March 20, 2012

Janet ByrdAlison McIntosh

Neighborhood Partnerships

Advocate’s College, Condensed Version

We Need to Build Public Will

"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.“

- Abraham Lincoln

knowledge

stories

cultural models

experience

myths

media

patterns of association

frames

stereotypes

We are not blank slates

Frames are mental structures that help people understand the world, based on particular cues from outside themselves that activate assumptions and values they hold within themselves.

Berkeley Media Studies Group

Framing Happens

• Frames are used by our brains to make sense of incoming information

• It happens fast

• Once triggered, they are hard to dislodge

UFALTUX

Framing is Always Happening

• If we do not pay attention to how we frame our issues people will default to the “pictures in their heads”

Master Narratives

Whenever we engage in public debates we may think of ourselves as conduits of information. However, our audiences think about those same policies, issues, and programs in terms of the background story— the master narrative —that lies beneath our bullet-points, facts, statistics, and legal citations.

The Benevolent Community

The Triumphant Individual

Independence

Interdependence

Dave Kolpack / AP“Self-Made Man” – Irene Ritter

Tools to re-imagine the world

• Speaking to values

• Aspiration vs. Desperation

• Portrait vs. Landscape

• Limit of Facts

• Social Math

• Shared Benefit

Speaking to Values Directs

Thinking

• We reason first from deeply held values.

• Values help answer: “Why does this matter to me/us?”

• We need to start with Values, not with the policy and program details

Values Matter

Levels of Thinking• Level One – Big ideas:

protection, justice, family well-being, equality, opportunity, prosperity

• Level Two – Issues:housing, the environment, children’s issues, workforce development

• Level Three – Policies:pay equity, bycatch, SCHIP presumptive eligibility, EITC

Why does this matter?

“Every child should have access to immunizations but too many families in our community are not bringing their children in to our clinics. This is why we are proposing a new agency rule requiring more clinic hours . . .”

Speak to Values First

“The health of the whole community is protected when we ensure that our children are immunized. One of the ways we do this is through our public health agencies that provide free and low cost immunizations for all children. We need extended clinic hours to keep up with growing demands. ”

Solution Oriented Language

Aspiration

DesperationChicken

Little

Used with permissionThe FrameWorks

InstituteCopyright 2008

New MexicoLand that used to be Enchanting

New Mexico – Land of Enchantment

The wild lands of New Mexico have been the source of our spirit and culture for a thousand years. We have a legacy of living with the land, not just on it. A new century poses new challenges – balancing growth and prosperity with the open space that is our heritage. The Wilderness Alliance is working to keep this balance and ensure that New Mexico remains enchanting for future generations . . .

Rolling to Solution

5% What’s Wrong

15% What’s at Stake

80% What Needs to Happen

Landscape versus Portrait Stories

Portrait

Landscape

Different Stories = Different Solutions

Portraits• Individuals• Events• Private• Better

information• Fix the person

Landscapes• Issues• Trends• Public• Better Policies• Fix the

Condition

- Based on work by Iyengar and Gilliam

Frames Influence Decisions

“Every frame defines the issue, explains who is responsible, and suggests potential solutions. All of this is conveyed by images, stereotypes, or anecdotes.”

- Charlotte Ryan, Prime Time Activism, 1991

Alternative Frames

Youth at Home Disobeys Warnings:Knocked out in storm-related accident

Girl at Home Injured during Storm:Home had been cited for building code violations

Teen hurt in freak storm:“I was terrified.”

Facts?

The Limits of “Facts”

Facts do not penetrate the world where our beliefs abide; facts did not give birth to our beliefs, and they do not destroy them. Facts can contradict beliefs constantly without weakening them in the least...

- Proust

Understanding means finding a story you already know and saying, “Oh yeah, that one.” Even just one piece of affirming information about a stereotype is sufficient to confirm the entire stereotype, whereas presentation of even several disconfirming cues has little effect on disconfirming the stereotype.

- (Schank, 1998 & Gurwitz and Dodge, 1977)

Facts do not Trump Frames

The Power of Metaphors

Numbers don’t tell stories by themselves

“Social Math” can make numbers more vivid and understandable

Social Math

Converting large numbers into comprehensible and compelling images to which people can relate.

Break down numbers by timeBreak down numbers by placeProvide comparisons with familiar thingsProvide ironic comparisonsPersonalize numbers

News For Change, 1999

Social Math Examples

One of the more shocking measures of our “prosperity” is the fact that the United States spends more on trash bags than 90 other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world’s nations.

Fast Company, March 2003, p. 74How to Lead a Rich Life:

Revised and updated for a poor economy

Social Math ExamplesNumber of candy-bar wrappers needed to win a basketball as part of Cadbury’s new anti-obesity campaign: 90

Number of hours an 85-pound child would need to play basketball in order to burn off the calories in that many candy bars: 100

-Harpers Index, August 2003

Social Math Examples

A medium combo (popcorn & soda) at Regal has 1,610 calories and 60 grams of saturated fat. That's roughly the saturated fat of a stick of butter and the calories of two sticks of butter.

Social Math, Exercise

• Using the facts or figures you brought with you today:– Spend 10 minutes trying to turn one of

these statistics into an example of social math.

– Spend 5 minutes sharing with your neighbor and helping each other improve the example.

EXERCISE

The “Message Box”

The Message Box• A tool to keep you “on message”

• Helps distill your key arguments to the ones you need to repeat over and over.

• Keeps you focused on Level One Values and Solutions

• Gives you the “cheat sheet” for interviews and debates.

• The place you bridge and pivot back to from hard questions and damaging frames.

Vision

Values

SolutionProblem

Vision

A clear statement of the problem you are trying to address in a way that everyone can see their stake in addressing the issue.

The solution you are proposing

and the principles or

outcomes it is designed to

achieve.

The Level One Values that underpin the challenge and your proposed solution. The answer to the “why does it matter”

question.

Values

SolutionProblem

Your vision for the community, state, society. A sense of the purpose and

goal that drives you to seek the change you are working for. Your

aspiration and inspiration.

PracticeIn teams of three:

• Fill out a message box on an issue or policy you work on.

• Share your message box with your partners for feedback and modify based on comments.

• Prepare one or two hard questions. Role play Q&A with the questions, using the message box to keep your answers “on message.”

Frames Create Reality

“The way in which the world is imagined determines at any particular time what men will do.”

-Walter Lippman, 1921-(courtesy of Dr. Frank Gilliam)

Questions?