Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Credibility (Ch. 36)
Aristotle believed that it was important for a speaker to clearly show their competence on the topics they speak about. The audience has to be able to relate to the speaker in order for the speaker to grasp their attention. This kind of helps the speaker build a relationship with the audience, building trust between the speaker and the audience. When the speaker, or really any communication source, proves to be invalid and untrustworthy, the audience will no longer listen to that source, and find another source to get their information from. In politics, when the public finds out that the government lied, or rather didn't give all of the information about a certain issue, you can see how the public start to not trust the information they provide to them. They see this as a violation of the trust that they had for the government. With any communicator, if they are not seen as a credible source of information, they are not going to be taken seriously. Once the credibility is put into question, the source will always be viewed in scrutiny because at one point or another, it was seen as dishonest.
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Credibility is definitely an important aspect of communication that some people forget about. I find that it's hard to believe or trust someone (a source) when they have already violated your trust, or lost credibility, by misleading or lying to the audience. Even if you decide that you are to forgive them, or try to put it in the past, it is true that the source will always be under scrutiny. This is something that affects communication on a personal level as well as a more widespread level.
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