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Persuasion in the Digital Age CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Loughborough University Institutional Repository PERSUASION IN THE DIGITAL AGE: A THEORETICAL MODEL OF PERSUASION IN TERSE TEXT A Doctoral Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Information Management at Loughborough University. Submitted by Stefanie Anja Hills December 2018 © by Stefanie Anja Hills 2018 To my late father Ralf Wichmann (6th May 1956 – 20th January 2007) iv ABSTRACT This thesis explores how the increasingly prevalent terse text format of Social Media communication has affected the way we seek to persuade one another and whether it has impacted the applicability of existing models of persuasion, influence and attitude change. Over the past few decades, communication behaviour has evolved dramatically. As a society we increasingly consume information in the format of short messages, rather than lengthy text and verbose speech. Meanwhile our understanding of persuasion has hardly moved on from the 1980’s and continues to be spread across a variety of academic disciplines, such as Behavioural Science/Psychology, Philosophy/Rhetoric, and various sub-fields of linguistics. Existing models of persuasion are to date lacking interdisciplinarity and applicability to the terse text format found in Social Media. The data used in this research is in the format of Twitter microblogs gathered throughout a number of recent political campaigns, such as the 2016 UK Brexit referendum and the 2016 US General Election. The research purpose is fundamental, rather than applied, meaning that it seeks to expand knowledge by increasing the understanding of fundamental principles, rather than answering specific questions and offering a precise solution to a practical problem. The research philosophy that has been adopted for this project is interpretivism. The research approach is idiographic, and the methodology is predominantly qualitative, with occasional use of descriptive statistics. The research was conducted in several distinct phases, starting with the construction of the theoretical model, followed by two validation exercises and further experimental exploration by means of a recall test and computational linguistic analysis, culminating in a revised model of terse text persuasion. v This research draws upon and collates existing knowledge from behavioural science, rhetoric, linguistics, and cognitive science and develops a comprehensive understanding of how we seek to persuade through terse text media, based on data collected around a number of recent political campaigns and topics of debate. The research demonstrates that existing models of persuasion, such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986) and the Heuristic Systematic Model (Chaiken et al., 1989)cannot be applied to the terse text context without significant modification. A new theoretical model of persuasion in terse text is proposed and evaluated. The findings also show that there is a distinct preference for heuristic over systematic cues in terse text messages with persuasive intent, and – in terms of Aristotelian rhetorical appeals – a preference for appeals to credibility (ethos) and emotion (pathos) over appeals to reason (logos). Additionally, the research explores, by means of a recall test, the most memorable subcategories of terse text microblogs, as well as the examining message structure and features through computational linguistic tools. Although this research focusses on political persuasion in terse text Social Media, the findings have implications that reach far beyond the political sphere into activism, marketing, social engineering, strategic communication and (human centred) information warfare. Keywords: persuasion, influence, social media, terse text, influence, political communication, digital communication, strategic communication vi PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS The research presented in this thesis has led to the following publications/conference presentations: Hills, S.A., Jackson, T.W., Sykora, M.D. (2017): ‘Persuasion and the Microblog - A Model of Persuasive Communications in Terse Text’, 4th European Conference on Social Media, Vilnius (Lithuania), July 2017 (full paper) Hills, S.A., Jackson, T.W., Sykora, M.D. (2017): ‘Persuasion and Influence in the Age of Terse Text Cyber Communication’, 22nd Annual Cyber Psychology, Cyber Therapy & Social Networking Conference (CYPSY22), Wolverhampton (UK), June 2017 (poster) Hills, S.A., Jackson, T.W., Sykora, M.D. (2017): ‘Persuasion in the Digital Age’, Zhejiang University International Doctoral Conference, Hangzhou (China), May 2017 (full paper) Hills, S.A., Jackson, T.W., Sykora, M.D. (2016): ‘Understanding and Identifying Persuasive Intent in Terse Text – An Interdisciplinary Approach’. In: Hills, P.D.M. ed. Why Cyber Security is a Socio-Technical Challenge: New Concepts and Practical Measures to Enhance Detection, Prevention and Response. New York. Nova Science Publishers (book chapter) Hills, S.A., Jackson, T.W., Sykora, M.D.: ‘Open-Source Intelligence Monitoring for the Detection of Domestic Terrorism’, 15th European Conference of Cyber Warfare and Security, Hatfield (UK), July 2015 (poster and short paper) Hills, S.A., Jackson, T.W., Sykora, M.D.: ‘Social Media Monitoring for the Detection of Domestic Terrorism’, 2nd European Conference on Social Media, Porto (Portugal), July 2015 (poster and short paper) vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to thank my family – my husband Mils, my daughter Alison, my stepdaughters Morwenna and Jenna, and my mother Veronika – for all of their support and for putting up with me during the more stressful times of this research. I would of course also like to extend thanks to my supervisors, Tom, Martin, and Junior. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with and be guided by you. And I would like to thank the wonderful new friends I have been blessed to make during this PhD – Tatiana, Katharina, and Becca. It would not have been half as much fun without you. Additionally, I would like to thank all of the amazing friends who have always been there – Jonathan, Miriam, Steffi, Melli, Laurents, Melanie, Sabrina, Sarah, Craig, Amanda, Kat, Bex, Veronica, and Claudia. I hope to see more of you, now that this thesis is out of the way. viii Table of Contents ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................... V PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS ....................................................................................... VII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................................. VIII LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ..................................................................................................... XIV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................ XVIII 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT ........................................................................................................................ 2 1.3 EXISTING RESEARCH ............................................................................................................................ 3 1.4 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................. 5 1.5 RESEARCH AIM & OBJECTIVES ........................................................................................................... 6 1.6 CHAPTER SUMMARY............................................................................................................................. 7 1.7 THESIS STRUCTURE .............................................................................................................................. 7 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................ 9 2.1 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 9 2.2 DEFINITIONS OF PERSUASION ............................................................................................................ 9 2.3 PERSUASION IN BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE ........................................................................................ 12 2.3.1 Models of Persuasion ...................................................................................................................... 12 2.3.2 Heuristics ............................................................................................................................................. 21 2.3.3 Confirmation Bias ............................................................................................................................ 22 2.3.4 Attitude Change and Attitude Reinforcement .................................................................... 22 2.3.5 The Persuasive Message ................................................................................................................ 26 2.4 PERSUASION IN PHILOSOPHY ..........................................................................................................
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