How Does Rhetorical Threat Inflation Impact Americans’ Perception of National Cyber Security Threats?
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Date
2022-06
Authors
Schiller Novello, Lucille A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This research project studies how three linguistic shifts, experiencer deletion; deleted agent of the passive; and nominal compounds, impacts a sample of Americans’ perceptions of three cybersecurity issues, hacking; privacy; and cyber war, when framed in the national security context. The purpose is to assess how successful these techniques would be if used as rhetorical threat inflation. While this study is not focused on proving whether or not threat inflation is happening with cybersecurity, it uses the fact that there have been few major cybersecurity attacks on US soil that could have severely impacted preconceived notions of the threat. Through a survey composed of three different sets of prompts randomly distributed to 94 participants, there were various combinations that elicited positive shifts in perception. However, there was no single linguistic technique that consistently caused positive impacts. Rather, the most consistency was within cyber war; it was the only topic where all three linguistic techniques had a positive impact.
Description
80 pages
Keywords
Media Studies, Cybersecurity, Cybersecurity Perception, Politics, Media, Cyber War, Rhetoric, Linguistic