COMSTRAT 561: Persuasion for Professional Communicators
Fall 2016 – Washington State University – Professor Bimbisar Irom
The purpose of COMSTRAT 561 Persuasion for Professional Commuincators is to familiarize the student with key theories, concepts, strategies, and processes of persuasion and social influence. This was achieved by completing readings, watching films, enaging in class discussions and various writing assignments.
Semester Facebook Project
A substantial part of the course was the semester long Facebook assignment. This project required us to develop a Facebook group or page and apply principles of strategic persuasion to advocate for a single political or social issue. As the semester progressed I curated content – news on this issue and to link news stories, videos, tweets, etc. – to the Facebook group, which must also served as examples of persuasive messages and appeals.
Why Youth Travel?
The social issue I chose to focus my page on is youth travel. My issue isn’t controversial per se, but I whole heartedly believe that travel can have transformative and lasting effect on young people.
As globalization and technology continue to erode international borders and geographic boundaries, it is more important than ever for individuals to experience and understand cultures other than their own. Domestic and international travel experiences, especially at a young age, are beneficial not only for the individual experiencing them, but also for society at large.
The cultural experiences provided by traveling allow the traveler to expand their learned or cultural perspective(s) by actively engaging with people of cultures different than their own. It is my opinion that when done at a young age, these experiences create open-minded and understanding citizens who progress though life as more peaceful and tolerant adults. This in-turn helps create a more peaceful and tolerant society.
My Facebook Page
The goal of my facebook page is to persuade readers that: 
- Meaningful travel experiences at a young age produce more tolerant and peaceful citizens.
- Travel is affordable by.
- Traveling is safe.
The persuasive appeals I used included:
- Response-shaping,
- Response-reinforcing,
- Simliarity,
- Credibility building tactics,
- Two-sided messages,
- Fear appeals,
- Elaboration Likelihood Model.
You can link directly to my Facebook page here.
Final Presentation
At the conclusion of the semester we were tasked with completing a final presentation in which we will shared out group/page. We were graded on how well we discussed our project approach, the persuasive concepts from we used developing it, and discuss how effective our persuasive appeals were.
I invite you to watch my final presentation via VoiceThred here.
Feedback: Please click here to review this work.
Bill Michie 