Dr. Ron Blog 4 - Persuasion

The Truth Campaign: Smoking

I may not be much of a TV person but, when I was watching Ridiculousness on MTV, a commercial came on that grabbed my attention. It was a commercial about the Truth campaign. The Truth campaign is an anti-smoking campaign. The Truth campaign teamed up with MTV to prevent smoking within teens. They have managed to lower then number from 26% teen smokers in 2000 to only 9 % teen smokers in 2014 (thetruth.com).

I personally am not a smoker. I am against smoking so this campaign did not change my views at all. In fact, reading the campaign, it made me happy to see that they are showing this and encouraging teens to either quit smoking or to avoid it all together.

The Truth campaign in my eyes is a good campaign. Having less smoke in your body is always a plus. On the flip side, I am not sure if it is good for MTV to show the campaign because it shows the actors that MTV uses as “unpaid tobacco spokespersons” (youtube.com). This could be a turn off for some viewers or the actors themselves. The viewers could see this commercial and either want to smoke because their favorite actor / actress is smoking, or they could get upset by what they see and not want to watch the shows / movies they are in anymore.

This campaign is a success to most viewers because it is showing healthier choices to viewers and teens. Instead of teens hacking their lungs up from all the smoke entering their bodies and all of the other effects it has on their immune system; it is showing that there are better and healthier choices to make.

I would advocate the same solution that The Truth campaign advocates because as stated before there is no harm done! If anything it would be a publicity issue for the actors. It is the actors faults that they are smoking in public. Those photos belong to the public after they have been taken and shared on the web. It is unfortunate for some because their publicity goes down, but it is their own fault for taking. Every time a photo is shown, the tobacco company is getting free advertisement and The Truth campaign wants that to stop.

What I have learned about the process or evolution of this campaign is that The Truth campaign wants to stop teen smoking and crush Big Tobacco campaigns. To do this is to target the now generation and show with their percentages that it is possible to quit smoking and that they are the generation that will make it possible.

About the campaign: Their goal is to get the 9% teen smokers to become 0%. Is this a possible goal to reach? The Truth campaign says absolutely! To do so, teens, parents, grandparents, anyone really; all they need to do is join the campaign and spread the word about smoking habits and how horrible they really are!

Dr. Ron Blog 3 - Persuasion

 Ebola has been mentioned all over the news and social media. It has become a problem not only for health reasons but also for mental reasons, the mental reasons that language causes. Our country is terrified of this disease, Why? Because of the many ways that the media portrays it. The media comes out with many different ways to grab someones attention to read or listen to their articles about the situation that occurs. In this case, the situation is Ebola. There have been several different ways Ebola has been mentioned throughout social media.

The language some of these articles use scare their readers. SCGNews starts their article with, “The information I'm about to present here is frightening. There's really no way around that. However, I request that you do your very best to maintain a calm state of mind”. This is the perfect language to use to grab the attention of a reader. If you scare them they will want to learn more to understand what they are scared of. This is uncertainty. If a person is uncertain about something they are not happy. They want the issue to be fixed in any way possible.

A second article, written by Carol Brown, starts off saying, “With daily headlines featuring the world 'Ebola,' fear is in the air; along with confusion. Many Americans are worried about Ebola spreading and becoming a serious threat”. Brown is talking about the same issue that SCGNews, but she uses language differently than SCGNews does. Brown is more calm and not as threataning as SCGNews is. She takes into consideration what her readers are interested in. They want the facts, but they do not want to be terrified of what they are reading. This may not occur with all readers, but this is how I see the difference.

Lastly, a third article from topinfopost.com, starts their article with, “All the disinformation being spread about Ebola by the U.S. Government and the complicit mass media will unfortunately make the Ebola pandemic far worse”. This article is my favorite. I like how they are very mellow about the Ebola situation. They do not scare the public with rumors and fabricated tales about Ebola. They are calm and are giving their facts. They think Ebola is being blown out of porportion and honestly I agree with them.

After reading these three articles, the language used throughout them all is different yet the same. Each article is concerned about Ebola but it is in different ways. The first article is a huge 'Warning! Warning!' sign, the second article is a 'be scared but its okay' sign, and the final article is an 'Ebola is not that big of a deal in the U.S.' sign. They all speak the same language but depict it in different ways.

Citation:

Brown, C. (2014, October 14). Articles: Ebola: Truth, Lies, Human Error, and Common Sense. Retrieved October 14, 2014.

DNA. The five biggest lies about Ebola being pushed by government and mass media. (2014, October 12). Retrieved October 15, 2014.

SCGNews. Ebola - What You're Not Being Told [UPDATED October 13th]. (2014, July 31). Retrieved October 14, 2014.

Dr. Ron Blog 2 - Persuasion

In the article, College presidents want to lower drinking age (CNN.com), it states that the age limit for college-age students should be legal to prevent binge-drinking. I personally have mixed feelings about this statement. If students were able to drink at the age of 18 then there would be an issue involving drinking and driving through high school and younger students. The article 900 lives saved yearly by keeping the drinking age at 21 (livescience.com) explains why the drinking age should stay. They believe that there should be more restrictions towards the 21 age drinking limit.

The audiences that these articles are targeting are college-age students and up (which is 17+). The issue in each article is opposite yet the same. Some people vote yes for decreasing the age in drinking and others vote no for decreasing the age in drinking. I am someone who is undecided. I see both arguments validly. It is hard to decide to change it or keep it the same. I understand if you lower the drinking rate then hopefully a parent will help you learn to drink responsibly, but not all parents are helpful.

Moving on, there are a few things I liked about both articles. Them main idea I like is that they see each others point of view in a productive way. They may not agree on many things but they do understand the others argument. CNN.com states, “more than 500,000 full-time students at four-year colleges suffer injuries each year related to drinking” and then they continue, “1,700 die in such accidents”. This is a huge issue. Later in the article CNN states that they believe the numbers would go down in the drinking age goes down because the students would already be exposed to alcohol and would not make such a big deal out of it. They will be in their parents care (hopefully) so they would have more rules and be use to it. After reading about CNN's argument of lowering the age limit I then read about keeping it the same from livescience.com. Livescience.com states, “since 2006 there are lower rates of drunk-driving deaths” and then they continue stating “the age 21 laws have saved up to 900 lives yearly on the road”. Lastly livescience.com says, “teen drinking and driving rates have dropped by 54 percent over the last two decades”. All of these statements and comments are great and understandable, but CNN.com made some valued points as well.

In the end each argument does serve the public in a positive way. I understand that the law will most likely not be changed in any way, but I like how it keeps coming up and gives people something to talk about.

Cited Work:

Commentary: Drinking age of 21 doesn't work. (2009, September 16). Retrieved September 29, 2014. Gholipour, B. (2014, February 24). 900 lives saved yearly by keeping the drinking age at 21. Retrieved September 29, 2014.

Dr. Ron Blog 1 - Persuasion

Something that I came across while  I was figuring out what to write about was the idea of overtime in the work field. I was reading an article written by Miriam Schulman, Time to Go Home, and found a lot of facts about overtime that were a bit shocking. To start off, There are 168 hours in a week. 56 hours for sleep, 5 hours for the commute to work, and 40 hours for work. This leaves you with 67 hours left which is roughly 9 hours a day for extra time. This is a healthy week. In the article Schulman state, "the average 40 hour-a-week job no longer provides sufficient income for many families". Most men and women are lucky if they get out of the office on time and to top it off, most of these people do not get paid overtime! This is unethical because you should be able to use your 40 hours a week to work and the rest with your family. Overtime at work has put a stress on not only the workers but the families as well. Schulman wrote, "42 percent of employees reported that their workload was excessive" and "long hours at work have been blamed for family breakdowns". This is unethical because families should not have breakdowns and feel stressed because they can not be together all because a member or two has to work almost 60 hours in a week! This whole article brings up amazing but upsetting points about the amount of stress overtime puts on a person. Schulman goes on and states, "we all get tired, pressure builds up, people get edgy, and tension breaks out" so why not give "people without jobs the extra hours"? This would solve so many ethical and normal issues throughout our world. People would not be as stressed and others would have jobs and be able to support their families! It is a win win situation that I believe should be done to eliminate stress on a worker that should be able to see their family more often and not be worried about getting fired because they do not want to work overtime.

To continue a bit, Schulman states that "downsizing, which has created both a surplus of work to do and an insecurity that makes employees feel they have to do it or lose their job" is insane! It is unethical because people should not feel threatened that they will lose their job. This will make their stress levels even higher and cause them to do a poor job. It is unfair to ask an employee to stay longer and work harder but get paid the same amount of money they were for the work they did before. In the end I believe it is unethical for the amount of pressure that business owners put on their employees and on top of that it is unethical to expect them to work twice as long for what they are getting paid to do.