PERSUASION IN THE LIGHT OF RESEARCH ON ADVERTISING MESSAGES

The research presents the process of advertising message and the mechanisms of its influence on consumer decisions. The goal of the article is to present the findings to the research question: Do the methods and techniques used in tourism advertising messages have an impact on society?  To give answer to our research question, the diagnostic survey method was adopted and a research tool was used in the form of a questionnaire, which in the interactive version was filled in by the participants of the most popular online forums. The questionnaire was available on several social networks and on a special generated page for this purpose from February 1 to May 31, 2016. The research shows that the very important mechanism of persuasion is the impact of the identification process with the person's respect and authority. An important role in the process of persuasion is also played by the content of the advertising message, which brings the recipients pleasant associations and entertains. The rules of influence used in advertising messages are no longer a new or emotional topic. Still, some moral doubts give rise to those of them which, through their physical characteristics, are difficult to grasp for human abilities and perceptive abilities, and therefore also in many cases foreign and unwanted

Digital Media and Youth: Unparalleled Opportunity and Unprecedented Responsibility

Part of the Volume on Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility This chapter argues that understanding credibility is particularly complex -- and consequential -- in the digital media environment, especially for youth audiences, who have both advantages and disadvantages due to their relationship with contemporary technologies and their life experience. The chapter explains what is, and what is not, new about credibility in the context of digital media, and discusses the major thrusts of current credibility concerns for scholars, educators, and youth

Refining the PoinTER “human firewall” pentesting framework

PurposePenetration tests have become a valuable tool in the cyber security defence strategy, in terms of detecting vulnerabilities. Although penetration testing has traditionally focused on technical aspects, the field has started to realise the importance of the human in the organisation, and the need to ensure that humans are resistant to cyber-attacks. To achieve this, some organisations “pentest” their employees, testing their resilience and ability to detect and repel human-targeted attacks. In a previous paper we reported on PoinTER (Prepare TEst Remediate), a human pentesting framework, tailored to the needs of SMEs. In this paper, we propose improvements to refine our framework. The improvements are based on a derived set of ethical principles that have been subjected to ethical scrutiny.MethodologyWe conducted a systematic literature review of academic research, a review of actual hacker techniques, industry recommendations and official body advice related to social engineering techniques. To meet our requirements to have an ethical human pentesting framework, we compiled a list of ethical principles from the research literature which we used to filter out techniques deemed unethical.FindingsDrawing on social engineering techniques from academic research, reported by the hacker community, industry recommendations and official body advice and subjecting each technique to ethical inspection, using a comprehensive list of ethical principles, we propose the refined GDPR compliant and privacy respecting PoinTER Framework. The list of ethical principles, we suggest, could also inform ethical technical pentests.OriginalityPrevious work has considered penetration testing humans, but few have produced a comprehensive framework such as PoinTER. PoinTER has been rigorously derived from multiple sources and ethically scrutinised through inspection, using a comprehensive list of ethical principles derived from the research literature

Neurorhetoric, Race, and the Law: Toxic Neural Pathways and Healing Alternatives

Neurorhetoric is the study of how rhetoric shapes the human brain. At the forefront of science and communication studies, neurorhetoric challenges many preconceptions about how humans respond to persuasive stimuli. Neurorhetoric can be applied to a multiplicity of relevant legal issues, including the topic of this Maryland Law Review Symposium Issue: race and advocacy. After detailing the neuroscientific and cognitive theories that underlie neurorhetoric, this Essay theorizes ways in which neurorhetoric intersects with the law, advocacy, and race. This Essay explores how toxic racial stereotypes and categories become embedded in the human brain and what can be done about it

Opinion Polarization by Learning from Social Feedback

We explore a new mechanism to explain polarization phenomena in opinion dynamics in which agents evaluate alternative views on the basis of the social feedback obtained on expressing them. High support of the favored opinion in the social environment, is treated as a positive feedback which reinforces the value associated to this opinion. In connected networks of sufficiently high modularity, different groups of agents can form strong convictions of competing opinions. Linking the social feedback process to standard equilibrium concepts we analytically characterize sufficient conditions for the stability of bi-polarization. While previous models have emphasized the polarization effects of deliberative argument-based communication, our model highlights an affective experience-based route to polarization, without assumptions about negative influence or bounded confidence.Comment: Presented at the Social Simulation Conference (Dublin 2017

Modeling building semantics: providing feedback and sustainability

Even minor changes in user activity can bring about significant energy savings within built space. Many building performance assessment methods have been developed, however these often disregard the impact of user behavior (i.e. the social, cultural and organizational aspects of the building). Building users currently have limited means of determining how sustainable they are, in context of the specific building structure and/or when compared to other users performing similar activities, it is therefore easy for users to dismiss their energy use. To support sustainability, buildings must be able to monitor energy use, identify areas of potential change in the context of user activity and provide contextually relevant information to facilitate persuasion management. If the building is able to provide users with detailed information about how specific user activity that is wasteful, this should provide considerable motivation to implement positive change. This paper proposes using a dynamic and temporal semantic model, to populate information within a model of persuasion, to manage user change. By semantically mapping a building, and linking this to persuasion management we suggest that: i) building energy use can be monitored and analyzed over time; ii) persuasive management can be facilitated to move user activity towards sustainability

‘Liking’ persuasion: case studies in social media for behaviour change

Contemporary social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have seen huge growth in recent years with a respective 1 billion and 500m registered users. Given such large numbers of the global population are using online social networks regularly, tapping into this audience to raise awareness of, and bring about positive behaviour change in, societal issues such as energy consumption and healthier lifestyles has promising potential. This position paper describes three behavior change case studies in domestic energy and physical activity that fully integrated with online social networks. Participant engagement throughout the pilot interventions was high with measurable consumption/activity behavior change evident. We also discuss our current social media and sustainability research