PROPAGANDA / A CRAFT BIBLE · CHAPTER 02
Chapter 02 / 16
The Audience You Make For
You do not write for everyone. You write for the group whose response you need, using the pictures already in their heads.
Before choosing a technique, learn what the audience already believes, fears, and repeats, and who among them can give you the response you want.
Why it works
People act on the pictures in their heads, not on the world itself
Walter Lippmann wrote in 1922 that people cannot see most of what governs them, so they act on the pictures in their heads: the reports, images, and stereotypes they have taken in. You work on those pictures. A message that matches a picture the audience already holds needs little proof. A message that fights one meets resistance and gets thrown out.
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann described the spiral of silence in 1974. People watch for which opinions seem safe to say in public. When they sense their view is losing, they go quiet, which makes the winning view look larger still. You can use this by making a view look like the growing majority so the other side falls silent on its own.
Bernays worked through opinion leaders: the doctor, the priest, the club president whose word a group already trusts. Reach the leader and you reach the group, and the group treats the message as its own instead of as an outside appeal.
When to use it
Study the audience before the message
- You are about to pick words, frames, or symbols. Study the audience first, because each of those choices depends on what the audience already holds.
- The audience is not one group. Split it into the people who can give the response, the people who pass messages along, and the people who only watch.
- You want a view to spread without argument. Find the opinion leaders the group already trusts and reach them first.
- You want the other side to stop talking. Show that their view is shrinking and yours is growing.
How to do it
Read the audience
- Collect the audience’s own words. Read their comments, posts, letters, and talk. Write down the exact phrases they use for the issue, the enemy, and themselves. You will build the message from these, not from your own words.
- List the pictures they already hold: the stereotypes, heroes, villains, and fears tied to your issue. Mark which point toward your aim.
- Split the audience. Name the people who can act, the people who carry the message to them, and the people who give the message weight by watching.
- Find the opinion leaders inside the group and learn what they already say. Plan to reach them first.
- Judge the climate. Which side feels safe to say out loud right now? If yours feels unsafe, plan to make it look larger before you ask anyone to act.
- Test one line against the audience’s own phrasing. If they would not say it in their own words, rewrite it until they would.
What it captures
What the audience study gets you
The study gives you the exact words to use, the pictures to fasten onto, the people to reach first, and the climate you are speaking into. It tells you which message will be believed without proof and which will be rejected on contact. Every later chapter assumes you have done this.
Read the studies