Rhetorical Agendas

All senators are adapting their communications to a new media climate where they make strategic choices about how to differentiate themselves through their rhetorical agenda—a public-facing presentation of a senator’s priorities for representation. This chapter lays out a theory of senators’ rhetorical agendas and constituent-driven communication on Twitter. Senators are utilizing Twitter’s unconstrained platform for low-cost reputation building with the public. Each senator is incentivized to strategically communicate a rhetorical agenda that fosters constituency relationships, building trust and legitimacy with voters. Senators make these connections on Twitter via a two-step approach, directly engaging people online but also by building digital relationships with journalists and political influencers who indirectly translate a senator’s priorities for the public. Senators get to decide how they frame their agenda and what type of constituency they want to cultivate with their strategic messaging.

Campaigning in the time of Twitter: 140 character ethical appeals from the 2012 United States presidential election

This paper looked at the use of Twitter during the 2012 United States presidential campaign and the use of ethos appeals as a strategy to build credibility. As a new communication avenue, Twitter plays an unprecedented role in political discourse today. Both the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns have engaged in social media strategies and are actively using Twitter to communicate their talking points, and overall political platform. Larry Beason’s (1991) categories of signaled ethos were applied to examine a collection of tweets from each candidate. Sites like Twitter offer a more personal communication avenue for politicians to use. This paper discusses the strategic messaging on Twitter from politicians, and whether the messages contain ethos. The research questions explored are: to what extent are there ethos appeals on Twitter in the 2012 United States political candidates’ tweets? And, to what extent are particular ethos appeals prevalent? Of the 100 tweets examined from Barack Obama, the findings showed that 32% of his tweets contained ethos appeals, while 58% of the 100 tweets from Mitt Romney contained ethos appeals.

Campaigning in the time of Twitter: 140 character ethical appeals from the 2012 United States presidential election

This paper looked at the use of Twitter during the 2012 United States presidential campaign and the use of ethos appeals as a strategy to build credibility. As a new communication avenue, Twitter plays an unprecedented role in political discourse today. Both the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney campaigns have engaged in social media strategies and are actively using Twitter to communicate their talking points, and overall political platform. Larry Beason’s (1991) categories of signaled ethos were applied to examine a collection of tweets from each candidate. Sites like Twitter offer a more personal communication avenue for politicians to use. This paper discusses the strategic messaging on Twitter from politicians, and whether the messages contain ethos. The research questions explored are: to what extent are there ethos appeals on Twitter in the 2012 United States political candidates’ tweets? And, to what extent are particular ethos appeals prevalent? Of the 100 tweets examined from Barack Obama, the findings showed that 32% of his tweets contained ethos appeals, while 58% of the 100 tweets from Mitt Romney contained ethos appeals.

Sustaining Ocean Observations: Strategic Messaging and Communications

Arguably the most important outcome of the Sustaining Ocean Observations 2.0 Workshop hosted by the Ocean Studies Board was “Strengthening the Collective Voice: Communicating the Importance of Sustained Ocean Observations.” One of the most significant challenges the ocean observing community faces is articulating the value of ocean information and improving ocean literacy. The Ocean Decade presents a pivotal moment to catalyze new effort and funding that will support strategic and unified messages regarding the role that observations play in society. Led by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL), the proposed strategic messaging and communications initiative will develop consistent, layered, and clear messaging regarding the value of ocean observations. COL will leverage existing interagency programs and trusted partners, along with external academic, policy, and industry collaborators, to obtain funding and other resources to support the initiative. This Ocean-Shot will build on ideas put forth by Ocean Obs’19, the Ocean Best Practices System, and other UN Ocean Decade initiatives. Primary activities will include hiring communications experts, surveying the community and relevant partners to collect input on the role of observations, and identifying messaging gaps. This effort would strengthen the community’s collective voice to demonstrate the value of observations to potential funders, philanthropic or private partners, and governments, and would address the needs of the technology sector.

Your Health vs. My Liberty: Philosophical beliefs dominated reflection and identifiable victim effects when predicting public health recommendation compliance

Philosophers and scientists have emphasized how our responses to global crises are often alarmingly ineffective. For example, people often prioritize a few nearby victims over many victims abroad. We wanted to understand individual differences in responses to public health crises during the COVID19 pandemic. Two experiments investigated how compliance with public health recommendations depended on messaging, cognitive style, and prior philosophical beliefs (Total N = 998). One of the two experiments found that compliance with public health recommendations was slightly improved by messaging about individual victims compared to messaging about statistical victims—i.e., "flatten the curve" graphs. However, both experiments found that beliefs about morality were more potent predictors of compliance than strategic messaging or reflective reasoning. In the second experiment, religiosity and beliefs about science were similarly predictive. This suggests that non-compliance with public health recommendations may not be a matter of ineffective messaging or reasoning, but philosophical differences.

Public Attitudes towards Cancer Survivors among Korean Adults

PurposeWe evaluated public attitudes towards cancer survivors and identified the characteristics associated with these attitudes in Korea.Materials and MethodsWe performed this cross-sectional study using proportionate quota random sampling of the 2015 Korean Census. In May 2017, investigators conducted face-to-face interviews with 1,500 Korean volunteers aged between 20 and 79 years. The questionnaire recorded sociodemographic factors, smoking and drinking habits, cancer history in family and acquaintances, interest in cancer survivors, cancer-survivor blame, and attitudes towards cancer survivors.ResultsMany participants had negative attitudes towards cancer survivors. People with a monthly household income above US $7,000 were less likely to have a negative attitude than those with monthly incomes below US $1,499. People in their 70s, without a religion, living in rural areas, smokers, or those who blame cancer survivors for their own cancer were more likely to have a negative attitude than people outside these categories. People interested in cancer survivors were less likely to have a negative attitude than those who were not interested.ConclusionTo improve attitudes towards cancer survivors, it will be necessary to increase interest in cancer survivors through education, publicity, and advocacy using strategic messaging that focuses on social and institutional aspects and emphasizes that responsibility for cancer should not be attributed to cancer patients. Inducing the public to be interested in cancer survivors will be important for positive attitudes toward cancer survivors.

ISIS’s media strategy as image warfare: Strategic messaging over time and across platforms

The media plays a crucial role in contemporary conflicts because an image war is occurring alongside the military confrontation. The Islamic state of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) sets a prime example for the usage of image as part of its fighting strategy, using various platforms to communicate its narrative. This study evaluates ISIS’s image front by analyzing its messages promoted through various online communication platforms: audio statements made by ISIS leaders, official videos, Dabiq and Rumiyah magazines, Islamic chants ( nasheeds), and Amaq news reports. The findings indicate that ISIS uses messages strategically in an attempt to create and maintain its image as a powerful organization. The three main themes are power projection, violence, and Islamic religious messages (while different emphases are placed on various platforms). Most messages target Muslims, while others (usually threats) target the organization’s various enemies. It appears that ISIS invests considerable resources and efforts into promoting its narrative as part of the image war—projecting its power, based on religious arguments, on one hand, and demonizing and threatening its enemies on the other, using repeated themes, descriptions, metaphors, and visual images (videos, pictures, and infographics). The study’s analysis indicates that ISIS puts a lot of emphasis on the media/image aspects of its battle, and uses all of the tools in its tool box in an attempt to succeed in the image war, a central front in contemporary conflicts.