Sessions 11 and 12 — Misinformation, Persuasion and Rhetoric
Exercise sheet
What this is for. By the end you should be able to look at something a friend forwards you, or an ad, or a politician’s answer, and say in one sentence what is wrong with it. Sometimes the answer will be that nothing is wrong with it. That answer is just as useful, and much rarer.
How to answer. Two or three sentences per item. Whenever you give a label, say why in the next sentence. The reason is the part you will still use after this course.
Worked examples. Most parts open with one. Use it as a model for what your answer should look like.
On AI. You may use it. If you do, add a note at the end saying which tool, what you asked it, and what for.
A. How a misleading headline gets made (5 items)
You can mislead someone without saying anything false. Take a true finding and delete the parts that made it small.
You will do this in both directions. First you write one. Then you take one apart, which is much easier once you have built one yourself.
Worked example
The study: “In 210 adults over 65 who already had trouble walking, a daily 15-minute stretching routine improved balance-test scores by 7% over ten weeks.”
The headline somebody wrote: “Stretching prevents falls in the elderly.”
The four What the study said What the headline kept Which people adults over 65 who already had trouble walking “the elderly”, meaning everyone Which outcome scores on a balance test falls themselves How much 7% nothing How long ten weeks nothing The word used instead: prevents. The study measured a small improvement on a test. “Prevents” says falls stopped happening.
An honest rewrite: “Daily stretching improved balance-test scores in older adults with walking difficulties.”
Exercise 1 — Write the headline
Below are two findings with no headline attached. For each one, write the most clickable headline you can that a real website would publish.
Then list which of the four you deleted (which people, which outcome, how much, how long) and which strong word you used instead. Set it out like the worked example: the headline first, then the list.
The rule: you may delete and you may frame, but you may not invent. Every fact behind your headline has to be one the study reports, and nothing in your headline may contradict it. Writing “cuts dropout to zero” when the study says 8 points is a different exercise. The point of this part is that you never needed to make anything up.
A1. “In 480 university students who said they used their phone in bed, moving the charger out of the bedroom for three weeks increased average nightly sleep by 19 minutes.”
A2. “In a trial with 610 first-year students at three universities, those given a weekly 30-minute meeting with a peer mentor were 8 percentage points more likely to still be enrolled a year later.”
Exercise 2 — Find the problem
Now the same job in reverse. For each pair, say what was deleted, name the word doing most of the work, and write an honest rewrite that would still get people to read it.
A3. Study: “Among 1,100 first-year students at four universities, those who chose to join a weekly study group scored on average 3 points higher out of 100 on end-of-semester exams, after one semester of weekly meetings.” Headline: “Study groups transform student results.”
A4. Study: “In 890 adults aged 30 to 50 who drank at least four cups of coffee a day, switching to decaf after 2pm for twelve weeks reduced the time taken to fall asleep by an average of 9 minutes.” Headline: “Coffee is destroying your sleep.”
A5. Every fact behind those two headlines is accurate. Explain in two sentences how they can still mislead.
B. Which appeal, and is it backed by anything? (6 items)
Persuasion uses some mix of three things:
- Ethos, trust in the speaker. Why should I listen to you?
- Pathos, your feelings. What should matter to me right now?
- Logos, the argument. Why does this seem to follow?
None of them is a trick by itself. An appeal is grounded when the speaker gives you something you could go and check. It is ungrounded when the appeal does all the work and there is nothing behind it. Session 12 called the ungrounded kind a counterfeit.
Two warnings about the word grounded. It does not mean true, and it does not mean convincing: a grounded claim can turn out to be false, and an ungrounded appeal can happen to be right. And the question is about the appeal, not the person. Someone lying to you can still hand you a checkable number. What a speaker knows and intends is Part E’s problem, and you usually cannot settle it from the words alone.
For each item, name the appeal doing the main work, say whether it is grounded or ungrounded, and give your reason in one line. If you say pathos, also write out the claim hidden inside the feeling.
Worked example
“I’ve been fixing these machines since before you were born, so trust me, it’s the pump.”
Ethos, ungrounded. The sentence is about who he is. Nothing in it is about this machine, so there is nothing here I could go and check. He may well be right about the pump, but he has not given me any way to tell. A grounded version would be “I’ve seen this fault before, and here is the noise it makes.”
B1. An actor in a white coat says: “As a doctor, I recommend it.”
B2. A doctor tells you where she trained, which board certified her, and gives you the registration number so you can look her up.
B3. A flyer, with nothing else printed on it, reads: “If we do nothing, next year it will be your street.”
B4. A fire safety campaign shows a burned kitchen, says most kitchen fires start with unattended pans, and lists three things you can do tonight.
B5. “Studies show that this diet works.”
B6. A tenants’ group flyer: “Average rent in this neighbourhood rose 22% between 2023 and 2025, according to the city housing register. The council should cap increases.”
C. Which premise did you add? (2 items)
A standard move in persuasion is to leave a gap and let the listener fill it. What you work out yourself you rarely question, because nobody argued you into it and there is nothing to push back against.
For each item, write out the sentence the speaker never said but the argument needs, then say what would decide whether it is true.
Worked example
“My cousin took this course and now she works at Google.”
The sentence nobody said: the course is what got her the job, and it would do the same for me.
What would decide it: what else she had going for her, and how graduates of that course do compared with similar people who did not take it.
Nothing false was said here. The speaker left out the only line that mattered, and I supplied it myself.
C1. “I’ve used this app every day for two years and my Spanish is fluent now. It works.”
C2. A politician is asked whether he can be trusted with the city budget. He answers: “I balanced my own family’s accounts for twenty-five years without a peso of debt.”
D. Write it out, then find the line nobody argued for (4 items)
The method is always the same. Ignore the delivery, write the argument out plainly, then put the persuasion back on top and see what each piece was aimed at.
Before you start: mark a line E if the world could settle it, and N if it is about what ought to be done or what counts as good. Words like “good”, “worth it” and “a problem” make a line N even when they sound factual.
Worked example
A landlord showing you an apartment: “I’ve rented apartments in this building for eighteen years. The last three tenants all renewed their leases. I’ve watched families grow up in these apartments. You should sign today.”
Step 1. Write it out plainly.
P1. The last three tenants renewed their leases. (E) P2. (never said) Tenants renewing means this is a good place to live. (N) P3. (never said) Nothing comparable will still be available if I take a day to compare. (E) C. You should sign today. Step 2. What each piece of persuasion was aimed at. Aimed at is not the same as evidence for. An appeal can make you grant a line without giving you a reason to.
Ethos, the eighteen years P1, it is why I believe him about the tenants Pathos, “families grow up here” P2, it makes “a good place to live” feel granted rather than argued Logos, three tenants renewed this is P1 P3, the line the conclusion needs nothing at all The finding: everything he said was probably true, and none of it was aimed at the line that would justify signing today rather than on Thursday.
Now do the same for this exchange.
A student representative asks the head of the mathematics department: “Is there any evidence that a tutoring centre would raise pass rates?”
She answers: “I have run this department for sixteen years. Last semester 94 students failed first-year calculus, up from 51 the year before. I have met with a lot of those students. We need to fund the tutoring centre.”
D1. Write her answer out plainly, including any line she never said out loud. Mark each premise E or N.
D2. Say what each piece of persuasion was aimed at.
D3. Name the line that nothing was aimed at, and say what would settle it.
D4. Every sentence she said is true, and none of her appeals is ungrounded. Explain why her answer still does not give you a good reason to accept her conclusion, and why that makes it harder to catch than a speaker who is obviously exaggerating.
E. Who is sending it? (4 items)
The same false claim can come from three very different people:
- Misinformation. They believe it. An honest mistake.
- Disinformation. They know better and say it anyway. A deliberate lie.
- Indifference to truth. They never checked, because whether it was true was not the point. They said what worked.
(Session 11 used “misinformation” for any defective claim, whoever sent it. Here the word is narrower and means the sender believed it.)
For E1 to E3, say which it looks like if you can tell, then say honestly whether you can tell from what you were given.
Worked example
A classmate tells you the exam is in Room 204. It is in Room 214. He read it off the department noticeboard, which had a typo.
Misinformation, and yes, I can tell. He believed it, and the item tells me where the belief came from. Nothing here suggests he knew better or that he did not care.
E1. An aunt forwards a message saying the ring road is closed all weekend. It is not closed. She read it on a page that got it wrong and believed every word.
E2. A company’s marketing team has seen the trial results, which showed no effect, and publishes “clinically proven” anyway.
E3. A post says the new stadium cost 1.4 billion pesos. The real figure is 900 million. You have no idea who wrote the post or why.
E4. Your friend repeats something false. Explain in two sentences why “you’re lying” is usually the wrong accusation, even when the claim is definitely false.
F. The three questions (3 items)
Part D took two tables. In a real conversation you get about four seconds. Compressed, the method is three questions you can run while somebody is still talking:
- Was the question answered, or was a nearby question answered instead?
- What did it prove? Is there anything in it I could go and check?
- Which premise did I supply?
Worked example
You ask your landlord: “Is the heating fixed?”
He says: “I’ve never had a single complaint from anyone on the third floor, and I was here at seven this morning dealing with it.”
1. Was the question answered? No. I asked whether the heating works now. He answered two other questions: whether other people have complained, and how early he got up.
2. What did it prove? That he was in the building at seven. That is true and checkable and tells me nothing about whether the radiator is warm.
3. Which premise did I supply? That a landlord who turns up at seven is a landlord who fixes things. He never said it. I added it, and it is why his answer felt reassuring.
Now do the same for this exchange. Answer the three questions separately, one short paragraph each.
A journalist asks the mayor: “Will you resign if the audit finds money missing?”
The mayor answers: “I have spent my entire life in this city. My father drove a bus on Route 12 for thirty years. I am not going to take lectures about honesty from people who have never had to meet a payroll.”
F1. Was the question answered, or was a nearby question answered instead? Name the question he actually answered.
F2. What did his answer prove? Point to anything in it you could go and check, and say whether checking it would tell you anything about the audit.
F3. Which premise did you supply? Write it out as a full sentence, then say what would decide whether it is true.
The required readings for these two sessions are on the session pages, and both are examined on the final: the 1937 article on detecting propaganda for Session 11, and Aristotle’s Rhetoric Book I, Chapters 1 and 2 for Session 12.