CASE STUDY: The Ethics of Emotions in Political Communication

Case Study PDF  | Additional Case Studies

Despite the United States being one of the most recognizable democracies in the world, it often trails most other developed nations in voter turnout. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, where countries like Belgium, Sweden, and Demark see upwards of 80% voter turnout, in 2012 the American turnout rate topped out at 58.6% and only barely increased in 2016 to 61% (Ward, 2018). FairVote, a nonpartisan organization which seeks to remedy this problem through electoral reforms, notes that low voter turnout is caused by a variety of factors such as electoral competitiveness, election type, voting laws, and voter demographics. Even among these variables one especially salient feature of low voter turnout is that it is usually attributed to “political disengagement and the belief that voting for one candidate/party or another will do little to alter public policy” (FairVote, 2020). In other words, Americans are increasingly suffering from a lack of voter motivation.

What is an effective way to address this lack of motivation among political constituencies? The Greek thinker Aristotle identified emotional forms of proof (pathos) as one of the central mechanisms for persuasion over two thousand years ago. It is no surprise that throughout history, politicians have always tried to overcome the voter motivation problem through emotional appeals and exciting the electorate through various campaign promises. Since the Donald Trump campaign in 2016 primarily sought to galvanize voters through the stimulation of fear and anger, a new debate surrounding the ethical considerations of emotive political messages has been spurred. From referring to Mexicans as rapists to claiming Muslims hate America, Trump capitalized on a rhetoric of fear and anger which he subsequently promised to fix through strict immigration reform should he be elected (Ortiz & Pickard, 2018). It appeared to have worked: “Trump led an unseen rebellion of working-class voters, most of them white and so disgusted by a stalled status quo that they voted for a candidate promising dramatic change” (Goldmacher et. al., 2016).

Is this use of political rhetoric that evokes intense emotions a good thing? On one hand, there are those like journalist Ron Chandler who argues that Trump’s use of “divisive and isolationist rhetoric” leads to “offensive aggression (aggression that’s not prompted by an actual threat), an unwillingness to compromise, or racism and bigotry” (Chandler, 2020). While it counters the common sense idea that “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,” there is support for the general notion that messages which cause strong emotional reactions also cause irrational and potentially violent behavior. In fact, a recent study conducted by scholars at the University of Alabama and Chicago School of Law found that “Donald Trump’s election in November of 2016 was associated with a statistically significant surge in reported hate crimes across the United States, even when controlling for alternative explanations… and counties that voted for President Trump by the widest margins in the presidential election also experienced the largest increases in reported hate crimes” (Edwards & Rushin, 2018). As the New York Times reports, these “personal attacks motivated by bias or prejudice reached a 16-year high in 2018 with a significant upswing in violence against Latinos,” a highly targeted group in Trump’s efforts to curb immigration (Hassan, 2019).

On the other hand, researchers Jeff Greenberg and Jamie Arndt argue that fear and anger aren’t always all bad. In their studies surrounding Terror Management Theory (TMT), they discovered that while these strong emotions can result in negative outcomes, fear and anger can also motivate actions such as generosity and a desire to take constructive action (Chandler, 2020). In fact, psychologist Dr. Michal Strahilevitz emphasizes that “voters are driven by emotions, and negative emotions may have the most impact” and Nicholas Valentino, professor of communication studies and political science, has shown in his studies of emotional effects on voting that “many citizens with few resources can be mobilized if they experience strong anger” (Strahilevitz, 2012;Valentino, 2011). Furthermore, though Trump may be an especially salient example as his emotive messaging has perhaps been more direct than we’ve ever seen (he is not one to sugarcoat his opinion), he is certainly not the only politician to have ever used fear and anger to motivate voters. While Trump played on these emotions for his base, so too did Hillary Clinton for her base in response to Trump’s every move. As journalist Molly Ball argues: “The critics who accuse Trump of cheap fear-mongering may be failing to recognize that the fear percolating in society is real, and somewhat justified; politicians who fail to validate it risk falling out of step with the zeitgeist” (Ball, 2016).

Emotive messaging works, and this is why it has always been used within political communication. The recent focus on negative emotions may be the key to solving the nation’s low voter turnout; in this way, it serves the admirable democratic goal of increasing citizen motivation and participation in politics. It is already projected to drive the largest voter turnout in decades for the upcoming 2020 presidential election. The Atlantic reports that “with Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency stirring such strong emotions among both supporters and opponents… the 2020 contest could produce a massive turnout that is also unprecedentedly diverse” (Ball, 2016). Emotions work to increase participation, but is an increase in voter turnout worth the risk of polarizing the country even further or even another spike in hate-crime related violence? Similarly, is the monotony of non-emotional messages worth the stagnant rates in democratic participation? Is the U.S. truly a democracy if only slightly more than half of the (eligible) citizenry is choosing its leaders? 

Discussion Questions: 

1. What values and activities are part of an ideal democratic community? What are the central values in conflict in using emotional messages to drive voter turnout?
2. Can political messages be devoid of emotion? If not, are some emotions more ethically desirable than others?
3. Does democracy have to be rational? Does rationality inherently entail an absence of emotion?
4. Is there a creative way to communicate political messages that utilizes both emotion and reason without privileging one over the other to increase voter turnout?

Further Information:

Ball, M. (2016, September 2). “Donald Trump’s Campaign Is Based on Fear.” The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-fear/498116/

FairVote.org. “Voter Turnout.” FairVote, Available at: www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#what_affects_voter_turnout_rates

Goldmacher, S., Schreckinger, B., Thrush, G., Vogel, K. P., Isenstadt, A., & White, B. (2016, November 9). “Trump pulls off biggest upset in U.S. history.” Politico. Available at: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/election-results-2016-clinton-trump-231070

Hassan, A. (2019, November 12). “Hate-Crime Violence Hits 16-Year High, F.B.I. Reports.” New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/hate-crimes-fbi-report.html

Ortiz, Erik, and Terry Pickard. (2015, December 8). “American Mayors Want to Ban Donald Trump From Cities for ‘Message of Hate’.” NBCUniversal News Group. Available at: www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/american-mayors-want-ban-donald-trump-cities-message-hate-n476566

Strahilevitz, M. A. (2012, October 28). “Which Emotions Have the Most Impact on Voters?” Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-money-and-your-heart/201210/which-emotions-have-the-most-impact-voters

Valentino, N. (2011, June 8). “Anger motivates people to vote, study shows.” Available at: https://phys.org/news/2011-06-anger-people-vote.html

Ward, Alex. (2018, November 6). “Why US Voter Turnout Lags behind Other Advanced Democracies.” Vox. Available at: www.vox.com/2018/11/6/18069360/midterm-election-voter-turnout-polls-2018-democracy

Authors:

Kat Williams & Scott R. Stroud, Ph.D.
Media Ethics Initiative
Center for Media Engagement
University of Texas at Austin

July 24, 2020

Image: Andre Hunter on Unsplash

This case study was produced by the Media Ethics Initiative and the Project on Ethics in Political Communication. It remains the intellectual property of these two organizations. It is supported by funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This case can be used in unmodified PDF form for classroom or educational uses. For use in publications such as textbooks, readers, and other works, please contact the Center for Media Engagement.

CASE STUDY: The Ethics of Political Speechwriting

Case Study PDF  | Additional Case Studies

History in HD / Unsplash

Political speechwriters and teachers have existed since ancient Roman and Greek leaders sought the help of skilled sophists to help them publicly relay their ideas in an accessible yet eloquent manner. The American political system naturally replicated the idea with many presidents hiring an adept writer to serve as their speechwriting advisor – someone who could help mold their rhetoric to reach the American people far and wide. While these “ghostwriters” were generally kept discreetly shrouded from the public eye, recent decades have seen a rise in their publicity through autobiographies and journalistic exposés.

The number of public presidential addresses has increased dramatically with every term, resulting in a more pressing need for speechwriting assistance over the last few decades. Presidential addresses were relatively rare until the rise of electronic media. Once the majority of American homes could tune in to political discourse with their radios or television sets, the demand for the president’s voice escalated. In his book Ghostwriting and the Ethics of Authority, John Knapp points out that “Abraham Lincoln gave an average of 16 speeches per year as president; Harry Truman averaged 88, Bill Clinton 550, [and] Obama gave 411 in his first year in office” (Knapp, 2016). It has become increasingly unrealistic for presidents to author every one of their hundreds of political speeches throughout their presidencies in addition to attending to their primary duties as president. When Obama’s speechwriter Jon Favreau asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs why the president needed help speechwriting when he was already a published author, Gibbs replied, “If there were 48 hours in a day, we wouldn’t need a speechwriter” (Knapp, 2016). Yet, this mechanism of efficiency opens up a number of ethical challenges.

It is true that a writing assistant who can take the president’s ideas and quickly write up an articulate speech is pragmatic, and the general public is growing increasingly aware that modern presidents are hardly ever the sole visionaries of their speeches. But concerns have been voiced about the authenticity of messages authored by a person not talking the talk. The one uttering the message is generally taken to be the source of its ideas and what it advocates; there is a relationship of authenticity between that message and that evident source of the message. Thus, some critics claim that most presidential speeches are deceiving and unethical if the speechwriter remains anonymous and unrecognized by the public. Many politicians throughout American history have insisted that their speechwriters remain anonymous so as not to minimize the message’s authority as coming from the president. In fact, Lyndon B. Johnson apparently told his speechwriter to have “a ‘passion for anonymity’” (Schlesinger, 2008). But some say that this nameless method “represents a kind of audience deception akin to plagiarism” (Bormann, 1984). If the message is not attributed to its rightful author, how trustworthy can it be? Indeed, during the 2003 presidential campaign, Congressman Dennis Kucinich publicly criticized some of the candidates with known speechwriters, exclaiming: “If a president has a ghostwriter, who’s the president” (Brandt, 2007)? Unlike an actor playing a part written by a screenwriter, many audience members assume that the president is the source of the statements they are asserting, and that the president believes these arguments and claims to be aligned with or coming from their beliefs and values.

Beyond the authenticity concerns, other controversies can quickly arise when someone is given the authority to communicate to large audiences under a politician’s name. Thus, some critics have even gone as far as to claim that a political speechwriter could potentially use their role to exercise influence, especially if the politician is unlikely to read through the draft thoroughly. While this may seem far-fetched, it isn’t unheard of. For example, in 1992 when U.S. Congressman Ron Paul was briefly out of the office, one of his staff ghostwriters wrote blatantly racist comments in the politician’s newsletter. The only publicly named author of the newsletter, however, was Paul himself.

Digital media has further complicated the ethics of speechwriting, as social media communication is becoming a standard for presidential messaging. Barack Obama was the first sitting president with a Twitter account and there is little doubt that this trend will continue beyond the often-tweeting President Trump. With the significance of media authenticity and demand for real-time responsiveness, challenges have already arisen with the question of using ghostwriters on social media – especially when digital platforms may be more easily accessible and vulnerable to abuse than Ron Raul’s 1992 paper newsletters.

Despite the growing ethical questions about presidential speechwriting and ghostwriting, many people still believe that the process can be trustworthy, especially if done using a certain level of transparency. Psychologist David Gruder argues that speechwriting is completely moral when intent and responsibility are brought into the conversation. He cites the relationship between President John F. Kennedy and his speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, as one that built a strong model for ethical speechwriting. Kennedy was known for publicly acknowledging and embracing the fact that Sorenson had a heavy hand in writing Kennedy’s most famous presidential speeches. Not only was he clearly transparent about Sorenson’s role, but he also took equal responsibility for the message and made sure that he and Sorenson agreed on the message’s intent and meaning. Gruder states that “Kennedy appears… to have spoken what was authentically true for him even when the perspectives and the words he used to express them were written by Sorenson” (Conner, 2014).

Nevertheless, even in the most virtuous of political relationships, ethical concerns may arise. For example, like Kennedy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was also one of the many presidents who had a trusted speechwriting team: Raymond Moley, Samuel Rosenman, and Louis McHenry Howe. The trio would often compete in good fun with each other to be the one whose speech draft made it to the president’s podium. In fact, for Roosevelt’s Inaugural Address, Moley typed out a speech while Roosevelt re-wrote it in his own handwriting so the other writers wouldn’t become jealous that Moley’s draft was chosen. However, unbeknownst to Moley until years later, Roosevelt credited himself as the sole author of the speech and several publications and biographies afterward did the same. Moley angrily challenged the accreditation in his own memoir, stating that the speech was, in fact, written mostly by himself (Knapp, 2016).

In the end, whether it be a full speech or text on a politician’s social media account, political ghostwriters are in more demand than ever. Many argue that speechwriters only truly exist to take a bit of labor off their hands and make sure the president can effectively communicate their sentiments in a way that is easily digestible by the public. Especially with an audience as massive as the entire country, it’s crucial that the message be expressed in the way it was intended. While this is all fine in theory, others contend that the proliferation of ghostwriters pose a number of ethical problems for the nation, including unaccountability for anonymously written speeches or the potential to negatively influence a figure of authority’s rhetoric. Given the already increasing number of speeches expected from presidents combined with new challenges raised by the normalization of social media, political speechwriters are unlikely to go away any time soon. Thus, it is important for us to consider how we might reconcile these dilemmas so that the American people can receive messages from their representatives as authentically as possible without said representatives using up all of their time to craft messages instead of running the country.

Discussion Questions: 

1.  Who is responsible for a message when it is ghostwritten – the writer who writes it, the speaker who speaks it, or both?
2. What role does a source play in evaluating a message? Does ghostwriting speeches inhibit this role in regard to political messages?
3. What ethical values come into conflict if a speechwriter is requested to write a speech that goes against their own opinions or beliefs?
4. Does authenticity matter in modern political communication? Can a speech be truly authentic if it isn’t written by the one speaking it?
5. What ethical values are in tension if a political ghostwriter later exposes their role and wants to claim credit for a speech?

Further Information:

Brandt, Deborah. 2007, July 1. “‘Who’s the President?’: Ghostwriting and Shifting Values in Literacy.” College English, 69, 6: 549-571.

Bormann, Ernest. 2009, June 5. “Ethics of ghostwritten speeches.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 47, 3: 262-267.

Conner, Cheryl. 2014, March 13. “Is Ghostwriting Ethical?” Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2014/03/13/is-ghostwriting-ethical/

Guthmann, Andrea. 2019, October 14. “Powerful Writing: Presidential Speechwriters Discuss Their Craft.” WTTW. Available at: https://news.wttw.com/2019/10/14/powerful-writing-presidential-speechwriters-discuss-their-craft

Kjeldsen, Jens E., Kiewe, Amos, Lund, Marie, and Barnholdt Hansen, Jette. 2019, March 15. “The Ethics of Speechwriting.” Speechwriting in Theory and Practice. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-03685-0_11

Knapp, John C., and Hulbert, Azalea M. 2016. Ghostwriting and The Ethics of Authenticity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Schlesinger, Robert. 2008. White House Ghosts: Presidents and Their Speechwriters. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Authors:

Alex Purcell, Kat Williams, & Scott R. Stroud, Ph.D.
Media Ethics Initiative
Center for Media Engagement
University of Texas at Austin

July 13, 2020

This case study was produced by the Media Ethics Initiative and the Project on Ethics in Political Communication. It remains the intellectual property of these two organizations. It is supported by funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. This case can be used in unmodified PDF form for classroom or educational uses. For use in publications such as textbooks, readers, and other works, please contact the Center for Media Engagement.