What is Media Argumentation?

Media argumentation is a term used by Douglas Watson to describe how people in the media attempt to persuade their audience. While Watson's book describes the recent work mainly in the field of philosophy, there is also relevant work in the field of communication.

This site and companion blog is an attempt to bring together the work that Watson describes with the relevant mass media and communication work.  The purpose of the bridging research literatures to help us better understand arguments presented in the media (from news commentary to shows on the paranormal).  Special attention is given to the errors made in reasoning (or fallacies).

This research blog is about media argumentation.  This research blog and companion web site serve as my set of notes and data for my research projects on mystery writing. Look at this research site and blog as a work-in-progress, as an online draft of my final papers. In this case, you get to look over my shoulder as I work through these research ideas. See my profile to send email or post comments to the posts below.

The overall purpose of this research web site and blog is to better understand the use of argument and fallacies in the media.   Over time, this research blog and site will cover a variety of research topics related to media argumentation.  See the video to the right for fallacy definitions and examples of fallacies in the media.

The current focus of this research site and blog is on the arguments that Fox News commentator, Bill O'Reilly, uses in the Talking Points Memo segment of his show. 

Prologue & Purpose

This is a research blog about mystery writing for television, novels, video games, etc.. This research blog and companion web site serve as my set of notes and data for my research projects on mystery writing. Look at this research blog as a work-in-progress, as an online draft of my final papers. In this case, you get to look over my shoulder as I work through these research ideas. See my profile to send email or post comments to the posts below.

The overall purpose of this research blog and companion website is to better understand how mysteries are written. Over time, this research blog and site will cover a variety of research topics related to mystery writing. 

The current focus of this research blog is on the portrayal of women in mysteries. Specifically, the focus is on how the women crime-solvers are portrayed in the Women's Murder Club novel series and in the WMC TV series. Ultimately, from a feminist perspective, the questions are how are women portrayed in the WMC stories and, more broadly, how should women be portrayed in mystery stories?

The Purpose of this study is...

The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which anti-prejudice messages appear on television and through a closer look at a particular genre, determine the rhetorical strategies used to promote an anti-prejudice message.

Purpose

Q: Is the purpose of this study to describe, predict or critique some form of communication?
A: Describe and critique(?)

Theoretic Agenda of Entertainment-Education

In their 2002 article on E-E, Singhal and Rogers propose that future theoretical investigations into E-E should address 5 items. Two of the 5 areas on the E-E "theoretic agenda" are:

• "Agenda #1: Theoretical investigations of entertainment-education should pay greater attention to the tremendous variability among E-E interventions."
• "Agenda #3: E-E theorizing will benefit from close investigation of the rhetorical, play, and affective aspects of E-E."

(Singhal & Rogers, 2002 , p. 120).

Of the 5 items called for, these 2 are what, in part, drive the research shared in this blog. When looking at the "tremendous variability" of E-E, we should consider looking at the fact that E-E is not new. Playwrights and script writers have long attempted to educate their audience while entertaining them. To aid us in designing the more formal type of E-E programs, what can we learn from specifically from TV and film script writers? How do they attempt to persuade the audience? And this brings us to agenda item #3. Can TV programs and films be analyzed as rhetorical artifacts/texts that attempt to persuade (educate) an audience about particular social issues? Well, yes! That's what this line of research is about.