation theory the new content of mass
  media can be called as media reality since events
  are repackaged to be more succinct, logical, and
  interesting to viewer or reader.

67

• HOW TO GAUGE PUBLIC OPINION - Personal contact
  - Media reports - Field reports - Letters and
  telephone calls - Advisory committee - Staff
  meeting - Polling and sampling

68
PERSUASION

• What is persuasion?Is an activity or process in
  which a communicator attempts to induce a change
  in the belief, attitude, or behavior of another
  person or group of persons through the
  transmission of a message in a context in which
  the persuade has some degree of free choice
• Use of Persuasion
• - Change or neutralize hostile opinion -
  Crystallize latent opinions and positive
  attitudes - Conserve favorable opinions

69

• Factors Influence Persuasion's success
• Audience analysis
• Source credibility
• Appeal to self-interest
• Clarity of message
• Timing and context

• Audience participation
• Suggestions for action
• Content and structure of messages (drama,
  statistics, emotional/rational appeal, etc)
• Persuasive speaking

70
LIMITATION FACTORS

• Lack of penetration
• Competing message
• Self-selecting
• Self-perception

71
PROPAGANDA

• What is propaganda?It is the deliberate and
  systematic attempt to shape perceptions,
  manipulate cognition, and direct behavior to
  achieve a response that furthers the desired
  intend of the propagandist.
• Techniques - Plain folks - Testimonial -
  Card-stacking - Transfer - Glittering
  generalities - Name-calling

72
Propaganda

• "The first casualty when war comes is Truth" --
  U.S. Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917
• "It is easier to dominate someone if they are
  unaware of being dominated. Colonised and
  colonisers both know that domination is not just
  based on physical supremacy. Control of hearts
  and minds follows military conquest. Which is why
  any empire that wants to last must capture the
  souls of its subjects." -- Ignacio Ramonet
• "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should
  always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." --
  Winston Churchill (British Prime Minister during
  World War II)

73
Propaganda

• It may seem strange to suggest that the study of
  propaganda has relevance to contemporary
  politics. After all, when most people think about
  propaganda, they think of the enormous campaigns
  that were waged by Hitler and Stalin in the
  1930s. Since nothing comparable is being
  disseminated in our society today, many believe
  that propaganda is no longer an issue.
• But propaganda can be as blatant as a swastika or
  as subtle as a joke. Its persuasive techniques
  are regularly applied by politicians,
  advertisers, journalists, radio personalities,
  and others who are interested in influencing
  human behaviour. Propagandistic messages can be
  used to accomplish positive social ends, as in
  campaigns to reduce drunk driving, but they are
  also used to win elections and to sell malt
  liquor.

74
Propaganda

• As Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson point
  out, "every day we are bombarded with one
  persuasive communication after another. These
  appeals persuade not through the give-and-take of
  argument and debate, but through the manipulation
  of symbols and of our most basic human emotions.
  For better or worse, ours is an age of
  propaganda.
• With the growth of communication tools like the
  Internet, the flow of persuasive messages has
  been dramatically accelerated. For the first time
  ever, citizens around the world are participating
  in uncensored conversations about their
  collective future. This is a wonderful
  development, but there is a cost.

75
Propaganda

• The information revolution has led to information
  overload, and people are confronted with hundreds
  of messages each day. Although few studies have
  looked at this topic, it seems fair to suggest
  that many people respond to this pressure by
  processing messages more quickly and, when
  possible, by taking mental short-cuts.
• Propagandists love short-cuts -- particularly
  those which short-circuit rational thought. They
  encourage this by agitating emotions, by
  exploiting insecurities, by capitalizing on the
  ambiguity of language, and by bending the rules
  of logic. As history shows, they can be quite
  successful.

76
Propaganda Devices Word Games Name Calling

• "Bad names have played a tremendously powerful
  role in the history of the world and in our own
  individual development. They have ruined
  reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding
  accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and
  made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter
  their fellowmen. They have been and are applied
  to other people, groups, gangs, tribes, colleges,
  political parties, neighbourhoods, sections of
  the country, nations, and races."
• The name-calling technique links a person, or
  idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who
  uses this technique hopes that the audience will
  reject the person or the idea on the basis of the
  negative symbol, instead of looking at the
  available evidence.
• The most obvious type of name calling involves
  "bad names." For example, consider the following
  
• Commie Fascist Pig Yuppie Scum
• Bum Queer Feminazi ultra liberal

77
Propaganda Devices Word Games Name Calling

• A more subtle form of name-calling involves words
  or phrases that are selected because they possess
  a negative emotional charge. Those who oppose
  budget cuts may characterize fiscally
  conservative politicians as "stingy." Supporters
  might prefer to describe them as "thrifty." Both
  words refer to the same behaviour, but they have
  very different connotations. Other examples of
  negatively charged words include
• social engineering - radical - stingy -
  counter-culture
• The name-calling technique was first identified
  by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA) in
  1938. According to the IPA, we should ask
  ourselves the following questions when we spot an
  example of name-calling.
• What does the name mean?
• Does the idea in question have a legitimate
  connection with the real meaning of the name?
• Is an idea that serves my best interests being
  dismissed through giving it a name I don't like?
• Leaving the name out of consideration, what are
  the merits of the idea itself?

78
Propaganda Devices Word Games Glittering
Generalities

• "We believe in, fight for, live by virtue words
  about which we have deep-set ideas. Such words
  include civilization, Christianity, good, proper,
  right, democracy, patriotism, motherhood,
  fatherhood, science, medicine, health, and love.
• For our purposes in propaganda analysis, we call
  these virtue words "Glittering Generalities" in
  order to focus attention upon this dangerous
  characteristic that they have They mean
  different things to different people they can be
  used in different ways.
• This is not a criticism of these words as we
  understand them. Quite the contrary. It is a
  criticism of the uses to which propagandists put
  the cherished words and beliefs of unsuspecting
  people.
• When someone talks to us about democracy, we
  immediately think of our own definite ideas about
  democracy, the ideas we learned at home, at
  school, and in church. Our first and natural
  reaction is to assume that the speaker is using
  the w