Ethics Of Persuasion Research Articles

"Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion," 2nd ed., by Randal Marlin

"Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion," 2nd ed., by Randal Marlin

The Just Use of Propaganda (?): Ethical Criteria for Counter-Hegemonic Communication Strategies

In the face of an entrenched corporate ideological apparatus that has captured our state institutions, mainstream media, and the governing classes, this article identifies an ethical problem for critical rhetoric. To what extent are democratic communities justified in utilizing the ‘master's tools’ of strategic communication to fight the vast political machinery of the corporate state? The debate in rhetoric studies on the ethics of persuasion and the debate in communication theory launched by Lippmann's critique of mass communication serve to open up areas of concern for considering the just use of propaganda. An ethical criteriology based on Michel de Certeau's concept of “making do” is developed to guide thinking about appropriate responses to the stranglehold of postmodern hegemony over the political economy. The Wisconsin Scott Walker repeal campaign of 2011 is used as an extended example to test this criteriology.

Explicating the Moral Responsibility of the Advertiser: TARES as an Ethical Model for Fast Food Advertising

In adopting a deontological lens to assess message ethicality, this study identifies and explicates the ethical dimensions of fast food advertising through five principles of the TARES framework of persuasion ethics. In moral weight, fast food—with its high calories and low nutritional value—is negatively prejudiced. A deontological-ethical perspective, by focusing on the quality of the advertising message, shifts the focus from the product to a more measured deliberation about the moral responsibility of fast food advertisers to reposition them as moral agents who are accountable for their messages. A content analysis of 380 television and print ads for fast food in Singapore shows that few ads met the TARES's expectations. Ads targeting children and teenagers are associated with lower message ethicality than ads targeting adults and the general audience, lending empirical support to the literature critical of fast food advertising's insidious approach of targeting the young.

Corrupt language, corrupt thought: the White Paper The importance of teaching

This article deconstructs the language of the 2010 UK Coalition Government's White Paper, The Importance of Teaching. It uses analytical frameworks related to rhetoric established by Aristotle and Cicero. It explores the mechanisms of language using both critical discourse analysis and content analysis, offering quantitative data on the content of the paper and qualitative data on the literary strategies employed. It is concerned not only with how what is communicated persuades but also the ethics of persuasion; what is suggested and to what end. The article suggests a mutually reinforcing relationship between poverty of language and poverty of thought. The Coalition Government asserts an heroic stance to act radically to free victimised teachers from the burdens of bureaucracy imposed by the previous government. However, rather than radical action to make change, the findings suggest that the White Paper presents an illusory carapace of change that conceals fundamental continuity. It reassures all of the commitment of government and audiences to change while sustaining education as fundamentally unchanged.

Public relations models and persuasion ethics: a new approach

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review public relations and related literature to examine attitudes to persuasion and propaganda as part of a long‐term project to produce an integrated ethical framework.Design/methodology/approachA critical approach to existing literature, examining assumptions and value judgments underpinning core texts and other writing. The limitations of systems, marketplace and relationship theory are briefly examined.FindingsThe dominance of systems theory and its reluctance to engage with persuasion has created a vacuum which is filled by critics, such as Stauber and Rampton. The common models of public relations – boundary spanner, advocate, relationship manager and propagandist – have limited discussion of persuasion and persuasion ethics, with the exception of the rhetorical version of advocacy which has produced considerable material of interest. However, rhetoric is rarely taught in the UK and the marketplace approach is more common. Social psychology has useful insights into persuasion and the Maletzke model is adapted to suggest future direction for an integrated ethical framework.Research limitations/implicationsThese are preliminary findings, based on literature, which will underpin the PhD started in July 2007. The application of the model is explored but has not yet been tested in practice.Practical implicationsIf practitioners internalise particular versions of public relations and adopt ethical assumptions connected with each model, competing views of PR ethics will undermine an integrative approach. The adapted model proposed in this paper can be used either as a tool for analysing communication ethics or as a practical guide to professional behaviour.Originality/valueOthers (L'Etang, Piezska, Moloney, Weaver, Edgett) have covered some of these issues. This paper links ethical approaches with models of public relations and suggests the use of a communication model rarely referenced in PR literature.

Public relations, the public interest and persuasion: an ethical approach

PurposeThis paper aims to consider whether ethical persuasion can be part of public relations practice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper contends that the critical issue for practitioners is not whether they engage in persuasion, but whether they do so ethically. Accordingly, a definition of ethical persuasion is derived by examining unethical propaganda. The paper then considers what standard might be used to assess the ethics of persuasion. The notion of “the public interest” – ubiquitously linked to ethical practice in public relations – is considered but found to be too elusive to guide the practice individual practitioners. Other more assessable standards are identified, as is a guiding approach to ethics. The approach to ethics adopted in this paper is rule utilitarianism. The methodology of this paper is deductive and derivative analysis, argument and synthesis, drawn from a broad body of literature.FindingsPersuasion can be ethical, and a definition of ethical persuasion is proffered. The public interest is not a standard that individual practitioners can determine, decide, know, or apply to assess the ethics of their practice. Ethical persuasion can, however, be assessed using other standards, discussed in the paper. Consequently, a set of criteria and standards to practicing ethical persuasion is developed.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper does not extend into a discussion of practical persuasive techniques. Therefore, an extension of this examination could consider a thorough assessment of the ethics of practical persuasive communication techniques.Practical implicationsDirectly relevant to the daily work of public relations practitioners, communicators, adertisers and marketers, who are interested in acting ethically. The paper provide a basis for a guide to assessing the ethics of persuasive practice.Originality/valueThis paper confronts both the question of whether practitioners can use the notion of the public interest to assess the ethics of practice, and also what constitutes ethical (and unethical) persuasion, and considers how persuation can be used ethically.

Law in the Digital Age: How Visual Communication Technologies are Transforming the Practice, Theory, and Teaching of Law

Law today has entered the digital age. The way law is practiced - how truth and justice are represented and assessed - is increasingly dependent on what appears on electronic screens in courtrooms, law offices, government agencies, and elsewhere. Practicing lawyers know this and are rapidly adapting to the new era of digital visual rhetoric. Legal theory and education, however, have yet to catch up. This article is the first systematic effort to theorize law's transformation by new visual and multimedia technologies and to set out the changes in legal pedagogy that are needed to prepare law students for practice in the new environment. The article explores the consequences for legal theory and practice of the shift from an objectivist to a constructivist approach to human knowledge, using an expanded, multidisciplinary understanding of rhetoric to analyze the elusiveness of evidentiary truth and the nature and ethics of persuasion in the digital era.

Propaganda and the ethics of persuasion

Propaganda and the ethics of persuasion

Communication in the Unfettered Marketplace: Ethical Interrelationships of Business, Government, and Stakeholders

As technology redefines relationships, new assumptions are emerging about the ethics of persuasion. In an increasingly global economy, technology is forcing greater transparency onto businesses and governments as the moral context of their communications is inseparable from the competitive nature of the business world. This article suggests that moral boundaries will be set naturally, that consumers have a moral obligation to excercise "due diligence" in their acceptance of messages, and that no one is in charge of the global economy's conventions and morality. The system ultimately depends on participants to keep their own self-interested boat in the race.

Communication in the Unfettered Marketplace: Ethical Interrelationships of Business, Government, and Stakeholders

As technology redefines relationships, new assumptions are emerging about the ethics of persuasion. In an increasingly global economy, technology is forcing greater transparency onto businesses and governments as the moral context of their communications is inseparable from the competitive nature of the business world. This article suggests that moral boundaries will be set naturally, that consumers have a moral obligation to excercise "due diligence" in their acceptance of messages, and that no one is in charge of the global economy's conventions and morality. The system ultimately depends on participants to keep their own self-interested boat in the race.

Ethical Considerations in Language Awareness Programs

Two traditional principles have served as the basis for the involvement of linguists in social issues, namely the vinciple of error correction and the principle of debt incurred (Labov, 1982). It is argued that an additional principle should motivate linguists to take a more proactive role in social issues, the principle of linguistic gratuity. One such proactive role is involvement in Language Awareness Programs, which are designed to provide an unde-standing of and appreciation for variety in language. This paper considers the rationale for and programmatic structure of two experimental language awareness programs, along with a discussion of some of the ethical issues that need to be considered in the implementation of such progyams. Ethical considerations include the ethics of persuasion and need, of presentation, of representation, of sociocultural change, and of accommodation. An example of a curriculum unit with a humanistic objective, sample exercises drmonstrating the scientific study of language patterning, an exercise with a sociohistorical objective, and an exercise promoting quaintness--i.e., the lexical heritage of the North Carolinian island of Ocrakoke--are appended. (Contains 22 references.) (Author/JP) ******************************************************, c************* * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN LANGUAGE AWARENESS PROGRAMS Walt Wolfram William C. Friday Professor North Carolina State University Presented at the Ethics Symposium, AAAL April 1993 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL HESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER tERICI U S DEPARTMENT OE EDUCATION On.ce ot Educanoce, Research end Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) hn.s document het been mOtoduce as c-crinreo Iron tne person or ocganasnon ongmanng r mmor changes hone peen made to .implov reoroduct.on ctueiy Prnnts oty,ev. or opmons statodm thisdocumem do not necestanty reprsent ottIC411 OE RI posnton or pancy Wolfram: Ethical Considerations in Language Awareness ABTRA.CT Two traditional principles have served as the basis for the involvement of linguists in social issues, namely, the principle of error correction and the principle of debt incurred (Labov 1982). lt is argued that an additional principle should motivate linguists to take a more proactive role in social issues, namely the principle of linguistic gratuity. One such proactive role is involvement in Language Awareness Programs, which are designed to provide an understanding of and appreciation for variety in language. We consider the rationale for and programmatic structure of two experimental language awareness programs, along with a discussion of some of the ethical issues that need to be considered in the implementation of such programs. Ethical considerations include the ethics of persuasion and need, the ethics of presentation, the ethics of representation, the ethics of socio-educational change, and the ethics of accommodation. INTRODUCHON The relatively short history of social dialectology has shown that it is quite possible to combine a commitment to th.e objective description of sociolinguisfic data and a concern for social issues. At the same time that social dialectologists have contributed substantively to our understanding of language variation, they have, at various junctures over the past three decades, become involved in several important social and socio-educational issues related to dialect diversity.' According to Labov (1982), there are two primary principles that may motivate linguists to take social action, namely, the principle of error correction and the principle of debt incurred. These are articulated as follows: principle of error correction A scientist who becomes aware of a widespread idea or social prachce with important consequences that is invalidated by his own data is obligated to bring this error to the attention of the widest possible audience.(Labov

The Epistemology and Ethics of Consensus: Uses and Misuses of 'Ethical' Expertise

In this paper I examine the epistemology and ethics of consensus, focusing on the ways in which decision makers use/misuse ethical expertise. The major questions I raise and tentative answers I give are the following: First, are the 'experts' really experts? My tentative answer is that they are bona fide experts who often represent specific interest groups. Second, is the experts' authority merely epistemological or is it also ethical? My tentative answer is that the experts' authority consists not only in their command over specific matters of fact and/or value, but also in their ability to achieve 'consensus' about what is 'true'/'false', or 'right'/'wrong'. Third, should the authority of expertise be limited? My tentative answer is that it should be limited in the area of facts but especially in the area of values. Persons who are ethics 'experts' must be particularly careful to practice an ethics of persuasion rather than an ethics of compulsion. Their role is not to force their group consensus upon decision makers' individual moral perceptions and deliberations; rather it is to help decision makers come to their own conclusions about what they ought to do.

Ethical thought in public relations history: Seeking a relevant perspective

A serious retardant to development of a specifically public relations (PR) ethical philosophy is the tendency to retain a commitment uniquely journalistic— objectivity. Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays offered two ethical options or imperatives, based on objectivity or on advocacy. Public relations must accept a commitment to the ethics of persuasion in order to reduce a crippling inferiority complex and advance understanding of the profession by its practitioners as well as the public.

St Augustine and the problem of deception in religious persuasion

A substantial body of literature has been produced in the twentieth century by religious and philosophical writers on the ethics of belief. Discussion of this topic has generally focused on the processes leading up to belief within the individual, so that it would not be inaccurate to say that for most of these writers ‘the ethics of belief’ means ‘the ethics of coming–to–believe’. There has been little attention among these writers, however, to the moral questions which surround the production or inducement of beliefs in others, to the ethics of persuasion. An extension of the ethics of belief to cover moral issues which arise in connection with persuasion seems reasonable; the ethics of belief, widely construed, might be said to encompass questions about both the production of beliefs within oneself and the inducement of beliefs in others.

A new look at the ethics of persuasion

This article suggests that effects rather than motives or methods become the definitive way of measuring the ethical quality of discourse. It also suggests that the supposed dichotomy between absolutist and relativist approaches to moral judgments is mistaken. Instead, approaches to moral judgment are seen as applications of consensual rules whose application follows a quasi‐juridical model.

The ethics of persuasion: A re‐examination

The ethics of persuasion: A re‐examination

A re‐examination of the ethics of persuasion

(1952). A re‐examination of the ethics of persuasion. Central States Speech Journal: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 4-9.

The ethics of persuasion

(1930). The ethics of persuasion. Quarterly Journal of Speech: Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 476-486.