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The "rhetoric of social intervention" (RSI) model is a systemic communication theory of how human beings symbolically constitute, maintain, and change social systems (e.g., organizations, societies, and cultures). The RSI model was developed in the writings of communication theorist William R. Brown.[1][2][3][4]
The model provides a framework for analyzing and interpreting social system change and its side effects from a communication perspective. It also suggests a methodology for acting as an intervener to encourage and/or discourage social system change.[5] The model offers an alternative approach to understanding social system change by its emphasis on communication as the driver of change in contrast to models that focus on social, political, economic, and technological forces as catalysts for change.[1]
The RSI model is envisioned as three communication subsystems that function as starting points for interpreting or enacting social system change.[1] The subsystems, known as attention, power, and need, form the RSI model framework.[1] This entry describes the assumptive foundations of the RSI model. Then it discusses the attention, power, and need patterns of communication that that model identifies as points for generating social system change and continuity.
- ^ a b c d Brown, William R. (1978). Ideology as communication process. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 64(2), 123-140.
- ^ Brown, William R. (1982). Attention and the rhetoric of social intervention. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 68(1), 17-27.
- ^ Brown, William R. (1986). Power and the rhetoric of social intervention. Communication Monographs, 53(2), 180-199.
- ^ Brown, William R. (2010). Need and the Rhetoric of Social Intervention. Eric Document ED515280.
- ^ Opt, Susan K. & Gring, Mark A. (2009). The rhetoric of social intervention: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.