A report with the following title: Persuading in a low trust world

PERSUADING IN A LOW TRUST WORLD
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Persuading in a Low Trust World
Introduction
In a world of distrust, incivility, and ‘fake news,’ it can be challenging for professional communicators to build trust and credibility for their clients or the issues they are advocating for. With the audience being uncertain about the clients or the issues fronted by professional communicators, the theories of persuasion can offer guidance. Given an understanding of the psychological, sociological, economic, and political theories related to persuasion, professional communicators can be in a better position to persuade the target audience and build mutually beneficial relationships. This report uses relevant theories to inform how a professional communicator can succeed in persuading in a low trust world.
Understanding he Target Audience
The success of the professional communicator in a low trust world relies significantly on their understanding of the audience. It is through understanding the beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and values of the audience that a professional communicator can devise a message that can result in a change in behaviors and attitudes. A key premise of the social judgment theory is that people make judgments about the content of a message depending on their stance on specific topic messages (Asemah & Nwammuo, 2017). Therefore, the way the audience will react to a persuasive message is dependent on their position on the topic. Professional communicators must understand the attitude of the receiver towards their clients or the advocacy message they are trying to pass across. This can be done through carrying out of a survey that presents different viewpoints on the topic of interest as the professional communicator tries to find the latitudes of agreement and disagreement as well as the latitude of non-commitment (Teng, et al., 2015). Professional communicators can find out how ego-involved individuals in low trust world are about a topic. As informed by O'Keefe (2016), highly-ego involved receivers have small levels of non-commitment and acceptance, and as a result, it can be hard to persuade them. This is more so in a low-trust world. Therefore, to succeed in such an environment characterized by a highly ego-involved audience, it is important for professional communicators to attend to their level of ego-involvement and adjust their messages accordingly (O'Keefe, 2016). It is evident that the social judgment theory can help a persuader thrive in a low trust world. With an understanding of the pre-existing attitudes of the receiver, a professional communicator can send messages that fall in the receiver’s latitude of commitment to attain true persuasion.
Understanding the members of the audience is also important according to the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). As informed by Petty, et al. (2015), the communicators can use two methods to influence the audience: the central route and the peripheral route. In a low trust world, understanding the audience can help the professional communicator decide which one to take for successful persuasion. Messages delivered through the central routes are more...