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Whilst indulging in several more hours of research, I realized that sticking with the

artifact from the first engagement paper was probably one of the best ideas that indulged my

mind since the beginning of the school year. I have a love for the ocean and a slight/borderline

obsession of it. It’s quite the fit, regarding this assignment. I enjoyed watching the documentary

called SEASPIRACY, dissecting it, and finding theories and concepts employed throughout it.

SAESPIRACY is a documentary about overfishing in the ocean and its detrimental impacts

towards the economical and environmental issues of this world. This artifact proves relevancy

since it involves discussion upon the destruction of or world and economic stance. I of course,

will be referencing back to my previous paper, as it had great facts and concepts that I have

already found within that documentary, all the while being careful not to plagiarize it. Then I will

incorporate my new findings within. These include new theories I will be elaborating on, that the

documentary incorporates, such as propaganda and cognitive dissonance theory. As for the

concepts employed those include symbolic action, ELM, and branding. This time however, I will

be focusing less on the concepts and more on the theories employed, propaganda and social

judgement theory.

Beginning with the first concept, symbolic action, is found throughout the documentary.

According to the book, symbolic action begins and ends with symbolic expression, as found on

page 81 of the textbook (Gas & Seiter, 2021). This can include a number of expressions like

language and meaning-laden acts, some examples of this could be protest marches as found as

the symbolic meaning intended there is to be persuasive (Gas & Seiter, 2021). Referencing

towards my recent engagement paper, some of the symbolic action found within this

documentary heavily included the music tone, the narrator’s tone of voice, and numerous gory

and horrific pictures of mutilated animals. All used in an attempt to gain the audiences sympathy
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towards the horrific acts of over-fishing within the oceans and seas of the world, to create a

change. This was a persuasive concept used to create a sense of heart ache for the audience in an

effort to gain their support towards making a change and getting donations from the audience.

Another concept from class that was used in an effort to persuade was the ELM,

elaboration likelihood model. Referring to the preceding paper, a strong ELM tactic that was

used throughout the documentary consisted of numerous graphic pictures and clips of tragedies

as a result of over-fishing, specifically, the capture vs. kill chart of the dolphins. This chart was

used to illustrate how the fisherman kill every twelve dolphins for every one dolphin that the

keep (Tabrizi, 2021). This got the audience thinking about the numbers of deaths for marine life,

engaging in their elaboration process of the video, and realizing the horrors and sadness that is

going on within the ocean. It causes an influx of peripheral processing for the audience to think

through and relies heavily on the audience’s emotional involvement towards the film (Dainton &

Zelley, 2018). Thus, allowing for a shift in their attitudes, which will help support the producers

of SEASPIRACY in their efforts to stop over-fishing.

The third concept used within this documentary is seen as branding, which kind of flows

into the concept of credibility. It was especially noticeable when the documentary would bring in

doctors and specialized experts in to give way to documentary’s credibility (Tabrizi, 2021). This

inevitably gave the documentary more ground to stand upon its argument, thus, persuading its

audience even more so in the direction towards stopping and fighting against over-fishing. On

top of this, the documentaries factual evidence is supported by another article that I came across

when researching for my earlier paper. That article was written by Sandra L. Diamond, and she

gave numerous facts that were the very same, if not similar to the documentary’s facts. One fact

in particular being, that bycatch from over-fishing is why fisheries are a major killer of marine
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animals in one day as opposed to an oil spill from a ship accident (Diamond, 2021). This was

also seen throughout the documentary, they had a whole section just showing graphic imagery of

the bycatch and deadly fishing consequences, all leading towards the concept of credibility and

branding, as it allows for a strong threshold for the documentary to stand on, with bring in

credible and strong outside sources to help persuade the audience of their credibility and giving

further creation to their strong and stable argument.

Moving on to the specific theories that I found within this documentary, we will start

with propaganda. This was thrown into this film heavily to persuade the audience towards

putting an end to the problem within the oceanic fishing industries. According to Simpson,

persuasive elements that can be found within propaganda stipulate mass suggestion or

manipulation of individual beliefs and motivations (Simpson, 2008). Within this film, through

the concepts discussed previously, the efforts to try to persuade through ELM, walks a thin line

of strong suggestion and possibly even slight manipulation. This is because feel good scenarios

can be seen through the documentary such as explaining/showing pictures of why positive

helping and supporting can cause great effects in counteracting the horrors of the over-fishing

issue. They show these feel-good situations, right after they get the audience emotionally

involved by “pulling at their heart strings” and making them feel horrible for what is going on to

these animals in the ocean (Dainton and Zelley, 2018). Another example of the propaganda

tactics employed are the narration techniques used as well as the background music, the

symbolic imagery of the tortured animals, and even down to the camera angles. Yes, one may

notice that some of these can be considered some of the concepts that I used from above in this

paper. That is because the symbolic action such as the camera angles, music selection, gory
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imagery, and narration/tone of voice, all fit into the theory of propaganda being used as the

persuasive tactic for this documentary (Simpson, 2008).

The other theory that was employed was cognitive dissonance theory. According to

Dainton and Zelley, it can be assumed that within the cognitive dissonance theory in order to

persuade people to do something an outside source has to provide enough ammunition to change

another’s beliefs or attitudes (Dainton & Zelley, 2018). With this being said, they also mentioned

within their book, on page 114, that the line of thinking within this theory, can appear logical but

at the same time can be incorrect (Dainton & Zelley, 2018). An example that they gave within

the book was that many smokers see through adds that smoking has illness issues and can cause

death, yet they still choose to smoke despite knowing those facts (Dainton & Zelley, 2018).

The SEASPIRACY documentary, creates a sort of tension that pulls at the audience’s

beliefs about eating fish. Over and over the documentary discusses how to simply just stop eating

fish and it will contribute to a higher chance of the over-fishing coming to an end. This in itself

causes the audience to feel guilty for contributing towards the over-fishing by eating fish. With

this, that’s when schemata becomes involved, creating the dissonance that causes the audience to

change its beliefs and stop eating fish, and if they can’t do that then to at least donate to the cause

to stop the over-fishing and bycatch. Schemata is cognitive structure for organizing new

information (Dainton & Zelley, 2018). The documentary throws out so much information

especially information that can bring the audience in at an emotional attentive state, it causes an

imbalance or dissonance for the audience to have to process. That is from a result of new

information that goes against what the audience already knew, which then can be used as a tool

for persuasion to get the audience to coordinate with the actions being persuaded to help the

audience stop overfishing.

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Analyzing everything discussed thus far, it is evident that this documentary implicated

several persuasive concepts, and even incorporated some of those concepts that tied them into

the persuasive theories used. One can piece all these tactics used with a spider web graph,

because there are so many examples, concepts, and theories. If not keeping track of them it is

easy to get lost in deciphering all of them because it is such an information overload that it

successfully uses to its advantage. This way with its overload of information it leaves a vast

amount of room for the audience to become emotionally engrossed with all of the symbolic

action thrown at their way through the propaganda theory. Then just as if this wasn’t persuasive

enough, the use the cognitive dissonance theory to trap their audience by causing them to have to

have a conflict between their actions and their beliefs through the use of schemata, which then

causes them to conflict a change towards the creators of the documentary’s advantage by people

either stopping the consumption of fish or donating to their cause.

In summary, it is abundantly evident that documentaries are capable of using wide

amounts of persuasive concepts, tools, and theories in their efforts towards creating change

however they see fit. Of course, as with everything else, one will not always be able to persuade

everyone. However, if one uses the right tactics and/or concepts and theories, they can persuade

and even alter certain peoples’ beliefs and attitudes. For example, I know someone else who

watched this documentary and they told me they were never going to eat fish again. I said “ya

right, its not that easy.” They then persuaded me to watch it, low-and-behold, I haven’t stopped

eating fish, but I definitely think about the documentary every time I eat shrimp. I definitely

don’t eat as much as I used to as well. This goes to show, that this documentary successfully

employs its concepts and theories to persuade the audiences of the dangers in over fish

consumption, which inevitably leads to over-fishing. The theories of propaganda and cognitive
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dissonance theory within this documentary created a strong persuasive basis that creates the

audience to have a shift in their attitudes and beliefs about fish consumption.
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References

Dainton, M., & Zelley, E. (2018). Applying Communication Theory for Professional Life: A

Practical Introduction (4th ed., pp. 111,112,113,114). SAGE Publications.

*4985_Dainton_Chapter_5.pdf (sagepub.com)

Applying Communication Theory for Professional Life: A Practical Introduction -

Marianne Dainton, Elaine D. Zelley - Google Books

Diamond, S. (2021). Bycatch quotas in the Gulf of Mexico shrimp trawl fishery: can they work?.

Retrieved 18 September 2021, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11160-004-7121-0

Gass, R., & Seiter, J. (2021). Persuasion Social Influence and Compliance Gaining (6th ed., pp.

122, 156, 92, 81, 82). New York and London: Routledge Taylor and Fancis Group.

Simpson, K. (2008). Classic and Modern Propaganda in Documentary Film: Teaching the

Psychology of Persuasion. Taylor And Francis Group, 35(0098-6283 print / 1532-8023

online), 103,104,106. doi: 10.1080/00986280802004602

Tabrizi, A. (2021). SEASPIRACY [Film]. A.U.M. Films and Disrupt Studios: Netflix.