Center for Cybersecurity & Data Intelligence

By James Robinson, Ph.D., Professor, Dept. of Communication

If you missed part one of this series, read it here. 

Sending, receiving, processing, and decoding messages requires a lot of mental effort. Think about it. Even the smartest people can be bad at communicating.

The best communicators know a lot about their message topic and even more about their audience. Without considering the audience, even the simplest message strategies fail.

Let me explain... When I proposed to teach a course in communication and cybersecurity, I was asked to create a promotional flyer to hang around campus. With so much creative freedom, I got carried away. I forgot my intended audience (young, hip college students) and sprinkled in jokes that only IT experts or middle-aged men would enjoy.

In case you're confused like my students... Here are my references explained:

• 1. Infamous hacker, Kevin Mitnick, wearing an "I am not a hacker" t-shirt
• 2. Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple computers, holding a cartoon of Kevin Mitnick in jail
• 3. A zombie apocalypse featuring The Zombies, an English rock band formed in 1958
• 4. The Cap’n Crunch whistle, alluding to John Draper, an early 1970’s hacker who used those whistles to trick payphones so that he could make free calls
• Perhaps my flyer would’ve persuaded sixty-year-old college students to take a class in cybersecurity. But, alas, my audience averaged 20-years-old and did not understand a single joke or reference that I had carefully planted to gain their interest.

Proud of my artistry and wanting feedback, I showed the class my flyer and asked what they thought. They told me that they didn’t understand the graphics or jokes. They didn’t even laugh after I explained them.

Somewhat saddened by my failed effort, I asked the students a final question: “Did anyone decide to take this class because of the flyer?” Not a single student had seen the flyer before that day in class. Not only had I failed to adapt my message to the audience, but I had also failed to expose them to the message.

To summarize my sad story: This message creation stuff is complicated… Communicators must carefully design their messages while keeping their audiences in mind. 

Also, college students need a refresher in classic rock bands.

The third and final part of this series explores psychology's role in crafting messages.