By Tori Horman
Often, I have been
assigned academic articles to read for classes that I just couldn’t seem to
understand. The content of the article may be important or useful, but the way
it’s written leaves me wondering what point it was even trying to make. This
often frustrating type of writing is known as official style. In this article,
I will be breaking down certain strategies used when writing in official style
and how they can be improved to make the writing clearer. If the writing is
clearer and easier to understand, this means that more people will be able to
access the information. If more people are able to access the information, they
are more likely to be able to use that information to make more informed
decisions in their lives. The text I chose to review was an article from the
Journal of Social Media + Society titled “Do We Know Politicians’ True Selves
From the Media? Exploring the Relationship Between Political Media Exposure and
Perceived Political Authenticity,” by Simon M. Luebke and Iris Englemann. The
journal it was published in, the Journal of Social Media + Society, focuses on
“the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and
policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future.”
Their mission is to gather studies on social media as technology evolves and is
open to a variety of research methodologies. Both authors work in the Communication
Science department at Friedrich
Schiller University in Germany. Englemann is a professor while Luebke is a
research assistant. Both authors have had their work published in several
academic journals.
The genre of the
piece is academic writing, which I would characterize by emphasis on research
methods, establishing credibility, and the use of the official style. Another
common characteristic of academic writing is the fact that it is peer reviewed
by other experts, which goes along with the importance of establishing
credibility. This type of writing tends to circulate within academic
communities and is often published in peer reviewed journals. This text was
written in order to explore the social media use of politicians and how that
can have a significant effect on voters. Readers may be motivated to read it
because they want to know how politicians are using social media and how they
may unknowingly be swayed to have an impression on this person based solely on
their social media presence and how they are discussed in the news and other
mass media. They can use this information to make more conscious and informed
decisions on why they support the politicians that they support. However, it is
unlikely to be accessed outside of an academic setting, due to the
inaccessibility of the writing. It may be assigned to
students of a political science or communications class, or it may be read by
other researchers and used as a source to expand on the topic.
The article uses a
lot of political studies jargon, which makes sense considering the target
audience, but for someone like me who is not involved in the study of political
science, there were many unfamiliar terms. When explaining how they chose to
conduct their study, the authors use lots of jargon referring to several theories,
“As previous research provided descriptive insights on the question, we apply a
more theory-driven approach, drawing on the literature on media priming
theory, performed authenticity in social media, political personalization, and
dual processing theory.” Fortunately, these theories, as well as other
terms such as “political personalization” are explained later in the article,
but when I first read this sentence, I was unsure of what exactly they would be
looking at in their research.
Another component
of official style that this article uses is passive voice. In the abstract it
states, “Results from an online quota survey in Germany (N = 1,210) show
that differences in perceived political authenticity are not simply
determined by citizens’ political attitudes but can also be explained by
their frequency of exposure to political information in different media types.”
When I began reading this sentence, I was confused as to who these differences
in perceived authenticity were referring to. Was it differences in how the
media reported things? Who were the ones perceiving the authenticity of the
politicians? Was it the media or the people? A way to reword this so that the
subject is clearer could be something like, “Results from an online quota
survey in Germany show that in addition to citizens’ political attitudes, how
frequently they are exposed to political information in the media can influence
how they perceive a politician’s authenticity.” The term “political
authenticity” used here is an example of passive voice in itself because it
turns an action (the action of perceiving something or someone as authentic)
into a concept.
This article also
contains sentences that use complex vocabulary and structure where it is not
needed, another component of official style. An example of this would be the
sentence, “This ordinariness dimension of authenticity comprises
impressions that contradict the notion of calculated politicians who do not act
based on true convictions but rather on strategic motives.” In this section of
the article, it discusses different factors that play a part in how people
judge a politician as authentic, ordinariness being one of them. A way to make this sentence more clear would
be something like, “Politicians that appear ordinary and down-to-Earth
contradict people’s usual impression of politicians who don’t believe in what
they’re saying, but say it to attract supporters.”
An
example of a sentence that uses several official style components at once
reads, “Media priming is the outcome of attribute agenda setting,
that is, processes in which the salience of different personality traits of
politicians is transferred from the media to the public.” First of all, this
is an example of a complex sentence because it combines several complete
thoughts together with multiple commas. we have jargon with the words “media
priming” and “attribute agenda processing.” This section of the article is
attempting to explain the concept of media priming, which is one of the
theories the authors are basing their research off. But in doing so, it brings
in another jargonistic term that is defined in an overly complex and verbose
way, “in which the salience of different personality traits of
politicians is transferred from the media to the public.” I was unfamiliar with
the word “salience,” so I looked it up and based on the context of this
sentence “salient,” according to Merriam Webster, means “standing out
conspicuously” or “of notable significance.” So, they are talking about the
personality traits of the politicians that stick out the most. This sentence
also contains passive voice. Both the subject and action are made unclear by
using the verb “is.” The personality trait “is being transferred from the media
to the public,” but wording it this way obscures who is the one doing the
transferring and puts more distance between the actor and the action they are
doing. One way this sentence could be fixed would be, “Media priming is the
outcome of the media pushing a certain narrative. Attribute agenda setting occurs
when the media emphasizes certain personality traits of a politician to the
public.” This revision splits up the sentence into two, making it less complex.
It also uses clearer vocabulary to define the concept of attribute agenda
setting, as well as rearranging the sentence to make the subject (the media)
and the action they are doing (emphasizing a personality trait) clearer.
One may argue that
language like this must be used when describing a study, because it establishes
credibility. And while I understand how the use of language is appropriate for
the intended audience, there is really no need to use complex and vague
language, when simpler and more clear sentence structure can be used to convey
the exact same meaning. I believe that official style certainly has its place,
but too much of it can be a bad thing. The study in question looks at something
that affects everyone, not just academics. People with a lower education level
vote too, and it is important that everyone can become an informed voter. By
reading the results of this study, people will be able to be more aware of how
politicians are using social media to appear authentic in order to gain their
support. This applies to other political studies that look into how voters are
influenced. If people know how they are being influenced, they can make more
critical and conscious decisions about who they support.
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