Ravi Zacharias Target Audience

Ravi Zacharias is a Christian apologetic orator that travels across the world evangelizing to people. Zacharias was born in India in 1946 and later pursued an education in theology. Moreover, he received his master’s in Divinity, and received six doctoral degrees in various other concentrations (e.g. law and sacred theology) (RZIM). He has developed into a world renowned orator that has spoken in over 46 different countries. Furthermore, he has spoken at a plethora of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions, such as Harvard and Cambridge (RZIM). He is associated with many political leaders throughout the globe, make regular appearances on nationally/globally syndicated media outlets (e.g. CNN, BBC, Fox News, etc.). It is imperative

He seeks to change the way people behave, think, and believe in regards to the message of Christ. Persuading an individual’s beliefs is a very hard task to take on, especially when an individual is deeply invested into their own personal ideology of the world. Zacharias however, uses a persuasion technique in his media that he uses to combat this challenge. The approach he uses to persuade his audience is through the principle of identification. Identification helps in the persuasion process because the audience is seeking “connections with others that resonance with their ideas or experiences” (Woodward, Denton 154). This is theory is stating that an individual wants to see themselves in the speaker. If an individual believes that the persuader is similar to them they are more likely to trust the message being transmitted to them. Zacharias understand this concept because through the media that he presents he seeks to relate to the audience through the stories that he tells. On all the media platform he uses stories to identify with his audience. Zacharias tells stories about his own life and stories about others also. In this way, Zacharias has multiple chances to have the audience identify with the message that he is relaying. The can identify with him personally and the narratives and stories that he is portraying in his stores about friends, families and books. On his YouTube page, Zacharias released a video called “The Place of Apologetics part 1” and he uses stories that he believes will connect him with the audience. For instance, he begins his speech with telling a story about him being lost in an airport and asking a staff member directions of where to go (Youtube RZIM). The airport staff