Rhetoric In The Context Of Public Relations
Uploaded by spootyhead on Apr 18, 2007
Rhetoric In The Context Of Public Relations
“Through rhetoric, people – individuals and organizations – influence opinions, understanding, judgements and actions. Negotiation and conflict resolution involve rhetorical changes of opinion, facts and resources. Policies by which people live together often require debate and consideration.” Robert L. Heath
1. INTRODUCTION
In this assignment I will try to illuminate and discuss what the term rhetoric is all about, how it is used, and how it becomes an implemented part in Public Relations situations.
I will discuss the importance of rhetoric as a communication tool to solve specific communications problems and illuminate this by the use of a specific case.
The case used in this assignment is NATO's 78-day intervention (war-campaign) in Kosovo in 1999. When using this as a case, it is difficult to describe the campaign to its full extent to illuminate the total use of rhetoric in all of the different communication situations occurring.
I will describe and discuss NATO's intentions and needs to communicate about the intervention to the public opinion, both prior to, and during, and how it was done. When doing so, I will show that NATO was indeed facing a major communication problem towards the public opinion, if they did not address their intentions and motivations for intervening in the first place and later.
In the assignment I will consider a brief background for why NATO intended to act in Kosovo, though this will not be discussed in depth. I will mainly illuminate what NATO it self defined as the ultimate main reason for intervention, and how the use of rhetoric was a significant tool as part of an overall public relations strategy. Further on, this assignment will be limited, but will provide one example that demonstrates the general and particular use of rhetorical approaches. This example will hence be NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
When discussing in the assignment, I frequently use the term "public opinion". When referring to this term, the context is within a European public and not in particular the American public. The reason for this is the difference in which one might say that briefings about the intervention to the European public was made by NATO, whereas briefings to the American public more often came from Pentagon. Being a conflict in Europe, the average American had naturally less interest...