Persuasion Videos and Activities

Logical Fallacies Activity

Yesterday, I realized that the way I have always taught logical fallacies and argumentation is kind of boring, and primarily features me throwing a million examples at students that don't stick. Today, in an effort to improve this exercise, I hunted around on the Chronicle of Higher Education forums and assembled a COMM 107-friendly activity from some of the recommendations there. Behold, a more fun and effective approach to teaching fallacies!

This was a fun and helpful exercise to get students' brains activated regarding logical fallacies.

1) "You are Wrong Because" Handout: First, I adapted a handout for students from the list provided at this link. It provides about thirty examples of common argumentative mistakes and examples. It eschews the jargon of the Greeks to instead emphasize memorability, which I like for the purposes of 107. We briefly discuss the list: I ask students to share any examples they can think of where friends, family members, etc. violated the rules of the list. (It's a pretty funny list, so it works!)

2) Video Clip for Applying Concepts: I then have students view the following clip and identify as many fallacies as possible:

The Daily Show - Immigrant Disease

It's pretty over-the-top, but it works!

3) Outline Feedback/Review: After that, I have students turn their attention to each others' outlines to give one another feedback. I told them to focus specifically on each others' argumentation to try to highlight any places where their classmates were employing faulty arguments. This worked great! Typically, when I tell students to challenge one another's argumentation, they don't get beyond the surface much. But I found that in the context of trying to hunt down logical fallacies in one another's speeches, they were better attuned to the sort of challenges people might mount.

Joe Biden + Paul Ryan Video for Teaching Charisma

Last semester, I set up a whole class debate around this video. This semester, outside the context of the election, I hunted far and wide on YouTube for a simple highlights reel that would provide the necessary context and talking points from the vice-presidential debate. You can see it at this link.

This video is great, in particular, for teaching about charisma, authority, and experience. How do Biden/Ryan summon all three of those strengths to challenge their opponent? Where might these strategies backfire? I discuss how different people might perceive Biden's laughter/"malarkey" comment differently; my mom thought he was being a jerk, but I thought he was hilarious and channeling my inner curmudgeon effectively.

I find that this helps cultivate a pretty robust conversation about credibility!

Michael