At The Living Room Candidate website pick one Presidential Campaign Ad to describe, analyze for the appeals it uses (non-rational appeals and propaganda appeals) and evaluate how persuasive and valid its method of persuasion is. Your thesis will be a two part statement about how persuasive it is and how valid or truthful or legitimate its methods of persuasion are.
Your introduction will introduce your focus ad with the title in quotation marks, what year it is from, and which candidate put out the ad, say a little about the ad, and give your thesis.
Your body paragraphs will describe the ad so that your readers can see and hear your ad through your description, organizing usually section by section, explaining the ways the scene or sequence is attempting to persuade you to vote for or against a particular candidate, including bringing up non-rational appeals or propaganda in each section you describe, defining/explaining how these appeals work, and persuading us that this section of the ad really uses the appeals you say it does. For example: the first scene, which shows … uses Transfer to suggest…. Transfer is defined as “Quote” (“Fine Art” 3 It does this by…
In your essay you will need to
- Analyze both the ad’s effectiveness and its truthfulness or validity as a way of appealing to voters. (Your thesis should be a statement about these two things)
- Describe the ad you choose and that I approve very clearly
- Explain what it suggests and how it manages to suggest or states this. For example: The ad suggests that if we vote for this candidate… he/she will…
- Identify any non-rational appeals (such as fear, nurturing, sarcasm, ridicule Critical Thinking 121 – 126) and forms of propaganda it uses (see 7 types of Propaganda in “The Fine Art of Propaganda” handout)
- Quote in MLA style, citing page numbers for the quotes from “The Fine Art of Propaganda” and From Critical Thinking to Argument where needed to define the propaganda and non-rational appeals you find in your focus ad
- This the AD I’m using r to suggest http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2008/country-i-love