Nature has published a short interview with psychologist Robert Gifford looking at the effective messaging around climate change.

Based on the problem of pubic distrust of scientific messages presenting a range of data (b/c good science is explicit about unknowns), Gifford proposes five elements of effective science messaging:

1. It has to have some urgency.
2. It has to have as much certainty as can be mustered with integrity.
3. There can’t be just one message: there must be messages targeted to different groups.
4. Messages should be framed in positive terms. (People are less willing to change their behaviour if you tell them they have to make sacrifices. If you tell them they can be in the vanguard, be a hero, be the one that helps — that works.)
5. You have to give people the sense that their vote counts and that their effort won’t be in vain.

Of course this doesn’t apply just to messaging around climate change and science.

It’s getting ugly out there. Progressives around the country are struggling to respond to the escalating rhetoric  coming from the radical right, including the hanging of Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) in effigy at a rally; groups of conservative activists disrupting town hall meetings; Fox News’s Glenn Beck calling on patriots to take back America while saying that President Obama hates white people.

In response, the Center for American Progress has offered up a few pointers for dealing with the right wing assault. Here are a few highlights:

• These forces are organized and driven from above: All strategies involving pushing back against these astro-turf forces should include addressing the national organizations driving the actions, not just their local tentacles. Research how they are funded, what their ultimate goals are and what means they use to engage local activists.  At the same time, it is important to ensure that local media treat the local manifestations of these groups as what they are; part of a conservative national strategy. These abusive hecklers are not local, suddenly angry people who otherwise might vote for a progressive.
• There are often strong ties to overtly racist groups: Call conservative groups on their willingness to engage with racists. Do so publicly and with the press. Make it much harder for mainstream conservatives and elected officials to rely on racist organizations to move their messages or provide foot soldiers for their campaigns.  This is not the same as saying that everyone who opposes President Obama is a racist or that everyone who is concerned about securing our border is a bigot. Lots of decent people disagree fundamentally with many of the president’s policy positions, including on immigration, energy, and health care reform. But groups with clear antipathy toward other people because of their race should not be the army on which any legitimate group moves its political agenda.
• They don’t want to have a debate, they want to shout you down: You have to know these tactics are going to happen and prepare for them. This means that every public event with an elected ally or potential ally requires a strong presence from supporters of health care reform or immigration or whatever progressive issue is under attack this week. Immigration advocates set up email lists to alert supporters whenever their voice is needed in a public meeting or even just to add their words to the comments following a news story online. Increasingly, progressive local blogs have started playing this role in the health care debate. The result: progressives have sometimes outnumbered “tea baggers” in some recent town halls.”

Yesterday Obama announced he is going to try to pass immigration reform next year.  Immigration has been a core issue for many of us for decades, and we know what to expect from anti-immigrant opponents.  They have a clear narrative with two main elements: law and order and the overwhelming of scarce resources.  In anticipation of the coming debate, some pro-immigration advocates and communications experts have attempted to developed a pro-immigrant narrative “designed to move hearts, minds, and policy.”  One of these advocates, The Opportunity Agenda, recently released a short framing memo on how groups might frame immigration issues. It’s worth reading the full memo but here’s the short version:

The Pro-Immigration Narrative has three main elements: (1) Workable Solutions; (2) Upholding Our Nation’s Values; and (3) Moving Forward Together. Each element can be expressed in different ways and with different, but related, messages and arguments:

1.) Workable Solutions. Americans are hungry for solutions when it comes to immigration, and they understand that punitive, anti-immigrant approaches are not realistic or workable. We can win by showing ourselves to be voices of solutions and can-do pragmatism. Messages without solutions are easily dismissed.

• We need to fix our broken immigration system, so people can get legal, contribute, and participate fully in American economy and society.
• We’re not going to round up and deport 12 million undocumented men, women, and children, so let’s focus on realistic solutions like creating a way for people to get legal and cracking down on employers that exploit or underpay their workers.
• Building border walls and raiding people’s homes and workplaces are just not realistic solutions. We need real solutions that will work to fix our broken system.

2.) Upholding Our Nation’s Values. The most prominent positive values behind the core narrative are fairness and accountability. Many progressive audiences also see freedom from exploitation as important. And many native-born Latinos and African Americans view equality as important, when it comes to how immigrants from different countries are treated.

• We need a system that protects all workers from exploitation and depressed wages and allows us to all rise together.
• Harsh policies that force people into the shadows are not consistent with our values. Some anti-immigrant forces want to ban undocumented immigrant families from renting apartments or sending their kids to school. These kinds of policies are unworkable and are not consistent with our values. We need to fix our system so that immigrants who came here to work, pay taxes, and learn English can become legal and contribute fully.
• Due process and fair treatment in the justice system are basic human rights, and respecting them is a crucial part of who we are as a nation. There is a lot of evidence that immigrants – both documented and undocumented – are being denied due process in this country. If anyone is denied that basic human right, we are all at risk.

3.) Moving Forward Together. These messages tap most Americans’ views that immigrants work hard and are already contributing to the economy in some ways.

• We need everyone’s contribution to get us out of the mess we’re in. To really fix the economy, we need to fix our immigration system to move towards eliminating the underground economy it perpetuates. By legalizing the undocumented workforce, we will bring these workers out of the shadows and put more workers and employers on our tax rolls.
• We need policies that allow everyone who lives here to work and participate in our society.

A few years ago, self-described “language architect” and public opinion guru for the Republican Party, Frank Luntz, made a splash with his book WORDS THAT WORK: IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAY, IT’S WHAT PEOPLE HEAR, which claimed to “raise the curtain on the craft of effective framing”. It was Luntz who turned the term “estate tax” into the more politically charged “death tax.” He also reframed “drilling for oil” into “exploring for energy.”

Here are his ten rules for successful communication.

Rule 1. Simplicity: Use Small Words. Don’t use words you have to look up, because most (people) won’t.

Rule 2: Brevity. Use short sentences. Good: Just do it! Bad: John Kerry “a bold progressive internationalism that stands in contrast to the belligerent and myopic bush administration”

Rule 3: Credibility is as Important as Philosophy: “Ultimate driving machine” “Read my lips: no new taxes.” Both catchy… both true?

Rule 4: Consistency matters. “It’s the real thing” 1943. “The breakfast of champions” and “M’m M’m Good” 1935. “Good to the last drop” 1915.

Rule 5: Novelty. Volkswagon (and now Mini’s) promoting small when everyone else is pushing big.

Rule 6: Sound and texture matter. “Snap, crackle pop” “intel inside” “quicker picker upper” “think different” … beauty before accuracy.

Rule 7: Speak Aspirationally. “A diamond is forever” “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” I think Obama read this book.

Rule 8: Visualize. “melts in your mouth, not in your hand” The secret to visualization is the word “imagine” The work is done by the reader.

Rule 9: Ask a question “can you hear me now” “got milk” “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Passive becomes interactive

Rule 10: Provide Context and Explain Relevance: From “Have it your way” in 1973 to “No late fees ever” from Netflix today: Be relevant

Rule 1. Simplicity: Use Small Words. Avoid words that might force someone to reach for the dictionary,
because most Americans won’t. The average American did not graduate from college and doesn’t understand the difference between effect and affect.

Rule 2. Brevity: Use Short Sentences. Be as brief as possible. Never use a sentence when a phrase will do and never use four words when three can say just as much.

Rule 3. Credibility Is as Important as Philosophy. People have to believe it to buy it. If your words lack
sincerity or if they contradict accepted facts, circumstances or perceptions, they will lack impact.

Rule 4. Consistency Matters. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Good language is like the Energizer Bunny.
It keeps going … and going … and going.

Rule 5. Novelty: Offer Something New. In plain English, words that work often involve a new definition
of an old idea. At a time when cars and the promotion of them were expanding in size, Volkswagen took exactly the opposite approach in design and in message. It worked because it made people think about the product in a fresh way.

Rule 6. Sound and Texture Matter. The sounds and texture of language should be just as memorable as the
words themselves. A string of words that have the same first letter, the same sound or the same syllabic cadence is more memorable than a random collection of sounds.

Rule 7. Speak Aspirationally. Messages need to say what people want to hear. The key to successful aspirational language for products or politics is to personalize and humanize the message to trigger an emotional remembrance.

Rule 8. Visualize. Paint a vivid picture. From M&M’s “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand” to Morton
Salt’s “When it rains it pours” to NBC’s “Must See TV,” the slogans we remember for a lifetime almost always
have a strong visual component, something we can see and almost feel.

Rule 9. Ask a Question. “Got Milk?” may be the most memorable print ad campaign of the past decade. A statement, when put in the form of a rhetorical question, can have much greater impact than a plain assertion.

Rule 10. Provide Context and Explain Relevance. You have to give people the “why” of a message before
you tell them the “therefore” and the “so that.” Without context, you cannot establish a message’s value, its
impact or, most importantly, its relevance.

WE ARE MEDIA has developed a “Social Media Strategic Planning Worksheet”, to help groups step back and begin thinking more strategically about their communications efforts. Importantly the worksheet covers goals, target audiences and technology implications.

1. GOALS AND RESULTS

GOALS: What are you trying to do? This is the most important component of a good plan and needs to be as SPECIFIC as possible.
Your goal is not your mission. Your goal is what you want to change. Make sure this is an appropriate goal for a social media strategy. What is it, exactly, that you want to accomplish?
RESULTS: A good way to determine if your goal is specific enough is to chart how you will measure your progress.

2. AUDIENCE

WHO: Who must you reach to achieve your goal? What are their demographics, “technographics, and other important characteristics ?
What are they doing online? What is their social activity online?

PERCEPTIONS, VALUES, CORE CONCERNS: How are they talking about your issue or organization? Are there misconceptions? Based on your social media listening, what existing beliefs can you tap into to reach your audience? What will encourage members of your audience to move toward your goal? What can you do or what conversations points can you use to tap into one of their existing thoughts or beliefs to gain their support? Remember this is about THEIR value system not YOURS. How they think and what lens they use to make decisions are important to understand if you want them to connect with your issue or organization. Remember it is always easier to tap into a value someone already holds than to create a new one. You may need to engage in social media listening techniques (link to module on listening) to understand the “points of persuasion”.

LISTENING & CONVERSATION: What is the best way to listen to them? What is the best way to engage them in conversation? For some resources about how to identify your audience, see here.

3. CONTEXT

The success of your efforts depends on an accurate assessment of the environment within which you operate and are seeking to make change happen.

a. Internal Scan – What are the assets and challenges of your organization that impact your social media strategy? Assess the capacity of your organization by examining your internal assets and the challenges you face as an organization. This can include:

• Resources: Staff, resources and tools that are available to undertake your communications work.
• Internal Culture: What resistance might there be within your organization? (link to module on culture change and resistance)

b. External Scan – What is happening outside your organization that may influence or impact your social media strategy?
What work has already been done in this area? Is there opposition, existing players or a debate or conversation underway on this issue?
(link to module on listening)

c. Define Your Position – Once you determine what the existing situation is, you can decide if you are going to:

• Position 1: Leap in to an existing debate– Fortify and amplify an established debate and spend your time and resources fortifying your position. This means “heavy implementation”, i.e. discussing the best tactics that can be employed in a widespread way.
• Position 2: Frame the debate – Most organizations think they are in this position—a blank slate, with no preconceived ideas to correct. Activities involved in framing a debate include research, language, development, messaging, audience research and opposition planning. For implementation this usually means agenda-setting tactics, such as placement of a key news article or speech at a high profile event with important stakeholders who will echo the message. While most organizations think they are in this position, it is not usually the case. Once the debate has been framed, move to Position 1 – to fortify and amplify.
• Position 3: Re-Frame the debate –Most organizations find themselves in this position. Sometimes groups fortify and amplify a losing debate, when what you really need to do is cut your losses. How do you talk about a issue in a new way, to gain traction and make progress? Activities include research and messaging, meeting with allies to determine new ways to discuss the issue and then continued framing activities, such as agenda-setting articles, opinion pieces and speeches.

5. Collaboration

Are there other organizations are doing the same work that you are doing? Can you work with them in partnership?

6. Pick your social media tactics and tools.

At this point you are ready to make some decisions: Link your goals, audience, listening strategy, and conversation with tactics and tools.

7. Given all the above, how does this integrate and dovetail with your organization’s traditional marketing and communications plan?

The Center for American Progress recently released a report entitled “The Political Ideology of the Millennial Generation“  providing a detailed portrait of the Millennial generation (birth years 1978-2000), covering the generation’s size, voting behavior, demographics, and views on cultural, foreign policy, the role of government, and economic issues.

According to the report “The weight of this evidence strongly suggests that Millennials are indeed an unusually progressive generation and that they will have a strong and durable impact on our nation’s politics.” Below are some of the more interesting findings.

• More than two in three younger Americans agree with progressive perspectives on energy, sustainable living, and climate change, government efforts to protect people and the economy, and new steps to fight inequality. Strong agreement tops 40 percent on many of these progressive beliefs.
• The views of younger people are fairly well aligned across educational classes, further reinforcing the generational harmony among younger Americans around many progressive ideas.
• Younger Americans are much more likely than those who are 30 years or older to believe that government must step in to protect the national economy when the market fails and that society has contributed greatly to the wealth of rich people.
• Noncollege young people (43 percent favorable) are even less positive about conservatism than are college-educated ones (48 percent).
• Young Americans are far less likely than older Americans to agree with conservative notions that stronger regulation of business does more harm than good; that free-market solutions are better than government at creating jobs and economic growth; and that limited government is always better than big government.
• White youth are more skeptical of their chances of achieving the American Dream than nonwhite youth. Twenty percent of those young people earning $20,000 to $30,000 per year are skeptical of their life chances compared to only 8 percent of those earning $75,000 per year or more.
• Asked to choose two American political values that are most important to them, 48 percent of young people say “opportunity” and 41 percent select “equality.” In comparison, their older counterparts favor “liberty” (41 percent) and “justice” (36 percent) as their top values.
• Young people are in basic alignment (although at lower levels of support) with older voters in the belief that “government should do more to promote the common good” (50 percent) rather than doing more “to promote individual liberty” (29 percent).
• Young and old are in agreement that government needs to play a larger role in the economy—60 percent of younger Americans and 61 percent of older ones say that “it’s time for government to take a larger and stronger role in making the economy work for the average American,” compared to 27 percent and 36 percent, respectively, who follow the conservative line that “turning to big government to solve our economic problems will do more harm than good.”

With the climate change debate heating up in Congress and environmental issues often ranking near bottom of public worry, some in the environmental movement are struggling to reframe the debate. EcoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington, has been conducting research for several years on new ways to talk to the public about climate change and other environmental issues.  There’s remains a fine line between reframing and DC-centered spin.  Here are a few of EcoAmerica’s findings; you bee the judge.

• The problem with global warming is saying “global warming.” The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes.
• Instead reframe the issue using different language. Talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.” “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.”
• The group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”
• The firm advises groups talk in “Talking Points”, aspirational language about shared American ideals, like freedom, prosperity, independence and self-sufficiency while avoiding jargon and details about policy, science, economics or technology

These suggestions replicate the contra-framing of much of corporate America. As Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University, an expert on environmental communications, told the NYT: ecoAmerica’s campaign is a mirror image of what industry and political conservatives is doing. “The form is the same; the message is just flipped.  You want to sell toothpaste, we’ll sell it. You want to sell global warming, we’ll sell that. It’s the use of advertising techniques to manipulate public opinion.”

There’s been a lot of talk in progressive circles about “framing” over the last few years. George Lakoff, the Democrats framing guru, defines frames as “mental structures that shape the way we see the world. . . . When you hear a word, its frame is activated in your brain. . . . In politics our frames shape our social policies. . . . Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames.”

Lakoff recently applied his framing analysis to break down what he’s identified as the “Obama Code”.  Below are a four of seven elements [edited] Lakoff sees as key to Obama’s success:

1. Values Over Programs: Distinguish programs from the value systems they represent. Every policy has a material aspect – the nuts and bolts of how it works – plus a typically implicit aspect that represents the values and ideas behind the nuts and bolts. The President knows the difference. He understands that those who see themselves as “progressive” or “conservative” all too often define those words in terms of programs rather than values. Even the programs championed by progressives may not fit what the President sees as the fundamental values of the country

2. Progressive Values Are American Values: Define what the fundamental American values are. Progressive thought rests, first, on the value of empathy – putting oneself in other people’s shoes, seeing the world through their eyes, and therefore caring about them. The second principle is acting on that care, taking responsibility both for oneself and others, social as well as individual responsibility. The third is acting to make oneself, the country, and the world better – what Obama has called an “ethic of excellence” toward creating “a more perfect union” politically.

How are such values expressed? Take a look at the inaugural speech. Empathy: “the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job, the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child…” Responsibility to ourselves and others: “We have duties to ourselves, the nation, and the world.” They define our democracy: “This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed.”

3. Biconceptualism and the New Bipartisanship: The third crucial idea behind the Obama Code is biconceptualism, the knowledge that a great many people who identify themselves ideologically as conservatives, or politically as Republicans or Independents, share those fundamental American values – at least on certain issues. Most “conservatives” are not thoroughgoing movement conservatives, but are what I have called “partial progressives” sharing Obama’s American values on many issues. And, he assumes that the more they come to think in terms of those American values, the less they will think in terms of opposing conservative values.

4. Protection and Empowerment: The fourth idea behind the Obama Code is the President’s understanding of government – “not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.” This depends on what “works” means. The word sounds purely pragmatic, but it is moral in operation.  The idea is that government has twin moral missions: protection and empowerment. Protection includes not just military and police protection, but protections for the environment, consumers, workers, pensioners, disaster victims, and investors.

For you gluttons for punishment, here’s a video of a Lakoff lecture.

Trying to figure out ways to talk, frame and respond to the current financial meltdown?  Wondering how we bring it all down to the local level? (Polls are showing 6 in 10 Americans think depression is “likely”.) Events are moving so fast, it’s hard for many of us to wrap our minds around it, but it’s our job to try. Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, has sketched out a possible progressive frame in his recent post, “Canaries, Coalmines, and Our Shared Fate”. Here are his top four takeaways and action plan. (Read the full post here.)

1. Abuse and exploitation of poor people of color eventually harms everyone.
2. Money has a way of materializing if you think something is really, really important.
3. Free market fundamentalism, R.I.P.
4. The fact that some corporations are now so large as to be “too big to fail” raises some provocative questions about the corporate form itself.

So what is to be done? This is a major, historic opportunity to educate the public about the way our economy works, what our government is for, and why a just society proceeds from deep awareness of our connection rather than the fiction of radical isolation.  In the short term, CCC and other allies have been urging opposition to the bailout proposals before Congress, and are insisting that protection for vulnerable homeowners and revisions to punitive bankruptcy laws be part of the package.  Over the longer term, we are working closely with others to develop a progressive economic plan to address the ongoing crisis.

Elites in Washington have concluded that average people don’t “get” the importance of the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street because it was poorly framed.

It’s not the recession, the foreclosure crisis or the basic injustice of the bailout that has spurred constituents to call in 100 to 1 against the bailout or flood Congress with so many emails that the system had to be taken off-line.  According to the Atlantic the problem is that “When described as a ‘bailout,’ the public opposes it. When the principles of the bill are described without using the word ‘bailout,’ they support it. So the failure of the bill, was, really, a victory for the inadequate and time-bound vocabulary that our elected leaders use to explain.”  Instead, the bailout should be called a “rescue” and sold as a bread and butter issue or with a “we’re all to blame” frame.