text: For and against • Whether or not you should include arguments for and against your case depends very much on your audience. If you know that they already agree with you, a one-sided argument is quite acceptable. If they are opposed to your point of view, then a one-sided message will actually be less effective, being dismissed as biased. Even if your audience don't know much about the subject, but do know that there are counterarguments (even if they don't know what they are) will lead them to reject your views as biased. Hovland's investigations into mass propaganda used to change soldiers' attitudes also suggests that the intelligence of the receivers is an important factor, a two-sided argument tending to be more persuasive with the more intelligent audience. • It is possible to inoculate audiences against certain views. If you present them with a weakened version of the arguments against your case, then they are likely to be resistant to stronger versions of those arguments that they may come across later. Again, this seems to be explained by cognitive response theory, since, by giving them a weakened version, you allow them to formulate negative cognitive responses. Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D
  Conclusion drawing • Hovland's research results are unclear here. Hovland tends to assume that you should draw the conclusions for your audience where complex issues are involved. He also seems to believe that it depends on your assessment of the audience's intelligence. • Timing • The time delay between your presentation of your case and the audience's having to reach a decision on it is of some importance. • The first side has the advantage when the second side immediately follows and there is a delay before the receivers reach a decision. • The second side has the advantage if the receivers are to reach a decision immediately after presentation of the two cases, if there is a gap between presentation of the first and second sides. Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D
  Repetition • Research (following up Zajon's findings in the 60s) has shown again and again that repeated exposure to a stimulus will increase subjects' liking for that stimulus. It doesn't seem to matter whether the stimulus is one which would normally be judged positively or negatively, nor even whether subjects are aware that they are more familiar with the stimulus than they are with others. The research seems to suggest that this is more likely to be the case with complex, rather than simple, stimuli. • So it does seem that, say, a political party with plenty of money for the campaign has a better chance, simply because it stands more chance of using the media to increase exposure to its messages and its candidates. • Repetition, then, will certainly strengthen a message, but you can soon reach the point of diminishing returns and that, of course, is something that advertisers have to bear in mind. We all know from seeing the same ad for what seems like the thousandth time that too much exposure can lower our liking of a message. The problem, naturally, is to be able to gauge where the point of diminishing returns lies. Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D
  The Communication Process: Channel Mass Medium • There is no very clear evidence as to which medium is likely to be the most effective. Lenin and Goebbels both considered film to be the most powerful propaganda medium. TV today has much the same reputation and radio was considered in its early days to be particularly powerful. Television and radio are perhaps considered so effective because they are in our own homes, but there's not much evidence to show that that makes much difference, even though it's one important factor in the BBFC's decisions on how to censor videos. TV and film may be considered especially powerful because they incorporate both sound and vision, but there is some evidence that that may in fact reduce effectiveness. TV is often also considered especially powerful because it is a mass medium, delivering the same message to around 20 million people at a time for the major soaps. However, that may work to its disadvantage when compared with, say, newspapers and periodicals which have highly differentiated markets, allowing much more precise targeting. Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D
  Research tends to show relatively little effect of any of the mass media - the so-called 'limited effects' paradigm, which emerges quite strongly from the empirical research tradition in the USA. However, it is possible that that is a deficiency of the research rather than of the media. It is often argued that since the American researchers were looking for clearly measurable effects they tended to concentrate on the short-term and thus may have missed the longer term and more diffuse effects. • A very important piece of research was conducted by Katz and Lazarsfeld into the effects of radio propaganda in the 1940s. Their research led them to formulate their Two-Step Flow Model of mass media communication, which still underlies much communication practice today. • In essence, it emphasises the importance of the influence of our social contacts in influencing our interpretation of media messages. Sophisticated political 'spin doctors' continue to recognise today that the best form of advertising is word-of-mouth advertising. They don't only need to persuade us as individuals of the validity of what they have to say. They must also persuade the people we come into contact with, especially the 'opinion leaders' in our lives. Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D
  Selective exposure • The Labour Party spin doctors know that Conservative Party voters will switch off when the Labour election broadcast is on and vice-versa. We will tend actively to seek out those messages which support the view we already have and avoid those which may challenge it. This applies not only to the mass media, but also to interpersonal communication. For example, it is well known that those with a positive self-image will tend to remember positive comments made about them, and those with a negative self-image will tend to remember the negative ones. (See also the sections on Selective Attention and Cognitive Consistency). • Selective attention • We maybe can't avoid being exposed to messages we don't like, but there is plenty of evidence that in such a case we won't pay much attention to them Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D
  Selective interpretation • Even if we are exposed and do attend to messages which conflict with our views, the chances are that we will interpret them in such a way that they do fit what we already believe. However good the Labour Party's arguments might be, the chances are that the Conservative voter will dismiss them as a load of nonsense. • An excellent example of this is provided by Kendall and Woolf's analysis of reactions to anti-racist cartoons. The cartoons featured Mr Biggott whose absurdly racist ideas were intended to discredit bigotry. In fact 31% failed to recognise that Mr Biggott was racially prejudiced or that the cartoons were intended to be anti-racist (Kendall & Wolff (1949) in Curran (1990)). Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D
  Interpersonal communication • Visual channel • Physical attractiveness of the Communicator is certainly important and there are other factors we can be fairly certain of. • The following seem to undermine the persuasiveness of a message: • narrow pupil dilation • a closed and symmetrical posture • self-touching ('self-grooming') • very high and very low levels of eye contact Christodoulakis Ilias, Ph.D