Learn and Present Your Speech: The Canon of Memory and Delivery

Learn and Present Your Speech: The Canon of Memory and Delivery

• Memorized delivery is highly risky
• Stay away from manuscript delivery (read it to audience)
• Avoid impromptu delivery (with little preparation)
• Use extemporaneous delivery (you determine in advance the organizational outline and the major ideas)

1. What is Public Opinion

• Lecture by Dr. Mohammed Ibahrine

• based on Seitel’s The Practice of Public Relations

Definition of Public Opinion

• Public opinion consists of two components:

• Public: signifies a group of people who share a common interest in a specific subject

• Opinion: is the expression of an attitude on a particular topic

What are Attitudes?

• Attitudes are based on a number of characteristics

• 1. Personal
• 2. Culture
• 3. Education
• 4. Family
• 5. Religion
• 6. Social class
• 7. Race
• Please put them in another order

Definition of Public Opinion

• Public opinion is the aggregate of many individual opinions on a particular issue that affects a group of people

• Public opinion represents a consensus

• Trying to influence an individual’s attitude is a primary focus of the practice of public relations

What are Attitudes?

• Attitudes are based on a number of characteristics

• Religion
• Culture
• Race
• Social class
• Education
• Family
• Personal

What are Attitudes?

• These characteristics /socializing factors help influence the formation of attitudes

How are Attitudes influenced

• Attitudes are

• Positive/ for
• Negative/against
• Neutral/nonexistent

How are Attitudes influenced

• Most people do not care much for any one issue

• A small percentage expresses strong support

• Another small percentage expresses strong

• opposition

• The so-called vast majority is smack in the middle

Question

• Please think of the publics of public relations

4. The Publics of Public Relations

• Proponents, opponents and the uncommitted:

• An institution must deal differently with

• Those who support it
• Those who oppose it

4. The Publics of Public Relations

• For supporters, communications that reinforce beliefs may be in order

• But changing the opinions of skeptics calls for strong, persuasive communications

• Often, particularly in politics, the uncommitted public is crucial

How are Attitudes influenced

• This group is the most readily influenced by a communicator’s message

• (which group?)

How are Attitudes influenced

• Cognitive Dissonance concept developed by the political scientist Leon Festinger

• Individuals tend

• to avoid dissonant information
• to seek consonant information

• Public relations professionals should attempt to remove dissonance to reach their communicative goals

Motivating Attitude Change

• Abraham Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of Needs

• 1. The highest order

• 2. The fourth level

• 3. The third level

• 4. The second level

• 5 The lowest level

Motivating Attitude Change

• Abraham Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of Needs

• 1. The lowest level physiological needs:

• A person’s biological demands

Motivating Attitude Change

• Abraham Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of Needs

• 2. The second level is safety needs:

• Security
• Protection
• Peace

Motivating Attitude Change

• Abraham Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of Needs

• 3. The third level is belonging needs:

• Love
• Acceptance
• Affection

Motivating Attitude Change

• Abraham Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of Needs

• 4. The fourth level is esteem:

• Recognition
• Prestige
• Confidence
• Leadership

Motivating Attitude Change

• Abraham Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of Needs

• 5. The highest order is self-actualization:

• Self-fulfillment

Power of Persuasion

• By persuasion, we mean

• “getting another person to do something through advice and reasoning”

• Persuasion is the most essential element in influencing public opinion

• Persuading is the goal of most public relations programs

What Kinds of “Evidence” Persuade People

• 1. Facts: Any good public relations program will always start with research

• 2. Emotions: People do respond to emotional appeals

• 3. Personalizing: People respond to personal experience

• 4. Appealing to “you”: The one word that people never tire of hearing is “you”

Influencing Public Opinion

• Public opinion is a lot easier to measure than it is to influence

• 1. The opinion to be changed must be identified and understood

• 2. Target publics must be clear

• 3. The public relations professionals must have in sharp focus the “laws” that govern public opinion

Influencing Public Opinion

• The “Laws of Public Opinion” developed many years ago by social psychologist Hadley Cantril, remain pertinent

• The attacks on America of September 2001 underscored the relevance of at least six of Cantril’s most important “Laws”

Cantril’s Laws of Public Opinion

• 1. Opinion is highly sensitive to important events

• 2. Opinion is generally determined more by events than by words,

• unless those words are themselves interpreted as an event

Cantril’s Laws of Public Opinion

• 3. At critical times, people become more sensitive to the adequacy of leadership

• If they have confidence in it, they are willing to assign more than usual responsibility to it
• If they lack confidence in it, they are less tolerant than usual

• 4. Once self-interest is involved, opinions are not easily changed

Cantril’s Laws of Public Opinion

• 5. People have more opinions and are able to form opinions more easily on goals than on methods to reach those goals

• 6. If people in a democracy are provided with educational opportunities and ready access to information, public opinion reveals a hardheaded common sense

Polishing the Corporate Image

• Most organizations and people are extremely sensitive to the way they are perceived by their critical publics

• Management is no longer reluctant to step out publicly “to stand up for what it sands for”

• In the wake of corporate scandals, smart companies realized they simply could not “hide” any longer from public scrutiny

Polishing the Corporate Image

• Corporate image is a fragile commodity

• Positive corporate image is essential for continued long-term success

• Most organizations understand that it takes a great deal of time to build a favorable image for a corporation

• But it takes only one slip to create a negative public impression

Polishing the Corporate Image

• As Ray D’Argenio put it:

• “Corporate communications can not create a corporate character. A company already has a character, which communications can reinforce”

Beware the Trap of Public Opinion

• The difficult task in public relations is not to win a favorable public opinion for a product or an idea, but to maintain it

• Communicators face a number of subtle yet lethal traps

Beware the Trap of Public Opinion

• 1. Cast in stone:

• 2. Gut reaction:

• 3. General public:

• 4. Words move mountains:

• 5. Brother’s keeper: