Summary Of The Tipping Point By Malcolm Gladwell

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Sometimes, the methods of propaganda people use are obvious, in other cases, the propaganda can be discreet and propagated through subconscious cues. In The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell writes about an experiment that was conducted on the 1984 presidential race between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale to see what makes someone persuasive. The results of this experiment can be analyzed in the context of the spread of propaganda (Gladwell 75). As explained by Gladwell, the experiment was conducted over the eight days before the election in which a group of psychologists videotaped three national evening news broadcasts. The news programs were anchored by Peter Jennings at ABC, Tom Brokaw at NBC …show more content…

Tom Brokaw scored an 11.21 for Mondale and an 11.50 for Reagan. Peter Jennings, on the other hand, scored a 13.38 for Mondale and a 17.44 for Reagan. To account for different variables such as a newscaster simply being more expressive than the other newscasters a control experiment was conducted. The control experiment showed segments of the newscasters speaking of general topics, some being happy while others being sad topics. It was interesting to observe that "...Jennings didn't score any higher on the happy subjects or lower on the sad subjects than his counterparts (Gladwell 75)." According to Gladwell, "... he seemed to be the least expressive of the three(Gladwell 75)." Therefore, according to the study, "...Jennings exhibited a 'significant and noticeable bias in facial expression' toward Reagan(Gladwell 75)." In terms of what happened in the election, it was seen that a majority of those who watched ABC voted for Reagan in greater numbers than those who watched CBS or NBC. It can be said that although newscasters are supposed to provide reliable news information that is not in favor of one political party versus another, this is often time, not the case. Viewers should be aware, that small things such as newscasters smiling or having positive facial expressions when talking about a particular …show more content…

There are several articles suggesting that there is no correlation between the amount of airtime and the number of votes a presidential candidate obtains but simple marketing techniques such as those from The Financial Brand tell us that repetition is a very important technique to use if one is trying to sell an item and that it is effective. The Financial Brand tells us that, “ In simple terms: frequency breeds familiarity, and familiarity breed trust.” because of this, it can be said that the amount of air time a certain topic or presidential candidate gets, can definitely influence an

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