The European umbrella organisation of LGBTQI organisations ILGA Europe and the Public Interest Research Center have just published two essential guides to help activists frame their messages.
The first of these, Framing Equality, is a short guide to strategic communications, based on extensive research and building on the experience of activists and communicators from around the globe.
According to the editors “It aims to provide a framework rather than a blueprint; helping you to ask the right questions rather than giving you the right answers”.
The toolkit is based around 3 chapters:
- Define the task
This means getting clear on your vision and your goals, and then focusing in on where your audience currently is on the issue in order to know the barriers you need to overcome - Develop the Frames
This section provides lots of examples and exercices on how to do this. It also helps understanding how “frames” work for communication - Test and refine
There are more and less involved ways to do this, depending on how much resource you have, and what kind of scale of implementation it will involve.
The second publication is a resource to help you test your messages. It is designed for campaigners who have little or no experience with message testing. You will be able to use this guide if you’re working with a research company and want to be able to explain what you need and make sense of what they provide. You’ll also be able to use it to get more involved in testing messages yourself.
