Persuasion Homework

Hi Drew,

You will need to pick a social issue topic on which you have a firm opinion/position (e.g., pro-universal health care; anti-racism; pro-environmental protection, etc.). Then your goal is to write an article to persuade other people to adopt your position. But before writing, you need to think about who your target audience is – liberals or conservatives? Based on what we learned about Moral Foundation Theory, if your target persuadees are liberals, you need to frame your message/article emphasizing “care” and “fairness” foundations; if your target persuadees are conservatives, you need to frame your message emphasizing “loyalty” “purity” and “authority” foundations (I have 3 examples on D2L to show you how to frame a message with a specific foundation).

So this “framing with moral foundations” is just one of the requirements. As you can see in the general instruction, in your message, you also need to include:

Evidence (e.g., statistics, quotations, etc.)

Narrative (e.g., real-life stories)

Therefore, the final, complete assignment you turn in should be like a news/media article you read every day (think about those news articles you read every day: the report has a topic; has a stance; in the story sometimes it has a real-life example; it has plenty of evidence to support that stance/argument).