Chapter Overview:

In this chapter, Fassett and Warren explore how we can use our communication as a means of social action. The chapter begins with a discussion of discipline and the ways in which the field of communication studies is a discipline and the ways in which our bodies are and have been discipline by institutions, such as the classroom. The authors’ also discuss what can happen when we continually engaged in public advocacy and working against the grain: cynicism, nihilism, and exhaustion. Warren and Fassett conclude the chapter by suggesting six small, but meaningful, ways we can engage in social action in our own lives.

Chapter Goals:

• Articulate what social action means and how to engage in it
• Explore the role of power in constraining our ability to act
• Identify options for engaging in public advocacy
• Become advocates for the issues you believe in while learning to listen to others in a critical, compassionate manner

Chapter Outline:

1. Discipline
2. Simulacra
3. Difference
4. Exhaustion, Cynicism, and Nihilism
5. Public Advocacy: Tactics for Social Action