Page 227 - Communication Theory and Research

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212 Communication Theory & Research
Persuasive techniques in the newspapers

In the 897 articles considered, the use of persuasive techniques is found 425 times
(that is in every other article). The techniques most used are: ‘name calling’,
‘credibility of the source’, ‘band wagon’ and ‘guilt technique’.
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‘Name calling’ appears 114 times, followed by the ‘transfer technique’ which
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appears 55 times, as does ‘cognitive dissonance’. Many also use the ‘guilt tech-
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nique’ (36 times) and ‘factoids’ (23 times). ‘Name calling’ is nowhere as heavy
or as frequent as it is in the Italian newspapers, where Milosevic is often com-
pared to Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Il Corriere della Sera refers to him as the
‘butcher’, the Saddam of the Balkans, ‘the last Stalin’ and the ‘monster without
a heart’. One unusual metaphor refers to him as ‘Milosevic, the fossil’, as ‘an
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example of political conservation that should be consigned to the scientists’. Of
the French newspapers Le Monde makes most use of persuasive techniques.
‘Transfer’ is used to compare Serbia’s situation with that of Kosovo (‘The West
doesn’t want to replay the Bosnian film again’) and the NATO bombings with
the German bombs during the Second World War. In this way there is a reminder
of the sentiments already felt on other occasions which are implicitly transferred
to feelings on Kosovo. Le Monde uses ‘name calling’ both for NATO and for
Clinton, defined, respectively, through metaphor as ‘the international police’ and
‘the American policeman’. Le Figaro often employs the ‘credibility of the source’
technique, using articles written by commentators and intellectuals more often
than those by house journalists, who are sometimes quite explicit about the limits
of the intervention.
The ‘guilt technique’ is often used in Frankfurter Rundschau. In fact this
German daily has to deal with the fact that there are two irreconcilable positions
within Germany. On the one hand, there is the pacifist stance, which is prevalent
in the younger generations, motivated by a strong sense of collective guilt that
stems from the two World Wars, and because they had not wanted to ‘see the
holocaust’ (this is a phrase used in the Frankfurter Rundaschau and possibly refers
to a process of psychological repression with regard to the holocaust). On the
other hand, there is the opposite perspective – that it is precisely for this reason
that Germans cannot ignore the genocide in Kosovo. The dilemma is resolved in
the newspaper by voicing both opinions using the ‘guilt technique’ and that of
‘transfer’: guilt if one does not take action against Milosevic, who is defined
using a typical example of ‘name calling’, ‘a new Hitler’, while, at the same time,
contemporary history is recalled. After the departure of the first German Tornados
from the bases at Piacenza, the newspaper reminds people of 6 September 1941,
the day on which Hitler’s pilots attacked Yugoslavia dropping bombs on
Belgrade. By doing so the newspaper makes people relive the feelings of guilt for
the original aggression and transfers it to Belgrade in the 1990s under NATO’s
missiles. Both points of view are expressed both by the author and in the quotes
in the articles.
Die Welt, on the other hand, alludes to these problems, but dedicates itself to
considerations like the ‘great abilities’ of the German pilots, as remembered by
British RAF veterans. NATO’s position is often represented and its intervention
without a UN mandate is justified in order to avoid a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’.