![]() In part, our brains accept whether something is true or not based on whether it sounds familiar, and repetition breeds familiarity. With sufficient repetition, an idea may be accepted as true without meeting the normal standards of critical thinking and evidence. Soundbites work by lodging themselves in your brain as they’re repeated over and over again. “ Fake news” has become a buzzword used by the American Republican party to allege biased reporting by the media.įor the purposes of this post, I’ll be considering buzzwords and slogans under the general heading of soundbites, since they’re all brief bits of language meant to serve as shorthand for a larger idea. A slogan can come from an attack ad against an opponent, such as the Conservatives’ “ Just not ready” ads directed at the Trudeau Liberals in Canada’s 2015 federal election.įinally, buzzwords, in a political context, are words or phrases that act like slogans for specific ideas. ![]() To use another well-known American example, Donald Trump’s “ Make America Great Again” is a slogan that attempts to boil down the goals of his administration to only four words. Photo by slogans are standalone phrases cooked up by political parties to represent a bigger idea. television news dropped in length from 43 seconds to nine seconds, and continues to shorten. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” is a classic example, excerpted from his 1961 inaugural address.Ī much-cited 2011 article in the Journal of Journalism Studies found that between 19, the average soundbite played on U.S. They are usually excerpted from a speech and stand in as a distillation of that speech. What are soundbites, slogans, and buzzwords? A soundbite is a short clip or phrase meant to represent a larger message. The recent Ontario provincial election brought with it seemingly endless mentions of “hallway medicine”, “a no Wynne situation”, and “sorry, not sorry.” But what do these repeated words and phrases actually accomplish? How do they work in the mind of the voter? Political discourse today is filled with soundbites, buzzwords, and slogans that are repeated ad nauseam. ![]() – George Orwell, Politics and the English Language (1946) “Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Erin Zimmerman, Science in Society co-editor ![]()
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