Hugh Rank’s Comms Theory from 1976 Will Help You Identify Fake News Today

Intensify and downplay were the two words communication theorist Hugh Rank chose to frame his persuasion schema in his paper circa 1976. His work was aimed at helping people to understand the techniques used to spread misinformation or disinformation.

Rank professed that persuasive communications techniques did one of two things: it either intensified an attribute — or downpayed it.

For example, a persuasive argument can intensify positive characteristics while downplaying the negative. Inversely, a persuasive argument can also intensify negative characteristics while downplaying the positive.

Rank then further divided intensify and downplay into three sub levels. Intensify consists of repetition, association and composition, while downplay consists omission, diversion and confusion.

Intensify.

• Repetition is straightforward. Repetition is straightforward. Repetition is straightforward. Repetition is convincing. Ask the advertising community.
• Association is identifying with something with which an audience has a preconceived notion. For example, Republicans invoke Regan while Democrats invoke Kennedy.
• COMPOSITION deals with the arrangement of messages in patterns of writing, design, imaging or the combination thereof. At the time of his writing, Rank uses examples like U$A and Nixxon — a reference to 37th President of the United States. Composition was used in the 2016 election where the O’s in “Crooked Hillary” were replaced with handcuffs.

Downplay.

• Omission is leaving facts out.
• Diversion is the concept of introducing another topic to divert attention from the original topic.
• Confusion is providing answers so convoluted, no one understands what you are saying. Or flooding the media with multiple versions of a story to confuse the audience.

Rank’s theory stands the test of time. If you want to read Rank’s full text, you’ll have to visit a library or an academic site on the web to find a copy.

Here is the citation: Rank, H. (1976). Teaching about public persuasion. In D. Dietrich (Ed.), Teaching and Doublespeak. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

A version of this post first ran in 2009 on my blog, the Sword and the Script Intensify or Downplay: The Hugh Rank Schema for Propaganda which in turn was adopted from a paper I wrote for a graduate course taught by Dr. Rhonda Zaharna about 20 years ago.

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