Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
Faking And Conspiring About Covid-19: A Discursive Approach, Rosa Scardigno, Alessia Paparella, Francesca D'Errico
Faking And Conspiring About Covid-19: A Discursive Approach, Rosa Scardigno, Alessia Paparella, Francesca D'Errico
The Qualitative Report
In the more general climate of post-truth - a social trend reflecting a disregard for reliable ways of knowing what is true, mostly acted through massive use of misinformation and rhetoric calling for emotions - an alarming “infodemic” accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic, affecting healthy attitudes and behaviors and further lessening trust in science, institutions, and traditional media. Its two main representative items, fake and conspiracy news, have been widely analyzed in psycho-social research, even if scholars mostly acknowledged the cognitive and social dimensions of those items and devoted less attention to their discursive construction. In addition, these works did not …
Priming In Leadership: Applying Communication Theory To The Speeches Of Ronald Reagan, Katherine Sakai
Priming In Leadership: Applying Communication Theory To The Speeches Of Ronald Reagan, Katherine Sakai
Senior Honors Theses
The study of priming gained traction in the 1990s when researchers such as John Bargh demonstrated the nonconscious activation of ideas, often through repeated related words or activated schema. Since then, researchers have studied the effects of priming on self-view, achievement, and teamwork. While the concept of priming has just recently begun to be applied to leadership in the workplace, no research has yet been done in finding examples of priming theory in the speeches of well-known leaders. In this study, Ronald Reagan’s persuasive tactics were analyzed and found to use similar methods of repetition and schema used in priming …
“But You Have To Have Been There To Know What We Are Talking About”: An Examination Of The Rhetorical Environments Of Cults And Other Extremist Groups And How They Lead To Violence, Katherine Camille
Honors College
Popular culture often cites charismatic leaders as the catalysts for violent acts in cults and other extremist groups. This explanation is insufficient and oversimplified, and this thesis challenges the idea that a single speech or person can move a large group to act violently and without their own best interests in mind. This thesis examines two well- known cults: The Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate, to determine what compelled their followers to commit violent acts 3⁄4 particularly mass suicide. I then take this analysis and look at QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory group, whose participation in the January 6th, 2021 …
Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches
Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches
Communication Studies
This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.
Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos
Conceptualizing And Measuring White House Staff Influence On Presidential Rhetoric, Justin Vaughn, José Villalobos
José D. Villalobos
Scholars have debated extensively the impact of presidential rhetoric on public opinion and congressional behavior, but have largely ignored the determinants of what the president actually says. This inattention is partly the result of the difficulty of acquiring systematic observations of presidential speech crafting. We devise a method of quantifying White House staff influence over the composition of rhetoric that captures the multistage negotiations between the president's speechwriters and his policy advisors and provides a framework for future studies on the determinants of presidential rhetoric. We employ our method to study influence over the writing of President George H. W. …