1 See D. Paul-Pertaub, M. Slater, and C. Barker, “An Experiment on Public Speaking Anxiety in Response to Three Different Types of Virtual Audience,” Presence 11, no. 1 (2002): 69: “The smaller the size of the audience, the more the interaction approximates a conversational paradigm.”

2 For more on using demographics to craft messages, see D. Therkelsen and C. Fiebach, “Message to Desired Action: A Communication Effectiveness Model,” Journal of Communication Management 5, no. 4 (2001): 376.

3 For research that supports Minh’s claim, see B. Tuttle, “Survey: Women Are Smarter, More Thorough When Buying Cars,” Moneyland, Time, January 25, 2012, http://www.moneyland.time.com/2012/01/25/survey-women-are-smarter-more-thorough-when-buying-cars/.

4 For more, see E. S. Going and D. Pye, “Check the Box That Best Describes You: Reflexively Managing Theory and Praxis in LGBTQ Health Communication Research,” Health Communication, July 18, 2012, 1–11.

5 Interestingly, though Obama and Romney often spoke about middle class job creation and economic growth, they rarely mentioned the existing poverty rate. See, for example, B. Calvin, “Little Mentioned on Trail, Poverty Wideningin US,” Boston Globe, September 10, 2012, http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2012/09/09/for-advocates-country-poor-presidential-campaign-gives-little-clarity-addressing-poverty/sZhd9i4Z0gMGahFKxknDXM/story.html.

6 Common ground is critical not only because it enhances a speaker’s credibility but also because it makes a speech easier to understand. See S. R. Fussell and R. M. Krauss, “Understand Friends and Strangers: The Effects of Audience Design on Message Comprehension,” European Journal of Social Psychology 19 (1989): 510.

7 For more, see J. S. Tuman, Communicating Terror: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Terrorism, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010), 113: “Next the creator of the speech may inquire: is there any possibility for common ground between the speaker and the audience?”

8 For more on this speech, go to http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tedkennedytruth&tolerance.htm.

9 See http://www.religiousherald.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3677&Itemid=53.