Understanding and Utilizing the Agenda-Spin Model for Rhetoric in General and Political Persuasion Sat. 3:45-4:30
The Short Courses, "Teaching Persuasion: A Revolt," taught at both the National Communication Association and Eastern Communication Association in 2014, focused on the process of how speakers, writers, and communicators of all kinds, perhaps most particularly political persuaders, make meanings, create saliences, and frame and spin facts and events in order to shape public perceptions and opinions. This view of rhetoric is quite contrary to the view of many, which is to base persuasion on what they claim "reality" dictates. This short course is perfect for our "harboring innovation" in my hometown of Baltimore, and is related to the ECA's Agenda-Spin Award.
Public discourse, to be an actual influence, must be persuasive, not only in getting across one particular point-of-view or opinion, but also in whether it facilitates the kind of discourse that can resolve problems, reconcile differences, and/or find solutions. Persuasion is always grounded in some world view, some ideological perspective, regardless of the politics of the communicator, no matter the motives of those who have stakes in controlling public discourse.
The Agenda/Spin Model first analyzes how matters become or do not become "issues;" then the model is utilized to determine what perspective or spin or what the meaning and significance of the issue becomes for the audience(s). The current national polarized debate about what issues should hold the public attention -- the border crisis, inflation, the economy, abortion, violent crime, the Supreme Court, Russia, China, voting rights -- may be the clearest example of rhetors' struggle for agenda and spin.
Spin is always a dispute over what's critically at stake and shaping perceptions and controlling the meanings of different events. There is an objective world of facts -- there are hurricanes and death, of course -- that is undeniable, but suasory discourse is not simply about observable, so-called objective realities; it is a phenomenon in which human beings create, contest, and change audience attention and meanings.
Presented by Richard Vatz