The Sensory Experience of Media
Electronic media provide several avenues for persuasion, including words, sounds and visual images. Contrast today's media of persuasion with that of ancient Greece, where persuaders could only use their voice, body and words to communicate. Today's channels of persuasion are truly multimedia in nature, which create a great number of outlets for a persuader's ideas. These cues reach us on emotional and even subconscious levels.
Visual Symbols
One of the most striking senses appealed to by media is that of sight. We are surrounded by photographs, logos and other images. Visual images are persuasive because they seem realistic, serve as proof for arguments and suggest arguments to audiences. Film and video are media that have ways of being "read" by viewers. For example, the transition in a film can suggest the passage of time. By using techniques such as editing, camera angles, transitions and special effects, persuaders are able to use film and video to persuade audiences, As we watch these media we automatically understand what they are communicating. Film and video, like other visual images, can elicit emotion in audience members. If you have ever cried during a movie, you realize how powerful media can be in affecting our emotions.
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The Internet has created new ways of appealing to an audience's senses. The graphical design of the Internet features visual imagery often at the expense of words. The Internet is capable of broadcasting multimedia such as audio and video. Also, the Internet allows us to extend our sensory experience through time and space. We can experience through pictures, sound and video, events that take place a world away from us. We can communicate with other individuals in real time through either e-mail, messaging or video conferencing.
Music and Auditory Symbols
Music and other auditory cues are a significant part of experiencing media. If you have watched a scary movie, you know how music affects how you think and feel about the film. The music is a symbolic cue that something good or bad is about to happen. Television commercials also use music to stimulate us to make purchasing decisions. In some cases, the musical score alone is persuasive. In other situations, the music along with lyrics communicate messages to audiences.
Subliminal Persuasion
Finally, we address how the media create so-called extrasensory experience for audiences. There has been a great debate about whether subliminal messages are used in persuasion or not. Recent debate about the topic was sparked in 1957 when market researcher, James Vicary claimed that subliminal messages to eat popcorn and drink Coca-Cola flashed on a movie screen and resulted in an increase in sales of the concession stand products. After much skepticism, Vicary claimed the results were fabricated.
Wilson Bryant Key's work in subliminal persuasion also received a great deal of attention in the 1970s and 80s. In a 1981 book Subliminal Seduction, he asserts, "Every person reading this book has been victimized and manipulated by the use of subliminal stimuli directed into his unconscious mind by the mass merchandisers of media." Key argues that the techniques of subliminal persuasion were a well kept secret and that, "the average citizen, as well as most social and behavioral scientists simply do not know what is going on" or they "appear not to want to know what's going on."
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