Why Is Persuasion Important in Mass Communication?

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Part of the video series: Mass Communication

Summary: Persuasion is a huge part of mass communication because all of the money going into mass media programs comes from advertisers. Understand the importance of effective advertising to the masses with help from a communications professor in this free video on communication.

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By Michael Morgan
eHow Presenter

Dr. Michael Morgan is a professor of communication at the University of Massachusetts, and he has published many writings on issues of mass communication. His areas of specialization...read more

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"Persuasion is very important in mass communication because the people who pay the bills -- who are the advertisers, the people who support the programs -- all the money comes from advertisers when it comes to commercial radio, broad...television broadcasting, most cable channels. The people who spend about 70 billion dollars a year on advertising want to know that that money is well spent. They don't want to just be throwing it out the window. They want to presume that they are able to persuade people -- that they have the best toothpaste or they have the best airline or the best bank to go to or the best politician or the best canned soup. Whatever it is they're selling, they want to be able to persuade people. They don't want to just assume that we're...they're putting out 70 billion dollars a year just to make nice TV programs, which is not their purpose at all. They have a tremendous amount of their entire livelihood invested in trying to persuade people. Now, that doesn't mean it necessarily works because as much as they are emphasizing and obsessed with persuading us, we tend to be very resistant to their persuasion. There's an assumption that people are just automatically affected in a very simplistic way. And sometimes people do get an idea to do something from the media, but most of the time, we resist what they're telling us to do. We say, "You're telling me to do that? I'm not going to go do that." But it's a...it's a give and take. We're also looking for the information they want to tell us. What's a good car for that? What's a good way to do that? How...what are people dressing like these days? What are good products? So we want to get information from them, but we tend to be wary and resistant and suspicious when it...we think they're trying to persuade us. At the same time, persuading us is the most important thing they can do and if they don't feel they're doing that -- if they don't feel their ads are working successfully -- they're going to put their 70 billion dollars somewhere else."