The Rhetoric of Reports about Mass Atrocities
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Date
2018-06
Authors
Estreich, Eleanor Lucille
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Mass atrocities and genocides remain prevalent in the world today. Leaders and institutions should value human lives and actively work to prevent and manage crises, because violent conflict poses a serious threat to peoples, cultures, security, and our sense of humanity. Social science and statistical methods are improving our ability to anticipate and prevent mass atrocities, but we must also improve the way evidence is selected and represented to decision makers in strategic communications. Charles J. Brown of Strategy for Humanity has put forth a call for the study of curated reports, which are reports that reach discrete audiences of decision makers in the U.S., and address the problems that audiences face. Building from Paul Slovic's research on our psychological perceptions of mass atrocities, this thesis joins the rhetorical and psychological disciplines toward the aim of identifying how to improve the persuasiveness and effectiveness of reports about mass atrocities. Using rhetorical analysis, I conduct three case studies by rhetorically analyzing three reports that were issued about mass atrocities in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Syria. I identify three crucial factors of a report's audience that matter for the process of argument invention: the audience's assessment of the risks of intervening in the region of interest, the explanatory models the audience uses to frame the violence, and the audience's psychological limitations when receiving information about events that are distant and involve large numbers of victims. I will argue that reports are more persuasive when the treatment of these three factors, through evidence selection and presentation, supports the argumentative aim of the report.
Description
103 pages. Presented to the Department of English and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts Spring 2018
Keywords
English rhetoric, Social science, Mass atrocities, Reports, Rhetoric, Psychology, Decision making, Case studies