Appealing to Emotions in Media
The fine line.
An emotional appeal is a method of persuasion that’s designed to create an emotional response; some of these emotions are happiness, anger, sadness, guilt and pity (Firestone, 2015). Emotional appeals are considered fallacies, or errors in reasoning, because they manipulate emotions in an audience.
Emotional appeals are especially prevalent in the media. When fashion magazines play on our insecurities about body image, they’re using emotional appeals. When political ads play on our fears, telling us that voting for someone will lead to financial ruin or wars, they’re using emotional appeals.
As noted, emotional appeals are generally considered fallacious because feelings are not evidence. However, if a direct connection between emotion and facts is made, then the emotional appeal is considered relevant. For example, a TV ad showing victims of a very recent hurricane might include a request for money or supplies. There’s a clear connection between the pity you feel for the people and the facts presented, so it is a relevant, or reasonable, emotional appeal. Moreover, appealing to emotions was proved relevant in filmmaking. According to Bartsch, Kalch & Oliver (2014), feeling moved is conceptualized and operationalized as an affective state characterized by negative valence, moderate arousal, mixed affect, and by the labeling of the experience in terms of feeling moved. As expected, the more moving films elicit more reflective thoughts, which in turn predict individuals’ overall positive experience of the film. The effect of the film stimulus on reflective thoughts is fully mediated by individuals’ affective state.
A fallacious emotional appeal draws a conclusion with no reliable evidence. For example, an ad might say, ‘Parents who care about their children help them prepare for college. Purchase this three-volume set of college prep materials and be that caring parent.’ The ad plays on parental guilt, and there’s no logical link between ‘caring parents’ and the product.
Thus, the emotional appeals in media have both advantages and disadvantages depending on the context and the scale of the emotional appeal used. But as journalists sometimes we debate whether appealing to emotions is relevant or not when it comes to some situations in news coverage especially in the area of politics. There are some positive aspects to it but in some forms of usage it becomes not only harmful but also damaging.
On the positive side, appealing to emotions has a role in decision making. Further research has been done on the role emotions play in decision-making. Dr. Jennifer Lerner, professor of public policy and management at Harvard Kennedy School, conducted many studies on the subject, only to conclude that decisions are not logical, but emotional. She found that emotions of any kind influence your decision-making abilities, but each in a different way. It’s to your advantage to appeal to the emotional sides of your audience, as this will increase the likelihood of driving action by convincing people that it is in their best interest. Many journalists in their advocacy campaigns use sadness-inducing photographs that attract more support, which is totally fine and supports the purpose. For example, when a natural disaster takes place in a country, the media portrays the catastrophic impact of the incident and use images of orphans, widows, disabled people and dead bodies, while playing sad background music in the reportages. This coverage plays on the emotions of people (sadness and pity), which pushes them to donate and take a stance (decision making). Emotional appeal also leads to mobilization, which can effect a positive change. For example, the media can mobilize the audience through appealing to their anger while covering news about political corruptions by using new media to galvanize people to mobilize and carry out collective actions such as social campaigns, protests, demonstrations and flash mobs to affect a political change. People through the influence of media will seek change and fight corruption, which is similar to the cases we find in the MENA region. Moreover, both decision making and mobilization lead to an important aspect that journalists seek; activism. Through vigorous campaigning, media leads to activism which brings about social and political change. For example, the campaign #BlackLivesMatter appealed to guilt (making racist people feel guilty), sadness (for what is happening to the colored persons) and anger (people are discriminated and are beaten up for solely the color of their skin) these aspects lead to social activism which in return caused a social change.
However, emotional appeal when abused in journalism can lead to negative outcomes. Appealing to emotions irrelevantly to get more click bates can lead to sensationalism. Sensationalism is a type of editorial bias in mass media in which events and topics in news stories and pieces are overhyped to present biased impressions on events, which may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story. Sensationalism may include reporting about generally insignificant matters and events that do not influence overall society and biased presentations of newsworthy topics in a trivial or tabloid manner contrary to the standards of professional journalism. Some tactics include being deliberately obtuse, appealing to emotions, and acting to obtain attention. For example, violence breaks out on the street; the deputies say that it was an incident; however a journalist reports it as a riot, adding colors to the painting in order to get more ratings by appealing to the audiences fear. Moreover, while appealing to the audiences’ emotions in a political campaign can help candidates win the elections; if all of the candidates did not have equal representation bias is going to take place. In addition, some journalists may appeal to the audiences’ emotions whilst providing misinformation which spreads fake news, in this case activism turns to manipulation. For example, in the presidency elections, one of the candidates maybe reported as a scholastic person, who used to be active in human rights campaigns and what not, appealing to the audiences’ emotions, however that might not be true. Moreover emotional appeals can also lead to propaganda. For example, the media can appeal to the pity emotions when covering the Israelis and appeal to the anger emotions when covering the Palestinians in the Israel-Palestine conflict aiming to influence people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. The spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, is considered as propaganda.
Thus we can say that the context in which a person uses the appeals and the extent of this use can either help serve the purpose or help spread sensationalism, fake news and propaganda while manipulating people as well. Personally, I would never use appeals when covering elections because no journalist will control his/her political bias no matter how much they try. I would also never use appeals for click baits because I favor truth over ratings. However, I would appeal to emotions when covering disasters, poverty, and human rights issues to serve the cause and I would also use these appeals to evoke a social or political change.
References:
Bartsch, A., Kalch, A., & Oliver, M. B. (2014). Moved to think: The role of emotional media experiences in stimulating reflective thoughts. Journal of Media Psychology: Theories, Methods, and Applications, 26(3), 125–140. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000118
Firestone, M. (2015). Emotional Appeal: Definition & Examples.
Neidhart, A. (2017). Appeal to your audience’s emotional side. Resource Media.
