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Title: Public Relations Notes


1
Public Relations Notes
  • Instructor
  • Dr. Ilias Hristodoulakis, Ph.D
  • Athens, Greece

2
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.

3
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.

4
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)

5
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).

6
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.

7
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.

8
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.

9
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

10
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.

11
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.

12
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

13
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

14
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

15
THE GOALS OF COMMUNICATION
  • Inform
  • Persuade
  • Motivate
  • Mutual understanding

16
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

17
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.

18
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19
  • 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'

20
  • 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.

21
  • 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.

22
  • 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.

23
  • 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)

24
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?

25
  • 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

26
  • 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.

27
  • 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

28
  • 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.' (!)

29
  • 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.

30
  • 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.

31
  • 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.

32
  • 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.

33
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'.

34
  • 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.

35
  • 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.

36
  • 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.

37
  • 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'.

38
  • 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.

39
  • 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.

40
  • 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'.

41
  • 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.

42
  • 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
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