Every day we are exposed to multiple persuasion attempts. Companies are trying to persuade us to buy a new car, a certain brand of clothing, even a certain type of food product from a specific grocery store. Politicians are seeking to persuade constituencies to believe in their political agendas and vote for their parties. TV channels are trying to gain viewers, music artists seek listeners, movie producers or theater directors want to increase the number of people buying tickets for their production, developers of social media sites and apps attempt to gain more users, and celebrities seek to nudge people into following their social media accounts or donate to their preferred charity. In short, persuasion attempts are ubiquitous.
The psychology of influence, the study of (mass) communication, and the art of persuasion or propaganda has received considerable scholarly attention.[1] Much progress has been made from linear, one-way communication models to the realization that persuasion is an interactive, multifaceted and complex process, which can be shaped but never fully controlled by the messenger. While the message, its delivery style, the medium and the sender continue to play an important role in persuasive communication, research is increasingly aware of the limitations of focusing on these variables only. An excellent message, delivered engagingly, via the receiver’s preferred medium, by a skillful sender, may still not resonate with the intended target. There is no ‘magic bullet’; no Huxleyan indoctrination,[2] or Orwellian mind control.[3]
Instead, real persuasion relies on frame alignment; that is, the adjustment of individual perceptions to the information communicated in a persuasive message—a fundamentally individual process. Increasingly, strategic communication and (counter-) framing are also applied to the study of both the development, implementation and effect of extremist persuasive messaging as well as the study of counter-measures, including counter-framing and counter-narratives as part of countering violent extremism (CVE). Factors influencing persuasion effects are of high importance both to a holistic understanding of radicalization and the implementation of counter-campaigns as radicalization is often conceptualized as a change in perception—a reframing of one’s understanding about the world.
Mediators of Message Resonance
Persuasion and potential frame alignment are complex processes influenced numerous factors operating on multiple levels; progressive growth in research since the end of the Second World War has uncovered a multitude of ‘ingredients’ for successful persuasion. The sender, for instance, needs to be both credible and likeable to elicit the greatest persuasive influence. The higher the perceived authority and expertise of a message articulator, the higher his or her persuasive potential,[4] although credibility must be viewed as relative to other frame articulators.[5] The same is true for likeability,[6] which is often coupled with the perception of similarity. The more a frame articulator is perceived to be part of the in-group of the message recipient and the higher the perceived similarity, the greater the persuasion effects independently of message content.[7] For instance, Americans perceive the frame “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing” very differently, depending on whether they believe it is a quote from former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, who rescued the country from civil war and slavery, or from Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Communist takeover of Russia.[8]
Rather intuitively, frame receptance and alignment is also influenced by the message content and the mode of presentation. A range of scholarly inquiries has uncovered a multitude of factors supporting frame alignment, including the themes frames need to cover,[9] the cultural and discursive opportunity structures at any given moment in time frames need to take into account,[10] the centrality of the beliefs articulated,[11] the persuasive attempts by other actors and counter-framing activities,[12] as well as factors pertaining to delivery mode such as the choice of medium,[13] visual or audiovisual framing,[14] and transmedia storytelling—the spread of narratives over multiple media channels.[15]
Despite all these factors capable of increasing resonance, whether persuasion effects and frame alignment take place remains contingent upon individual characteristics. While attempts have been made to develop a framework to explain how individual characteristics shape persuasion processes,[16] and resistance to persuasion,[17] no single theory can explain the manifold factors that have been shown to influence individual persuadability and frame resonance. In their classic discussion on framing effects, Snow and Benford detail that frames need to fit within an individual’s phenomenology, that is, they need to be relevant to the individual’s current life world, suggest answers to an individual’s personal struggles, and helping individuals to navigate everyday life.[18] When frames are too abstract and removed from personal experience, they are unlikely to resonate and elicit persuasive effects.[19]
Message receivers are not ‘blank sheets’, they compare and contrast persuasion attempts with prior knowledge and, as social judgment theory postulates,[20] if a frame is too far removed from other beliefs an individual holds, they are likely to reject the frame without much contemplation.[21] Even if, however, a frame is not outright dismissed, individuals differ in how much they engage with the messages they receive. Those high in need for cognition—a relatively stable trait—are more motivated to elaborate frames and ‘think them through’, whereas those high in need for affect prefer emotional framing over high cognitive engagement.[22]
To complicate matters further, persuasion depends on how well messages are tailored to the receiver’s personality,[23] political orientation,[24] political knowledge,[25], gender,[26] age,[27] social status,[28], and temporal factors such as emotional states or mood,[29] vested interest in the issue,[30] or external distractions.[31] In short, there are far too many individual variables to take into account to judge persuasion effects ex ante with a sufficient degree of certainty. Frame articulators cannot possibly consider all these variables when attempting to persuade audiences, not even in one-on-one communication, especially because certain factors may be in constant flux as opinions change, values become more or less salient, and moods fluctuate.
No matter how sophisticated persuasion attempts are, it will never be a simple case of “monkey see, monkey do”; effects will always be contingent upon individual-level factors. This is not to say that audiences may consciously be able to escape persuasive attempts, but underlying, subconscious characteristics determine susceptibility to a certain message at a certain point in time.
Consequences for Extremism Research and CVE Practice
The abundance of individual factors influencing receptiveness to persuasion attempts shows that there is no magic bullet that persuades upon impact.[32] Messages can be carefully crafted, engagingly delivered by a trusted and likeable source, and yet not resonate. While politicians and companies only need to persuade a certain amount of people in order to be successful and may be able to rely on the factors supporting message resonance that they can control, in extremism studies the problem of individual differences to persuasion is more pronounced.
On the one hand, the question that has plagued the field ever since radicalization came to the forefront of public and scholarly attention after 9/11—Why do some people radicalize, while others exposed to very similar conditions do not?—has been unanswered and is likely unanswerable. Archetti, for instance, postulates that there cannot ever be a model fully explaining what leads individuals to radicalize, because radicalization is a situational phenomenon. It is a “temporal- and context-specific outcome: it depends on an individual’s unique position within a configuration of relationships at any given time”,[33] which change all the time and can therefore neither predicted ex ante nor fully explained ex post as both the individual and the researcher are unlikely to be able to trace all factors that contributed to the radicalization. Not only relationships change, individual characteristics such as emotions, vested interest and others may also change, meaning susceptibility to a persuasion attempt can fluctuate within a single individual over time.
On the other hand, the power of the receiver’s characteristics in determining persuasion effects, is also a problem for CVE practitioners. They, too, face the problem of being able to control message, messenger and medium, but may still fail to reach their target audience; potentially with detrimental consequences. To mitigate the impact of individual characteristics, counter-narrative campaigns could employ narrowcasting strategies.[34] Narrowcasting is tailored communication on the web; instead of broadcasting messages to a wide range of actors, narrowcasting targets specific audiences. Social media now affords new opportunities to learn more about one’s audience, their personalities, characteristics, preferences and emotional states,[35] as well as the social networks influencing individual actors,[36] and can even be used to manipulate variables such as emotions.[37] Generally speaking, the better one knows one’s audience and the more targeted communication efforts are, the more likely one is to achieve frame alignment.
Nevertheless, narrowcasting cannot eradicate an individual’s unique social position and characteristics influencing narrative persuasion. The individual will remain a variable that frame articulators are unable to control or even predict ex ante. No CVE strategy will be appealing to all those at risk of radicalization, but no extremist persuasion strategy to facilitate radicalization will either. (Counter-) extremism as well as persuasion generally are and will remain phenomena, which necessarily carry a degree of uncertainty.
European Eye on Radicalization aims to publish a diversity of perspectives and as such does not endorse the opinions expressed by contributors. The views expressed in this article represent the author alone.
________________________
REFERENCES
[1] van der Pligt, J. and Vliek, M. (2017). The Psychology of Influence: Theory, research and practice. Routledge: Oxon
[2] Huxley, A. (2004 [1932]). Brave New World. Vintage Classics: London
[3] Orwell, G. (2008 [1949]). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Penguin Books: London
[4] Benford & Snow, 2000; Hewitt & McCammon, 2004; Morrell, 2015
[5] Matesan, I. (2012). What Makes Negative Frames Resonant? Hamas and the Appeal of Opposition to the Peace Process. Terrorism and Political Violence. Vol. 24 (5), pp. 671-705
Wiktorowicz, Q. (2004). Framing Jihad: Intramovement Framing Contests and Al-Qaeda’s Struggle for Sacred Authority. International Review of Social History. Vol. 49, pp. 159-177
[6] Reinhard, M., Messner, M. and Sporter, S. (2006). Explicit persuasive intent and its impact on sources at persuasion: the determining roles of attractiveness and likeableness. Journal of Consumer Psychology. Vol. 16, pp. 249-259
Nisbett, R. and Wilson, T. (1977). The halo effect: evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 35, pp. 250-256
[7] Van Baaren, R., Holland, R., Steenaert, B. and van Knippenberg, A. (2003). Mimicry for money: behavioral consequences of imitation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 39, pp. 393-398
Seyranian, V. (2014). Social identity framing communication strategies for mobilizing social change. The Leadership Quarterly. Vol. 25, pp. 468-486
Giorgi, S. (2017). The Mind and Heart of Resonance: The Role of Cognition and Emotions in Frame Effectiveness. Journal of Management Studies. Vol. 54 (5), pp. 711-738
Bandura, A. (2001). Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication. Mediapsychology. Vol. 3, pp. 265-299
[8] Asch, S. (1948). The doctrine of suggestion, prestige, and imitation in social psychology. Psychological Review. Vol. 55, pp. 250-276
[9] Benford, R. and Snow, D. (2000). Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment. Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 26, pp. 611-639
[10] Tilly, C. (1978). From Mobilization to Revolution. Addison-Wesley: Reading
McCammon, H., Newman, H., Muse, C. and Terrell, T. (2007). Movement Framing and Discursive Opportunity Structures: The Political Successes of the U.S. Women’s Jury Movements. American Sociological Review. Vol. 72 (5), pp. 725-749
Matesan, I. (2012). What Makes Negative Frames Resonant? Hamas and the Appeal of Opposition to the Peace Process. Terrorism and Political Violence. Vol. 24 (5), pp. 671-705
[11] Snow, D. and Benford, R. (1988). Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization. International Social Movement Research. Vol. 1, pp. 197-217
[12] Chong, D. and Druckman, J. (2007). A Theory of Framing and Opinion Formation in Competitive Elite Environments. Journal of Communication. Vol. 57, pp. 99-118
Wiktorowicz, Q. (2004). Framing Jihad: Intramovement Framing Contests and Al-Qaeda’s Struggle for Sacred Authority. International Review of Social History. Vol. 49, pp. 159-177
Kinder, D. and Sanders, L. (1990). Mimicking political debate with survey questions: The case of white opinion on affirmative action for blacks. Social Cognition. Vol. 8 (1), pp. 73-103
Snow, D. and Byrd, S. (2007). Ideology, Framing Processes, and Islamic Terrorist Movements. Mobilization: An International Journal. Vol. 12, pp. 119-136
[13] Walter, N., Murphy, S., Frank, L. and Baezconde-Garbanati, L. (2017). Each Medium Tells a Different Story: The Effect of Message Channel on Narrative Persuasion. Communication Research Reports. Vol. 34 (2), pp. 161-170
Keith, S., Schwalbe, C. and Sillcock, W. (2009). Visualizing cross-media coverage: Picturing war across platforms during the US-led invasion of Iraq. Atlantic Journal of Communication. Vol. 17 (1), pp. 1-18
Kwon, K.and Moon, S-I. (2009). The bad guy is one of us: framing comparison between the US and Korean newspapers and blogs about the Virginia Tech shooting. Asian Journal of Communication. Vol. 19 (3), pp. 270-288
[14] Walter, N., Murphy, S., Frank, L. and Baezconde-Garbanati, L. (2017). Each Medium Tells a Different Story: The Effect of Message Channel on Narrative Persuasion. Communication Research Reports. Vol. 34 (2), pp. 161-170
Hansen, L. (2011). Theorizing the Image for Security Studies: Visual Securitization and the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis. European Journal of international Relations. Vol. 17 (1), pp. 51-74
Makhortykh, M. and Sydorova, M. (2017). Social media and visual framing of the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Media, War & Conflict. Vol. 10 (3), pp. 359–381
[15] Gretter, S., Yadav, A. and Gleason, B. (2017). Walking the Line between Reality and Fiction in Online Spaces: Understanding the Effects of Narrative Transportation. Journal of Media LIteracy Education. Vol. 9 (1), pp. 1-21
Jenkins, H. (2007). Transmedia Storytelling 101. Retrieved from: http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html
[16] Modic, D., Anderson, R. and Palomäki, J. (2018). We will make you like our research: The development of a susceptibility-to-persuasion scale. Retrieved from: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0194119
Alkis, N. and Temizel, T. (2015). The impact of individual differences on influence strategies. Personality and Individual Differences. Vol. 87, pp. 147-152
[17] McGuire, W. (1964). “Inducing resistance to persuasion: Some contemporary approaches” in Berkowitz, L. (ed). Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Academic Press: New York, pp. 191-229
McGuire, W. and Papageorgis, D. (1961). The relative efficacy of various types of prior belief-defense in producing immunity against persuasion. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. Vol. 62 (2), pp. 327–337
Schweizer, T., Krochik, M. and Jost, J. (2011). Resistance and Susceptibility to Persuasion Across the Political Spectrum. Retrieved from: https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campuspress.yale.edu/dist/a/1215/files/2015/11/2011_Schweizer-Krochik-Jost-2011-1djc8xs.pdf
[18] Snow, D. and Benford, R. (1988). Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization. International Social Movement Research. Vol. 1, pp. 197-217
[19] Ibid.
McDonnell, T., Bail, C. and Tavory, I. (2017). A Theory of Resonance. Sociological Theory. Vol. 35 (1), pp. 1-14
[20] Sherif, C., Sherif, M. and Nebergall, R. (1981). Attitude and Attitude Change: The Social Judgment-involvement Approach. Greenwood Press: Westport
Sherif, M. and Hovland, C. (1961). Social judgment: Assimilation and contrast effects in communication. Yale University Press: New Haven
[21] Chau, H., Wong, C., Chow, F. and Fung, C-H. (2014). Social judgment theory based model on opinion formation, polarization and evolution. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications. Vol. 415, pp. 133-140
Bail, C. (2016). Cultural Carrying Capacity: Organ Donation Advocacy, Discursive Framing, and Social Media Engagement. Social Science and Medicine. Vol. 165, pp. 280-288
[22] Cacioppo, J., Petty, R., Feinstein, J. and Jarvis, W. (1996). Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin. Vol. 119 (2), pp. 197-253
Haddock, G., Maio, G., Arnold, K. and Huskinson, T. (2008). Should persuasion be affective or cognitive? The moderating effects of need for affect and need for cognition. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Vol. 34 (6), pp. 769-778
Wheeler, S., Petty, R. and Bizer, G. (2005). Self-schema matching and attitude change: Situational and dispositional determinants of message elaboration. Journal of Consumer Research. Vol. 31 (4), pp.787-797
Appel, M. and Richter, T. (2010). Transportation and need for affect in narrative persuasion: A mediated moderation model. Media Psychology. Vol. 13 (2), pp. 101-135
Bartsch, A., Appel, M. and Storch, D. (2010). Predicting emotions and meta-emotions at the movies. The role of need for affect in audience’s experience of horror and drama. Communication Research. Vol. 37 (2), pp. 167-190
[23] Hirsh, J., Kang, S. and Bodenhausen, G. (2012). Personalized Persuasion: Tailoring Persuasive Appeals to Recipients’ Personality Traits. Psychological Science. Vol. 23 (6), pp. 578-581
Halko, S. and Kientz, J. (2010). Personality and persuasive technology: An exploratory study on health-promoting mobile applications. Persuasive Technology Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6137, pp. 150-161
Kaptein, M., Markopoulos, P., de Ruyter, B. and Aarts, E. (2015). Personalizing persuasive technologies: Explicit and implicit personalization using persuasion profiles. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies. Vol. 77, pp. 38-51
[24] Dharshing, S., Hille, S. and Wüstenhagen, R. (2017). The Influence of Political Orientation on the Strength and Temporal Persistence of Policy Framing Effects. Ecological Economics. Vol. 142, pp. 295-305
[25] Borah, P. (2011). Conceptual Issues in Framing Theory: A Systematic Examination of a Decade’s Literature. Journal of Communication. Vol. 61, pp. 246-263
[26] Bleich, S. (2007). Is it all in a word? The effect of issue framing on public support for US spending on HIV/AIDS in developing countries. The International Journal of Press/Politics. Vol. 12 (2), pp. 120-132
Orji, R., Vassileva, J. and Mandryk, R. (2014). Modeling the Efficacy of Persuasive Strategies for Different Gamer Types in Serious Games for Health. User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction. Vol. 24, pp. 453-498
[27] Kim, J., Allison, S., Eylon, D., Goethals, G., Markus, M., Hindle, S., McGuire, H. (2008). Rooting for (and then abandoning) the underdog. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. Vol. 38, pp. 2550-2573
[28] Montiel, C. and Shah, A. (2008). Effects of Political Framing and Perceiver’s Social Position on Trait Attributions of a Terrorist/Freedom Fighter. Journal of Language and Social Psychology. Vol. 27 (3), pp. 266-275
[29] Chang, C. (2007). Interactive effects of message framing, product perceived risk, and mood: The case of travel healthcare product advertising. Journal of Advertising Research. Vol. 47, pp. 51-65
[30] Hamby, A., Brinberg, D. and Daniloski, K. (2017). Reflecting on the journey: Mechanisms in narrative persuasion. Journal of Consumer Psychology. Vol. 27 (1), pp. 11-22
[31] Bilandzic, H. and Busselle, R. (2011). Enjoyment of films as a function of narrative experience, perceived realism and transportability. Communications. Vol. 36, pp. 29-50
[32] Archetti, C. (2017). “Narrative Wars: Understanding Terrorism in the Era of Global Interconnectedness” in Miskimmon, A., O’Loughlin, B. and Roselle, L. (eds). Forging the World: Strategic Narratives and International Relations. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, pp. 218-245
[33] Archetti, C. (2015). Terrorism, Communication and New Media: Explaining Radicalization in the Digital Age. Perspectives on Terrorism. Vol. 9 (1). Retrieved from: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/401/794
[34] Moses, Z. (2018). Visiting professor discusses the changing landscape of online terrorism. Retrieved from: https://www.start.umd.edu/news/visiting-professor-discusses-changing-landscape-online-terrorism
Nguyen et al (2017). Tailoring the Mode of Information Presentation: Effects on Younger and Older Adults’ Attention and Recall of Online Information. Human Communication Research. Vol. 43 (1), pp. 102-126
Barasch, A. and Berger, J. (2014). Broadcasting and Narrowcasting: How Audience Size Affects What People Share. Journal of Marketing Research. Vol. 51 (3), pp. 286-299
Kant, T. (2014). Giving the “Viewser” a Voice? Situating the Individual in Relation to Personalization, Narrowcasting, and Public Service Broadcasting. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Vol.58 (3), pp. 381-399
[35] Back, M., Schmuckle, S. and Egloff, B. (2008). How extraverted is [email protected]? Inferring personality from e-mail addresses. Journal of Research in Personality. Vol. 42, pp. 1116-112
Nissenbaum, A. and Shifman, L. (2017). Internet memes as contested cultural capital: The case of 4chan’s /b/board. New Media & Society. Vol. 19 (4), pp. 483-501
Yarkoni, T. (2010). Personality in 100,000 words: A large-scale analysis of personality and word use among bloggers. Journal of Research in Personality. Vol. 44, pp. 363-373
Yee, N., Bailenson, J., Urbanek, M., Chang, F. and Merget, D. (2007). The Unbearable Likeness of Being Digital: The Persistence of Nonverbal Social Norms in Online Virtual Environments. Cyberpsychology and Behavior. Vol. 10, pp. 115-121
[36] Eastwick, P. and Garnder,W. (2008). Is It a Game? Evidence for Social Influence in the Virtual World. Social Influence. Vol. 1, pp.1-15
[37] Holden, C. (2015). Facebook Mood Experiment: Experimental Evidence Of Massive-Scale Emotional Contagion Through Social Networks. Retrieved from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272886836_FACEBOOK_MOOD_EXPERIMENT_Experimental_Evidence_Of_Massive-Scale_Emotional_Contagion_Through_Social_Networks
