Analysis of the Strategies for Persuasion Employed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - Essay Example

Analysis Paper: PETA Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Discussion Works Cited I. Introduction This paper undertakes an analysis of the strategies and tactics for persuasion employed by the social movement PETA, or the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. As a social movement, PETA is often in the news with sensational public protests that garner news attention, and it is interesting to find out the kind of tactics and strategies the movement makes use of in order to advance their causes and their protests. The social movement defines itself as biggest group on earth pushing for and advancing the interests and rights of all animals, with membership numbering three million around the world. The key focus areas are in the textile and clothing industries, in the entertainment field, in factory farms, and in scientific laboratories. Among the causes that it is active in include abuse of domesticated animals, cruelty in the annihilation of animals that are deemed as pests but serve a useful role in various ecologies, and other related animal issues. Its means of advocacy include campaigns of protest, legislative lobbying, investigations of cruel acts against animals, education of the general public, the rescue operations involving animals in distress, the invitation of celebrities to take part in campaigns, the holding of events that are of special significance to the movement, and research initiatives (PETA). The literature defines various language-based tactics and strategies in common use by social movements around the world, and the objective of this paper is to identify PETA’s tactics and strategies and classify them according to the categories presented in the text, by way of undertaking an analysis of the use of those tactics and strategies as they relate to PETA’s campaigns and advocacies. To wit, the different strategies and techniques of persuasion presented in the text are acts that are symbolic and not verbal; the use of new technological platforms such as the Internet and social media; obscenity; labeling; ridicule; the use of music; the use of slogans; identification; polarization; and the employ of the power language or rhetoric. Through PETA’s long history, it is reasonable to assume that the movement must have employed all of the tactics and strategies listed above in some form or other in its campaigns and programs. The goal is to be able to look at the more current literature to identify exactly what tactics and strategies are relevant to PETA’s campaigns (Stewart, Smith and Denton 167-168; PETA; Tolhurst; Saul; Burns). II. Discussion In a most recent protest, PETA was reported to have laid in Trafalgar Square in piles as naked bodies drenched in blood. In that protest the protesters were all naked and acted as if they were butchered animals for food, and they were covered in gross blood to negate any connotation of spirituality. The pictures too present the protesters as having grim faces and holding placards urging the world to go vegan as a way to show compassion towards animals and to halt the worldwide slaughter of animals for food. The implication is clear, that the killing of animals constitute a kind of horror inflicted on a massive scale. People are animals too, and they can also be piled on top of each other in the middle of a prominent square, to be watched and covered by the international press. This one act of protest contains within it several tactics and strategies of persuasion. First, the sensational form that movement used to catch attention employed shock and obscenity in the form of nudity and the use of blood on a mass scale. From experience people can recall the use of nudity by one of two protesters allied with PETA, but in this one campaign a large contingent all went nude, and covered itself with blood to boot, to catch attention. Second, the campaign made use of posters and slogans. The poster said Choose Life: Choose Vegan. This poster/slogan is in reference to the way choosing meat is choosing death. This slogan too makes use of several other strategies of persuasion, and they include framing, polarization, identification, and the usurping of power rhetoric. Framing is used in the way the fight for animal rights is framed in terms of choosing death and life. Diet is framed in terms of making a choice between the two. By going naked and pretending to act like dead animals meanwhile, the group is making use of identification to persuade the world. In this instance it is appealing to the audience to identify with the protesters, who are themselves identified with the butchered animals for food. Polarization comes in in the slogan’s pitting veganism versus the eating of animals as life and death. To eat animals is death, and to eat plants is life. There is the element too of the symbolic protest and the nonverbal tactic of getting the movement’s message across through the symbolic act of going naked in a very prominent place. By stripping en masse and thereby attracting the attention of the international press, the movement is trying to make use of a very graphic and nonverbal tactic to get its message across in a very succinct, symbolic yet very powerful manner as well. One can see from the preceding discussion that just one effective campaign from PETA makes use of a composite of different strategies and tactics, indicating the high level of sophistication probably developed through years of successful campaigns that PETA possesses, when it comes to making effective use of chosen tactics and strategies to persuade the world to be kinder to animals and to respect animal rights (Stewart, Smith and Denton 167-168; PETA; Tolhurst). The use of the language of power and the tactic of identification is likewise evident in the words chosen by the PETA representative to the press during the interview tied to the protest, when the representative couched the language of protest in terms of animals also feeling love and pain like people, and then superimposing that identification with the use of the words killing, harm to the ecology, and the rise in diet-related diseases among people. The use of the words vegan for life and the implication of meat eating for death likewise contain elements of a labeling strategy, implicit in the slogan that the group made use of for the protest action (Saul). In another campaign masked as protest, that was also noteworthy for making use of social media technologies as a tactic for persuasion, PETA criticized One Direction for its use of a monkey in one of its music videos. There are several tactics and strategies employed in this simple but effective campaign. One, it rides on the popularity of the Internet as a technology and the celebrity power of One Direction to direct attention to animal rights and persuade people to be kinder to animals. Second, the campaign made implicit use of ridicule, by calling out what One Direction did as something worthy of action and attention. The campaign made use of framing too, by depicting the use of the monkey wearing sunglasses as an issue of animal cruelty that is tantamount to a crime. The use of the monkey is then framed as an act of exploitation that furthers an on-going crime against all captive animals, because of the way animals are abused and beaten to submission during training for use in movies and music videos, and then abandoned when they get old (Burns; Stewart, Smith and Denton 167-168). To conclude, one can see that in a sampling of PETA’s campaigns, one is able to get a glimpse of the sophisticated ways in which PETA makes use of various tactics and strategies of persuasion, employing them in hybrid and creative manner to get their messages across and to powerfully achieve the goals of the campaigns, ultimately aiding in pushing for the rights of animals around the world (Stewart, Smith and Denton 167-168; PETA; Tolhurst; Saul; Burns). Works Cited Burns, Ashley. “PETA Is Taking One Direction To Task Over Using A Monkey In The ‘Steal My Girl’ Video”. UPROXX. 2014. Web. 2 November 2014. Read More