1. Elaboration Likelihood Model
The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion, developed by Richard Petty and John Cacioppo, is essentially a theory about the thinking processes that might occur when we attempt to change a person’s attitude through communication, the different effects that particular persuasion variables play within these processes, and the strength of the judgements that result.
At its core, and as the name suggests, the ELM assumes that individuals can differ in how carefully and extensively they think about a message and the position, object or behavior it is advocating. That is, in any given context, the amount of elaboration or thinking a person does about a message or issue can vary from low to high along an “elaboration
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This idea is called by most theorists as cognitive consistency. As the research continues however, Leon Festinger introduced the idea of cognitive dissonance wherein a person experiences a psychological discomfort if the idea that was introduced to him/her does not support his/her current beliefs and values. Since there is a bulk of information introduced to the public, there is a tendency that people will try, in various ways, to make enlign this information to their current beliefs and values. This is where selective processes comes …show more content…
The audiences interpret the media in their own perspective and tend to avoid messages that do not go along with their beliefs. Selective processes theory includes selective exposure, selective attention, selective retention and selective perception. The first two steps in this theory involve the selective exposure and selective attention. This step explains the tendency of the audience to expose themselves and/or to attend to messages they feel are align to their current attitudes or beliefs and interests. Political interest and opinion for example might influence the way an individual gave attention to a media message. Selective exposure and selective attention also include their tendency to avoid those that might create dissonance.
Selective retention, on the other hand, “is the process by which people tend to remember best and longest information consistent with their preexisting attitudes and interests.” In this step, an individual tend to remember more those that are closer to their beliefs and
This eventually leads her to challenge her self concepts to extreme levels, causing her to either liberate herself from the façade she created or sink into the role. Easy A describes many genuine psychological phenomena and I am going to focus on three of them; Cognitive dissonance theory, how societal and cultural norms dictate our attitudes and thoughts, and different ways of persuasion. The cognitive dissonance theory is the feeling of unease that is felt when we act in opposition to our attitudes, which causes a shift of attitude in order to be consistent with our behavior. Easy A depicts strongly the theory of cognitive dissonance on numerous occasions.
The author states that the one of the many flaws in a democracy is the fact that people have the right to vote without having knowledge on the subject. He understands that people make decisions based off their morals, not on the knowledge they have on a subject. Keohane adds that as a self-defense mechanism people, when they are faced with a mental conflict that occurs where their beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information; this is called cognitive dissonance. He goes on to explain the theory of motivated reasoning, which is where people have two facts presented to them where one fact contradicts their principals, and they end up choosing the fact that is closest to their ideals. According to Keohane people with higher self-esteem are more likely to acknowledge new information than people with insecurities.
The argument can be made that, instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator in the public, at least some media should give the more informed and critical segment of the people what it wants (Lazere 305). The people are considered to be the largest segment of the audience and that should be enough evidence for the media members to make the news tailor made for the viewing public. When confronted with said evidence, most media members blame it on education. “One professional consultant who pioneered these formats justified them by claiming, “People who watch television the most are unread, uneducated, untraveled and unable to concentrate on single subjects more than a minute or two.” (Lazere 306).
In the epigraph of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Ellison quoted, “Harry: I tell you, it is not me you are looking at…but that other person, if person, you thought I was: let your necrophily feed upon that carcase… [sic]” This quote from T. S. Eliot’s Family Reunion portrays one of Ellison’s chief themes in many of his works. This inclination towards seeing what you want to see and omitting all else is, in psychology, called the confirmation bias. Individuals do this subconsciously every day without fail. Whether this bias is shown through writing a persuasive essay, or through explaining an issue to a colleague or friend, it plays a large role in many of our lives.
A different quote in this article states “The news media is extremely powerful, and that it can inject particular points of view into its audience. At the other extreme, scholars have contended that the media has minimal effects on individuals because of various mediating conditions, including their selective exposure to media they find congenial to their views, selective perception in accordance with preexisting
The 2006 British film “The Queen” depicts events that unfolded after the death of Princess Diana in 1997. In the film, the British Royal Family did not react the way the public expected them to. Due to their lack of grief that was publicly shown towards Princess Diana’s death, it resulted in their actions being heavily criticised by British media and the public. Newly elected Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had to step in to help the Royal Family deal with their bad relations to the public, with the help of Diana’s ex-husband, Prince Charles. From the in-depth movie analysis, this essay will be able to show that the media is able to influence the people and their stance towards certain topics by applying these media theories: agenda setting through gatekeeping, dramatization, and two-step flow of communication.
These three hypotheses will be used to illustrate how cognitive dissonance is experienced by the characters in the inner story world, which could possibly create distortions and discrepancies in the viewers’ real-life knowledge and meaning-making processes. Selective exposure is described as “the tendency people have to avoid information that would create cognitive dissonance because it is incompatible with their current beliefs” (Klapper 1960, p. 19). This hypothesis is played out in the second part of episode one in the second season, when at the briefing in the police station Agent Cooper lays the facts around Laura Palmer’s murder, her sexual relations and drug habits, and Deputy Andy does not accept these facts about Laura. He starts crying and screams at Agent Cooper and the forensic analysist Albert Rosenfield that he does not like how they “talk smart about Sheriff Truman or anybody!
CHAPTER III Framework This chapter shows and discusses the theories, the theoretical paradigm, the conceptual framework and the operational definition that will be utilized in this research. The study will be assimilating the following theories: Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacippo, 1986); hierarchy of advertising effects model (Thorson et al., 1992) and; music theory (synthesis). A. Theoretical Framework I. Elaboration Likelihood Model Elaboration likelihood model of persuasion or ELM is a dual process model developed by psychologists Richard Petty and John Cacioppo in the 1970s, defining how a medium or a person’s presentation of the message forms and changes the receiver’s attitude.
With the mass amount of entertainment and media that gets shoved in our faces on a daily basis, it can be a difficult task to look between the lines and see what’s really going on. While many of our favorite shows, movies, and books seem like light entertainment, they often carry hidden messages meant to sway us into a particular worldview. Blackmail in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, drug abuse and promiscuity in Scooby Doo, and mistrust and paranoia in If You Give A Mouse A Cookie are just a few examples of why we need to be consciously aware of what media is trying to tell us. William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night’s Dream shows us that he thought slavery was okay.
The main objectives in chapter 9 include the ways media attempt to influence people’s attitudes, beliefs, and/or behavior, ways media technology can be disruptive and have adverse effects on behavior, the positive and negative influences of certain kinds of media, such as advertisements or reality television programs, on self-image. Even though media is a great outlet, media has changed our generation causing effects on self-image and human interactions. Because of its pervasiveness in American culture, the media affects people in both obvious and subtle ways. Modern media comes in many different formats, including newspapers, magazines, television, social media, etc.
The Elaboration Likelihood Model was established in 1980s by John Cacioppo and Richard E. Petty. ELM is one of the most influential and important theory of persuasion. This approach explains how attitudes are shaped, changed when the process of persuasion is taking place, i.e. what level of elaboration arises during receiving the persuasive message by the recipient. Two levels of ELM can be distinguished: high level and low level.
The three modes of persuasion are ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos, pathos, and logos are used by individuals who desire to persuade an audience with a particular argument or claim. Persuasion techniques are often used by political figures, sales people, entrepreneurs, and just about anyone trying to persuade a target audience through emotions, character, and logic. The ad, I Am One, shows how these vehicles of persuasion are presented and used; rhetorical strategies like tone, attitude, and non-rhetorical strategies related, patriotism and history references.
The wellsprings of the media picked are unmistakable. As Jay Blumler brings up in his book The Use of Mass Communication, where he asserts that studies have demonstrated that crowd satisfactions can be gotten from no less than three particular sources: media content, introduction to the media in essence, and social connection that encapsulates the circumstance of presentation to various media (Blumler 1974). It is clear that groups of viewers invest energy utilizing the media as a part of different ways. Whether they are killing time or utilizing it as a social instrument, every medium is novel in its motivation.
According to Baran (2012) mass communication can be defined as “the process of creating shared meaning between the mass media and their audiences.” This essay aims to discuss the degree to which we are shaped by our interaction with the media. In order to achieve the aforementioned aim of this essay I will focus on the following: limited-effects theory, two-step flow theory, attitude change theory and agenda setting. The limited effects theory sets out that media influence is based on individual and social characteristics.
The theory explains “how individuals use mass communication to gratify their needs” (Burgeon, Hunsaker and Dawson, 1994, cited in Udende and Azeez, 2010, p. 34). The theory holds that “people influence the effects that mass media have on them” (Anaeto et al, 2008 cited in Edegoh, Asemah and Nwammuo, 2013, p. 23). The assumption of the theory is that people are not just passive receivers of media messages; rather, they actively influence the message effects. Media audience selectively choose, attend to, perceive and retain media offerings on the basis of their needs, beliefs, etc., thus, “there are as many reasons for using the media as there are media users”