Matthew Laboissonniere

Senior Seminar in Communications

Professor Berkos
10 April 2021

Chapter 7 Discussion Post 8

One interesting thing the chapter started to talk about was persuasion. Persuasion is trying

to convince someone of a viewpoint that you believe in. One cool topic the chapter brought up

was how the rise of social media has influenced our idea of persuasion. Digital marketing has

completely changed our values on persuasion, whether its brand labels, Facebook Ads, Google

Ads, sponsored ads, and other ads in general. People are exposed to a ridiculous number of

advertisements a day, around 4,000-10,000 a day.

I definitely recognize that persuasion happens a lot on social media, especially in the

political climate. I remember back during the election social media was the only place I would

go to try to get away from politics, but then it was the only thing on social media as well. My

views were definitely persuaded, typically when it came to former President Donald Trump. My

whole life I have been a Democrat, but I was starting to find lots of interesting articles talking

about ways he helped the economy and foreign affairs. However, I would never side with him

politically based on how he felt about social issues. Eventually, I stuck with voting for President

Biden, but it was not as 100% set in stone until it was decision day. All politics is simply

persuasion, which candidate can convince you to vote for them, who can convince you that they

should lead the country. The chapter states that understanding how persuasive messages work or

do not work is a central part of surviving today’s advertising/media-blitzed society.

The next part of the song I could relate to be the types of peripheral messages. The first

type are positive messages, where they are perceived positively by the audience and create a
positive mental state, and people who are on the fence would possibly be swayed. An example of

this would be if you attend an event where someone performs very well, and you have little to no

expectations going into it. This happens to me all the time if I get invited to a concert where I do

not know the artists. The audience clearly loves the artists, and if you have no opinion on it, you

will definitely feel swayed to like the artists. The crowd is rocking and the songs always sound

way better live, and since you do not have a crazy opinion about the artist, you will be more

likely to become a fan.

The next type would be neutral, which is when it leaves receivers feeling emotionally

ambivalent, do not know or care about the cue to capture their interest. This can happen

especially in school when you are attending a lecture or going to a guest speaker that you do not

care too much about. A guest speaker would most likely bore you unless whatever they are

talking about is extremely motivating, but otherwise they are there just to do their job and leave.

Recently, I have been finding it hard to pay attention in class and I am realizing these messages

are neutral peripheral messages. Especially during COVID, lots of classes are just recorded

online lectures and we have to watch them after, take notes, and teach ourselves the material.

While most kids have trouble paying attention in a normal class setting, this makes it even more

difficult. The professor does not do much to make it more entertaining and the students do not

care about the material.

The last type of peripheral message is negative, which makes the audience have a

negative view of this person. Recently, country artist Morgan Wallen had an incident where he

said a racial slur. The public’s opinion was torn on this: one half was ready to cancel him, and

the other half was apologetic and said that people made mistakes. Personally, I always thought

he was an ignorant guy, and the minute this happened I was completely content on cancelling on.
After reading this chapter, I understood that I went into this decision with negative bias and that

ultimately affecting how I interpreted the situation.